“I think not.” Bodil straightened my fingers, digging her thumbs into the aching tendons. “And while Bjorn has a reputation for having talented hands, I don’t think you’re the sort to suffer for the sake of gaining attention. I think”—she hesitated—“that you believe you deserve the pain.”
It suddenly hurt to breathe, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Why, Freya?”
Twin tears squeezed out from under my eyelids, running down my cheeks as the answer lurking deep inside me rose to the surface. “My husband Vragi was a piece of shit,” I finally whispered. “He ruined my life and would have done his best to ruin Ingrid and Geir’s, but…” I tried to swallow but it stuck, making me cough. “I murdered him, Bodil, and he didn’t deserve that. Didn’t deserve an axe in the back of the skull just for being a bastard.”
“I disagree,” she replied. “Vragi’s reputation was known even in Brekkur. I’d bet all the silver in my pocket that cheers went up throughout your village when they heard the news.”
I gave a tight shake of my head. “He might have been an arse about it, but no one ever starved. He made sure of that.” And in Skaland, that mattered. Our world was harsh and cruel, winters taking countless lives as the unprepared or unlucky starved. But not in our village, for we always had fish.
Or had.
Now, thanks to my violence, how many would be lost when winter came?
Though that wasn’t the reason I neglected my scars. Wasn’t the reason I embraced the pain. “I feel guilty for the harm I’ve caused my village,” I choked out. “But I don’t feel bad about killing Vragi. I don’t feel anything.”
“Because he deserved it, Freya. That’s why.”
I clenched my eyes shut again, scrubbing away the tears. “It’s not. With the other people I’ve killed, it was me or them, so it makes sense that I felt little remorse over their deaths. But Vragi wasn’t threatening my life, or even Ingrid’s life, only promising misery, and I killed him in cold blood rather than trying to find another solution. If I were anyone other than who I am, Snorri would have punished me as a murderer, but instead I walk free. I should feel terrible guilt, but I don’t. So I need to make myself feel hurt another way, to punish myself, because I’m afraid if I don’t, I’ll do it again.”
Bodil exhaled a slow breath, then wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close like a mother would a child. “You don’t deserve to hurt. Hlin’s blood runs in your veins, so it’s your nature to want to protect those you care about. Vragi was a man who destroyed the lives of everyone he touched, and no amount of fish makes up for that. He didn’t need to go after this Ingrid you speak of. He could’ve taken Snorri’s gold and walked away, but he chose to attack you and yours. It’s his own bloody fault that he picked a fight with the wrong woman.”
There was logic to what Bodil said, yet I remembered the surge of emotion that had filled me when Vragi uttered his intention. Protectiveness, yes. Fear, yes. But above all else, rage. And that was not something I could cast at Hlin’s feet.
Bodil reached into my pocket to extract the salve. “Put it on.”
I rolled the jar between my hands. “I will. But I’d like a few minutes alone to sit, if that’s all right.”
She hesitated, eyes considering. But she must have heard the truth in my words, for she rose, casting a warning over her shoulder as she departed. “Do not wander, Freya. There are many who seek your death.”
Sighing, I opened the jar and smeared some of the salve on my scars, feeling almost instant relief from the stiffness. When I’d finished, I leaned back in the wet sand, turning my face up to the misting sky and closing my eyes. If only there was a way to clear my head. A way to silence the problems warring for my attention. A way to not constantly be thinking.
What I needed was not respite from the world but respite from myself. Except short of someone knocking me over the head, there was little chance of that.
“Breathe in,” I murmured, attempting one of Bodil’s exercises for settling the mind that she’d taught me earlier in the day. “Breathe out.”
My heart steadied as I breathed, pushing away every thought that came for me as I hunted stillness.
Breathe.
My mind quieted but the silence was short-lived, for a crackle soon filled my ears.
Along with the stench of charred meat.
Jerking upright, I panned my surroundings and my eyes instantly latched on the source.