My scalp stung, only the tightness of my braid preventing him from ripping out a handful of hair, and my temper snapped. “Perhaps it is you who is doing it incorrectly, husband. That’s certainly how it feels.”
Silence thickened the air.
A smart woman would regret such words, but I was clearly an idiot of the first order as all I felt was a flash of wicked triumph as the barb slowly struck home. Vragi’s face darkened beneath his thick beard, a vein in his temple pulsing like a purple worm. Then his knife pressed against my cheek, his breath rank as he whispered, “Maybe the key is to make you less pretty, Freya. Then you will have to learn other skills.”
The steel was cold and cruel. It wiped away my triumph and replaced it with fear.
Yet…I couldn’t concede. Couldn’t allow myself to break or cry or beg, because that was what he relished: bringing me low. Instead I met his gaze and said, “Do it. Do it, Vragi, and then go to the village and see if they’ll still host your feast and call you a hero when they learn you cut your wife’s face to spite her beauty.”
His lip curled. “They need me.”
“That doesn’t mean they need to honor you.” And a narcissist like him needed that honor.
I watched the wheels of his mind turn; no doubt he was musing how much he could hurt me without consequence. But I refused to look away despite the cold sweat that slicked my palms. The blade pressed harder against my cheek, stinging, and I sucked in a sharp breath to control my rising panic.
He heard it.
Vragi grinned, my tiny show of weakness satisfying him. He let go of my hair, lowering his knife. “Get back to work, woman. When you’re finished, bring two fish to your mother. Perhaps she’ll remind you of your duties. It is her fault, and your father’s”—he spat—“that you don’t know them.”
“Do not speak ill of my father!” I grabbed my knife, but Vragi only sneered at it.
“There is the proof,” he said. “He forgot you were a daughter and taught you like your brother. Now instead of a wife, I have a grown woman who plays at being a warrior like a small child, brandishing her stick and imagining every tree her foe.”
Heat burned up my chest, turning my cheeks to infernos. Because he was not wrong.
“Perhaps I’ve been complicit,” he said. “I’ve allowed you too much idle time, which the gods know is the ruination of good character.”
The only idle time I was allowed was the hours I slept, but I said nothing.
Vragi turned away from me, going right to the water’s edge, the fjord glittering in the sunshine. Lifting his hand, he invoked Njord’s name.
For a long moment, nothing happened, and I breathed a silent prayer that the god of the sea had finally recognized what a piece of shit his child was and stolen away his magic.
Wasted prayers, for a heartbeat later the water quivered. And the fish began jumping.
Only a few at first, but then dozens and dozens were hurling themselves out of the water and onto the beach until I could barely see the rocks through the teeming mass of fins and scales.
“This should keep you occupied.” Vragi smirked. “Give your mother my love.”
My bloody blade quivered in barely checked rage as he turned and walked away.
I stared at the fish thrashing about on the beach, desperate to return to the water. Such a waste, for there were more here than we could sell before they went to rot. And it was not the first time he’d done such a thing.
I’d once watched him beach a whale, but instead of ending the animal’s life immediately, he’d allowed it to work its way back into the water, only to use his magic to draw it out again. Over and over he’d done it, all the village watching, his eyes filled with fascination as he tortured the animal for no reason beyond the fact that he could.
It had only ended when my brother pushed through the crowd and embedded an axe into the whale’s brain, putting it out of its misery and allowing the rest of us to begin the process of butchering the carcass, no one celebrating what should have been a glorious day of feasting.
I refused to feel the same sort of regret again.
Pulling up my skirts, I raced to where the fish flopped, snatching up one of them and tossing it into the water. Then another and another, some of them so heavy that it took my entire strength to get them back in.
Moving along the waterline, I returned Vragi’s catch to the sea, my stomach twisting whenever I found a fish that had succumbed, each death my own personal failure. But there were so many.
Finding a fish still alive where it had tossed itself into some brush, I picked it up and threw it over my shoulder at the water.