Her eyes held a sadness I didn’t understand at the time.
“Take Mikaela.” My mother pushed up to her elbow. “Maiken is stronger, and I have need of her help here.”
As the second-born twin, I’d always been more petite than my sister, weaker, sicker.
“Are you well, Mikaela?” Nanna asked, this time feeling my forehead.
I stifled a cough that tickled my throat. I wanted to go with Nanna to the castle, where I would be away from the cold and hunger. So, even though I felt miserable, I nodded.
Nanna shifted to Maiken. “And you, Maiken. Are you well?”
My sister tightened her arms around me and squeezed me hard. She had always been sturdy, never getting sick, never complaining, never suffering the way I did. She gave a pretend cough. “No, Nanna. You must take Mikaela.”
Nanna studied us both again, sighed, and then held out a hand to me. “Come, Mikaela.”
I rose, but before I could extricate myself from Maiken’s embrace, she pressed something into my hands. When I felt the smooth shape, I tried to give it back to her. Although blue mussel shells lined the shores of every part of Norvegia’s coast, this was a rare purple one, believed to act as a shield of protection to the one who possessed it. Maiken had discovered it last spring after the snowmelt. And she’d kept it close ever since.
I shook my head, unwilling to take the special item from her.
She closed my fingers over the shell and squeezed her hand around mine. “Keep it near. Every time you miss being home, take it out and think of me.”
Now, in the chill of the forest, I fingered the smooth shell, then pulled it out of my pocket.
The jotunn still hadn’t taken his eyes from me, was watching me with the reverence given to a queen, not a servant.
“This truly is the only thing I own that means anything to me.” I held it out, unable to pry my fingers up from the shell.
The jotunn stuck out his hand, thick with short beefy fingers.
I drew in a sharp breath, then forced my fingers to release the shell, displaying it in the palm of my hand. “It once belonged to my sister. My twin sister.”
“Where is she now?”
“Dead.”
Little had I known how much I would miss my sister when I’d walked out the door with a too-big sack filled with the few possessions I owned. Little had I known that was the last time I’d see Maiken alive. Little had I known she would die a month later from inhaling too much smoke after the thatch of our home caught on fire.
It just as easily could have been me who stayed behind and died from breathing the smoke. In fact, most of my life I’d blamed myself for my twin sister’s death, knowing she’d given me the coveted position in the castle when she should have taken it for herself.
Why had she done it? The question had haunted me for so many years along with the guilt. If only she’d gone with Nanna instead of me. But I’d been selfish, taken the easy way, and walked away willingly. At the very least I should have left Maiken the shell. I didn’t know if the promises of protection were real, but I could have insisted she keep it.
The jotunn reached out to take my most treasured possession from me, but I closed my fingers around it again. “First, before I give you this, you must free Sven from being your slave.”
“I free him.” The jotunn didn’t take his eyes from my hand.
“And set him free from the curse.” I knew so little about Sven’s curse and how it had come about. But I did know that I had to bargain for breaking the curse too, or Sven’s freedom wouldn’t do him any good, not if he bled to death.
“The curse once spoken cannot be broken.” The words tumbled from the jotunn’s mouth, likely a saying he’d heard from ages past.
So, there was no hope for Sven? No hope for the people of Romsdal? Or was this all some kind of hoax the jotunn had made up? After all, why did the jotunn have the power to utter curses on people? Who had given him such authority, and were the curses real?
“Tell him to cancel the curse by issuing a new one,” Sven whispered, a thread of hope in his voice. “Tell him to pass the bleeding curse to the firstborn sons in my direct family line.”
I didn’t think Sven had ever married or had children, so the curse would be useless. But would the jotunn realize it?
The jotunn shuffled and looked away. Was I losing his attention? How long before he lost interest in me altogether?
Sven nudged me, as though sensing the change in the jotunn’s interest as well.
“You may not be able to break the curse,” I said, “but you can pass it along. Let the curse go to the firstborn sons in Sven’s direct family line.”
The jotunn frowned and pressed a hand to his head.
“If you do, I’ll give you this.” I opened my fingers from around the shell again.
He reached down with a snarl and swiped up the tree limb he’d been wielding when he almost hit me.
“Please!” I called, suddenly growing desperate to have his strange, oddly-shaped eyes back upon me.
He glanced down at me and paused. “You’re so pretty, lady.”
“Please pass the curse away from Sven and onto his firstborn sons and grandsons. If you do, this shell will be yours to remind you of me forever.”
“Forever?”
“Yes.” I held my breath and waited. “First you must pass the curse on.”
He hesitated then spoke his words in a rush. “I pass the curse from Sven to the firstborn sons in his family.”
Sven shook his head, but as the jotunn shifted to look at him, he dropped his sights. His shoulders slumped, and he offered no further protest.
My muscles tensed with the need to hang on to my shell and flee. I didn’t want to give it to this madman. But I kept my outstretched hand steady.
As though sensing my turmoil, he placed his palm up, clearly expecting me to deliver it to him willingly.
I could do nothing less. I gingerly set the delicate shell onto his crushing hand. Perhaps in sacrificing it, I could finally find redemption for my selfishness those many years ago when I’d refused to sacrifice my comfort for my sister’s.
He lifted it between two large fingers, examining it. “It’s pretty, just like you.”
“I pray it brings peace to your troubled soul.”
He nodded, watching my face, testing my sincerity.
“The exchange has been made.” Sven tugged my arm. “But he is not to be trusted, and we must go.”
Before I could say farewell or offer a word of thanks, Sven twisted me around and jerked me forward.
“Wait!” the jotunn called. “Where are you going?”
I glanced behind me, but Sven was pulling me along hastily, and I could no longer see the jotunn.
“Run!” Sven’s harsh whisper resounded in the air. “Run as fast as you possibly can.”
In the next instant, I heard the jotunn’s angry shouts filling the air and the thwacking of the tree limb against the brush and knew he was chasing us again.
Chapter
23
Gunnar
My injury pained me with each jarring movement. My arms ached from pulling Frans’s heavy weight. And my lungs burned with the need for air.
But I forced myself to keep up the punishing pace—even though everything within me demanded that I go back for Mikaela. I wanted to trust Sven to protect her and get her away from the jotunn. But the truth was that I’d never truly trust anyone with her but myself.