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

by Adrienne Young

“They’re fine.” I glared at her, insulted. “If you’re worried, fight with someone else.”

“Stop worrying about me.”

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.

I let the growl crawl up the inside of me, from that deep place that comes alive in battle.

I could barely hear him. I could barely think, everything washed out in the flood of the vision before me.

He was gone, devoured by the fog, the Riki disappearing with him.

As if they were ghosts. As if they were never there. And they couldn’t have been. Because it was Iri, and the last time I saw my brother was five years ago. Lying dead in the snow.

I broke through the fog and ran toward the river as fast as my feet would carry me

I sucked in a breath, looking up to the thin white clouds brushed across the sky to keep another tear from falling.

I wouldn’t hesitate to kill every one of them if I thought it would get me home, but it probably wouldn’t.

“I saved your life. I’m hoping that’s good enough reason to believe him.”

Memories suddenly felt more like dreams, moments stuck between waking and sleeping.

They hated me like I hated them. But they’d won. And they knew it.

“You’ll find your own end before the snow melts because your pride and your anger are more important to you than your own survival.”

I drew back, the words stinging. Because they were true. More true than I wanted to admit. “I’ll be gone before the thaw.”

“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.”

In my mind, I traced the path through the forest to the river. I sat in the corner and ate, looking at the wall. I kept to myself.

He looked around us warily. If there was anyone nearby, they would have heard me. But I didn’t care.

The tears came back up and it made me even angrier. Because as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t hurt. I couldn’t hide that I was cut deep with what he’d done.

You were fighting in the distance. I could barely see you in the fog.”

And though I couldn’t imagine it, maybe I did know what he was saying because I could see it. He’d found a place here and he fit.

“I’ve thought of you every day.”

“The path of my soul has taken a turn, just as yours has.”

“I want to go home.” “I know. But you will never be the same. You will never be the same person you were.” He paused. “You are seeing the truth. I see you thinking it, every day.”

“That they’re like us.” 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.”

They were going hunting with some of the men from the village. He was leaving me. Again. And I wouldn’t be here when he returned. I’d wait for a chance to get to the river and I’d take it. I wouldn’t look back.

The thing I remembered most about my mother was her hair. I remember it catching the sun and thinking that it looked like it was moving even when it wasn’t.

For a moment, I thought I should lie.

No one would notice I was gone until morning.

I couldn’t see his face in the moonlight as he stepped back and looked at me. He stood there, silent, his breath slowing. “You’re going to close your eyes and never wake up. If you do, it will only be to wish you were dead.”

She stood, motionless, in the dark. I waited for her to say something. To do something.

I had never been so vulnerable. So full of fear. And I had never hated myself until that moment.

Then, the all-consuming shame of being afraid to die for the very first time in my life.

I closed my eyes and welcomed the dark.

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

“The same way they don’t know they can trust us. But we need each other. If we don’t come together, our people are finished. Our way of life is gone.”

“You’re not alone,” I said, emotion thick in my throat. “And I’m not leaving. Ever.”

My father had his arms wound around Iri like ropes, hunched over and weeping into his shoulder, his body wracked with sobs. The sound of it filled the house and spilled out into the village. And Iri was the same, his face broken into pieces as my father held onto him.

Their faces, too, were shrouded in suspicion.

My father looked them over carefully, left to right. He stood beside me, his sword still hanging at his side. The glisten of tears still shone on his cheeks, but my father was a dangerous man. Anyone could see that.

My father wasn’t convinced. I could see doubt in every shift of his eyes. He didn’t trust them to keep the truce. Neither did I. Not really.

“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....

I couldn’t feel the tears falling anymore. I couldn’t feel anything except for the parts of...

I pushed the uncertainty and doubt down to the very deepest part of me. I buried them there, along with the beliefs and traditions that had made up who I was.

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.”