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.

We stood in silence, listening to the blood drain into the trough, and my eyes lifted to the idols of my mother and my brother on the stone. They were lit up in the amber light, shadows dancing over their carved faces. I’d felt the absence of my mother as soon as she stopped breathing. As if with that last breath, her soul had let go of her body. But with Iri, it had never been that way. I still felt him. Maybe I always would.

He stood, going to the door and leaving only Fiske’s hand to keep me from rolling off the table. My head fell to the side and Fiske came back into view, his dark hair falling around his face as he worked at cleaning my shoulder. I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. “Who are you?” The words cracked in my chest. He stilled, the hard angles of his face severe in the dim light. The heat of a tear slowly trailed down the side of my face. “Who are you to my brother?” His mouth pressed together before he answered, his hands stilling on the wound. “He’s my brother. And if you get him killed, I will cut your throat like I should have done in Aurvanger.”

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.

I would be a fool to try now. But if I could last the winter without getting a knife in my heart, maybe I had a chance.

“Hmph.” The blacksmith hovered over me, his brow scrunching. “I told you to be still.” My face slid on the anvil, slick with snot and silent tears, as they held me in place, letting the collar cool. It was too late. The weight of the warm metal sat heavy around my neck.

I dropped the idol into the flames, tears catching in my chest. I let him go. I erased him. Every memory. Every small hope. Because the Iri I loved was gone. The boy who had once known every shadowed corner of my life was dead the moment he spilled the blood of our people. That boy was gone just as our mother was, but his soul was lost.

“She’s gone,” he whispered, sitting down beside my cot. He looked down at the collar around my neck, his eyes shifting to avoid mine. “I thought we had more time. I’m sorry.” I didn’t answer. The last thing I wanted from him was his sympathy. “It’s only until the thaw, Eelyn. Then we can find a way to get you home. Back to Aghi.” I rolled onto my back to face him. The glow from the fire pit was too low to see his eyes. “Hylli is home to both of us, Iri.” He looked away. “Fela is my home now.”

“What?” I couldn’t smooth the bite out of the word, pulling the flower into my cloak. “Nothing.” She blinked. “You just—with that green cloak and your hair—you look just like Iri.” Something sad fell like a veil over her voice, the lift in her mouth turning down at the corners. So, she knew who I was. At the very least, she suspected.

“I used to do my brother’s,” I answered. The breath caught in my chest. Inge and Halvard both looked at me. Iri stilled, sitting up straighter.

His face changed, a flash of darkness igniting in his eyes. His fingers tightened around my wrist as he pushed me back, pinning me to a tree. His axe slid from its sheath smoothly before the cold blade pressed to my throat. “Threaten my family again and I will kill you,” he breathed. “I’ll kill you and then I’ll wait for the thaw. I’ll go down to the fjord and kill your father while he sleeps.” My eyes widened, my mouth dropping open. I looked into his face, trying to measure the hatred there. But it was something else. Something more ferocious than hate. It was love. For Iri. “Iri would never forgive you,” I grunted. “I care more about keeping him alive than I do his forgiveness. I will leave you dead in this forest and tell Iri you ran.” He drifted closer. “Then do it.” I leaned into the blade, meeting his eyes as a sob broke from the words. And for a moment, I thought he would. I almost wished for an end to the cracking, crumbling ache in my chest.

“So Iri is Riki now?” She nodded. “He is. Iri left his past behind. It took time, but the Riki accepted him. The gods are funny that way.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “What do you mean?” “I mean, sometimes they make families in peculiar ways.” She stood, pulling more garlic from the crate. “Fjotra,” she said, under her breath. “Fjotra is the blood bond. They aren’t brothers,” I corrected her. “That’s munstrǫnd fjotra. Sál fjotra is a bond between souls.” I stared at her. “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.”

I went back to work. I didn’t want to know what Iri planned to do. He’d left. He’d taken a new family, and he didn’t owe me anything anymore.

“What does it say?” “Ala sál. Soul bearer,” he said, proudly. “It’s my taufr.” I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. “What is it?” “It protects me.” “How?” “You give it to someone you want to protect. It tells the gods that you bear another’s soul. My mother made it for me.”

“It means fish.” He looked up at me, his brow furrowing as he stood. “Your name. It means fish, doesn’t it?”

“You still have Aska blood in your veins. You still belong to my family.” “I will always be your brother. I was born Aska. But I’m something else now.” “You’re either Riki or Aska, Iri. You can’t be both. You told Runa who I am.” He didn’t meet my eyes. “Yes.” “How long until she tells someone and they come to kill us both?” “She would never do that.” “Well, I’m not going to stay long enough to find out. I’m going home. With or without you. I’m not going to wait for the thaw.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Then you’ll die.” “Vegr yfir fjor, Iri. Honor above life.” My voice turned weak. “Didn’t you think about me?” “I’ve thought of you every day.” He watched as I wiped the tears from my face.

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.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you save Iri’s life?” He sat up straighter, letting the silence between us stretch out and pull like the thoughts in my mind, trying to find a place to land. “Because we were dying. Because it was the end. And at the end, life becomes precious.”

Iri was a traitor. But we were bound together in a way that even I didn’t understand. And the worst part had been realizing that there was maybe nothing he could do to change that. I wanted to forget him, but maybe I never would. I wanted to let him go, but I might never be able to.

“We find things, just as we lose things, Eelyn.” Inge stood. “If you’ve lost your honor, you’ll find it again.”

“Are you going to come back?” he asked, kicking the snow with his boots. I took the reins of Iri’s horse, running my hand up his snout. “I don’t know.” “You could. You could come back if you want.”

I reached into my armor vest and took his hand. “Thank you.” “For what?” He looked at me, his face changing. “For being kind to me.”

“Elska ykkarr,” he said, and the warmth of the words wound around me. I love you. I leaned into him, letting him hold me. I loved him, too. More than anything. But I wondered if I would ever be able to admit it to him again. I wondered if a part of me would always be angry. “What do you want me to tell our father?” He sighed. “The truth.” I didn’t want to tell him about Iri. But I could never lie to him.

“If you’re going home, it won’t be as a dýr.” He uncrossed his arms, going back to the horse. The blacksmith went back to his work and the pounding of iron on the forge rang out around us. “You don’t owe me anything.” I could hear the Riki down the path starting to move. “You saved my life. More than once. We’re even.” He glanced down at the ground and I waited for the words building behind his lips. “We’ll never be even.”

I fell into him, the weight so heavy that I couldn’t draw another breath. His arms slid around me and I pushed my face into his shoulder. I wept. A dark, sacred cry rising up out of me. He held me together, keeping the pieces from falling down around us. And I cried until I couldn’t feel. I cried until I couldn’t think. The moon rose up over my broken home and I broke with it.

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

She turned to face me, her kol-rimmed eyes red and swollen. “Are you one of them now too?” she asked, the words broken. “You want to be one of them, like Iri?” “No!” I met her eyes. “I’m Aska, Mýra. I want our people to survive. That’s all.” She fell into me, burying her face in my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing. She wept, folding into me, and I held her. My father and Fiske stood as black silhouettes before the fire, watching us. “I’m alone,” she cried. “You and Aghi are all I have.” Her voice bent into a whisper. “Please don’t leave. Please,” she begged. I pulled back to look at her. “You’re not alone,” I said, emotion thick in my throat. “And I’m not leaving. Ever.” Her weight grew heavy in my arms and when I couldn’t hold her any longer, I slid to the ground and pulled her into my lap. “Elska ykkarr,” I whispered into her hair. “Elska ykkarr.” She cried like I’d never seen her cry and the sound of it echoed through the trees. She cried for her family. For Hylli. For the Aska. For everything. And I cried with her.

I tried to remember who I was. Strong. Brave. Fierce. Sure. I tried to summon her to me—that Eelyn who would choose her people over anything else. I searched for her within myself, but she was different now. I was different. And it was something that was already done. Something I couldn’t change.

“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.”

I could still see a young Eelyn standing on the beach turned into the wind, a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t buried her. I’d only let her change into something new. I’d envied Iri my whole life for his open heart, and now mine had been pried open too. 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.