Page 74 of A Curse Carved in Bone
Except as the chill grew, the wind no longer stroked my skin but cut like a knife, and reality came thundering back.
We were alone.
Trapped.
And the place that had brought our hearts back together might well be the place where they beat their last.
By dawn, not even Bjorn’s heat was enough to keep me warm, both of us soaked from melting snow and no salvation in sight.
It will be better in daylight,I kept repeating to myself as I shivered against him, sensation gone from my toes, my fingers spared only because I kept them wedged under my arms. Yet as the sun rose, it revealed that little about our circumstances had changed.
The runes that held our prison in place seemed impervious to the elements, and though I tried to wash them away with snow melted by Bjorn’s axe, the water only ran around them. My magic, bound to my touch as it was, could not help, and though Bjorn’s axe could pass through the barrier if he threw it, he could not so much as mar the runes scratched into the earth.
“I’ve never met anyone who knows as much about runic magic as Harald,” Bjorn said, leaning a forearm against the invisible barrier, eyes fixed on the charred remains of the trees around us. “Nor one who plans half as well.”
“He did not plan to leave us alive and yet here we are.” I held my hands over his axe. “So he’s fallible. He can’t predict everything.”
And yet no matter how I bent my mind to possible solutions, nothing worked. Frustration built in my chest, and needing to do something—anything—I leaped to my feet and shouted, “Help! Help us!”
“Save your breath, Born-in-Fire,” Bjorn said. “There is no one who will hear.”
Ignoring him, I balled my fists and screamed, “Help! We’re here! Help!”
“Well,” a female voice said from behind me. “Isn’t this an interesting development.”
I whirled, about to put Bjorn in his place for mocking my yelling, only for all words to stall on my lips.
Because the woman staring at me with eyes like frozen waterfalls was Ylva.
Dressed in a warrior’s attire with her reddish-brown hair in war braids, she stood with Ragnar at her elbow and several warriors to either side, all with arrows trained on Bjorn andme.
“When they say out of the frying pan and into the fire, this is what they mean, Freya.” Bjorn bent to retrieve his axe, then bounced the blade of flames against his palm. “Ylva.”
“Honorless traitor.” She spat on the ground.
“Ylva, if you just listen—”
“You are no better, you faithless whore.” She lifted her hand. “Kill them. He’s not here.”
Slapping my hand against the barrier, I covered our prison with magic, wincing as several arrows bounced off.
Ylva only snorted. “They are trapped, so let them die slowly rather than quickly. Those wards will hold them until they breathe their last. Come, we must continue our search.”
“Ylva, wait,” I called, unable to keep the desperation from my voice. “Harald is moving to attack Skaland and make himself king.”
“That is no revelation, Freya,” she answered. “Why do you think we fought so hard against him? If you’d held your faith, we might have held him back, but you were too busy spreading your legs for this one.”
“I ran because I thought it was the only solution,” I said. “Then Harald took me prisoner.”
“Do either of you two know what the wordprisonermeans?” Ylva demanded, looking between Bjorn and me. “Because I do not think you do. The word you are looking for is sycophant. Flunky. Minion.” Her lip curled. “You are Harald’s pets, not his prisoners.”
“Harald trapped us in here!” I couldn’t keep the panic from my voice because of all the people who might have come, Ylva was the most ill-fated choice. “Ylva, Harald deceived us! He’s—”
But she was already walking away, nearly out of earshot.
Desperate and knowing who she was looking for, I screamed, “Snorri is dead!”
Ylva froze.
