“Your father didn’t visit?”
Bjorn’s jaw tightened. “Only when he wished answers from her. My existence was the source of a great deal of conflict between Ylva and him, so he never brought me to Halsar.”
I hesitated, then asked, “Did they not suspect you had god’s blood?”
“My mother knew.” He swallowed. “She forbade me to speak Tyr’s name. One of my earliest memories is of her telling me that to do so would set me on the path to losing those I loved to fire and ash.” He shook his head. “She painted these visions in my head of people screaming, people dying, and everything was always burning.”
It was hard to hear that. Not only because she’d been right, but in the attempt to change the fate she’d foreseen for him, Saga had filled her child’s head with nightmares that I suspected remained even now.
“I was asleep one night,” he continued. “My mother shook me awake and told me to hide, pushing me under some blankets in a chest. Moments later, I heard a man’s voice. Heard him making demands of her. Heard her refusing. Then she screamed.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “I knew he was hurting her, and though I was afraid, I got out of the chest. I don’t remember saying Tyr’s name, but I must have because a burning axe was suddenly in my hand. I panicked and dropped it, and within seconds the cabin was ablaze. My mother was screaming and struggling with the man, the air so thick with smoke I could barely breathe. Could barely see. And there was no way out.”
My palms slickened with sweat, and I stared at the burned ruins with new horror.
“Out of desperation, I picked up the axe again to try to help her, but the roof collapsed and a beam struck me. The last thing I remember is my mother screaming, and then when I woke again, it was to find myself in Nordeland.”
As the prisoner of his mother’s murderer. “I’m so sorry, Bjorn.”
He gave an abrupt roll of his shoulders, then motioned up the stream. “We should keep moving.”
As the light faded, we reached the source of the warm water. The black mouth of a cave yawned before us, the stream flowing over and through a roughly constructed dam of rocks.
Bjorn led me out onto the banks, ducking into the cave opening before muttering Tyr’s name, his axe flaring to life in his free hand and illuminating the darkness. A gasp pulled from my lips as a large steaming pool was revealed, almost the entirety of the cave flooded. Against one wall was a pile of supplies, as well as char marks on the stone floor in the shape of an axe.
“You’ve been here before?” I bent down to touch the water, which was blissfully hot.
“When I want time alone, I come to this cavern. My mother brought me here often when I was a child, because I was always filthy.” He gestured to the dam. “She built this.”
Not for the first time, I was struck at how vividly he remembered his mother despite her having died when he was a boy. Like her every word had imprinted on his soul.
And he was abandoning his quest to avenge her. Was leaving with me what he truly wanted? Or was he only leaving to save my life?
“Bjorn…” I trailed off, afraid to ask, because what I so desperately wanted was within my grasp and I didn’t want to ruin it by making him question himself. Except I knew that the questions would come, and it was better now than later. “I don’t want you to regret making this choice.”
Didn’t want him to regret choosing me.
“Freya…”
I went to the water’s edge, watching the steam eddy and swirl without really seeing it. Instead, visions of our future filled my head, and in them I saw Bjorn growing bitter and angry at having been denied his destiny, endless arguments and nights spent with our backs turned, cold empty space between us. My eyes stung, the grief that rose in my chest as real as if my visions were reality.
The scuff of boot on rock and the swirl of steam told me that he’d come up behind me. His arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me against his chest, his chin brushing my temple. “There is no future where I would regret choosing you.”
I sucked in a ragged breath, but it felt like no air reached my lungs, my heart a riot in my chest as my emotions warred within it.
“I wish I’d realized it sooner.” His breath caught and he swallowed hard, his struggle to say what he wanted to say making me want to hear it all the more. “For nearly all my life, revenge for what was done to my mother was all that mattered to me. It consumed my every waking breath and I refused to allow anything else to matter. Then the most fierce and beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on hit me in the face with a fish and proceeded to wind her way into my heart. To make me want a life ruled by something deeper than hate.”