Freya squeezed her eyes shut. A rhythmic chanting started to her right, deeper than her old friend’s voice; a flash of light brightened the backs of her eyelids; the floor itself trembled, keys and metals smacking into each other in a ruckus. Tea sloshed over the sides of Freya’s cup and over her gloves, and her falcon took off. Just as suddenly as the shaking started, it stopped. Freya waited with her heart in her throat.
Brenn slumped in her armchair. The skin under her eyes was sallow.
Freya wanted to grab her by the collar of her priestess robes and shake answers out of her. “Did you see something?” she asked.
“I did,” Brenn said. “Why don’t we finish our tea first?”
“If it’s something bad, I need to know now.”
Brenn stared into the hearth.
“Tell me.”
“I saw two things. One of them may need your immediate attention,” Brenn said in warning.
“Yes?” Freya croaked.
“You shouldn’t have skipped out on the assembly. There’s important news.”
“That’s specific and helpful.” Freya looked up at the ceiling. “Thanks a lot.”
“The other thing is more abstract.” Brenn took a deep breath and rushed through her next words. “It’s about Queen Astrid. The goddess showed me that she will experience a loss. But this doesn’t mean—”
Freya jumped to her feet. Scalding hot tea splashed over her trousers. “A loss ofwhat?”
Loss of her queendom? Loss of her life?
“Like I said, I do not know. It could be a financial loss,” Brenn reasoned. “Or a friend dying of natural causes.”
Like Freya, Astrid had few friends. Freya laughed dryly. Her throat caught on the laugh and transformed it into a cough. “Why hasn’t the goddess shown this to you before? Has the loss been coming all along?”
Brenn held two fingers to her temple. “I love you, Freya, truly. But that’s not how wyrd works, and you know it. We are not worthy of the goddess’s full knowledge, and we will only ever see glimpses of our fate.”
The raven and the falcon circled overhead, cawing at each other in a reflection of their owners.
Freya was already at the door, donning her wet boots. “I’ll be back if I need more. Keep your window open for Huginn.”
“Freya, it’s going to be okay. It’s not—”
“If you remember more details, please get in touch with me right away.” Her voice had gone stiff, formal. “I’ll see you later.”
Brenn followed Freya into the rain, pleading. “Freya. There are things you don’t understand about the goddess and her magic. It’s okay not to know, but please don’t act rashly.”
The things Freya did not know were ahead of her, not behind. She mounted her horse, one word echoing through her mind over and over again, all-consuming.
Loss.
Chapter Two
Queen Astrid Karrsdaughter, orc ruler of Torden, would’ve rather been anywhere but here.
She listened with waning patience to the steward’s rundown of issues brought up at the assembly. Often, the complaints Torden’s citizens raised with Varin filled Astrid with unease—either because she had not thought of addressing something herself, or because they seemed so insignificant as to hardly be worth the administrative effort. The steward was a tolerant orc. More tolerant than Astrid was capable of.
As the steward droned on, Astrid glanced behind her. Her spymaster was missing. Astrid had known this instinctively; she felt the absence of Freya even when she did not see her, like a draft against her side. Astrid had not seen Freya slip out of the meeting, but that was no surprise.
The steward’s spectacles repeatedly fell to the end of his nose and had to be pushed back up. Astrid watched the rhythmic nature of this action, the inevitability—the slow descent downward, the quick, precise push upward, and the sniffle that followed, his tusks wavering as if preparing for a sneeze. Maybeshe needed to order him a new pair of spectacles. She fiddled with her dark red cloak and absently noticed some of the thread was coming loose on the left side.
Astrid glanced back once more.
