by Cate Tiernan
It was my amulet. I’d been vaguely aware of it throughout the night, but I hadn’t had a moment to think about it or dream of using it.
Now it was waking, coming to life.
“Lilja,” the man said again. “Dóttur bróður míns. How glad I am to meet you at last.”
Daughter of my brother.
Now everyone was looking at me.
“Who—” My voice broke, and I coughed. “Who are you?”
“My lovely niece, I am the true heir to the Iceland throne. Your uncle Egthor.”
CHAPTER 32
Raising my chin, I tried to strengthen my voice. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“Of course you haven’t,” said the man. His hair, the exact shade as Eydís’s, glowed like the fire. “Why would your father mention me? I was his deep secret—the one brother he didn’t kill outright.”
“Where have you been? Why didn’t you show up sooner?” A very, very slight sound came to me, drifting on the air like the single plume of smoke from a spent match.
“I’ve been where your father left me,” Egthor said. “In the tunnels beneath his hrókur.”
The only tunnel I knew about was the one that led from Father’s library out to the woods. The one I escaped from.
“You were beneath the castle when it burned?” I asked. The translucent ribbon of sound curled under my chin and drifted toward my ears.
His face hardened. “Yes. Unfortunately. But now I’m free. And here to take the power that should have been mine four and a half centuries ago.”
I felt warm now. The flow of blood from my stab wound had slowed to a slight seeping. I was less swoony, and the pain had diminished considerably. Against my skin, the amulet was becoming uncomfortably hot. It came to me, what I was hearing: It was the memory of my mother’s voice, singing her power into being. It was the song she sang the night she died.
“Why would you be the true heir?” I asked. I kept my voice faint and broken, and I looked whipped, bloody, and beaten.
“I was the better student, and my father’s favorite. It should have been mine.” Anger entered his voice. His hand tightened on River’s arm, and she swayed.
The song was rising clearly in me now, and for the first time I understood it, like a child first learning to read, the jumble of shapes settling themselves into letters, then words with meaning. It called upon the powers of the earth, the wind, the water. It called to all the powers to flock to me like birds coming to roost in a tree. The feeling was dazzling, painfully joyful and exquisite, and yet I was aware that this power could be used to work great evil and to cause great harm.
“But my father was the oldest.” I assumed.
“He was the black sheep!” Egthor shouted. “A bitter disappointment to our father! He studied not, spending his days wenching and drinking!”
Behind me, Amy murmured tiredly, “Wenching? Really?”
“I studied! I worked! I learned our family’s magick side by side with my father. He was proud of me. Your father was a disgrace.” Egthor was getting worked up, and his tight grip on River’s arm meant she was getting shaken.
My mother’s voice was strong inside my head. Next to Egthor, River raised her chin slightly and looked at me, and I tried not to react: Her eyes were lucid and focused, sending me a message. You can do this.
“But my father was still the oldest.”
Anger colored Egthor’s cheeks. I quickly went on: “But why have you waited so long? Why not take over when I was a child?”
“He has only recently been freed.” For the first time the woman next to Anne spoke. Her cheekbones were prominent beneath dark, hooded eyes. Her hair was fine and silver-colored, like River’s. Uh-oh. “I was curious about the Iceland house and went exploring there.”
I’d explored there, too, very briefly. I’d gotten such bad feelings from the scorched, deadened earth that I’d never gone back again, ever.
“I found your uncle. He’d been chained in the tunnels, held in place by bolts going through his wrists and ankles,” said the woman, painting a sickening picture that filled me with revulsion. “The whole place was spelled to deaden his power. No magick could be worked there.”
“Holy mother,” Asher said.
My uncle held up one arm. The skin was healing, but there was a deep impression in his wrist where a spelled bolt had held him in place for four centuries. The shocking knowledge that my father had kept his brother prisoner like that was unutterably horrible. I didn’t want to know it.
“Why didn’t he just kill you?” I asked, my voice small and ashamed.
“He needed my learning.” Egthor sneered. “The lessons he’d mocked were suddenly useful to him. He said he would keep me alive as long as I could teach him something. I was there for a year and a half before the northern raiders, those savages, came.”
Oh my God, he killed Reyn. And where was Ottavio?
“And then for four and a half centuries after that. Fortunately, for the last three hundred years or so, my brain wasn’t worth much, so I wasn’t too aware of my situation.”
There you have it: one of the huge downsides to being immortal. You can’t starve to death. You stay alive, your body wasting away, your brain sputtering into nothing without fuel. In my uncle’s case, someone cutting off his head would have been a mercy. My father put him there; he had done that to his brother. Would I ever be able to think of my father without horror and disgust?
“I found him eight months ago,” said the woman. “I released him and nursed him back to health.”
“Why?” My body was humming with power, strong and light.
“I understood him,” she said. “I, too, have been cheated out of my family’s power. When my cousins killed their parents, they were greedy. Now I’m here to collect my share.”
“Agata,” River murmured, and Egthor shook her again.
“Yes. Your cousin Agata,” he said. “We make a good team. Immortals around the world have gotten a taste of justice. For too long has the balance of power been unequal.” His archaic phrasing interspersed with modern language added a further air of unreality to this situation.
“Well, you’re not equalizing it,” I said. “You’re just taking it and keeping it. Do you see the difference?”
Nastasya. It was River’s voice inside my head, audible as a bird’s song. We must end this.
I didn’t know how to do the thought-transfer thing, so I just thought, Yeah, and hoped it somehow got to her.
Egthor acted as if he hadn’t heard me. “After Agata freed me, I searched for Valdis’s amulet. I should have felt traces of it, should have been able to find it. It was only a few weeks ago that it came to me in a dream, that it was whole again. That it had been found.”
“Hmm,” I said, stalling for time. Inside I was trying to focus, joining my mother’s power with mine. It was so clear to me—how much easier it would have been for me to just wrest power out of everything around me, the way Teräväs do. Instead I was taking the time, using my waning energy to craft a channel for the magick to move through me.
I remembered how Incy had held me in a fog, encased in layers of magick so that I couldn’t move. I put those memories into my spell.
I couldn’t kill Egthor or Agata—unless they ran at me, yelling, a sword raised. But with them just standing there, all I could stomach was a binding spell.
“So give me the amulet, Lilja,” my uncle said. “I’m your only living relative. I know more magick than you could possibly imagine—and I could teach it to you. I can show you how to use the amulet, how to increase your power tenfold. You will be my heir.”
“Really?” I said, making my voice wearier.
“Yes. Not only that, but I can share with you the history of our family.”
That did make my head jerk up, my eyes lock on him sharply. I’d longed for that my whole life. I’d been so young when my family died—I knew almost nothing about them or our lineage. I would give anything to know it, to understand
my family, my parents better. To understand where we came from and how our magick had arisen.
Egthor saw my interest and pressed: “My father taught me the history of our family for thirty-five generations back. I’m the only source of that knowledge in the whole world.”
Oh, now that hurt.
“So give me the amulet,” he said cajolingly. “You and I—and Agata—can become impossibly powerful.”
“We don’t need her,” Agata said sharply. “You and I together are enough! You always wanted her dead—Edna—that silly boy—”
“Oh my God,” Daisuke murmured. “Innocencio.”
“She has the amulet,” Egthor said.
“Kill her and take it,” said Agata.
It was then, when Egthor looked at me, considering, as if thinking Well, I guess I could just kill her and take it, that it all became quite apparent to me. Whatever evil my father had perpetrated on Egthor, however violent the past had been, still, these two people had gone all over the world, killing immortals and taking their power. They had worked on Incy to try to kill me. They had seduced Daniel and made him turn against River.
They had mailed me Incy’s head.
He had most likely killed Reyn.
Taking a deep breath, I opened my mouth and my mother’s power, my power, poured out of me. The song came out imperious and terrible, full of menace and strength, as strong as a hurricane, solid as the earth, fierce as fire, and unstoppable as the ocean. I let the magick move through me out into the night, let myself be a conduit only. It was harder, it took more thought, but it was how I chose to wield my power.
Egthor and Agata froze, aghast, as the binding spell hit them with full force. I felt the wound in my gut open again with searing pain, felt the startling, warm flow of blood returning. But I sang on, watching as Egthor unwillingly dropped River’s arm and Agata released Anne.
Egthor’s face shone with effort as he struggled to resist my spell. I felt Agata working against me—I could feel my song weakening, being subdued by their greater knowledge. A cruel smile raised the corners of Agata’s lips. She wanted to crush me like a flower under her heel. She wanted me dead, didn’t want to share Egthor with anyone. My throat began to close as if a fist were squeezing my windpipe. Oh God, oh no.
Two voices joined mine, bolstering my magick with theirs. Supporting each other, River and Anne were calling magick out of the earth, out of the night air. They laid their song over mine, and the pressure on my throat eased. The smile left Agata’s face.
One by one, my friends added their voices, blending and weaving around my central, strengthening core. Egthor dropped to his knees, snapping his hand out, screaming words of his own that I deflected. I pulled my amulet from beneath my shirt, held it up as it glowed with ancient power. When Egthor saw it, his eyes widened and his screams became more desperate. Agata was shrieking, her words dark and spiky, sharp as needles and acrid as bitter melon.
But she was no match for me, for us.
My words drove Egthor and Agata to their knees, to curl up on the ground with the enormous weight of my binding on them. Carefully I began to wrap it up, to slowly knot and finish off the spell, much like knitting. And then a pack of dogs, baying and snarling, burst through the door of fire: Molly and Jasper, young Henrik and Dúfa. They were furious, teeth bared, fur rising in lines down their backs.
“Molly!” River said, and Asher whistled fiercely. The dogs looked at him, and he sternly ordered them down the steps. Reluctantly they passed Egthor and Agata, growls rumbling deep in their throats, their fangs more frightening than I would have imagined.
And then a tall figure strode through the door of fire. My heart stopped beating for a moment, my voice faltered, and I forgot to breathe.
His face was burned and blistered, his shirt smoldering and charred. In his hands was a long, two-handed claymore, and he raised it swiftly and sharply above Egthor’s head.
“Wait!” I shouted at Reyn. For Reyn it was, alive, in pain, and full of berserker rage.
“Wait,” River echoed.
“He dies now!” Reyn said, the raider fury on his face making him both distant and familiar.
“Wait!” I pleaded, walking forward and wincing with a renewed, searing pain. Reyn saw the front of my clothes soaked in blood and his eyes flared, new anger lighting them from within. “Reyn—he knows my family history! He knows all the stuff I don’t!”
Slowly River turned—she looked older, her face thin and drawn, her hair seeming a lighter silver. “Reyn—please.”
“You want to rehabilitate them?” Reyn practically spat. “Like Innocencio? They deserve to die!”
“And I don’t?” River asked, sounding pained and exhausted. “You don’t? Are they so much worse than we were?”
Reyn’s jaws clamped together, and he stared at River. “You want to give them three hundred years to turn good?”
The faintest shadow of a smile crossed River’s face. “No, my dear. I just want to give them one day. And then a day after that. Maybe a day after that.”
I didn’t realize Asher had left until he came back, holding clinking lengths of silver chain. When Egthor saw the chain, he started weeping silently, tears rolling down his face.
“You won’t be in a dungeon,” Asher murmured, taking Egthor’s hands and snapping spelled wrist cuffs on him.
Lying on the porch next to him, Agata was incensed, her eyes popping, lips pressed together so hard, they had turned white. Wearily, River bent down and tried to pry open Agata’s fingers, which seemed locked unnaturally tightly, muscle and bone constricted as though in death.
The effort made sweat bead on River’s bruised forehead, but determinedly she got several fingers open and took something from Agata’s palm. I drew in a sharp breath as River put on the tarak-sin of the Genoa house, the large ring hanging heavily on her narrow finger.
Agata had had the tarak-sin. With shock I realized Ottavio must be dead.
Asher knelt down and pulled Agata’s hands behind her back.
“I’m sorry, Agata,” he said, locking cuffs on her thin, bony wrists. “But you know we can’t let you do this.”
It looked like she was trying to spit at him but couldn’t.
Asher rose, his face soot-smeared and tired, and searched our meager crowd. “Daisuke. Joshua. Anne. Can you come with me? I’ll take them to Benoit’s, in Minnesota.”
Egthor moaned. He did look like my father—his face had sharper angles, and my father’s hair and beard had been longer and often braided and tied with leather cord. But he was the most familylike of anyone I’d seen in 450 years, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I walked toward the porch, the pain in my stomach becoming the center of my being, the enormous thing all of me revolved around. Just lifting one foot onto a step felt like someone had buried an axe in my stomach.
“You will tell me everything,” I told Egthor, raising my voice.
He snarled at me, his cheeks wet with tears. Reyn kicked him, and Egthor winced. I gave Reyn a look.
I was Lilja af Úlfur. I refused to share in my father’s shame, the memory of his cruel and ruthless acts. But his power ran through me, and it always would. Narrowing my eyes, I made my face cold, bringing all my anger to the surface.
“You will tell me everything,” I said more harshly. “I am the heir to the House of Úlfur! I have my family’s power!” I held my amulet higher, the moonstone shining whitely. The hunger that showed on Egthor’s face as he stared at it was uncomfortable to see. Gritting my teeth against the pain, praying I wouldn’t faint and keel over backward, I forced myself up the steps.
“You will tell me everything,” I hissed. “You will teach me what you know. Or I’ll strip your skin from you with a word, cut off your head, and feed you to the dogs!”
River’s face was expressionless; Reyn’s was watchful. At the bottom of the steps, Dúfa’s whiplike tail thumped once, as if politely accepting the offer of Egthor’s head.
Egthor’s eyes wide
ned, but he didn’t respond. Then Asher tugged on the chain, Daisuke and Joshua came up to help him, and Anne started murmuring spells under her breath. Egthor and Agata were led away. River awkwardly sat down on the steps and buried her face in her hands.
The world started to dim around the edges of my vision, and the rushing sound came back to roar in my ears. “Uh-oh,” I said, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 33
And that, oh best beloved, is the story of how my life began, when I was 459 years old. Looking at me now, a leader in the immortal community, someone respected for knowledge and wisdom—
“You are so full of it,” Reyn said over my shoulder. “No one’s going to believe that.”
I glared at him, trying to cover the screen with my hands. “Go away! No one asked you!”
“Leader in the immortal community?” He scoffed. “You missed the last meeting because you stayed up late to watch Dancing with the Stars!”
“Shut up! Again, no one asked you!”
“Plus, I’m taller than you said I am.”
“Oh my God! How much did you read?”
“I’m really closer to six-one.”
My mouth dropped open. “Oh. My. God. I can’t believe you read this.”
He grinned unrepentantly, and as usual it made a little butterfly of excitement flutter in my chest. I ruthlessly crushed the butterfly: There were serious issues at stake.
Standing up, I put my hands on my hips. Over on the couch, adolescent Dúfa opened her eyes, stood up, and stretched.
“You mad? You want to come get me?” Reyn raised his eyebrows suggestively.
I knew that look, and so did all the cells in my traitorous body, which started squealing and jumping up and down in anticipation.
“You need to leave,” I said firmly, crossing my arms.
“You can’t kick me out. I live here. Plus, I have custody of the child.” He nodded at Dúfa, who jumped down and did the “downward-facing dog” stretch. She was growing into her long stick legs, and in general was a smidgen less awkward and funny looking.