“Onlythis will save him, Ailsa.”
Without further decision, she pulled her dress aside on her chest and placed the knife edge to the scarred rune over her heart. Her eyes fell to the sky, glaring into the winking starlight where she knew the blind beast watched and relished. “I’m willing,” she hissed to the Crow, and slashed through the scarred skin disrupting the ink.
The runes surged to life across her body, but she felt no pain this time. Only light and life, death and darkness. Surging together until the ancient power wove itself into the threads of her soul, her destiny claimed with the simple cut across her skin. She felt it everywhere, every part of her being from her skin to her blood, the very sustenance inhaled in her lungs charged with a living force that both set her on fire and drowned her away. And she could breathe. Each rise of her chest was no longer a fight but a natural movement, effortless and satisfying. Her body was no longer filled with fluid, and she felt alive and strong.
But Vali was still screaming somewhere beyond her body and the sudden sensations pulsing a new life in her veins. She heard Nerissa at her side whisper something and the flames ceased, leaving only a charred man tied to the stake.
“Vali,” she spoke his name with hope this time. Ailsa pulled him from the stake before the wolves could get any closer, ignoring the heat from the fire still fresh on his skin. He was hot everywhere she touched, his eyes were shut, the skin of his cheeks black from smoke. “Sólskin, wake up.” She held him to her chest, feeling the rune on her hand fade as his own was shriveled and scorched. The heartbeat in her own chest slowed with a painful throb.
They were dying.
“What do I do? How do I help him?” she whispered to someone—anyone who could help.
The familiar voice in her mind answered, If runes are born from blood, what do you think rewrites the threads of fate? My knowledge is inside you now, Ailsa. The power to change the past and lay a new future is at your fingertips. Listen to your heart, it will know what to do.
She dipped her fingers in the bleeding flesh above her heart, where the rune binding herself to an untapped power was carved into completion. She wet the pads of their tips and rewrote Vali’s fate like ink across a blank page. That whisper of knowing echoed inside her flesh, like the voice of her spirit nudging her inclinations, moving her hands until they were drawing symbols across Vali’s excoriated skin. She covered the old runes Odin marked into his body, writing over his past to make a new future, a new destiny that would belong to him and him alone.
Her eyes had never seen these symbols before, but her spirit knew them,feltthem. They faded into his skin as soon as she was finished with one, disappearing so that none would ever see the forbidden language of fate nor be able to copy their scriptures. Each one replacing a darker one written by a god with the power to control flesh, but not fate.
She saw their threads in her mind, woven together like a braid, the edges smoothing back together from their fray. The witches whispered around her, but she paid them no attention. She now held a power they had no knowledge of, one that had been suppressed since the fall of Gullveig over a century ago. Only once their threads were bound into time once more did her fingers stop tracing his chest.
Ailsa opened her eyes she didn’t realize had been shut, gaining witness as Vali took a gasping breath. His body renewed before their eyes, every inch of discolored skin now creamy and smooth. His chest now bare, unmarked, a blank canvas for a new future. The sunset of his gaze found hers and brightened the hazy valley with their life.
“Ailsa,” he whispered. Her name, both a request and an affirmation. He sat up in her arms and pulled her into his chest, kissing her with the heavy weight of his relief and the fierceness of his passion. He pulled away when he sensed something different about her, his eyes falling over the crimson stain bleeding through the sheer fabric of her gown.
“You did it,” he only said.
She swallowed and nodded, pulling her gown aside for him to see the new rune formed above her heart. “Does this change what you feel for me?” she asked.
His lips turned up in a slow smile. “No, Ailsa. Never that.”
A giddy laugh broke the fleeting moment of relief, reminding them both they were hardly safe yet, only experiencing the bliss found in the eye of a storm. Ailsa looked up to see Nerissa and Fenrir watching them, her face glowing with pride. “What did I tell you, Great One? I promised I would return the power to you. Now that you have it, you cannot be stopped. Odin will fall.” He kissed her hand appreciatively, never tearing his eyes away from Ailsa.
“I will not help you destroy the Nine Realms,” Ailsa spat, pulling Vali closer.
“I do not need yourhelp, just your submission.” Fenrir looked to the south, where the Palace of Light stood somewhere behind the nightly fog. “Maybe I should pay Odin a visit since he’s in the neighborhood.”
“Vali,” she whispered without moving her lips. The wolves and witches now distracted by her performance, chattering amongst themselves. “We need to get out of here before they chain you.” Stories said Fenrir could break through any chain until the dwarves crafted a metal with the contrasting ingredients of life itself. If the wolf couldn’t break them, Vali would be helpless.
“Even I cannot hold off a coven of Volva, Ailsa. But we will not go down without a fight. I’ll create a distraction while you grab your blade.” The blade she had dropped when she cut him from the pyre.
“When?”
The scraping of metal against cold mountain answered her inquiry. Vali’s gaze widened on hers, his hand abandoned her waist to spread a palm across the granite. “Run to the top of the steps and don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you.” His lip slipped beneath his teeth, her first warning a sharp whistle.
The shudder of the mountain side was the second.
She threw herself away from him in the direction she believed she had tossed the dagger. Rows of teeth glistened in the corner of her vision, viscous snarls behind them. Nerissa shouted something at them both, but her voice was swallowed by the cracking stone beneath their feet, a deep sound that reminded her of breaking bones. She looked back to see the jutting end of the courtyard crumbling to pieces, the wolves and witches who stood there fell into a mess of granite and ash.
“Go!” Vali shouted at her. Clutching the dagger, she took off toward the double doors sitting high over several clusters of stairs. A wolf lunged at her, but she evaded its attack, swiping the dagger across one of their eyes to force it back. Blind and bleeding, it whimpered away. Vali used the wind to push the rest of them back, pressing the wolves against the railing as he dealt with Fenrir.
A great roar shook the stone floor once again, and Ailsa turned to see Fenrir had shifted. Living up to his namesake, the Great Wolf was at least five times the size of a normal wolf. Her head was nearly the size of one of his fangs. He lunged at Vali, jowls snapping and narrowly missing the elfin as he leapt aside.
“Vali!” she gasped, but she was too far to help him even if she could. Another wolf sprung towards her face, and she barely had time to lift her dagger and sink it into its chest, falling on her back against the cold pavers. She pushed the dead weight off her chest, now looking up at the night sky. The sight above made her pause.
Eagles.
An entire fleet of them circled above, their wingspans covering the starlight and masking the night. One swooped down and clawed a wolf, tossing it over the side of the mountain where its sharp wails echoed far across the mountain range. The wolves scattered, forgetting Ailsa as more eagles plunged. Nerissa was busy saving witches falling from Vali’s rockslide, giving Ailsa the opportunity to run up the stairs as Vali commanded.