Author's Note: Thank you so much for all the kind words and the patience. This chapter is extra long and I'm adding an extra chapter or two to this story just for you guys.

May Contain: A tale from Norse mythology that I slightly… embellished. A flashback, even though it's tropey. The events of Cold Days. From my own stuff: references Worth a Shot, chapter 7 of HoHW, and a chapter from In Between.

Oh yeah. It's alllll coming together.

Definitely Contains: mentions of suicide


IV. Þrettándinn

No use wishing on the water,

it grants you no relief

"How do I look?" I tied off the end of my braid and straightened the collar of my armor. I had worn it before, but it always felt a little ridiculous, like a costume. I wasn't sure I would need it today, but it's always good to be prepared.

"Authentic," Hendricks muttered, chucking another log onto the fire. He settled back into his chair across from Tracy, where they had been playing chess all morning in the sitting room of the Provencal cottage.

I had spent most of the wintry days since Yule here. The owner kept it warm and cozy and had an incredible collection of medieval weaponry displayed on the walls. I could hear her in the crowded kitchen, singing loudly in French, probably mixing up another round of drinks for the visitors that had dropped in for our joint birthday brunch.

"Knight to F6."

"You sunk my battleship," the young man said brightly.

The big bodyguard sighed and reached for his coffee, glancing at me. "Ready?"

I nodded toward the door and we slipped out. It wasn't polite for one of the guests of honor to ditch her own party, but I wasn't sure I'd be missed. We each picked up a pack stashed near the woodpile and set out into the blustery, overcast morning. Slushy meltwater dripped from every eave and snowdrops had cropped up green and white through the drifts that remained. I could still hear the other birthday girl from several houses down.

"I don't think she was putting any orange juice in those mimosas," I whispered. Hendricks snorted.

Residents waved and called greetings as we passed. They took down wreaths and greenery, stacked wood for bonfires. January had slipped in unnoticed among holiday parties that blurred from one to the next, each more chaotic than the day before, culminating in Thirteenth Night; the last of the winter celebrations.

Hendricks didn't talk, equally silent when he passed me a flask of scotch as when he paused to point out hawks and foxes at the boundary where the field became forest. We followed the well-worn path through stands of fir and pine to a stream, the stream to a river and the river to the fjords. The sound reached us long before we saw it; the river tumbled out into a small, mossy clearing at the edge of the cliff where we stood, above the clouds. The waterfall dropped what must have been a thousand feet, straight into a narrow bay. Here at the top, it rushed through a channel between the sharp-cornered basalt columns of the cliffside, like the pillars of The Giant's Causeway in Ireland. The sight of it had been awe-inspiring as a kid, and this was far bigger, grander, with an impossibly ancient, imposing solitude you just don't get from most tourist destinations.

We weren't the first to visit. 'Dìsafoss' read the runes etched into a standing stone in the middle of the clearing, nestled in the fronds of a fern.

"This must be the place." I traced the weather-softened shapes with a finger. The sun broke through the gloomy sky, glimmering in every color on the spray. Ambitious blades of grass fought their way through the last of the ice. Behind us, just above the trees, I could feel the pull of the unending storm. Silent and waiting. Almost reassuring, by now.

"So what should I do?" I asked, drawing the sword I had taken from the armory. My favorite one, a little lighter and smaller than the rest, sleek and practical. The blade had been forged from water-patterned steel, the hilt silver, wrapped in leather. An oval chunk of polished amber served as the pommel, the feather of a bird trapped inside the stone, floating forever. "Should I say something? Or—"

"Note wasn't very specific. And she never mentioned it." Hendricks shook his head. "But if I was going to guess—" he looked meaningfully at me and then at the edge of the cliff, grimacing.

"Oh." I sucked a breath through my teeth. "I can't just… throw it in?"

"You know that's not how they do things around here."

"Good point." I picked my way to the edge of the falls, already soaked to the skin from the mist that rose from it. A few ice floes lingered in the fjord below, dotting the surface near the rocky sea shore. "How far down is that, you think?"

"Pretty far." He stepped a little closer. "Terminal velocity-far."

"Are you sure you don't want to join me—"

He shook his head again, thumbs hooked through the straps of his pack. Hendricks bore the same mark on the back of his left hand as I did — the three interlocking triangles of the valknut. "Just here for moral support."

I had found, in that book of Sigrún's he had loaned me, a vague note about how at one time the newly-deceased who wished to return to battle would take a sword to Rán, the sea goddess. The note didn't say why, exactly — a tradition so old the original reason for it had faded from record — except that those who kept it were successful in returning, and I was down to try almost anything.

Even this.

"Meet you at the bottom." I shrugged out of my own pack and dropped it at his feet. He nodded, taking a few careful steps away from the edge. I trudged about twenty yards, backtracking along the shore of the river. Hyperventilating, even though it wasn't necessary for a dive anymore. I tucked the sword beneath my arm, turned and sprinted before I could change my mind. My boots slipped on the stones but I kept my footing until I reached the edge, launching myself away from it with every bit of force I could summon. The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

I had been skydiving before, in Hawaii.

This was nothing like that. I tried to scream. The wind ripped it from my lungs, forced tears from my eyes. An updraft caught me like a leaf, reversing the flow of the waterfall for a second. It took all my strength to pull my arms against my sides. I dropped, fast as a falcon, headfirst into the mist that shrouded the base of the falls.

Into the water. From such a height, it might as well have been concrete. Not that it mattered in my post-life nigh-invincibility; the only thing in this place that could kill me was the woman who had invited me to stay. If a living person somehow survived the fall, they would have gone into immediate shock from the cold. It felt no different than Lake Michigan at the end of summer; cool and dark and deceptively deep. I kicked away from the churn, toward the bottom where the water was calmer, and clear enough to see that Hendricks was right.

Swords jutted up from the seabed, corroded, crooked like old grave markers. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred, all told. I expected more, though I wasn't sure why, or why it bothered me that there were so few, but it was obvious what should be done. I drove the sword I had brought into the silt and gravel, struggling against the current the whole time. Through the bubbles that rose from my lips, I saw a woman with long, dark hair. She reached out to me and touched my forehead.

"Hail, Sea Warrior." The voice inside my head was a whisper of wind over waves, foam on sand. "That is what your clan name means, did you know? In days long past, you might have been one of mine."

I found myself kneeling before a throne carved from driftwood, in a dim, empty hall made of a massive capsized ship. It leaked everywhere in slow drips, ribbons of seaweed hung like banners. Upside-down lamps burned, illuminating piles of treasure in every corner, heaped on benches, overflowing from chests.

"I know what it means." I stood, the sword still in my hands. I hadn't agreed to kneel to anyone. "It's an old name."

Rán stood as well, descending from the throne to approach me. Beautiful, in a morbid way; whatever her skin tone had been in life, it was now pale gray and mottled with purple lividity at her joints. Lucky for her, she lacked the typical waterlogged look of a drowning victim — her features were almost too sharp, shark-like. She wore nothing except for her hair, modest as a dress in a tangle of loose black waves that nearly reached her ankles, woven through with bits of net and fishbones. "You bring a gift, but you seek a boon."

"I didn't ask you for anything." I hadn't planned on actually meeting anyone at the bottom of the ocean, and I definitely hadn't anticipated this.

"No. But I have heard of you. A warrior of some renown. I wondered if you would seek me out. You come to me now in desperation, as many do." She leaned down to peer at my face, her narrowed eyes the color of seaglass. "As you have tried before."

"Please." My own voice echoed in the empty hall, played like a cued-up recording; a memory in high definition previously dulled by alcohol and the soothing numbness of compulsion, by a kindness I didn't deserve. "I don't want to feel like this anymore."

I managed to keep from cringing. Barely. I didn't remember exactly what I had said when I tried to take advantage of a friend's sorrow, in the hope that he would put me out of my own misery. A good man, despite what he thought of himself, he had never breathed a word of it to me or anyone else. But I knew what I had done when I woke up on Thomas's boat with the worst hangover of my life, and couldn't find my gun.

No use in feeling guilty about it now. "That woman is dead."

"That life was blotted out, not so completely, but scattered wrecks enough of it remain." Rán clicked her tongue against her scrimshawed teeth, and turned my face up to hers with a clammy hand on my chin. She hooked a finger into the strand of leather around my neck, threaded through the chiming guardian bell. "I know you seek passage out of the Fallen Woman's realm. You are far from the first, little one." She booped me on the nose and I laughed, I couldn't help it. "Do I amuse you?"

"The whole naked alpha bitch routine just reminds me of someone I killed, that's all," I shrugged, planting the tip of the sword between my boots to lean on it. Trading insults was a treasured and well-documented pastime of the Vikings, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. "I don't think she read much Browning, though. Or much of anything, really, so style points to you."

"Typical shieldmaiden insolence. I always wondered why you all wear helmets, with nothing in there to protect." She put a finger on my forehead, giving me a sharp push. "You should be grateful to even be here among the honored dead. Think of where you might be had you perished in despair, instead of your own… arrogant self-reliance."

I stumbled backward and landed on something soft; my own faded floral couch with the granny square afghan on the back. My empty hands recognized the texture of the fabric before I saw it, before the rest of the living room developed like a Polaroid, dim color blooming into fuzzy-edged shapes. A pistol rested on the coffee table in front of me, an empty glass. The shadows next to me solidified into a figure, I didn't have to look to know who it was: a memory of a bad dream.

It always happened one of two ways, like it had the very first time, when the Nightmare wearing his face broke into my head and made me watch, frozen, as it killed him and me and all our friends, over and over, a thousand different horrible deaths, or—

The Nightmare slipped into one of those other dreams. The kind I woke from breathless, unable to even reach for the phone and dial his number the next day without blushing. And it always waited until I was in his arms to start whispering suggestions, kindly reassuring me that no one would blame me for ending it. If I was too frightened to go on, if I couldn't take the horror of knowing what lurked in the dark, if I couldn't fight anymore, everyone would understand.

Those were my lines the Nightmare recycled. He would have never said those things to me. When I needed more help than I knew how to ask for, he dragged me out of the dark, threw me back into the ring and made me fight.

I forced myself to turn and face the figure seated next to me. Empty eyes, no ghost of a smile hanging around his features. The hand that covered mine wasn't warm. Just a sad reminder of the last hour we had spent alone together, the pledge we had made even though we had both known it was more valediction than vow. Lately I couldn't bring myself to say his name, it hurt to even think it. For all the physical pain I had been spared in this place, nothing touched the agony of that raw, open wound.

"Yet she neither moved nor wept," Rán recited, sing-song. "Look at you. Still unwilling to rid yourself of this pale forgery." She shook her head in disapproval and the shadowy room faded back into the shipwreck hall. "You skjaldmær are all the same. So fond of your monsters."

"I guess it takes one to know one."

"Honesty. Well, that is refreshing. And deserving of a reward. Alas," she shrugged, now loosely holding the sword I had brought, inspecting it. "I can only give to you what I possess and life is not among my many treasures. I could give you nothingness. Dissolution. Fathomless, uncharted peace between the hither and the farther shore—"

"I didn't come here for that."

"Of course not." She put a hand on her hip and frowned at me, waving the sword for emphasis. "Nor could I in good conscience give it, as you have already laid in a course and bound yourself to the mast, my girl—"

"I didn't come here to watch a slideshow presentation of my low points, either—"

"Then you should have gone elsewhere." She laughed, testing the edge of the blade with her thumb. "Why have you come? A thousand long years have passed since one of your kind has sought me out. I thought perhaps dear Gullveig and Oðr had given up on that pet project of theirs—"

"... A thousand years since any of the Einherjar have visited you?"

"The Einher— no, silly child. The Einherjar never seek me out, only ever the dísir." She flicked the sword through the air with a professional flourish. I knew the word, dísir, a kind of catch-all term for the female spirits of Norse mythology. "The Daughters. All of her little fledglings make their way here eventually, to prove themselves of equal nerve as their mother." She glanced up, looking along the blade at me, pinned to my spot like a thumbtack on a map. "You remind me much of her. The hair, the hubris. Too bold by half. But one could hardly expect you to know that tale. I imagine you were raised on different stories. It was the weaving of Fate, then, that brought you here. The wind in the sails."

"Just a note in a book," I whispered, my mouth dry. But it wasn't just scribbles in a margin, was it? Sigrún had been around for all the legends, those pithy footnotes might as well have been her journal. Sigrún, who had made that vague job offer after I had taken care of those fish guys in the warehouse. The dísir weren't only revered ancestors and famous shieldmaidens, they were the fates and the psychopomps, the Norn…

… And the Valkyries, the Choosers of the Slain, protectors of legendary heroes — or of whoever could afford it, nowadays. The two I had met had been so strong, so skilled and sure and perceptive to the point of prescience. And so tall. It never crossed my mind that they had ever been dead like me. Or that they had ever stood here themselves, seeking the same thing. No story or saga I had read detailed how they came to be, everyone I asked had a different theory. I assumed they just showed up one day, fully-formed and ready to kick ass.

You know that's not how they do things around here.

"As I said," Rán smiled smugly.

"A thousand years," I repeated numbly. "Who was the last to visit you? If you don't mind my asking."

"That redheaded chit." She pursed her bloodless lips like she had tasted something foul. "Eiríksdóttir."

"Freydís Eiríksdóttir." I'd had my suspicions about the flippant, flirty Gard sister's identity, and this confirmed it. She had mentioned a famous brother, could have only meant Leif the Lucky, son of Erik the Red. Which made her a mortal, or at least previously a mortal. A badass, famous mortal, but still. Her name hadn't been forgotten, and she had returned anyway.

"The very same."

"More than a thousand, then." My nails bit into my palms as I clenched my fists, trying to hide how I trembled in every limb. "Give or take a decade or two."

"It matters little to me." She paced around me like a judge at a county fair. "Though I am surprised to find another one of you here after all this time. I suppose it is only fair to give you what I have given the rest. But be forewarned — if your heart is not strong enough for the gift I give, you forfeit your right to return in honor to Freyja's hall. Leave now, if you wish. The choice is yours."

After months of struggling, trying to fight my way out, I had stumbled onto an answer. Strong enough or not, my heart thundered frantically behind my ribs, ready to leap at the sliver of a chance, at an opportunity I had thought too far beyond my reach to even consider.

"Like you said." I stood my ground. I had come too far to turn back now. "The wind in the sails."

"So be it, Sea Warrior." She drove the sword I brought into the deck of the ship and raised both hands. "Thus I give to you what you have given me—"

"Oh, I don't do riddles."

"This is no jest. You came seeking favor and I give it." Her voice dropped to a whisper, washing over me with the rising water that sloshed around my ankles, knees, hips, deeper still, until her hair floated out around us in a tangled net. The lamps extinguished with a sputter, leaving us in darkness except for her seaglass eyes, glowing like the lure of some abyssal predator. "Along with every shard of your shattered heart, every shadow you disavowed, every memory you drowned, the deep fathoms of your soul you fear to look upon. These I return to you."

Fear tickled in the back of my mind, an apprehension almost foreign since death and dying had become so mundane. The flood carried us into the keel of the shipwreck hall, forced my chin up; I could either speak or breathe and chose the latter. If I could have screamed, I would have. She didn't intend to kill me, I would have seen it coming.

"I have always admired the way you Christians do it." Rán seized my face in one cold dead hand. "Be born again, shieldmaiden, in the ocean of your tears."

She wanted me to suffer.

Down she drove me, into cold and crushing darkness. Into the rending pain of grief not amplified, simply exposed; the curtains thrown back, the entirety and enormity of my sorrow laid bare. Every horror replayed. Regrets and mistakes. Failure and shame. The questionable things I had done in the name of justice or for the sake of love. Every haunting thing I left unfinished, the person I would never be. The goodbyes I never said.

Worse than that, the child I had betrayed. She carried the weight of all this, a burden too large for one little soul to bear. I had promised her we would never be afraid again, and I had broken that promise more often than I had kept it, more times than I could count. I couldn't save her, no matter how hard I tried.

But she didn't need a hero. She was one in her own right and only needed to be reminded of it, to be dragged out of the darkness, thrown into the ring and made to fight. I reached for her — that small, stubborn figure standing alone against an expanse of fear and despair…

…and found my palms against plain white tile.

Water swirled down the shower drain beneath my bare feet, first dirty, soapy, then clear. Wonderfully warm, after that battle in the icy mud and wind on the island. Every square inch of my body ached, the fatigue left over from adrenaline overload.

A memory. That's all this is.

I took stock of injuries; cuts on my knuckles, a scraped elbow and matching shin. A series of odd round bruises on each hip, tender but not painful. Confusing, until I realized what they were; fingerprints from someone with very large hands, holding on to me much tighter than necessary while on a motorcycle, a hundred feet above Lake Michigan. We had both enjoyed that just a little too much. It had been a hot minute since any man had given me bruises like that, and it was a shame it hadn't happened the traditional way. Just my luck that he was still out there on the island, where I couldn't take him up on that threat he had made.

Just a memory, one you don't even really remember…

I rinsed and dried and dressed in the athletic clothes from my gym bag; leggings and a sweatshirt I had stolen from the Water Beetle. The locker room was empty, quiet except for a dripping tap. I threw my towel in the laundry chute and rolled beneath the ropes of the boxing ring to lay in the middle of the mat and finally acknowledge the exhaustion dragging at my limbs.

It had been a long night. A single dangling light glowed above the ring. I had left my watch in my coat and there were no windows in this part of the castle. It had been not quite dawn when Thomas helped me unload my bike at the docks, thank god, or he might have glimpsed how red my face was when he said: "Now that you've seen the goods, are you sure you don't want to go back out? We can go back. I don't mind. You guys can borrow the cabin, and I'll put my headphones on and listen to a podcast or something—"

"You know," said a voice from the shadows. "I think that is the first time I ever heard you laugh."

Skaldi Skjeldson slipped between the ropes more nimbly than any guy that big had a right to do. He stood nearly as tall as Dresden, though barrel-chested and burly, covered in tattoos from the scalp around his braided mohawk to the silver rings on his fingers. He still wore his tactical gear, splattered with what I hoped, being level with his boots, was mud. "This whole time I thought you were some stoic scary woman." He leaned down and offered the bottle of vodka he clutched in one enormous hand. "Turns out you were just pining for your boyfriend—"

I was too tired to argue with him. "Not pining—"

"Oh, let me enjoy this. It's like a story." He sat, leaning back against the corner post of the ring, and patted the space next to him. "The brave, beautiful shieldmaiden, sorrowfully awaiting the return of her lover, lost to the depths. Like Freyja, from the old tales."

I sighed, sat up and moved to sit next to him, taking the bottle he offered. It didn't matter whether I knew the story or not, whether or not I wanted to hear it; he was going to tell it. "Guess I never heard it. Goddess of love, right?" I took a pull from the bottle. Cheap stuff, with a sharp burn. "Fertility and all that."

"Of love, yes, but also of war and death. First among the Valkyries," he added, showing me the tattoo on the inside of his forearm; a nude blonde holding a fiery sword, done in a style that blended an old-school Sailor Jerry pinup with even older Viking art. "Like you, she was fond of a seiðrmaðr, some grey-cloaked wanderer," he leaned toward me, lowering his voice like he was disclosing classified intelligence, or a particularly juicy rumor. "Maybe even Valföðr himself, though it was too long ago to know for certain, and no one dares ask her. And like you, her mage went missing from his ship—"

"Okay, that's not what happened—"

"He went missing," Skaldi insisted as he motioned for the vodka. "On a sea voyage, which was a much more dangerous undertaking then. We didn't have radar navigation, no satellites. Can you imagine facing the open ocean without so much as a compass?"

I shook my head. He had a knack for storytelling and a rumbling Scandinavian accent — we should have been drinking mead around a fire instead of sitting in the dark in an empty boxing ring.

"And so overboard he went in a storm and greedy Ràn, the sea goddess, sought to keep him for herself, like all things lost to the waves. When she learned of his disappearance, Freyja collapsed on the shore and wept until her tears fell as blood, and this moved even the cold heart of Ràn… mostly because every drop that landed in the water turned to amber and gold. For many a day and more, she mourned as she searched. For weeks, for months, until her tears had paid the ransom and he was returned to her."

"Returned—"

"Returned, but transformed, by that time in the cold and crushing dark, into a monster. And yet she loved him still."

"I call bullshit." I tried unsuccessfully to convince myself it was the burn of alcohol that made it so hard to speak. "I think you made that up."

"All stories are made up," he laughed. "Anyway, it's good your dead boyfriend is back—"

"He was only mostly dead," I corrected, realizing my mistake too late. "Which is slightly alive. And he's not my—"

"Not so bad, being dead. A little boring. Probably not so bad being your boyfriend, but you remind me too much of an ex." He raised the bottle toward me in a toast and took a drink. "Not so bad being a monster, either—"

"He's not—"

"I'm not talking about him, lillesøster." He fixed me with the look he used to silence a mob of berserkers and issued a command. "Sit down."

I sat from halfway to my feet, more shocked at myself than angry with him. Blood rushed hot against my eardrums, my own voice still echoed in the gym.

"You've taken lives before, but this—" Skaldi was still talking, peeling at the plastic label on the bottle as he spoke, having the good sense not to look at me. "You did the right thing. The only thing. That mad faerie would have doomed us all. If that's what is troubling you, we can talk about it."

I had done what needed to be done, that much was true. I did it without hesitation, not knowing or caring who would pay the price aside from me, and felt less for the woman I shot than I would have for a rabid animal. Had she been a woman at all, beneath the corruption and madness? Had I sentenced another to the same fate? None of that mattered. It needed to be done. I would have done it again, no question.

God, I would have done anything. I would have flayed her living, torn her throat out with my teeth to keep him safe, if that's what it took. I had felt entirely capable of it, consumed by it; a convergence of awareness, of clarity and surety so white-hot and pure it seemed almost divine. As if that moment was the sole reason I had been born, just to pull the trigger. The only other time I had felt anything like it, I had been sure it was an effect of the Sword of Faith in my hands.

Nothing, not facing down a band of mythical hunters, or demons from another dimension, or an insane faerie queen, was as frightening as knowing that it wasn't the Sword.

"But if it's relationship problems that trouble you, I don't know how much help I'll be—"

I drove my elbow into his ribs. I didn't feel much like talking to anyone, at least not anyone here, and even if I was with the company I preferred, we probably wouldn't be doing much talking, either. We had done plenty of talking, there by the fire in Harry's little cabin out on Demonreach. It was going to take time for me to accept the fact that he was back, but after that...

"Oof." Skaldi made a face at me. "I don't know whether to be impressed or disappointed, lillesøster. You work with us an entire year, doing things no mortal would dare, and this whole time you have been fighting with only half a heart."

I rolled my eyes, yanked the bottle out of his hand and drank deeply.

"I don't mean it like that. Well, not entirely. You modern fighters, you try so hard to leave your feelings out of it. Like it makes it easier. Like you're some space knight with a magic laser sword." He elbowed me gently. "But I know that isn't you. I was there for the clean-up, I saw what you did in Mexico—"

"I did have a magic sword for that," I cut in, and it was his turn to roll his eyes as he faced me.

"Any weapon, without someone willing to wield it, is just a piece of metal, no matter what it's made of, or who made it. A sword can easily be broken, or stolen, or hammered into a shovel. Your real weapons are here," he said, taking my hand in his for a second. "Here," he tapped a finger against my forehead, and then against my chest. "And here, most important of all. Don't leave your heart behind when you take the field. As long as you have that, you can never be disarmed."

"... I think that might be the cheesiest fucking thing I've ever heard," I said, though I had to blink hard. It had been a long day, filled with too many emotions, all still too close to the surface for my comfort.

"Wait until you watch one of the Valkyries will her sword out of thin air, and then you can tell me what you think." Skaldi shook me by the shoulders and it rattled my teeth. "It was a true pleasure, finally getting to see you fight like you mean it. Though I did not expect something as foolhardy as taking on and then joining the Hunt. On a flying motorcycle, no less. Out in the vanguard, leading the charge like Guðrùn on her black horse. You caught the eye of the Choosers tonight, as surely as if you painted a target on your back."

"The flying part wasn't exactly my idea."

"How is it you can resist the wiles of that White Court pretty boy, but not some wizard and his bad ideas?"

"Not all of them are bad," I said, trying hard not to grin.

"I don't want to know." Skaldi held up a hand and shook his head, eyeing the vodka left in the bottle. "You should probably eat something." He grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet as he stood. To my credit, I only stumbled a little as he held the ring ropes down with one foot and I passed through, following him through the heavy castle doors.

Marcone and his money had managed to get the old guard. Most of the guys had been around since there were only three digits in the year. Every one of them could use any weapon from a rock to a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, but when mixed with food and alcohol, they reverted to the old ways pretty damn quick. Especially after midnight.

Each table in the armory looked ready to buckle, loaded with weapons to be cleaned, ammo to be counted, medical kits to restock. The crew sat here and there, making repairs or tending wounds. Other than that, it was a party, complete with music, a few kegs wedged in tubs of ice, and the mouthwatering smell of cheap pizza. Somebody brought me a cold beer and a paper plate of food and ushered me toward a nearby table, where the ribbing started immediately.

"Hey, tell your wizard I need him to put that flying spell on my Honda—"

"Yeah, where is he? We want to meet him—"

"You didn't bring the galdraraumr? But we saved him some food—"

Skaldi coughed pointedly and waved a cut it out hand in front of his throat. The commentary stopped. I got a nod of acknowledgement from soft-spoken, ginger-haired Njall — an Ostman, one of the Vikings who settled in Ireland way back in the day. He didn't look up, busy tattooing the shoulder of either Ubbe or Bjorn, who were as impossible to tell apart as my own youngest brothers.

"All done." He wiped the ink down and slapped Bjorn (or Ubbe) upside the head, waving for him to vacate the seat. "Are you bunking here, cousin?"

"If I don't fall asleep standing up first," I said, trying to balance plate on top of cup as I pulled out a chair.

"Good." He grabbed my arm and tugged me into the empty seat in front of him. "You're next."

"What? No—"

"Be still." He was already digging into his kit for a fresh set of plastic-packaged instruments. "Have you been marked before?"

"No?" I huffed, still indignantly trying to wiggle away and eat my food. I had made it well into adulthood without getting any tattoos. It wasn't needles or pain that turned me off, just the idea of something so… permanent.

"It's a tradition after facing a mighty foe, and the highest honor." Skaldi refilled my almost-empty beer, speaking low so that only I could hear him. "No mortal carries the battle scars of the Einherjar."

"The first is chosen by the gods," Njall announced before I could protest or escape, and the room went quiet. He picked up a heavy book of medieval magic from his gear, held it out by the spine and let the covers fall open. He laid the book on the table before me, open to spidery sketches. He put a finger on one, a circular pattern of bindrunes shaped like the spoked wheel of a ship, or a compass, or a close-up view of a snowflake. "The Signpost. Runes for a journey. Whoever carries this mark will never lose their way, even in the storm, or if the path ahead is unknown."

"I think Björk has that same one," I said to riotous laughter.

"Do it!" The crew took up a chant, beating on the tables. "Do it. Do it. Do it."

It was enough to make me a little misty-eyed. After a lifetime of the opposite, I had finally found a place where I felt I was wanted. Like I belonged. They never demanded I prove I had the right to share their space, I never had to pretend to be less to appease their egos. My presence here had never been questioned, not even on the rainy morning Sigrún walked me into the castle and introduced me.

I had never been one to bend to peer pressure or make excuses, either, but it had been a really long day, and I had been drinking on an empty stomach.

"... Fuck it." I yanked the collar of my sweatshirt over my head; they had seen a sports bra before. "What was it you said? A target on my back?"

Skaldi set a pair of shot glasses and a bottle down on the table, the contents so strong my eyes watered when he pulled the stopper. Not vodka but something he had brought from home, and I wasn't sure he meant Oslo. He sat down, poured for me and then himself before passing the bottle around. He raised the glass high. "Skál, Vetrarbana."

A dozen of the fiercest fighters to ever walk the earth raised their glasses as well, echoing the cheer at a volume that made the whole room shake.

"I guess I don't know that one, either," I admitted.

"A kenning," Njall explained quietly. "Winter's Bane."

The shiver that raced down my spine seemed wildly disproportionate to the chill of the disinfectant he swabbed between my shoulder blades. I raised my glass with trembling fingers and didn't feel the needle, the sting of it lost in the fire of that very first shot. "Skál."

The bottle — still just as full as it had been to start — passed from one hand to another for a second round, accompanied by toasts extolling bravery and battlefield shenanigans. By the third, they were singing along to nineties Icelandic pop and smashing glasses on the floor, and with the fourth, darkness slammed down on me like a rogue wave...

... Until someone grabbed the collar of my armor and hauled me out of the water, onto the stony shore. I blinked up at the gray sky and the dead man standing over me, and the tears started immediately, stinging and silent.

"Beginning to think you might not come back," the big bodyguard muttered. I opened my mouth to speak, then rolled over onto hands and knees and heaved up a combo of seawater and brunch into a tide pool.

"How long?" I asked, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth. Hendricks nodded over his shoulder at the late-afternoon sun, a burning disc of white behind the clouds. He pulled me to my feet. I shuffled to the driftwood fire flickering nearby, safe from the waves, a good distance from the falls. I sat on one end of a washed-up log and he sat on the other, busying himself with a stack of firewood.

… Pretending like he didn't see me crying, and I was almost as grateful for that as for the sense of overwhelming relief — like a wound had been lanced. The pain lingered, but a pain that was manageable.

I had passed the test, but there was always another, and whether or not I would pass the next remained to be seen.

"Find what you were looking for?" he finally asked, glancing at me.

"It— I…" The words wouldn't come. It was as if someone had built a wall between my brain and my lips. I couldn't tell him what I had seen, what had happened, couldn't make a goddamn sound and not because I didn't want to speak. "What the fuck—"

Hendricks frowned at me, then smiled, understanding before I did, like he had seen this before. Apparently there was a reason why the origin of the Valkyries was all rumor and myth — a reason he, of all people, didn't know either. "Most safe are secrets known to but one."

"Don't talk about Fight Club," I sighed. "Got it."

He chuckled and poked at the fire with a stick.

--

The party was in full swing as I made my way through the village, toward the henge on top of the hill. Music followed me, snatches of modern melodies mingled with the primal thud of animal skin drums, rising voices.

"What is this?" Val grinned. She waited for me, leaning against a standing stone. "I expected a woman, not some cranky, half-drowned kitten. Should I fetch a warm towel? A saucer of milk?"

It had rained on the hike back to the village, and I hadn't had time to dry off or change. The leather and chainmail was heavy, still soaked, but it didn't feel much like a costume anymore.

"Let's get this over with." I picked up the rusted sword and battered shield waiting for me and marched into the ring, turning to face her.

"No foreplay. How disappointing." A dagger appeared in her fingers, flying at me faster than any human could throw, but I had seen it happen first, plunging into an eye socket, pinning my skull to the stone behind me. I batted it down with my sword, then rolled away from the second dagger. The third and fourth I caught on my shield. She tossed a single knife high into the air. It came whistling down from the black sky as a hundred, though I had already raised my shield overhead and crouched beneath it. Blades sank into wood, into the snow and dirt around me. I stayed low, slamming the shield down between me and the line of fire that raced along the ground toward me from her fingertips.

"Good. Very good." Val raised a hand, timeout. "Would you not rather be with your friends, though? Today is your name day, after all." She gestured at the bonfires glowing around the village. "I would take no offense if you wanted to save this for another night."

"Oh, I'm not dressed for a party," I said. "Not for that kind of party, anyway."

"For my kind of party," she laughed, twirling another conjured dagger through her fingers. She made to lob it at me, then hesitated, curious. "... When you see it coming, how does it happen?"

She had never asked before and I had to stop and think about it. "I just… see it, right before." I shook my head and knocked the other daggers loose from my shield with my sword. "I don't know. It's like—"

"Like a waking dream," she supplied, her eyes searching my face.

I nodded. "But it's not… not magic, is it."

"'Most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact," Val quoted. "Perhaps this is simply the fact you know. Or, to quote another, 'The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.' The more you know of Death, the easier it becomes to recognize, anticipate. And you spent more time in that presence while you lived than most, questioning and investigating—"

"This never happened when I was alive."

"Because you were alive, perhaps?"

"Don't perhaps me." I shook my crappy sword at her. "There are a lot of things you haven't been telling me. That you can't tell me." I took my stance again, raising my shield. "Or that you're not allowed to tell me."

"Is the why of it so important to you? The bridge between knowledge and wisdom is experience. This connection is something you forged yourself. Pursue it and see where it leads you, or abandon it." She smiled, pleased with me. "If you are capable of such a thing."

"Tell me something else, then. You're not the type to sit around and cry when there's a job to be done. You lost someone, but you never paid a ransom with tears of blood. Another fabrication?"

"Never doubt that I wept." Annoyance creased her flawless features, impatience; I had touched a nerve. "I was right hand to the war chief of the Aesir, in those days. Not simply consort but comrade as well. When the soldier next to you falls, you shed your tears, but you take up his standard and continue on, as you well know. And for his return, I paid dearly. Not in tears, but in blood, that much was true."

"What did you do?"

"I went to the shore, walked out into the water and fell on my blade. The living cannot enter Rán's kingdom, as you well know," she repeated, one eyebrow arching.

I knew, now. And she knew me down to the last molecule, knew where I had been today, knew exactly what I had done. To prove themselves of equal nerve; not a petition for favor, but a tradition that had become trial, in remembrance of one woman's willingness to do what was necessary, no matter the cost.

"A sacrifice."

"Not as such. I meant to reclaim what was taken from me. From all of us," Val continued. "And I succeeded because I knew something she knew not."

"Which was—"

"One. Extra. Fact."

The henge around us trembled as she spoke. Fire flared between the standing stones, twenty feet high, trapping me in the circle. She raised a hand, her palm toward the sky and clenched her fist. The ground erupted as emaciated corpses clawed their way out of the cold earth. Not zombies. Black Court vampires, what the locals called draugr. Not the real thing, either; magical constructs that existed at her whim, but they looked and smelled and moved real enough. I could see them like the nauseating flicker of a migraine aura, dragging me down to rend me limb from limb in the muck.

I took a deep breath, steadying my grip on sword and shield. "I didn't know it was a touchy subject," I said. "Sorry I brought it up."

She laughed and leaned against one of the stones with her arms crossed, watching. At least she had stopped lecturing me, which was only a relief until I realized that the half dozen draugr were only the first wave. The church bell tolled midnight and the hits just kept on coming. I fought until the music stopped, the bonfires around the village died and the lights of the aurora had come and gone.

The dead littered the ground around me, knee-deep. I wasn't tired. Not physically, anyway. Her game was meant to frustrate me. Usually a good fight served to shake that nagging, incomplete feeling of being here, but it wasn't just an ache anymore. That call to surrender was harder to ignore, louder now than it had been, now that I had more to risk.

The path ahead seemed clearer, too, but it was going to take more than that to beat her. I couldn't fight with half a heart anymore, not if I ever wanted to leave this place. I needed to reach what lay on the far side of that void, its opposite; the salience, the euphoric single-mindedness I had felt during the Chicagopocalypse, or when I had faced off with Nicodemus, during the Wild Hunt and at the Red Court's temple.

I had been so afraid of it. Afraid of myself, and for what? It was right there at my fingertips, and at the same time impossibly distant, the ember of a dying star and if I could only reach out and touch it—

"Almost," she whispered, her voice in my head.

"Stop fucking around and come fight me yourself, you undead bitch."

"Pot." Laughter came from the dancing shadows between pillars of fire. "Kettle."

I knew she would step up behind me and break my neck, as surely as I knew my own name. She knew that I would see it, she would expect me to dodge, to turn and strike. I pulled in my shield and pivoted backwards to duck beneath her arm. I checked her hard with the shield, unbalancing her, creating distance as I raised my blade. Her figure blurred in the firelight, abruptly facing me. She caught the blade barehanded. It stopped as if it hit a brick wall, an inch from her nose. Blood the color of molten metal dripped from her palm, steaming in the frozen mud. The sword screamed, crumpled in her fist like aluminum foil. With her other hand she ripped the shield from me and threw it with such force that it splintered against the nearest stone.

"That's a dirty trick," I whispered. She grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off my feet. The hilltop fires roared into the sky and guttered out like birthday candles, though her eyes still glowed, peregrine gold.

"You, of anyone, should never underestimate your opponent's willingness to die." The hand around my throat tightened. "Even mine. Especially mine."

"Fuck you," I choked, and decked her in the mouth with a left jab solid enough to crack an oak makiwara board. "I almost had you."

She laughed delightedly, snapped my neck like a matchstick and let me fall to the gore-streaked mud of the hilltop, limp and lifeless and terribly aware. Freyja leaned down over me, backlit by the first rays of a fiery sunrise, her hair brushing my cheek. She licked the glittering blood from her lips and smiled as I drew a breath, her voice warm and beautiful as the bells that tolled the dawn.

"Almost."


thank you for reading :D