A bird cawed in response.
This sound did not come from her mind, but from the canopy. Ailsa peered up at the branches linking above her and found a crow perched on the lowest limb. Its eyes bashed out, bleeding from the sockets and reminding her of the one she had dreamed of all those nights ago after fighting the sea serpent.
“A blind crow,” she whispered in awe. The black bird cocked its head at her, cawed another obnoxious call, and suddenly stretched its wings to fly towards a distant branch still visible in the mist. The crow did not fly away, but peered back at her, as if waiting for her to follow.
She wiped her cheeks now stained with blood and salt and stumbled to her sore feet. Together they traveled through the mist draping the forest, and her hope redeemed a little more with every step.
Vali stood over the remains of his crew; their bodies mixed with an equal number of Vanirian soldiers. He surveyed the waste. The blood of his kin now saturated the earth stretching the width of the small clearing. The last thing he remembered were Njord’s men following Ailsa into the mist, and the god shoved the hilt of his sword into Vali’s skull, knocking him unconscious.
He awoke to the smell of open wounds and the stinging taste of copper on his tongue. The entire realm settled back into a quiet peace as if hundreds of lives had not been ended in the last hours.
Vali sank to his knees and wailed into the quiet, disturbing the agonizing peace that irritated him beyond real words. He should have seen this coming, should have anticipated that the Vanir would try to stop him. He should have traveled smaller, taken an off-route path, set up a diversion. He should have doneanythingto prevent this.
He should have prevented this.
“This does not bring me satisfaction, Vali,” a voice crept from the fog behind him.
Vali’s knuckles blanched as he clenched his fists. “It didn’t have to come to this.”
Njord sighed. “No, it didn’t. If you would have returned the Tether—”
“The Tether is not mine to give away!” He stood to his feet and spun to face the god. Njord faced him alone, his riding beast somewhere far behind a layer of haze.
“That’s right, Vali. It isn’t yours to give. It belongs to the Vanir, and the sooner you return it, the better. You are thinking about yourself and your people but giving the Aesir the Tether will affect all the Nine Realms.” Njord took a step back. “And you know this.”
Vali said nothing, and Njord turned from him to disappear in the direction of Vanaheim. “You know where to find me when you change your mind, Vali.”
He spent the rest of his time counting the bodies, naming each one in a specific prayer to the heavens where the fae returned as rays of light. A small spark of hope flickered when he felt the pull of the Tether, his own magic catching her like a scent in the breeze. Ailsa was still out there, Seela and the others were not counted amongst the dead, and all was not lost just yet.
If there was still Ailsa, there was still hope.
* * *
“Odin’s fucking eye,”he heard spoken through the mist. Foul words spoken by a voice soft as silk in sunlight.
Through the pale fog her figure emerged, a dagger weakly hanging between her fingers, and her shoulders slumped from exhaustion. Ailsa’s dress was torn, a crude slit ripped up to her upper thigh and flashed her legs as she walked. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, her cheeks still damp from tears. They filled again with a kind of relief he never thought she’d regard him with.
“Vali!” Her voice broke. He realized it was the first time she’d ever said his name, and to hear it so affectionately sighed from her lips made the bleak day a little brighter.
She threw herself against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He stumbled back, startled, but quickly caught her embrace. The events that transpired were heavy on his mind, and he didn’t have the energy to question her advance or the implications of her body pressed against his chest. He simply held her back and let himself remain blissfully naive.
“I never thought you’d be happy to see me,” he said.
“You try wandering a sea of mist for hours believing you’d never see another soul again. You’d throw yourself at your most hated enemy as well.”
“Thank you… I think.”
She was thinner than she appeared. His hands discovered how much her clothes hid the way her skin hugged her form into tight curves. Her hair had fallen out of the tight braids she liked to weave, leaving messy, damp waves trailing down her back and skimming his arms now locked around her small waist. She smelled like a battle all on her own, and he wondered about the horrors she faced in this forest.
He pushed her back by her hips to look her over. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? You’re covered in blood, Ailsa, gods below how are you walking—”
“Just a little is mine, most of it is Vanir. And…” she flinched.
“And who?”
She bit down on her trembling lip. “Some of the blood is… is Sorrin’s.”
The name made the grief return. He had hoped for the best when he didn’t see the officer’s face in the field, but Ailsa’s tears told him his worst fears had come true. “I’m sorry, Vali. It’s my fault. You told me to stay out of sight and I didn’t listen. He followed the Vanir who were chasing me—”