He rolled onto his back, staring at the sky, strands of his dark hair plastered against his face. “Says the woman who tried to throw herself off a cliff.”
My stomach tightened. “I was trying to stop the battle. I was trying to take away their reason to fight.”
“I know what you were trying to do,” he answered. “And it is done.”
Bjorn turned his head to meet my stare. “Everyone saw Tora’s lightning fling us into the water, Freya. Watched us go over a waterfall too high for anyone to survive. They think we’re dead.” A strained grin worked its way onto his face. “But we’re not.”
No, we were not.
Bjorn caught hold of my arms, pulling me on top of him. The heat of his body was welcome after the freezing river, but I forced myself to focus as he said, “Everyone believes we’re dead, Freya, and no one fights to possess the dead. We can leave Skaland without consequence, because Snorri won’t punish Geir or Ingrid for you falling in battle. No one will come hunting for us. We can choose where we go and what we do, and no one, not even the gods, can stop us, because we are the unfated. We make our own destiny. Together.”
Together.
My heart skipped, then sped, because this was a future I’d never allowed myself to imagine.
A life with Bjorn, nothing standing between us and no one controlling us. We could live without others trying to use us to further their own ends. Bjorn smiled, and lifting a hand, he tucked a sodden braid behind my ear. “You will have everything I have the power to give, Freya. I swear it.”
Twin tears dripped down my cheeks, splashing against his chest. “But what about avenging your mother?”
What about avenging mine?
A flicker of pain crossed through his eyes, and Bjorn squeezed them shut. But as he reopened them, he said, “No oath is worth your life. No amount of vengeance is worth your happiness. I’ll let the past burn to ash, Freya, because you are my present. My future. My destiny.” He lifted his other hand to cup my face. “I love you.”
And I loved him.
Loved him in a way that defied reason, words not enough to convey the emotion that burned in my heart. A sob tore from my lips and I buried my face in his neck, inhaling him. Drinking him in because he was mine. And we’d never be parted.
“We need to go.” His fingers tangled in my hair. “They’ll break off fighting to search the riverbanks, and there can be no sign we ever escaped the churn of the falls.”
Wiping at my face, I climbed to my feet. Bjorn kept a grip on my hand as he kicked water onto the mud to hide the marks left by our bodies, then led me downstream, our feet splashing in the shallow water. Only once did I look back, my stomach flipping at the sight of the enormous falls, mist rising from the base. He’d willingly taken that plunge, trusted my magic would save us, believed we were strong enough to survive it.
All to save me.
Of their own accord, my eyes focused beyond the falls to the smoke rising above the clifftops. But no lightning flickered, no thunder boomed.
“Harald came for you, not to take Grindill,” Bjorn said. “He’ll abandon the fight to search for us.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. Don’t forget that I know him well.”
Tension receded from my shoulders. It was over. It was done.
“This way,” he said, gesturing up a narrow stream that flowed into the river. “We’ll be there before nightfall.”
“Where?” I asked, relishing the feel of my hand in his. Never wanting to let him go.
Bjorn only smiled. “You’ll see.”
* * *
—
We walked upstream for hours, the water growing progressively warmer until what flowed over my feet was the temperature of a bath. We spoke little, Bjorn casting the occasional glance skyward where the sun crawled toward dusk. We passed the ruins of a burned-out cabin, the blackened wood being slowly consumed by time and moss. “That was the home where I lived with my mother,” he said. “I haven’t been here since the night it burned.”
I bit my lip, then asked, “What happened?”
He stopped in his tracks, staring at the ruins in silence for long enough that I thought he might not tell me. Then Bjorn said, “We lived here alone. As far away from people as she could have it.”
“Why?” I asked, my pulse thrumming with anticipation, because Bjorn never spoke of his mother.
“Knowing the future is a burden,” he answered, “for it is often full of pain and heartache and loss. Being around people is what causes”—he winced—“caused her gift to show her the future, so she avoided it when possible. Which meant it was just her and me most days.”