“She still is. You’re just no longer worthy of her loyalty.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, needing to be away from her before I lashed out with more than words. “I’m leaving, Mother. It’s time you made your own way in the world.”
Twisting on my heel, I strode toward my mare, Bjorn at my side.
“Freya!” she shrieked over and over as Bjorn lifted me onto my horse. “Please!”
I didn’t look back.
“We need to hurry.” I rode at a swift canter down the narrow trail circling the fjord, knowing that for all my bravado, I had a decision to make. “We don’t have much time to get back.”
Instead of answering, Bjorn drew his gelding to a rough halt, the horse tossing its head in annoyance. “Why return at all? This is your chance to escape. We can head down the coast and find a merchant ship heading south, where we’ll be out of reach of all of this.”
“So that Snorri can execute my idiot brother and my negligent mother?” I snorted. “As tempting as that is at this particular moment, no.”
Reaching out, Bjorn caught hold of my mare’s reins, preventing me from heeling her into a trot and away from this conversation. “Freya, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“If it’s your opinions on my family, I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s not about your family. It’s about mine.” He dragged his eyes up to meet mine. “My mother’s foretelling…it wasn’t the only one she had about you.”
My heart skipped, unease pooling in my stomach as I ceased trying to extract my mare from his hold. “What did she say? And when?”
Why didn’t you tell me?
“I…” His throat moved as he swallowed. “It was a long time ago, when I was still a boy, but I remember it clearly.”
“You seem to remember everything about her very clearly and yet communicate none of it,” I snapped. “What did she say?”
Bjorn was silent, and nausea twisted my guts. For what he might say. And the fact that he kept it from me at all.
“She went into these strange trances when she was being told something by Odin,” he finally answered. “I was alone with her when she was suddenly seized by one. She told me that the shield maiden would unite Skaland, but that tens of thousands would be left dead in your wake. That you’d walk upon the ground like a plague, pitting friend against friend, brother against brother, and that all would fear you.”
His words settled into my core, and I struggled to breathe.
“Whatever she saw terrified her,” he continued. “I was young, and it sank into my mind that the shield maiden would be more monster than woman. Even as a grown man, I…I had this vision of what you’d be like.” He looked away. “It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Not a monster, but a beautiful and brave woman who rescues fish and walks through fire to protect others.”
My eyes burned and I blinked rapidly to keep tears from forming.
“I didn’t tell you, because you weren’t what my mother described,” Bjorn said. “I was certain that I’d remembered wrong. Or that you’d altered fate and that the future Odin had shown my mother no longer existed, not just the darkness and death, but all of it. Except then the tests began, the gods stepping onto the mortal plane to acknowledge you, and I could not deny that you were destined to lead.” He took a deep breath. “I watched you make choices to protect Halsar and it didn’t seem possible that you would become a monster who’d bring death and destruction. But after the siege of Grindill…”
“You decided that maybe I was a monster after all.” I choked out the words, horror strangling me.
Bjorn shook his head. “No. But that Snorri would turn you into one if you allowed him to control your fate. I thought hearing Steinunn’s song, seeing yourself like that, would drive you to walk a different path, but you just couldn’t escape the need to protect the pieces of shit you call family.”
I flinched. “Don’t speak about them that way.”
“Why not?” he snapped. “Despite all you do, all you’ve done for them, your brother called you a mad bitch. Your mother called you a whore. They aren’t worth allowing Snorri to turn you into a monster to make himself king.”
He wasn’t wrong. But neither was he right.
“I thought when you saw how your mother is living, you’d turn your back on them,” he said. “Yet though I watched you realize she profited from your pain, it changed nothing. I watched you listen to her tell you how time and again she’s chosen your brother and herself over you, and again, it changed nothing. You refuse to change your fate.”