Sky in the Deep (Sky and Sea, #1)

by Adrienne Young

I pulled my sword from my scabbard with my right hand and caught the axe with my left. “Vegr yfir fjor.” She settled her arm all the way into her shield, lifting it up over her head in an arc to stretch her shoulder before she repeated it back to me. “Vegr yfir fjor.” Honor above life.

The boy I’d shared my childhood with. The boy I’d fought side by side with. He was worse than any enemy. And the blood we shared was now poison in my veins.

“How much for her?” one of them called back to the torches. “Four penningr,” a man shouted back. I could feel myself sinking deeper into the snow. It was the same price I’d paid for the goat we sacrificed the night I saw Iri. I tried to blink back the flare in my eyes. It was a cruel joke. Like Sigr was looking down on me and laughing. He had to be.

I watched the charred black catch the edge of the wood, eating its way across until the idol was just a part of the fire. Turning to smoke and gathering up above me. It stretched and curled around itself, reaching out into the air. Until it was nothing.

Inge laughed. “She has hair, doesn’t she?” “I used to do my brother’s,” I answered. The breath caught in my chest.

I’d always thought of Iri as strong. Wise. But my brother was a fool. He’d given us up for a Riki girl. And if Iri could do a thing like that, then what was I doing here? I’d followed him into the forest. I’d gone after him. Risked everything. For this. He hadn’t just become one of them. Iri was in love with one of them.

“Fjotra is the blood bond. They aren’t brothers,” I corrected her. “That’s munstrǫnd fjotra. Sál fjotra is a bond between souls.”

“This kind of bond is formed when a soul is broken. It’s formed through pain, loss, and heartbreak. They’re bound by something deeper than we can see. And that made Iri family.”

But I wasn’t angry. I was aflame with fury. I was filled with something so dark it was poisoning me from the inside out. I lifted the spade again, pointing it at him. “How could you do it? How could you be here all this time living a new life with a new family?”

I put my face into my hands, trying to escape what he was saying. Because it made me feel like the world was turned sideways. Like everything I’d ever been taught didn’t fit into the shape of this world.

“What are you thinking now?” The weight of it fell from my head, down into the rest of my body. The words were small but they were true. “I’m thinking that I wish you’d died that day.”

I sat down on the cot, curling up on my side and tried to stay quiet as I wept. But the thing writhing inside me was too angry to be calmed. It was too hurt to be hushed. It was a living, breathing thing and it was trying to swallow me whole. And maybe it would. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore and only the sound of the fire remained.

“Sigr, keep the soul of my mother safe in Sólbjǫrg. Protect my father. Do not take your favor from me.” The words bent and turned around each other. I sniffed them back. “Don’t forget me.”

“Elska ykkarr,” he said, and the warmth of the words wound around me. I love you.

It was still strange to see them this way—tired and weak. Heartbroken. The spirit in them was sleeping somewhere deep inside, but it was there. It was like the stillness of the air before an angry storm. And I didn’t like the idea of sleeping in the middle of it.

I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing, his back rising and falling against me, like the sound of seawater kissing the fjord.

I stood at the threshold of the thought. The thought of Fiske that had been buried alive in the back of my mind. I looked over the edge of it, peering down into the darkness. It called to me. It screamed my name. And I jumped.

He smiled at the corner of his mouth. “Because you have fire in your blood.”

“I don’t belong to you.” I repeated the words I said to him the night he pulled the stitches from my arm. This time, to lift the weight that pressed down onto him and silence whatever words were whispering in his mind. And because a small part of me still wanted them to be true. “Yes, you do.” He pulled the hair back out of my face so he could look at me. “Like I belong to you.”

And when he kissed me again, the seconds slowed. They stretched out and made more time. I felt his body against mine, unraveling everything else that was between us, and my soul unwound, threading itself to his. And I let it. I gave myself to him. Because I was already his.

“If you go back to Hylli, I want to come with you.” I twisted the corner of the blanket in my hands. “What about your family?” “I’ll go where you go.” This time, the words were unyielding.

I reached for him and he came down onto his knees in front of me, between my legs, and he let out a long breath as he leaned into me. I held his weight, holding him tightly. “I didn’t want to ask you,” I said in a cracked whisper. He set his head onto my shoulder. “You didn’t have to ask me.”

She would have to lead with her left and her left wasn’t her strong side. But I’d done as much for her in the past. It’s what we did for each other. It’s how we survived. And being back on the front line with her was like going home. A home that could never be burned or broken.

I was the same. But I was different. I closed my eyes again, laying my head back to rest on Fiske’s shoulder, and wove my fingers into his. Where the people we had once been and the people we were fit together. Where we were both.