Page 53 of Between Broomsticks and Beating Wings
As I entered the room, I shoved the key into a hidden spot in my armor where she wouldn’t dare reach.
The room was softly lit by candles, as if it’d been expecting us. There were rugs lining the black stone floor and colorful tapestries lining the walls. It wasn’t dreary, but warm. My room in Valhalla was all whites and golds, but this one was black and shades of red. They were vastly different, but Hel could have supplied us with much worse accommodations than this. After hard benches, forest floors, and dwarven beds, I was relieved to see the massive bed in the center of the room, a wispy canopy strung up around it.
Kari blew out a breath to tell me how unhappy she was with our situation, but at least that loaded sigh hadn't been a scream in my direction.
“When were you going to tell me?” she finally asked. I turned to face her then, and my stomach lurched when my eyes met hers. I didn’t want to see her anger, her distrust.
“I should have told you sooner,” I said, unstrapping my sword and leaning it against the wall. The double axes secured to my back came off next. I didn’t want to have this conversation strapped to the chin in weapons.
“You didn’t tell me at all. Hel did.” Kari ground her teeth. “You tell me nothing. You never have. And you wonder why I keep my distance, why I have such strong walls. You built them! They’re there for you and you alone.”
“I know.” I swallowed, running my fingers through the loose strands of my hair. This white hair of mine had gotten me out of so many confrontations over the years, I’d forgotten what it waslike to have to work for what I wanted with words, to be the one expected to grovel.
“That’s it? You know? Great. Iguess this is all worked out then.” Kari laughed bitterly, throwing her hand up in the air. Tove came out of nowhere and hissed at me as he trotted by to use his human’s leg to scratch his sides on.
“It’s not worked out, seeress. Far from it,” I said, wanting badly to reach forward and grab her, but I wouldn’t until she begged it of me. “I take responsibility for those walls, and I’m sorry for giving you a reason to build them. My intention was never to hurt you, though I understand intention means very little when the outcome is harmful all the same.”
Kari crossed her arms, fighting an eye roll as she said, “So tell me then. Would you have confessed the truth?”
“I would have,” I admitted. “I was waiting for the perfect time, but I realized there was no perfect time far too late. I wasn’t holding back out of malice, but I was trying to spare you grief. You’d already had far too much of it for someone your age. For anyone, really. You’ve lost so much, had so muchtakenfrom you, and I didn’t want to take that option away from you too. I figured if you chose another path, that would have truly meant something. You wouldn’t have just chosen it just because Midgard wasn’t an option. And selfishly, I was worried you might have chosen Midgard anyway so you could have been taken to Helheim to be with your family prematurely.”
Kari stood before me, her arms by her sides, showing me she was hiding nothing. She was open, expecting me to do the same. “You selfishly didn’t want me to leave you.”
“Yes,” I sighed, admitting just one of my many hidden truths. I removed my boots, one at a time, never taking my eyes from her. “It was selfish, yes, but not entirely so. Kari, you don’t deserve to be here just because I took you to Valhalla. At thetime, I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to bring you back. I never meant to steal the mortal realm from you.”
“When did you find out I wouldn’t be able to return? And what if I’d chosen Midgard? What would you have done then?”
“Bodil told me. The, uh, healer. You may not remember her, but it was your second night in Valhalla. If you had chosen to go to Midgard, I would have done everything in my power to ensure you survived once there. I would have gone to the gods, struck a deal, anything.”
Kari remained silent for a while before she retreated to the sitting room by the windows, her shoulders slumping with notable fatigue. “As soon as we walked through those gates, I could tell I wasn’t ready to be here. I feel Hel’s seidr so strongly here, it calls to me like never before. I feel it scraping its way under my skin, trying to crawl back to her, like it was never truly mine to begin with. I can’t stand the feeling, and I will go anywhere to get away from it. It seems like anywhere I go, hergiftfollows me, but being on Asgard was the best I’ve felt in my entire life, even with a hole in my shoulder.” She gave a bitter laugh, as though her heart wasn’t truly in it, and that, I could understand.
“You’re happy to return to Asgard? Truly? Not because it’s just the better of two options?”
“Truly.” Kari nodded with a crooked smile. “And maybe working under Freyja, being her attendant, will be the best thing for me. She’s the goddess of seidr, after all. Who better to learn from?”
I slowly nodded my head as I came to sit with her. I kept my distance so as not to spook her, but I didn’t want to pace the room or hover either. “Seeress, I have so many things I need to tell you. More apologies, more veiled truths.”
“I wasn’t sure if I’d ever hear the words I’ve been yearning to. I’m still not,” she said, shifting her weight so more of her wassitting on her seat. She rested her elbow on the arm rest and stared down at her nails, as if what I was about to tell her was of no importance, like she hadn’t screamed at me to tell her my secrets.
We were in Helheim now, and I couldn’t keep this knowledge from her any longer. If her family saw me, they’d know my face. I’d tried to be careful on so many nights in those early days, but spirits have a funny way of sneaking up on you, and there were five of them I’d been trying to keep my involvement hidden from. I should’ve known Haddy would find me lurking around their longhouse eventually. She was even more curious than Kari, always wandering around the longhouse, never spending much time within it. She was quiet, kept to herself, and seemed to enjoy my presence instead of being scared by it. I’d told her not to tell the others, and she’d agreed not to if I’d promised her one thing.
Haddy and I played hide and seek every three moons. She would be the one to hide, and Apple and I would wander through the forest to catch her. I’d let Apple find her most of the time, and Haddy would fall to the dirt laughing her little butt off as soon as she was caught.
Staring at Kari now, I could see as clear as day what she would have looked like at Haddy’s age. My heart twisted, and Kari’s expression did as well, as if she was reading my mind, though her imagination would have never been able to fabricate these memories. I needed to start talking before she got up and walked away from me, but gods, the words on my tongue had grown so heavy over the weeks.
“I will tell you everything you yearn for and more. Anything you want, seeress. Not to appease you, but to finally give you what you’ve long deserved.”
“How long?” Kari asked, her chin pointing up and her elbow falling off the armrest. “How long did you watch me before you swooped in and took me to Valhalla?”
“Two years.”
“Two years… So you…” She shuddered. “You were there that night? The night of the raid.”
“I was. It hadn’t been the first time I’d been to Stormheim, but it had been the first time I saw you.” I thought back at the memory, pain spreading through my chest like a wildfire. “I was sent to see if any of the souls taken in the raid were worth bringing back to Valhalla with me and?—”
Kari ground her teeth before interrupting me. “You went back empty-handed.”
“I did. In truth, I’d been annoyed Odin had sent me at all and not one of my younger sisters. It was a small raid led by rouge raiders, and only a handful of people were killed. I hadn’t understood why he would send me, of all valkyries. I’d lingered longer than I should have, trying to understand what my purpose was in your little village. And then, I saw you.”
