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I see blood in your future. Blood and terror,” Heid told her. “But I also see greatness. These things are, in many ways, inseparable from one another.”
But I won’t lie to you: It’ll be difficult. Nothing in this life worth having comes easily.
Only time will tell how your story goes. There’s nothing that will cause you greater grief than trying to fulfill or avoid a prophecy.” “I don’t understand,” Gunnhild said weakly. The old witch bared her yellow teeth in a wide grin. “Oh, my girl,” she said. “You will.”
“People say things they don’t mean when they’re hurt and wish to make others hurt with them,” her mother had said once when Oddny was younger and had come crying to her after an argument with Signy. “You’re sisters. When two people know each other as well as you girls do, you know the exact things to say that will cause each other the most pain.”
“You’ll get used to being afraid. If you don’t feel fear, why would you need to be brave?”
“I suppose enduring this will make me stronger, then,” Oddny had said bitterly. “If it comforts you to think so,” Yrsa had replied. “But it’s all right to feel weak, Oddny. Sometimes our bodies give us more pain than we can bear. But any gods worth worshipping know that not every person can give the same effort.”
When your patron calls you, they’ll judge your strengths and weaknesses against yourself, not against others.”
He was of a height with her, his face open and kind but his eyes shrewd and full of mischief, and she decided that anyone who could rankle a king the way he did was likely a good ally to have.
“She came out of nowhere,” Eirik hissed back. “It could be another trick.” “She could be our last hope.” “Or she could be our doom.” “I surely could be, should you continue carrying on as though I’m not sitting right here,” Gunnhild said loudly, and both men turned to her.
“It’s a long story.” “And I would hear you tell it.” “I wouldn’t know where to start.” “The beginning should suffice.”
He didn’t appeal to your ambition—he appealed to your selfishness. Your desire to be someone. To prove your mother wrong. But to me, you’ve been someone all along. You never had anything to prove. Do you not see that?”
Or she could choose this. Choose them. Choose him. But what held her back was the understanding that if she chose him now, she might do so again and again until eventually there would be no question and no choice at all. Until it would always be him. That, she realized, was love. A different kind of love than she felt for her sworn sisters and for Heid. A love like fire, warm and bright and destructive all at once. And she wasn’t certain she should kindle this feeling, for she didn’t have to be a seeress to know that one day the resulting blaze might very well consume all else.
“Good,” said Freyja soothingly. “How will you ever master your fear if you won’t admit to feeling it in the first place? Embrace it. Wield it. Things are only going to get more difficult from here. But in the end, it shall be worth it.”
We can be better than our parents were, she wanted to say. We will be better than them, if you give us one more chance to be better to each other.
I don’t think the dead want us to die for them. I think a better way to honor them is to live.”
