Rinda Elliott - Foresworn

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?”