Kitabı oxu: «Foresworn»

The Norns

Thence come the maidens

Mighty in wisdom,

Three from the dwelling

Down ’neath the tree;

Urd is one named,

Verthandi the next,

On the wood they scored,

And Skuld the third.

Laws they made there,

And life allotted

To the sons of men,

And set their fates.

—The Norse Poetic Edda

The Prophecy

It is written that the kynkvísl, Norse descendants, will one day house the souls of the gods. True heroes who know their sad fate in the coming battles but fight nonetheless. Their time begins with the portents of Ragnarok. Three years of winter, roaring seas that lash the land and an all-consuming fire. The destruction of the world.

There is another prophecy, one never written and held secretly by the giants of Niflheim, the lowest region of the Norse underworld. The sisters of fate have the power to change the heroes’ destinies. Change the world’s destiny. But only if they survive to their nineteenth birthday.

The odds aren’t good, according to this unwritten prophecy:

Born of two magical clans that share life’s spiral. Light of head, dark of eyes, the young warrior will herald the beginning of Ragnarok. His hand to the death of a norn.

Dedication

This one is for my critique partner, Rachel Vincent. She took one look at the crazy-tight timeline I’d set up in the first two books, sat us down in her living room and worked with me until I got it right. It took some time. You’re right, Rachel, we do have a great partnership, and it is about more than hummus and caffeine!

Acknowledgments

First, I’d like to thank my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for her patience with me and this particular deadline. And for all the end brainstorming! But mostly for taking a chance on this trilogy.

I’d also like to thank my agent, Miriam Kriss, for the last-minute-scramble help at times.

As always, so, so much thanks to my husband and children, who have developed more patience than most need while dealing with my deadlines over the past couple of years.

To my mother and my sisters for LOTS of phone support.

And again, to the Deadline Dames. Who knew we’d still be going strong in constant support and friendship all these years later? Devon Monk, Karen Mahoney, Jenna Black, Rachel Vincent, Jackie Kessler, Toni Andrews, Lilith Saintcrow and Keri Arthur. You guys are the best!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

The Norns

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“One of these things is not like the others,” I sang under my breath, as I white-knuckled my Jeep between a couple of eighteen-wheelers. I’d been sandwiched between monster vehicles for so many miles, I could no longer feel the tips of my fingers.

Maybe I shouldn’t have started my trip in the middle of the night, after all.

Not that I’d had a choice. I hadn’t been able to find a hotel with an available room the night before and after four hours of sleeping in my car, I’d decided driving had to be a better option than freezing to death.

What had I been thinking?

Oh yeah. That somehow it was my responsibility to find a teenage warrior who was going to save the world. If, that is, he didn’t kill me because of some weird prophecy.

Now minutes before sunrise, I was doing everything I could to stay out of blind spots while the trucks kicked up snow all over my smaller vehicle. Between that and what was coming from the sky, I felt like I was caught in some surreal dream sequence in a bad eighties horror movie—as if any second, the trucks around me would converge, develop abominable snowman faces and we’d end up battling it out at a sleazy truck stop.

My phone rang, the screen lighting up the dark momentarily. It wasn’t one of my sisters’ distinctive tones, so I didn’t take the time to look to see who was calling. With the way one of the trucks kept swerving, someone else shouldn’t have been driving in the middle of the night, either. “Soooo not answering while I’m playing caravan with big rigs,” I muttered between clenched teeth.

But the ringing didn’t stop, which meant it still could be one of my sisters. I had two—we were triplets. Growling, I snatched up the phone, glanced at the screen and, though I didn’t recognize the number, I answered. “Yeah?”

The silence lasted long enough for me to roll my eyes.

“Hello! If you don’t answer, I’m hanging up. Who the hell is this?”

“Raven.”

My sister’s tone in just the one word made me instantly start looking for a place to get off the road. The shoulder was too iffy because of the slick snow and the water on either sides of the highway. “Gods, Raven! You’re lucky I answered. It’s freaking noisy here, and I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you?”

“Oklahoma.” Her voice sounded hushed, and I had to strain to hear her. “I found him. Found Vanir McConnell.”

Three days before, my sisters and I had discovered our egg donor—as if I’d call her Mom anymore—had been spending years researching kids on the internet—kids who could possibly be carrying god souls like us. What she planned to do with that knowledge was anyone’s guess. But with the way she’d been acting, it couldn’t be good. So each of us had picked a warrior to track down. We’d split up for the first time in our lives. Raven was talking about the guy she’d chosen. The one who apparently carried the soul of the Norse god Odin. We were pretty sure the wolves in the article our mother had saved were the big clue on which god.

Mine had something to do with crops, according to the tabloid story I’d picked—or my norn had picked. She’d squirmed like I’d set her on fire the instant my hand had touched that printed paper I’d found in our mother’s room. Crops could mean Freyr, and that particular god could possibly be the most important of them all. He wasn’t supposed to survive Ragnarok—like most of the important gods—but he played a huge part of the end of it, and if he did survive, he could have something to do with healing the earth after three years of winter had damaged it.

My entire life had been about crazy stuff—goddesses and Norse prophecies—and I’d never truly swallowed the Ragnarok part of it all. I mean, come on! Three years of snow, angry waves swallowing the earth, gods battling giants, elves and whatever. Oh, then there was the fire. Always the damned fire.

My stomach churned.

“I know. Coral told me,” I finally answered as I made it past the lake—on the right side at least. I started to pull over but saw the place was a campground. Oh no, we aren’t going to risk that kind of bad mojo. I took the next opening instead into a fast-food parking lot and nearly slid into a parked pickup. My cell hit the floor. “I dropped the stupid phone!” I yelled. “Just hold on while I find a parking space away from these loud trucks!”

I could have gone into the campground, but I’d vowed never to step foot in one again. I’d had enough of those places growing up. Our mother had dragged us from one to another, always moving when her freaky, paranoid internal clock said boo. I’d developed what I thought of as a healthy disgust with all things tent related. And I planned to honor that disgust. Forever.

I parked far enough away from the restaurant to have privacy but still catch a little of the light coming through the windows. A guy in a fast-food uniform scurried past a window, carrying a tray. It looked like they were about to open. I leaned over to feel around the floorboard for my phone and snatched it up. “I’m back. Where have you been? I called you, like, five times last night and Coral is totally freaked.” Okay, maybe Coral wasn’t totally freaked, but she’d been worried. Unfortunately, I’d had to cut the call short. I looked around. The parking lot was mostly deserted. “You’d better call her right away if you haven’t already.” Frigid air snaked through every opening in the Jeep it could find. Felt like it was trying to burrow permanently into my bones.

“I will. I don’t have my phone. Might have lost it.”

“You’d better find it, or pick up another somewhere because we have to stay in touch.” I grabbed a blanket from the pile in the passenger seat and wrapped it around me. With the car running, the heat blasting through the vents, and the snow pattering on the roof, it could have been cozy. If the heat had actually been winning the battle against the cold. “I’m in Wyoming already, and holy goddess crap it’s cold up here.”

“I expected it to take you longer. It took me forever to get here, and Oklahoma is closer.”

“Me? You’ve already found your warrior. Coral told me.” I snorted. “How?”

“I crashed into a river. He helped me out.”

My heart did this weird sort of extra thump, thump, thump and I held my breath, staring at the sunrise that seemed to be battling the clouds for sky space. It looked like splotches of spilled tangerine paint on a dark gray canvas. Not for the first time I thought about how we should have stayed together. How nothing would mean anything if I lost one of my sisters.

“I’m okay,” she said quickly. “The car is in a river and will have to be towed, fixed—hopefully. I don’t even want to think about how much of my savings that will suck up. But I came out with only a lump on my head. Vanir’s aunt is a doctor, and she stuck around to make sure I was fine. And get this, Kat, she has seidr. Big-time. And her name is Sarah Eir.”

“No shit.” A dump truck pulled into the parking lot and drove so slowly past me, I tightened my jaw until it hurt. My exhaustion from my sleepless night was starting to settle in me like a heavy weight, and I blinked at the red-and-orange-streaked sky. Felt like someone had poured grit into my eyes. When the loud motor finally quit, I frowned. “Wait, you met a doctor with seidr magic and her name is Eir? Like the healing goddess? That’s whacked.” I don’t know why I was surprised Raven had met someone with seidr magic. It wasn’t like I didn’t believe in it. How could I not when my own version had ruined my life?

The thump in my chest grew worse, and I realized it wasn’t my heart making a racket—it was my norn. The Norse goddess who had turned me into a host and liked to take over my body occasionally. The She Leech who had ruined my life. Who had burned my fingerprints off when I couldn’t find a pen and paper. Who had told some kind of potential future that made no sense. Skuld.

Even her name sounded like some cartoon movie villainess. As if someone had played a word game using similar negative words like skull, scald, or scold.

I ignored her. It was what I did best.

“It’s not only her,” Raven continued. “Vanir has brothers, all with Norse names, and they look like their Choctaw-Irish father. And everyone here knows what’s going on. I just know it. This whole situation is too surreal, Kat. We’ve spent all our lives hiding our magic, knowing others don’t even know about it, and I walk into a family who knows things. Even the sheriff, I think. It’s like I marched right into a book.”

Closing my eyes tight, I gripped the phone until my fingers went numb.

“Sounds like it’s all coming together.” I could barely get my voice past the sudden dryness of my throat. “Ragnarok. Just like the stories.” I tried to swallow. Bit my tongue to try to flood my mouth with moisture, but it didn’t work. Clenching my free hand into a fist, it took everything I had to push back the torturous images from the last time I’d slept. And the time before...and pretty much all the times I tried to sleep over the past couple of months.

Running for my life and jumping off a cliff into a chasm of fire.

Trapped in a burning house.

And the worst?

Tangled in rope in the middle of a raging forest fire.

My nightly movie reel. All fire, all the time! My norn wanted to make sure I understood I’d be the sister dying and that no matter what fate had in store for me, it involved burning to death.

“I still can’t believe this is happening.” I rubbed fingers and thumb over my eyes, groaning.

“Kat, I’m really nervous about the aunt. She’s going to know what’s going on.”

I let Raven’s words sink in as I looked back at the sunrise, noticing more clouds had rolled in, piling over each other until their thick black bodies swallowed the light. I wanted that light today. Needed it. The world was only days into the freak summer snowstorm of the century and already I was sick of it. Shivering, I pulled the blanket higher and blew hot air underneath it, thought about what Raven had just said. “What do you mean? That our possibly crazy mother might be there? That she might scare your Vanir? Probably not a good idea to share. Just stay low. See if you can find Dru. But first, let’s back up a sec.” There’d been something new in her voice for a moment. Something that put a little more interesting twist on the hell going on around us. “You said Vanir’s name with a lot of familiarity for just having met him last night.”

She was silent for a moment. “No, I didn’t. I said his name in a normal voice.”

I could hear the lie spilling nervously all over those consonants and vowels, so I grinned. Good for Raven—she’d hardly ever even looked at boys before.

“Gods, Kat. That’s not important right now. You wouldn’t believe what...”

I waited as I eyed the thicker snowflakes hitting the hood of my car with audible thumps. When she didn’t go on, I sighed. “I wouldn’t believe...” I repeated.

“It’s bad, Kat. Mom’s here.”

I sat up straighter. “Coral didn’t tell me that. How do you know?” Shock made me clutch the phone hard when I heard a sob. Raven crying was something I didn’t handle well. “Raven?”

“Hold on,” she whispered. There was a clatter as she obviously set the phone down.

I waited, chewed on my fingernail, then grimaced when I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I washed my hands. Tapping my finger on the steering wheel instead, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly because the panic filling my chest made my lungs feel full.

A loud clatter on the other end made me wince. When my sister didn’t immediately speak, I wanted to climb through the phone and strangle her. “Raven! What is it? Hey, talk to me!”

“I think she killed a boy, Kat. I drove into a river—Vanir fished me out.” It was her turn to take a loud breath before more words spilled out of her. Fast. “He has wolves—can you believe it? But he had to leave me with them to find his friend, and when I caught up to him, it was only to find that his friend had been killed. Killed, Kat. Vanir brought me to his house and their sheriff questioned me. I didn’t know anything for sure, of course, but I think it could have been Mom.”

“I can’t believe that.” Again, the words had to be forced out. I didn’t trust our mother—hell, I didn’t even like Dru very much—but this was beyond my comprehension. Murder. I’d expected her to try some stupid spell that hurt them or made it impossible for them to get where they were supposed to be during the end of the world.

Not that I entirely wanted to accept that was what was happening.

“I don’t know for sure,” Raven answered. “But there wasn’t a mark on him, and it looked like he was killed with magic. Plus, I smelled the lavender.”

A diesel pickup pulled into the next space, and the driver leaned over to look at me through his passenger window. I frowned and turned away from him, still clutching the phone as if I was afraid I’d drop it again.

“Kat?”

It took several tries for me to get enough air to speak. “You know I’ve stayed mad at her, that I’ve always thought she was kind of loopy, but this? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand.” I didn’t want to be this far from Coral when she found out. Our middle sister was still too attached to our progenitor. “Oh gods, Coral! This will kill Coral.”

“She won’t believe it.” Raven lowered her voice. “I have to find Mom, Kat.”

I made a strangled sound. “No. You don’t. If she’s already crossed the line, you have to tell them! Why do you feel this need to protect her? I don’t get it! Look at how we grew up! All I ever wanted was a normal life and she made sure that didn’t happen. You should have just told them the truth last night. She’s killed someone, Raven.”

“We don’t know that for sure. And I have to be absolutely sure. Have to give her that. Anyway, have you been paying attention on your trip? On mine, nuts were coming out of the woodwork. It’s snowing at the equator, Kat! People are scared! We don’t know the situation here. What if this was something else?”

Of course she backtracked. Like I would have to. Literally. I’d have to turn around and drive to Oklahoma now. There was no choice. I loved my sister—both my sisters—fiercely, but I didn’t trust them at all when it came to Dru. “You sounded pretty certain a minute ago, Raven.”

She didn’t say anything for a long, long moment. “My rune tempus hit last night and the runes said ‘in violence conceived.’ What do you think that means?”

Stunned, I sat still and silent, gripping the phone as more trucks came into the restaurant parking lot. I glanced over, and the guy in the diesel truck was still in there, still watching me. Instead of thinking about the ramifications of what Raven had just said, I dug in my bag for my can of pepper spray. I really, really needed to not think about what she said. Not too deeply.

“I think my norn is trying to tell me something about our birth,” Raven said.

“No.” I clutched the can to my chest, stared straight out the windshield at the clumps of snow building on the hood. Then at the span of new dark clouds that looked like they had sprung from the mountain in the distance. “No. Dru doesn’t hold back. Innocent childhood isn’t a sacred thing in her world. It’s not her style. Gory bedtime stories are my first memories.” And they were. Stories of gods fighting, gods smearing herbs on talking severed heads...gods giving birth out of their freaking armpits. Nothing had been taboo for Dru. “She would have told us.”

“Maybe not.”

“What if it isn’t?” I groaned again, knowing it sounded more like a growl. “What if it’s something stupid from the past that has absolutely nothing to do with this? You could get in big trouble, Raven.” And I couldn’t handle that. Couldn’t handle anything happening to either of my sisters.

“I know.”

“Sounds like you’ve found the right guy. I’m calling Coral, and we’re coming to help. In the meantime, you know where to look.” I turned off my Jeep—thinking I’d grab breakfast in the restaurant.

“Not really. Campgrounds are out in this weather. She has to be in a hotel, but I can’t figure out how. She didn’t have much cash.” She paused. “How long do you think it’ll take you to get here? I have no car and I can’t waste the money to rent one. I still have to find a hotel, and I’m worried about the cost on that. Have you had trouble finding rooms? I did every single night. Spent a fortune to get here.”

“Yeah, I’ve had trouble, but it got easier up here. People are used to driving in snow, so they didn’t all stop immediately.” Okay, I lied. But just a little. She had enough to worry about. “Since Coral’s guy lived closer, she’s been driving around, trying to find him, but she told me last night every hotel in the area is packed. Our neighbors are taking people in.”

“Coral’s not, right?”

“Don’t think so.” I smirked because I knew exactly what she was thinking. That Coral trusted too easily and could let someone even worse than Dru into the house. Well, Raven probably wouldn’t use Dru as the comparison. It pissed me off that neither of my sisters could grasp how off our mother really was. And it pissed me off more that even I was surprised by the thought of her killing someone. I thought I’d given up on her years ago.

My stomach growled.

“Kat? I can’t let Mom hurt Vanir. He’s...well, he’s really cool.”

I liked this subject better. I shook my head. “I thought I detected heat. So, I guess you won’t end up in Gefjon’s hall, after all?” I’d always teased my sisters that they’d end up there because they’d die still virgins. Dru had kept a pretty close eye on us, so there hadn’t been any serious relationships yet, even though we were eighteen. Who was I kidding? Serious relationships. Ha! We hadn’t even experienced casual ones.

“Probably not.”

“Really?” I dropped the pepper spray. “Holy crap! I’m coming down there now. Get off this phone, call Coral and tell her you’re okay.”

“Bossy much?”

“I told you. She’s freaking.” Man, at this rate, my nose was going to start growing like Pinocchio’s. I stared at the light filling the sky, at the snow that was falling everywhere—not just here. When I’d left Florida, it had covered the ground there, too. The scariest part was it was still summer. Even this far north, I doubted they dealt with this much snow in August.

A plume of smoke rose into the sky from somewhere not that far away. It writhed and spread into the already dark clouds. Fear made my heart pick up. Stupid fire.

“Raven?” I whispered.

“What?”

“Do you have the feeling one of us isn’t making it through this? All the other stuff Dru told us is coming true.”

“We are. All three of us are going to make it. We’re going to fight. And think about it. Mom changed things so maybe she’s altered all of it and fate is now in our hands.”

“I’m not sure that makes me feel better.” Though it kind of did. Any change from the scary prophecy of our death was welcome. But then it occurred to me that whatever Dru changed could actually be playing into fate’s hands. That thought made me break out into a cold sweat.

“Yeah, nothing like a little pressure. But I’m determined to keep Mom from hurting Vanir and I plan to do it without dying. Stubborn as you are, it shouldn’t be hard for you, either.”

I should have told them about the dreams of fire before because doing so now would just worry Raven and probably make Coral do the freak thing I’d made up earlier. For real. “But Coral...Coral’s—”

“Coral is a lot stronger than we think. She’s going to be fine.”

I smirked. “You know you’re channeling that parent vibe again, right? You’re, like, minutes older than me.”

“Sometimes, every minute counts. I gotta go. Promise to call you again later.”

She hung up, and I sat in the near silence of my car, the only sound the engines outside and the steady thump of snow pattering the Jeep. What if everything Dru changed wasn’t really a change? Just trying to wrap my head around that crazy woo-woo stuff made it hurt.

Someone banged on my driver’s window and I jumped.

“You okay in there?” A bearded face appeared. It was the man from the diesel truck. His breath fogged the frozen window. “You really shouldn’t be sleeping in your car in this cold.” He knocked again. “Do you need help?”

He actually tried to open the car door.

My eyes flew open wide. “No!” I yelled and held up my cell phone to show him I could call for help—whether it had to do with the car or him. “Was just taking a break!”

He frowned a moment longer, eyeing the huge mound of blankets packed into the front seat of my Jeep with me, then looking in the back. I knew exactly when he spotted the suitcase because his eyes turned into slits. His face was so close to the glass, I could see up his nose. Gross. “Seriously, I’m fine,” I yelled at the window. “I’ll leave now, okay? As soon as my car warms back up!” Ever heard of nose clippers? I continued silently.

He nodded and moved away. Just not far enough.

So much for breakfast here.

Groaning, I started the Jeep again and hoped the heat would kick on fast. It usually did. Unlike my sister Coral, I’d picked a car that had an actual working heater. Though I wished I’d thought of how cold it could get with the partially removable top. Of course, I lived in Florida and planning for subzero temperatures hadn’t been on my agenda. College had been my first goal. The second—keeping my sisters safe. I didn’t even know what I planned to study yet. Raven wanted some kind of history or anthropology—something or another. Coral was interested in plants, so she’d know everything about them for spells. Me? I planned to take the basics wherever my sisters ended up. What I wanted to do would eventually come to me. I hoped. I peeked out the window only to see that scary nose-hair man was still watching me.

He had the same shaggy brown do as the guy in that movie The Stepfather. Right before he killed the family and shaved his beard.

That’s it, Kat. No more freaking scary movies!

My skin started to crawl. I picked up the pepper spray because I knew better than to ignore that feeling. I had once, and that once had been enough to make me overvigilant when it came to me and my sisters from then on. Insidious black fear began to creep into my bones. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Calm down, Kat. You’re in control here. You’re eighteen. Not thirteen and stuck in the woods with an older boy you shouldn’t have trusted. You. Are. In. Control.

And I was. My car was locked and I had a weapon. But I couldn’t shake the discomfort and realized it was probably coming from my norn. She’d been shoving her own feelings into me more often lately. The emotion could be coming from my sisters. We had a weird connection as triplets and it was probably one hundred times stronger because we also all carried the souls of the norn sisters—the three goddesses who had lived beneath the world tree called Yggdrasil.

Those shared feelings had helped us out more times than I could count. And my sisters had no idea I’d sort of made it my life’s work to watch out for them. Raven was always too busy working and trying to keep things together. Coral spent her time studying and fretting. It was an old-fashioned word, but the first time I’d read it, I’d stuck it to Coral because it fit. She was the softest one of us. The quickest to tears. When we were little, sometimes all I had to do was look at her a certain way and her eyes would fill up.

Eyeing my phone, I thought about calling her. Checking in. She’d sounded funny during our last call, and I’d had the distinct feeling she’d been keeping something from me.

The three of us had split up for the first time in our lives, each going after a boy who could possibly carry the soul of a Norse god. A future warrior who needed to make it to the final battles—one who didn’t deserve problems from Dru.

Nose-hair man started toward my car again, and my unease kicked into high gear. I held up my pepper spray, watched with real satisfaction as his eyes grew wide; then I jammed my Jeep into Reverse and peeled out so fast, he had to jump away from my car.