I flinched, struck with visions of what had happened between us last night. How I’d given myself to him so utterly and completely while every word he’d whispered was a lie. Oh gods.
“I have fulfilled my oaths!” Bjorn shouted. “I swore to destroy him. Swore to bring him low. Swore to rip the crown from his grasp by taking the shield maiden, all of which is done. And she didn’t need to come to Nordeland to keep it safe, she just needed to be away from him.”
Again, I was rendered nameless. Just a tool, just a weapon to be wielded by all the men around me. But I’d had enough.
“Freya—” Bjorn reached for me.
“Don’t you touch me!” I skittered backward, nearly colliding with Tora.
Harald raked his hands back through his hair. “Is this betrayal motivated by the belief that I’d have separated you from her? Gods, Bjorn, when have I ever denied you anything? If you’d only told me that you cared for Freya, I’d have let you keep her. She’d have been queen of Nordeland at your side when you inherited one day.”
Keep me? I stiffened, though neither of them seemed to notice.
“On what conditions, Father?” Bjorn retorted. “I know you. There is no chance you’d have been able to resist using her to further your ambitions. All I desire is to take her away to a place where she can make her own fate.”
“I would not have used her.” Harald gave Bjorn a look of disgust. “What you fail to see, my son, is that if you’d given Freya the truth, she might have chosen to serve Nordeland. If she is half the woman you claim, then she’d have surely joined our cause, if only given the opportunity. But instead you denied her the chance to do great things so as not to risk your ability to use her to satisfy your own ends.”
Use her, use her, use her.
The words repeated in my skull, growing louder with each saying until it felt like a giant screamed inside my head. Everyone had used me. Everyone—but Bjorn had been different. Had been the one who’d put me first. The one who’d cared.
Except it turned out that he’d used me worst of all.
“I curse you!” I screamed, and it felt like the world trembled, tilting beneath my feet. “I curse all of you never to see Valhalla. I curse all of you to Helheim. May Hel take all of you into her keeping!”
Then the ground surely did tremble, rumbling and bouncing, everyone struggling to keep their balance.
“Freya!” Bjorn stumbled toward me, but before he made it two steps, great blackened roots exploded from the earth, wrapping around his legs.
And not just him.
All around me, roots exploded from the earth to grasp the legs and arms of Harald’s warriors, men and women screaming as they hacked at them with axe and sword, but the weapons just passed through the roots as if they weren’t there.
Bjorn’s axe appeared in his hand, and he too slashed at the roots, flames severing them, but more burst from the ground, trying to drag him down.
Panic overwhelmed my rage, and I lost my footing as a concussive blast of thunder sent me staggering. Tora’s lightning exploded the roots attacking her, only for more to appear. Skade was screaming and shooting her magical arrows into root after root.
The other Nordelanders had no such defenses.
On my knees, I watched in horror as the black roots wrapped around the other warriors, digging into their flesh, the screams unlike anything I’d ever heard as they were dragged to the ground.
Then, as one, the roots vanished into the earth.
Leaving only silence.
On my knees, I stared in horror at the dozens of bodies lying on the ground, chests still and eyes glazed. Dead.
“Freya?”
I swallowed my bile, eyes going to Bjorn, who still stood alive, as did Harald, Tora, and Skade.
No one moved.
Harald stepped down from the rock on which he perched, moving toward me. “That was what they meant by ‘child of two bloods.’ Not god and mortal, but of two gods.” He drew in a ragged breath, gray eyes filled with delight. “She’s Hel’s daughter. The first of her kind.”
I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. “No.”
“Yes.” Harald grinned. “You cursed all before you to your mother’s domain and she took them. All dead. All denied Valhalla because of your power.”
A whimper exited my lips and I crawled backward from him, my eyes skipping from corpse to corpse. All dead. All cursed. By my temper.
By me.
“That is why you are so special, Freya,” he said. “That is why even the gods themselves recognized your power. The power to unite Skaland, yes. But also the power to destroy all who stand against you.”