The raven cawed.
“Can I stop it?” I asked. “From happening again?” I thought of Ethan and Elisa and Oliver. And Chris. “Can I keep them safe?”
The bird shuffled. I pushed myself to standing and walked over to the window, my legs unsteady with the memory of memory, the weight of my past dragging my heels. I didn’t want to reclaim anything. If I did, I’d have to admit that I was the one who killed Brad, that I’d wielded some great and terrible power against him.
And I’d have to admit to myself that I hadn’t felt bad about it. Not once. Terrified, maybe, but only of myself. I was just as cold and ruthless as the violet-eyed girl, and that’s why no one could love me. I wasn’t safe.
I opened the window and held out my hand, the raven only inches from my skin, its black beak poised over my wrist. I waited for it to strike, to lash open my flesh and take back the blood that shouldn’t still be pumping through my veins.
Instead, it looked up at me with those dead black eyes and waited for the question still lodged at the back of my throat, the one I’d been fearing since I woke up to see Jane’s body drawn in my hand.
“Are you the one doing this?” I whispered. “Am I?”
Munin’s reply was fast and sharp.
No.
Then the raven plucked the crystal from my hand and took off, disappearing into the darkness.
I watched it fly off, my blood as cold as the snow. This had nothing to do with me then—this wasn’t my past or curse catching up. This wasn’t some strange karmic retribution. But that meant it was someone else. Someone else was killing my friends. And if it wasn’t the gods I knew, I couldn’t imagine being able to stop it from happening again.
Dreams tumble
Yggdrasil’s roots stretch from floor to ceiling break past desks and chairs and there is Jonathan, drawing circles on the chalkboard and there are the owls, sitting silent in their chairs, watching.
Waiting.
“You’ve come back,” she says and I turn to see the violet-eyed girl.
She stands among shadows and ravens, her blade drips blood.
“I thought you had turned away.”
“I need to know,” I whisper.
“I need to know what is happening.”
The girl presses a hand
to a gnarled root.
Ravens twine under treeflesh.
“The end times come,” she whispers.
“Our battlewith the Aesir comes, but another . . .
another god stirs,
one who should not waken.”
“But my friends. Why are they dying”
“Because the gods require blood.
And this god starves.”
“But why them?”
She turns, and the raven on her shoulder tilts his head. Munin watches us. Waiting. His beak drips crimson.
“They were chosen,
as you were chosen.”
“Chosen for what?”
“To serve.”
Shadows stretch and through the gaps I see a battlefield, bodies prone and bleeding, ravens harvesting.
“The owls are screaming,” she says, tilting her head to the sky.
Blood drips against her porcelain skin.
“And the ravens have gone silent.”
“How do I stop it? How do I keep them safe?”
She steps closer and in her violet eyes I see the void.
“No one is safe. Not from what is yet to come.”
Her blade kisses my skin,
the tip drags against my neck.
“This is not how things were meant to be.
We must stop this new god.
Before he throws off the balance.
Before he kills again.”
“You saved me once. How do I save my friends?”
She doesn’t smile.
But I swear that Munin does.
“By giving yourself to me. Be my vessel.
Together, we will fight him.
When he is gone, our battle with the Aesir may begin.”
Roots twist tighter around us, bind my arms and legs.
“Vessel?”
Her blade presses deeper,
draws shadows from my neck.
“We gave you your life,” Munin says.
“Now, it is time to give it back.”
Class resumed as normal the next day. I nearly slept through breakfast without Elisa there to wake me up, but at least when I did drag myself from bed there weren’t any new scribbles in the notebook. My dreams were like a bad aftertaste in my mouth; I remembered only snippets of them, but I didn’t want to know the details, not really. All I knew was that the thought of them made my pulse race, made me feel like I was living on borrowed time. Like everyone was. Every time I blinked I saw that damn circle, the one surrounding Jane and Brad and most likely Mandy. Every time the darkness closed in, I saw the violet-eyed girl with her hands in Chris’s chest, offering him to the World Tree. Swearing that this was my power.