“What’s it matter?” I muttered. The room was spinning now. I tumbled down the whirlpool, a stupid grin slashed on my face. “I don’t have any honor; I’m already dead.”
“Your time has not yet come,” came a voice, deep and resonant like the movements of the shadows in the darkest depths of the ocean. It wasn’t the girl. It was the bird. “Your death will serve a greater purpose than this. When the gods battle, you will be their sword and shield. You were born for greater things.”
I laughed. This was hilarious. I was dying, and these hallucinations were every dream of grandeur I’d ever had. Too bad they were lies. The girl leaned down and placed one hand on each of my wrists, right over the cuts. Her hands weren’t cool like porcelain. They burned.
“Blood for blood,” she said, her smile widening. “An exchange. A gift.”
“Remember what we have done for you,” Munin said. I knew his name in a flash of insight. We all knew his name. We just never remembered. “When the time comes, when we come calling, remember this exchange. Remember this power.”
Her hands were fire. They burned into my skin, rode my bones and veins like an electric current, searing my heart, my lungs, my brain. It was ecstasy.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
She didn’t answer.
She clenched tighter. My wrists shattered. Vision turned white. Everything burned white and black and I was there, floating above Brad as he wandered drunkenly through the school’s football field. A light coat of snow frosted the ground, everything beautiful and pastoral and perfect. He was humming to himself. I felt inside his heart; he was ecstatic. He felt like a god.
He stopped when he saw the girl. The naked girl with skin white as snow, a raven on her shoulder.
“What’s . . . what’s a fine piece of ass like you doing out here?” he slurred, grinning. He shambled forward, already excited. She was naked and alone and he was on fire. He’d fucked one girl already. This was his night.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she sauntered toward him, and wait, hadn’t there been a bird on her shoulder earlier? He shook his head and fell to his knees. She didn’t turn away from his drunkenness. She walked right up to him and knelt down, forced him to sitting. She straddled him, and it was then he realized she wasn’t fully naked. She had gloves. Red gloves. And they were dripping.
Her lips found his in an instant and his heart swelled with heat. She smelled like cinder and dirt and she leaned into him, pressed him to the ground with the sheer weight of her lips and torso. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t think beyond the friction of their skin, the steady beat of his blood.
He didn’t see her reach above his head to trace a thick, bloody line into the snow, arching her arms out to the sides like wings, dragging my blood in a halo around them both. So much blood. How had I lost so much blood?
She bit his lower lip and tugged, causing him to gasp.
“In humility I offer this sacrifice,” she whispered heavily into his ear. He squirmed, his eyes closed. Fuck, he wanted her. He wanted her more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. And he would have her. “May his soul nourish the great Yggdrasil. Through his suffering, may the Tree grow.”
She slid her hands to his chest and arched her back, looked straight up into the sky. Straight at me.
“May his life pave the way for the Great Battle. May his sacrifice give you strength.”
Then she plunged her bloodied hands into his chest. I felt her fingers claw around his heart, stop the blood in his veins. I felt the scream die short in his lungs as his soul was sucked down, down into the roots of the Underworld. His death was swift. Painless. But his death, I knew, was just the beginning of his punishment.
She stood smoothly. No wound in his chest. Her hands still bloody.
“For you, Kaira,” she said. “This is all for you.”
Then, from the shadows, the great raven Munin flew toward her, fast as an arrow. He pierced through her chest and pain pierced through mine as both she and the bird and the football field exploded in a torrent of feathers and smoke.
I opened my eyes and was back in my dorm room. The raven still sat on the windowsill. He didn’t need to show me the rest; every day was a testament to the power Munin had wielded. I rubbed my wrists. The skin was smooth, never kissed by a blade. I’d woken the next morning in my bed—no blood in the bathroom, no cuts on my skin. A bad dream. Until Mom told me Brad had been found dead on the football field.
“Why is this happening?” I whispered to the bird. To Munin’s messenger. I pushed myself to sitting. “Why is he back?”
The bird didn’t answer, but it didn’t fly off. It cocked its head toward the pillow.
And I knew then what it wanted. I reached under and grabbed the crystal Mom had sent me. It was hot to the touch, and the crow flapped its wings the moment it saw it.
I held it out to the bird.
“Is this what you want?” I asked. “You want me to dream again.”