Freyja’s cave is about a mile from the safe house. Not far at all, but not ideal, considering we still have to drag Agnata around. We go in silence as the clouds seem to drop closer to the earth, lightning from a coming storm snagging the water across the Øresund Strait. It’s enough that we pick up the pace without exchanging a word.
I watch Will’s boots ahead of me as we press forward, almost there, trying very hard not to think of what comesnext. Surely, more time spent running, the safe house compromised. None of us can go home, we can only go forward. To the next safe house. The next mission.
Almost by reflex, my focus strays to the waves beside us. The water sluices through the sand, making its mark with each inhale and exhale of the tide. Its energy sparks into the air we breathe, and though I haven’t eaten in hours or truly slept in days, it’s invigorating and cleansing. It puts a smile on my face because I suddenly feel I made the right choice. But then something taps my foot. I look down and stifle a scream.
A fish stares up at me, blood black as night clotting where its eyes should be.
The sight of it stops me dead in my tracks. Sofie bumps straight into my back with an audibleumphand a “Hey, what—oh my God, what is that?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Ahead, Will stops and turns as quickly as Agnata’s weight will allow. “Guys... ,” he says, and my eyes immediately jump farther out into the waves.
And there, coating the surface, are hundreds—thousands—of fish belly up, their eyes oozing rotting blood into the water.
Oh, Father, what have you done?
I glance to Will. “We need to get back right now. Can you run with her?”
He doesn’t answer, he just starts running. Sofie isscared enough that she simply does, too, though I feel the questions building in her throat.
We race down the beach and veer up the little hill where I’d first heard Agnata selling us out. Over the hill and then it’s just a few steps more and—oh.
The little bushes disguising the windows and door are gone.
There’s nothing but another sloping hill, cloaked and green.
“What?” Will pants. “I’ve been here a hundred times. It’s always right—”
“Magic,” I whisper with a smile. Clever Katrine. “I can smell it. A cloaking spell of some kind.”
“Well, how do you uncloak it?” Sofie asks, thumping her rucksack to the ground. “Katrine! Are you in there? It’s us!”
Will grabs her arm to try to silence her, nearly dropping Agnata in the process. “It could be a trap.”
“Wait, look!” I say, and they both quit fussing.
The hillside before us shimmers, and then a hole appears, door-shaped and yawning wide. Katrine’s wild hair blows into the wind, almost a vision. She looks both pleased and horrified to see us.
“Come inside, quick! Runa, there’s something you must see.”
She leads me into the room first, almost herding meinside. As my eyes adjust, my lips fall open. There, hovering above the fireplace in words as clear as any inked on paper, is a very succinct set of instructions.
Your father’s war is here.
I cannot fight by your side without the ring.
Return it to me as soon as you can.
The ring.
I look to my hand but know it’s not there.
It wasn’t there the moment I came to inside the warehouse.
As this realization washes over me, Sofie is in my ear asking all the questions she didn’t whisper-scream on the beach.
“What’s this about, Runa? What is it about that ring that’s so special, and who the hell is writing words in the air with smoke like some third-rate ghost from my fairy tales, huh?”
