Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sometimes Eivor wondered if the universe hated her.

One of her knees was shaking. Her throat was dry, and her head felt stuffy. To make things worse, the goddamn neon light above their head kept buzzing and flickering like they were in a shitty horror movie. Eivor was tempted to rip it off the ceiling before she went utterly barmy.

Next to her, Birna was saying something to Soma, laughing all the while. They’d been stuffed in this room backstage while they waited for the show to start; Eivor’s heart did another somersault at the reminder that, oh fuck, they were finally going to play before an audience that wasn’t furred and four-legged and far too judgmental of their musical talents (Nali was a very wonderful cat, yes, but as a music critic he still had a long way to go). Birna was giddy as all hell to no one’s surprise, while Soma was cool and collected, leaning beside the door all badass like, because of course she would. Valdis, their new bassist, was silent, as always. Eivor had probably exchanged all of five words with her since she had jumped aboard this ship full of crazies they were now all happily sharing. Valdis was the quiet sort—and frankly Eivor respected that. Her dumbass brothers were windbags; maybe Valdis tended to keep her mouth shut because they had never let her have a word in edgewise growing up.

In other circumstances Eivor would have shared Soma’s nonchalant assurance and/or Birna’s gleeful anticipation. In normal circumstances she would have been over the moon; they had all worked so goddamned hard to get this jig, practising for months on end (Eivor’s fingers sure felt like they were going to fall off, for one) and greasing all the right hands to have a place at this joint (it stank of piss and cheap beer, but hey! at least she and the girls would have free drinks after the show!)

And yet Eivor’s current predicament was all of her own making. Indeed, she had no one else to blame for the nausea sloshing in the pit of her stomach, for the jitters that left her hands shaking like a leaf in a storm.

After all, she’d been the one to have the fan-fuck-tastic idea of inviting Randvi to the show.

They had stayed in contact over the last few months despite the unusual circumstances. “You’re not responsible for what Sigurd did,” Randvi had texted her earlier this week. “I don’t want this to ruin our friendship. I care a lot about you, Eivor.”

I care a lot about you, Eivor, and oh hell, somehow those few words made Eivor want to either do a victory lap around the place or burrow ten feet in the ground; she wasn’t quite decided yet. But then, there’d been that other thing, that whole I-don’t-want-to-ruin-our-friendship thing. That made her want to scream too, but in a whole ‘nother way. It was like that stupid meme. Inside of Eivor there were two wolves, and both wanted to scream. Or something. She needed a few more drinks in her system to get in the right mindset and unleash her inner poet upon unsuspecting victims. Maybe later that night, once Eivor would find herself seeking the sweet oblivion of alcohol after what was sure to be yet another fuckup.

“You okay, there, Sunbeam?” Birna asked, smirking at her. “’s not like you to be so quiet, usually.”

“It’s just nerves,” Eivor mumbled, and now Birna was raising a brow, clearly not buying that bullshit excuse. “Never played before so many people before.”

Birna snorted. “Hell, Eivor, half of those people are your own damn mates. No one came to see me, that’s for sure.”

“Valdis’s brothers came to see her,” Eivor said, jabbing a thumb at their bassist. The latter simply shrugged. “Not me.”

“But one of them’s your ex, isn’t he?”

More like an old pity fuck of mine, Eivor thought with a grimace. “Yeah, so?”

“So, Valdis’s brother, and that dumbass Vili, plus—” Birna suddenly frowned. “Wait. Eivor, you stupid, stupid slut, you didn’t…”

“I didn’t what?” Eivor said, tiredly.

“You invited your exes to the show—but just the guys? What the everlasting fuck?”

“I still hang out with them. What gives? You don’t have a dog in this fight.”

“Sunbeam, if you’d asked your female exes to come, you coulda introduced me. I coulda been the best rebound ever!”

“You want me to help you hook up with my exes?”

“Ladies, ladies,” Soma said, holding out her hands. “Seriously? We’re about to have our debut show, and that’s what you want to talk about?”

“C’mon…” Birna elbowed Valdis in the ribs, and the latter rolled her eyes. “Aw, no one’s with me on this? Some wingwomen you are…”

“Alright,” Eivor growled. “I’ll set you on a date with Ciara or Petra.”

There would have been Estrid too, but as far as Eivor knew, the honey-tongued Frenchwoman was still married to that wanker Birstan, the owner of the hardware store where Eivor had been working a few months back. “Oh, we’re in an open marriage,” Estrid had told Eivor with a laugh, “he’s got someone on the side too, there’s no reason to worry, cher amour,” which was, well, good for them, but in the end, once she’d left the bed and shimmied back into her jeans (Estrid’s favourite pair, of course, since they fit Eivor’s arse all snug like) Eivor had decided she was done messing around with married people.

(The fact that Sigurd had been discovered as having cheated on his fiancée around the same time surely had no role to play in that realization, no siree…)

“Ciara?” Birna bounced her eyebrows. “That hot Irish redhead with the cute lil’ tush?”

Eivor sighed. Oh, yes, she sighed, remembering said lil’ tush all too well. Nice and curvy, just as she liked ‘em. “Yeah. She’s still studying in London. I’m sure she’d be up to go for a drink or two.”

“Man, I take back what I’ve said,” Birna said, grabbing Eivor into a tight one-armed hug. “You’re the best mate a girl could ask for, Eivor Wolf-Kissed. I’d kiss you, but of course, that’d be gay, innit?”

“Sure would,” Eivor said, smirking and tussling with the madwoman as if they were a pair of wits-addled jocks.

“I saw Randvi too,” Soma said, looking at Eivor. Her brows were slightly furrowed. Eivor swore under her breath, losing her gormless grin. She’d always been a perceptive sort, Soma. Sometimes you were glad she was on your side, but on other occasions, she sure was good at making you feel like a goddamn ninny.

“Randvi?” said Birna. Fuck, Eivor thought, all too aware of what was to come. “Your brother’s ex?”

“Randvi-my-friend,” Eivor said, with some gruffness. “She’s her own person, y’know.”

Soma crossed her arms. Her dark eyes remained fixed on Eivor, who looked down, unable to stand the heat of that stare. Soma was a military brat, born and bred on a naval base, and it showed.

“Eivor Varinsdottir,” Soma said, “you’re an idiot and a masochist.”

“Wha?” said Birna. “How comes?”

“I’m over her,” Eivor muttered, prompting Birna to gasp dramatically like some dewy-eyed lady from a period drama. “She’s my brother’s ex. Didn’t want to make things awkward and all. But we stayed friends. We did,” she added with much emphasis as Soma raised a brow. “She’s here because we’re friends. Not because…”

“You clearly still want to bag her, eh?” Birna said. “Aw, man, Eivor you should have told us! We’d be your wingwomen! I’d be your wingwoman!”

Soma paced, pinching the brow of her nose. “Oh, to hell with this,” she finally said, grabbing Eivor’s hand and dragging her out of the room. Birna whooped, jumping from the couch and following after them, tailed by an ever-silent Valdis.

“The show’s about to start,” Eivor protested, to which Soma answered, “This won’t take long. I need you to have a clear heart and a clearer head tonight, Eivor. Talk that shit out with Randvi or so help me, I won’t let you set a foot on that stage.”

Eivor stifled a curse as Soma dragged her into the bar, which was filled to bursting with people—punks and metalheads of all stripes and sorts—waiting for the show to start. She grit her teeth at the grating sound of drunken laughter, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the dim lighting. It was even hotter here than backstage, the air sticky and stinking of sweat. Eivor’s head swam a little, but she forced herself to focus, hanging on to her (admittedly rather sizable) pride. It would do her no good to swoon like a delicate flower in front of this crowd, oh no siree.

“Where is she?” Birna asked. “That ‘friend’ of yours?”

Eivor did not even have to look. Randvi was propped against the counter, a beer in hand. That bright red hair was a dead giveaway, though in truth Eivor felt drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

(Fuck. Since when had she gotten so corny? If they were still on speaking terms, Sigurd would have laughed his arse off, the wanker.)

Randvi was wearing a bomber jacket. And jeans. Tight jeans. Her tush was nice and curvy, just as Eivor liked ‘em. Damn. She tried not to stare. If she had been religious, Eivor would have said that the Lord was testing her—and of course, just like most classes she’d taken in her life, Eivor was failing. Miserably.

(Well, at least that was not unusual. The only way to go after you’d been stuck eating dirt for a while was up, right?)

Someone next to Randvi waved to motion them forward. A tall, broad-shouldered man with black hair shaved on the sides. Vili. “Eivor!” he shouted—because of course the pisspot had no concept of an indoor voice. “There you are, chickenshit!”

“Arsestick,” Eivor drawled in greetings, prompting a chuckle from Randvi. Goddamn, but wasn’t that the most precious sound she’d ever—

“Good evening, Eivor,” said their third companion. Valka. Eivor’s best friend since childhood had one eyebrow quirked in puzzled amusement; she was probably the only goth in attendance, which was a damn shame—goths were the coolest people in the world, according to Eivor’s very unbiaised opinion. Valka was stirring a cute-looking lil’ cocktail that smelled strongly of pomegranate. “I thought you said we wouldn’t see you until after the show.”

Soma glanced at Eivor, who mumbled, “Just wanted to, er, give a quick holler while my vocal chords are still in workable order, yeah? Not sure I’ll be much of a chatty sort after all that screaming, I mean.”

“It’s good to see you again,” Randvi said, warmly. “I missed you, Eivor.”

Eivor briefly wondered how Randvi would react if she were to throw Birna over the counter. The latter was cackling, like they were in one of those bullshit anime romcoms Eivor’s cousin Hunwald always harped about and not, like, the real goddamn world or anything. Valka sighed, reaching for her drink. No doubt she would question Eivor sharply over a cup of herbal tea later on.

“Yeah,” she croaked. “I missed you too. It’s, er, nice of you to come.”

Birna’s smirk was something to behold. “Nice of her to—oof!” Valdis had just driven the point of her elbow into Birna’s side. “I mean,” the latter said, “it’s nice to meet you. You’re Randvi, right? The name’s Birna.”

“Eivor often talked about you,” Randvi said. She turned to Soma and Valdis, adding, “And the two of you must be Soma and—”

“Hey, Eivor!” another voice hollered. From a nearby table, a man, his red-blond hair gathered in a messy bun, was raising his mug in a salute. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Erke!” Eivor said, reaching to clap his hand. Her grin widened at the sight of the man who stood behind him. “And what’s that? You’ve dragged your grumpy Englishman along for the ride?”

“Hey, Eivor,” said Stowe, shaking her hand as well. “Why so surprised to see me?”

“Always took you for the strait-laced type,” Eivor said. “Gotta give the example to those young ‘uns you watch over, yeah?”

“’Straight’, she says,” Erke chuckled, prompting his partner to roll his eyes in a good-natured manner. “You should have seen us in our wild youths, Wolf-Kissed.” He bounced his eyebrows at Stowe, who pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “Me and Stowe, we met during a bar fight, after all.”

“You did?” Randvi said, directing her smile toward Stowe and—alright, alright, Eivor wasn’t the jealous sort (and to be fair, she’d drunkenly flirted with Stowe the first time they’d met before realizing, oh hell, that was Pride, wasn’t it, and wasn’t he accompanied by an equally handsome fellow who seemed just about willing to either bust her kneecaps or burst out laughing? oh yes he was, oh my, but this is awkward), but at that sight, the blood boiled in her veins, and by God, but she would have been ready to throw hands right there and then, never mind the fact that Stowe was a boxer with many wins under his belt, and that Eivor happened to need her knuckles tonight. “Never would have believed it, from the respectable looks of you.”

“Respectable?” Erke mouthed, while Stowe shook his head, a slight smirk showing on his lips. “Maybe,” he said, “but I did spend my youth getting into scraps with people twice my size.”

Soma mirrored his smile. “And now you work to keep kids from making the mistakes you did.”

Her words brought unpleasant memories at the forefront of Eivor’s mind. Both Stowe and Erke were social workers specializing in cases involved troubled youths. Hell, but she would have given about anything to have had someone like them in her corner back in those dark, dreary days where she’d been nothing but a little shit shouting into the void hoping that one day she would eventually be heard. She’d had Sigurd instead, which was—Eivor scowled, unwilling to go there. No, she didn’t want to think of Sigurd, not now, not tonight.

“You call them mistakes,” Vili said with a laugh, “I call them ways to build one’s character!”

“You would,” Valka said, rolling those pretty blue eyes of hers.

Before she could say anything else, another voice called Eivor’s name—and something barreled toward her, crushing her midsection into a vice-like embrace. She wheezed, looking down and finding a pair of brown eyes—guileless and dumb as a puppy’s—staring back at her.

“Ah, Eivor!” Hunwald exclaimed. “My dear, dear cousin, so good to see you!”

“Hunwald,” Eivor croaked, “didn’t think you would, er, that you’d come…”

In truth, she hadn’t wanted him to come. This place wasn’t exactly somewhere you hosted fancy shindigs. Already dozens of punks—scruffy, scrappy punks—were eyeing him as if they could smell the stench of Daddy’s money clinging to him. Hunwald was a dandelion, bright and loud, among dry grass—and quite a lot of people would have loved nothing more but to pluck him from the ground. Eivor usually beat the crap outta these people.

To make matters worse were the two slight figures standing nervously behind him. “Good evening, Eivor,” said Oswald, Hunwald’s step-brother. Unlike the former, he seemed fully aware of just where he’d ended up. After all, as the eldest of three brothers, it was his job to be an overprotective, overly anxious mess. “Er, nice place this is. Not what I would have expected, but…”

Eivor grinned weakly at him. “At least it was cheap?”

“Right,” Oswald said, deadpan. Behind him, a wild-haired drunk began to vomit copiously over his friend’s Converses, to the great amusement of all their mates. Oswald sighed, massaging his temple. This was going to be a long night, Eivor could read in those pretty peepers of his. She squeezed his shoulder in silent support.

“Hi, Eivor,” said the last of the three brothers. Ceolbert had grown a few inches over the last few months—and were her eyes deceiving her or had he bulked up slightly as well? “Long time no see.”

“Lookit you, cuz!” Eivor said, grinning and grabbing him by the shoulders. “Being on the school football team sure is treating you well, yeah?”

“It does,” said Ceolbert, smiling slightly as well. “You’re looking good too. Aren’t you nervous?”

‘Nervous’ was putting it mildly; Eivor felt as if she was on the verge of going off the deep end, and she either wanted to scream at the top of her lungs or pummel something into oblivion—which was why she’d joined a punk band, in hindsight. Instead, she forced a (twitchy) smile and said, “’Course not. Why would I be nervous?”

“I remember the lot of you,” Randvi said, smiling. “You’re Eivor’s cousins, right?”

“Yeah,” Eivor said, nodding. They weren’t really kin, technically; Oswald’s mother was Styrbjorn’s sister, and she’d married Hunwald’s dad after divorcing her wanker of a first husband (dude apparently had been landed gentry, with a bloody title and everything), a union which had then produced the human-shaped ray of sunshine that was Ceolbert.

Oswald, of course, held out his hand like he was still in some posh private school, and not some seedy spot where people got shivved on the regular. “Nice to meet you. My name's Oswald.”

Soma shook his hand. Because unlike Eivor (and especially Birna), she was actually a sane person who’d been blessed with social skills. “Soma. Glad you could come.”

“And I’m Hunwald, and this is Ceolbert!” Hunwald said, grabbing their youngest brother and pointing at him with a madcap grin.

“Ceolbert,” Birna said with a snort. “And Hunwald.”

“Dad teaches the Old English classes at uni,” Ceolbert mumbled.

“And Mum is a specialist of Anglo-Saxon studies!” Hunwald added. “That’s how they met. Romantic, isn’t it?”

“That’s all nice and good, but, er…” Birna jabbed her thumb toward Ceolbert. “Isn’t he a bit too young to be here?”

In response, Hunwald exclaimed, “It’s his eighteen birthday!” Oh hell, Eivor had totally forgotten; that explained why they had all come. Hunwald pinched Ceolbert’s (admittedly adorably) round cheeks, ignoring the latter’s feeble protests. “Our boy’s old enough for a first night of nightly revelry!”

“No, he’s not,” Oswald growled, in a decidedly un-Oswald-like manner. Hunwald just continued to grin stupidly, because of fucking course what younger sibling had ever been cowed by a threat made by their elder? It was simply the way of the world, like the tides being commanded by the moon. Or something like that. Eivor’s metaphor-making (metaphor-mangling?) skills only kicked into high gear after a few beers, after all.

As entertaining it would be to watch choirboy Oswald (try to) tan that dumbass Hunwald’s hide, it seemed Soma had other ideas. “Alright, that’s enough. We need to get going, ladies.”

Eivor’s friends swarmed her, cheering and clapping; this time, even Valdis’s dumbass brothers joined in the fray (she hadn’t even noticed they had gotten here—which one was the twin she’d bagged, again? Eivor didn’t rightly remember). She looked over their shoulders, meeting Randvi’s gaze. It was corny as hell, but it felt as if they were worlds apart. She only distantly heard Soma saying, “Eivor, c’mon. It’s time to go.”

“Sure,” Eivor said, absently. Randvi was waving and mouthing, “See you later,” and again Eivor’s brain went haywire: was she being polite—because of course she would, Randvi was a classy lady, she’d always been, that was why Sigurd was currently still in possession of that wandering dick of his—or was it something else? Was Eivor clearly reading too much into the way that lovely, lovely mouth had curled up to form that beautiful smile?

Eivor’s legs walked of their own accord, taking her away from Randvi and that pretty, pretty smile. She went through the motions almost on autopilot; the girls were talking together, but all she could hear was the blood thumping in her ears. The moment Eivor set foot on stage, guitar slung over her shoulder, there was a deafening cheer from the crowd, loud enough to rattle her bones. Eivor blinked a little, shielding her eyes from the blinding light of the projectors with one trembling hand. God, but she was drenched in sweat. Good thing Eivor hadn’t planned on chatting up Randvi tonight, because she must have reeked to high hell. Soma approached the mic, wincing at the feedback. Birna huffed, passing a hand through her hair, which was so wet that it clung to her brow. Valdis remained silent as ever. Eivor wondered if there existed something in the world that could shake that cool countenance of hers; probably not, she surmised.

Soma breathed in, deeply, before moving to the mic to say, “Good evening, ladies, gents and other folks of London’s underground, we’re the Raven Feeders—and we’re here to fuck up your world for one night!” It had been Soma who had come up with the idea of naming their band after a kenning from an old saga; since she had been a child, she’d loved the stories from their distant past, those tales of skalds and shieldmaidens, of drengir and draugir, of wyrm and wyrd—and she’d hated that right-wing wankers and goddamn Nazis had claimed that ancient, proud culture for their own shitty ends. After a few duds (‘Shield Gnawers,’ ‘Birds of the Battlefield,’ and ‘Swans of Blood’ were the ones that Eivor remembered best), they had settled on ‘Raven Feeders’. The first time Eivor had told Valka about it, her best friend had laughed and laughed. It had stung, really. The name had been Eivor’s suggestion, after all.

There were a few drunken cheers from the crowd. Of course that mad lad Vili shouted, “Fuck it up, ladies!” which wrung out a rare smile from Soma’s lips. Then, Birna struck her sticks together, screaming, “One, two, three, four!” and that was it. There was no going back; they’d all jumped into that chasm, feet first. Eivor’s fingers danced over those strings, never faltering, never stumbling. Birna’s drums boomed in a maddening rhythm, echoing through Eivor’s ribcage like a second heartbeat. Valdis’s bass line held the entire thing together, a steady presence to anchor all that rage. And Soma—

Soma was fucking everything.

Because yes, Birna was passionate, but she was only a passable drummer. Valdis was talented, but she had no stage presence whatsoever. Eivor had only been brought into the band, “because she looked like a punk-rock Valkyrie,” according to Birna. But Soma—Soma was the real deal. Soma had the voice. The writing chops. The passion, the engagement, the rage. Soma grabbed that mic and screamed in it like she had something real to say. If anything, she was the Valkyrie; Eivor would have followed her anywhere if she willed it so, and she knew Birna and Valdis felt the same way.

Eivor grinned, feeling a pleasant surge of warmth in her ears, a roar that made the blood sing in her veins. She was alive, fucking alive. A moshpit had formed in front of the scene; Vili dragged Erke along, the two men losing themselves in the cleansing revels of violence. Hunwald made as if to follow them—but Oswald grabbed his arm, bodily dragging him backward. Valka sipped her drink calmly, as if she was simply lounging at home with a cuppa tea and a cat in her lap. She was smiling at Eivor as if to say, “Why yes, I am the one who made all of this happen, that is the fruit of all my labour you now see on stage.” And she was right, because Valka was the one who had kept Eivor sane through all those shitty years in their shared youth, she had been the lighthouse leading her home throughout all those dark, stormy nights. Eivor locked eyes with her, slightly nodding. In response, Valka raised her drink in a cheeky salute.

The crowd roared as one as that first song came to an end. It was exhilarating. Eivor was panting as if she’d just run a marathon—and yet she felt filled with a manic sort of energy, something that made her want to roar right back at the mad lads and lasses massing before her, whooping and asking for more. And Soma rightly answered, pouring her heart right into that mic. There was anger, yes, there was pain—but if they had to go, then they’d go down fighting, if they had to burn, then they’d make the world burn alongside them. For one night there was a little sliver of hope back in their lives, one as sharp and angry as steel, but a sliver of hope nonetheless.

They had just finished their rendition of The Clash’s London Calling (“Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river!” Soma had screamed, and the crowd, whisked into a frothing frenzy, had screamed right back, Joe Strummer’s refrain as familiar to their weary ears as the sound of their own names) when Valdis let out a strangled sound, one hand dropping to her side while the other came to her mouth. Before Soma could say anything, the bassist hurried backstage. Soma exchanged a glance with Eivor, going to the mic to utter, “One moment, please,” and they all followed Valdis behind the curtains.

“What was that?” Birna hissed; Valdis was standing in a shadowed corner, hugging herself as if to keep her warmth from escaping her body. “Val, you can’t just bail on us in the middle of the show!”

“I… I can’t,” said Valdis. “Back there, I saw…”

Soma put a hand over her shoulder. “What is it? You know you can tell us, Valdis.”

“My ex,” Valdis mumbled, and at this, Birna cursed. “He’s supposed to be in København, I left the city, moved to fucking England to be rid of him, and yet…” Her voice died down to a mutter. Soma and Birna shared a wary look.

“We’ll have the bouncer kick him out,” Soma said. Good old reliable Soma. If someone could keep a cool head through this mess, it was her. “We can call off the rest of the show if that’s what you'd rather—”

“No,” Valdis said, eyes flashing. “Bastard ruined enough of my life already, I won’t let him have this too.”

“Nice,” said Birna. “Using spite as a motivator. I dig it. Let’s make it a show they won’t soon forget, eh?”

“Good,” Soma said, decisively. “Get back there, I’ll see it done.”

A sea of confused—and angry—faces welcomed them back on stage, with a few entitled arseholes even making rude gestures. Something prickled at the back of Eivor’s neck. She wanted to shout at them, so fucking what? Out of the corner of her eye, she could still catch a glimpse of Valdis; even now, their bassist remained unusually subdued, and that pissed the right hell out of her. Birna said, rather softly, “Where is he? That piece of shit stalker of yours?”

“Back there,” Valdis muttered as she pointed a spot toward the end of the bar. “The bastard with the black ponytail. That’s him. That’s Rued.”

The man was tall, with a sneer that seemed perpetually etched on his hateful features. He was accompanied by a few other goons who were all smirking like a pack of total tossers. Good, Eivor thought with a snarl. It’d have been too easy otherwise, and that wouldn’t have made it any fun, would it?

Then she caught sight of the weaselly-looking man standing next to Valdis’ wanker of an ex.

“What,” Eivor rasped, “the fuck…”

“What is it?” Birna asked.

Gorm was there. Gorm Fucking Kjotvesson. All of a sudden, Eivor was taken back—far back when she had been young and stupid and angry, angry at everything and everyone, angry at the world. Back then, it had seemed a good idea to run with Gorm and his gang, it'd seemed a swell strategy to make some quick and easy cash by selling low quality grass to the stupidly rich kids attending that stupidly rich school where Styrbjorn had forced her to go, but then—then she’d caught the bloody bastard and his mates messing with some poor girl, and she’d—well, Eivor had been young and stupid and angry, angry enough to go against a group of boys taller and stronger than her, but not stupid enough to keep her blackened and bruised arse from going to Styrbjorn to tell him what had truly happened. Gorm and his gobshite goons had been sent to juvie—where they had rotten for a good few years, Eivor hoped.

What were the fucking chances that he would team up with Valdis’s arsehole ex, of all people, to crash their debut performance?

Nah, the universe hated Eivor’s guts: there was no other explanation.

Valdis made another pained sound. Birna stroked her back, saying, “Chill, girl, chill… we’ll kick his arse if he gets within breathing distance of you, don’t you worry.”

“He’s not the only one,” Eivor growled. “Gorm’s here. Fucking Gorm, of all people.”

“An old mate coming to call on you?”

“A thorn in my arse, more like.”

Birna bared her teeth in a grimace. “Oi, what is this, Arseholes Anonymous? They all gave themselves the word or summat? Shittiest team-up ever…”

At that moment, Gorm turned his head, meeting Eivor’s gaze from across the distance. He smirked—the tosser actually smirked. And then the arsehole next to him shouted, “You all fuckin’ suck!” prompting Gorm to laugh and laugh.

For some reason that got Eivor going, and she lunged forward to roar in Soma’s mic, “What the fuck did you just say?” She didn’t wait for the laughter that was sure to follow; tossing her guitar aside, she leaped from the stage, making for Gorm and his lackeys.

“Fight!” screamed some punk she passed by, punching in the air, studded bracelets jangling on his bony wrist. “Fight!”

He wasn’t the only one. “FIGHT!” cried the crowd, jubilant at the promise of blood. “Kick his teeth in!” shouted a—rather cute, Eivor noted, turning to look at her for a brief moment—girl with green hair and very short shorts.

That was a bad idea; the moment she had her eyes on the green-haired girl was a moment where she wasn’t looking at the enemy. Almost in slow-mo Eivor felt the imprint of someone's knuckles upon her jaw; in the distance she heard someone cry out her name. Eivor fell to the ground, her face exploding with pain. People laughed and jeered around her, the sounds distorted by the ringing in her ears. “C’mon, get up!” someone was saying. Eivor’s head was pounding. Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself off the floor. Through blurry eyes she saw a figure surging toward the bastard who had downed her. And then another, and then a third. Soon, the air was filled with pained shouts and angry bellows—and the blunt, oh-so-familiar noise of fists against flesh. A bar brawl on her first show. If he were here, Sigurd would have clapped her on the back and said, there’s my lil’ sister.

Well, Soma had said they would fuck up their world for one night. And Eivor—and the rest of her mates—were intent on keeping that promise, apparently.

Fight, Eivor, fight! That was Sigurd’s voice in her head. He’d taught her how to throw a punch—how to keep a low centre of gravity when moving around, how to duck and evade any incoming blow going her way. But Eivor hadn’t kept up with her training those past few years. She tried to think through the fog of pain: when was the last time she had been in a fight? One year ago, two years ago?

The last time—she groaned, spitting a glob of blood by the side—yes, the last time she had gotten in a fight, it had nearly ended in a (admittedly well-deserved) murder. Back when she’d been working at that piece of shit Halfdan’s gym, Ceolbert had sometimes come to hang out; lad had just joined his school’s football team, and he’d become fairly serious about staying in shape. Then Eivor had noticed just how often her boss’ creepy brother came round sniffing whenever the kid showed up for a quick workout. When Eivor had asked Ivarr, hands clenched into tight fists at her sides, why a grown-ass man felt the need to hang around a sixteen-year-old boy so much, he had only smirked and said, “Well, I go wherever I please, and this fine establishment belongs to my brother, doesn’t it? Besides, the lad’s glad for the extra coaching. Isn’t that right, boy?”

He’d then flung his arm around Ceolbert’s shoulders, and the latter had winced. At that, Eivor had seen red, and—well, back when she’d been a kid, her social worker had always said she was bad at keeping her temper in check, hadn’t she? Sometimes about not processing her trauma in the right way or whatever the fuck that meant. Anyway, not long after, Ivarr Ragnarsson’s face had become a bloody paste under her fists. Fucking lunatic had been laughing when his brothers had dragged him away from Eivor, who had to be held back by Vili and both Eiriksson twins. Halfdan had decided not to press charges, telling Eivor and her family that he would prefer if the matter remained forgotten, swept under the proverbial rug so to speak, but Ceolbert’s dear mum—ever sweet Edith, his female doppelganger in looks and temperament—had chosen this very moment to show that she had a vindictive streak the size of a continent. In no small part thanks to her stubbornness Eivor had gotten scot-free, and that bastard Ivarr had been slapped with a restraining order (and the tacit threat of being hit by something else if he ever tried anything funny in the future).

Eivor pounded her fist into her other hand, cracking her neck. Ivarr had deserved his pummelling; she’d gladly unleash hell on these arseholes as well.

With a roar, she lunged forward, one fist colliding with—well, some random pisspot who had been unfortunate enough to be in the way. She was only vaguely aware that Vili was beside her as well, shouting and pummelling the guy who had first sent her to the floor. Everyone was here: Stowe and Erke, Broder and Brothir, even Randvi—a whole pack of Eivor’s mates had jumped into the fray, hungry like wolves out for blood. Hell, she thought with a reddened grin, but this was as exhilarating as being on stage.

“Aw, hell no!” screamed a familiar voice, and without looking Eivor knew Birna had leaped from the stage to lend her fists to the cause. Valdis followed after her, and then it was Soma, climbing over a table and shouting and pointing like a battlefield general directing her troops.

Because by that point the whole bar had become a combat zone of sorts. Stowe and Erke stood back to back, fists raised in a boxer’s stance, while Randvi was already grappling with one of Gorm’s goons. Eivor’s heart lodged in her throat at the sight—but there was no time. Gorm had just met her gaze across the distance, bloodshot eyes promising violence. Eivor growled, ready to give him as good as she got.

“All of you, stop—” Oswald called out, trying to be heard above the clamour, but of course no one listened to him. He froze on the spot as some fuckfaced friend of Gorm’s came crashing on the table in front of him; Eivor gave Birna two thumbs’ up, and the latter answered with a overzealous salute.

Ceolbert, for some unfathomable reason, was holding a pool cue with shaky hands. Two guys, built like goddamn panzers, were marching toward him, and Ceolbert hastily backed away, tripping on a fallen bottle. Eivor watched in horror, crying out his name. He was too far away, she would not reach him in time. She’d always beaten the bullies off his back and now—he’d come to see some stupid band playing a kind of music he didn’t even like just because he wanted to support his beloved big cousin, just because he missed her—and that was how Eivor was going to repay him? By letting some sour-breathed tosspot kick the crap out of him? On his birthday, no less?

And then Randvi jumped in front of Ceolbert, swinging a folded chair. With a satisfying ‘twang!’ the piece of metal hit one of the bastards right in his ugly mug. Eivor stood gaping like a total fuckwit, thinking, oh God, that woman, that woman! Randvi roared, “Get away from him, you fucking creep,” and Eivor wheezed, feeling as if she was about to swoon like some lady from a cheesy Victorian novel. Then, Randvi was holding out her hand to help Ceolbert to his feet and—fuck, but didn’t she look like an angel whenever she smiled like that? An angel wielding a steel chair like she was in a wrestling match.

God-damn, but Eivor was in love.

The two stood back to back—Randvi with her chair, Ceolbert with his pool cue—and Eivor could have wiped a tear off her eye right here and there.

That only left Eivor squaring off with that weasel Gorm.

And from the expression on that ugly mug of his he wasn’t exactly forward to the beating that was sure to follow.

“Already regretting your life choices, are you?” she said, with a cocky grin.

“You ruined my life, you fucking bitch!” he screamed in response, and Eivor rolled her eyes. He had not grown more eloquent over the years, it seemed. Hell, but how she hated tossers like him, stupid manbabies who couldn’t handle the consequences of their own actions like goddamned adults.

“As if you already had a life to ruin,” Eivor shot back, and he surged forward like a bull charging a red flag, with no subtlety, no finesse, at all. Eivor stepped sideways, just a wee bit, using his own momentum to fling him over a table. With a loud snap, the wooden splintered under his weight, and Gorm crashed on the ground in a fracas which would have made Sigurd glow with pride. A frail wheeze escaped his mouth as Eivor towered above him, rage radiating from her body in cold waves.

“Nothing more to say, eh?” Eivor said, putting one foot over his throat. He gurgled in response. “Good. Maybe you ought to keep that mouth of yours shut for a while.”

He didn’t say anything; perhaps the lesson was sticking, Eivor thought spitefully. She sucked in a breath, casting a glance around. The clamour had died down; the punks had stopped screaming for blood. She met Erke’s gaze, then Vili’s, eventually returning their manic grins. Her friends stood victorious, their enemies groaning and wheezing under their (sometimes not so proverbial) boots. Eivor wanted to laugh and laugh until her ribs were hurting.

Then someone—Valka—came running, crying out, “Eivor, Eivor, you have to come!”

“Wha?” she said, abruptly brought down from her high. “Wh-What’s going on?”

“It’s your cousin! Come on, Eivor!”

Too dazed to answer, Eivor let herself be guided by the hand, Birna and Soma following after her. A few people had gathered in a circle around two figures, one with his head lying in the other’s lap. Eivor felt her blood icing in her veins.

“Why are you all looking at me like that…?” Oswald mumbled as Valdis pressed a damp cloth to his head. "Did something happen…?"

“What's wrong with him?” Eivor said hoarsely, crouching to lay a hand over his shoulder.

“Rued clocked him,” Valdis murmured, brushing a few blond curls from his brow. “And he hit his head on a table as he fell.”

“Shiiit,” said Birna. “This wee fella against that psycho over there? Fucking hell, man…”

Something soft showed in Valdis’s green eyes for a brief moment. “He did land a hit on Rued before going down, however…”

“That was brave of you,” said Soma all the while Birna muttered, “That was stupid more like.”

“He was going to hit you first,” Oswald uttered. “And from behind, too. I hadta stop him.”

Eivor winced; ace student Oswald was losing his English, which meant that the situation was more critical than she would have first believed. “You need to go to the hospital, Oswald,” she told him.

“I called an ambulance,” Valka added. Eivor smiled gratefully at her, glad for that blessed moment she’d decided to go and buy weed at her place. She had gained a true friend that day (and gotten some quality grass in the process, which was a plus). “They’ll be here soon.”

“I’m fine,” said Oswald. Considering that one of his pupils was blown wide enough that Eivor could barely see the blue of his iris, that was one fat, stupid lie. His gaze edged downward, and he suddenly blurted out, addressing Valdis, “I like your boots. Vintage, aren’t they?”

How the hell does he know what vintage Doc Martens look like? “Fuck,” Eivor mumbled, exchanging a worried gaze with Randvi, “it’s worse than I thought.”

“You’re not fine,” Valdis said. “You have to go to the hospital.”

“But I’m fine—”

“Hospital,” Valdis repeated through grit teeth, and thankfully Oswald had enough sense to keep his mouth shut this time. “And I’ll go with you.”

She’d thrown a significant glance toward her ex, who was still tossing on the floor and cussing up a storm, arms pinned behind his back by Brothir while Broder pressed a boot to his neck. Eivor nodded, standing up and cracking her knuckles. “Yeah, you go with Oswald,” she said. “We’ll take care things on our end.”

Valdis managed a slight, shaky smile, saying, “Thank you.” Damn, but how Eivor hated seeing her acting that way. She vowed to take a swing at her ex for good measure.

At that moment, someone crawled from under a table. “Is it,” Hunwald said, eyes wide, “is it over?”

Ceolbert went to help him to his feet. “Everything’s fine. We’re all safe now.”

Hunwald stared at him with his mouth open. Like a goldfish that had just suffered a seizure. “Wait, you were fighting, Bertie. You… you fought to defend me!”

“Cut it out, Hun,” Ceolbert mumbled. Grim-faced punks were nodding to show approval, while a pair of (rather cute) rude girls cheekily grinned at him. The poor boy went utterly crimson, up to the tip of his ears.

Hunwald laughed, nervously. “Oh, man, is my girlfriend going to freak when I tell her about this!”

“You mean she’s real?” Eivor sputtered, looking at Ceolbert in shock. “She’s not just some big-titted anime girl on a computer screen?”

“Of course she’s real—why would you think—”

Eivor tuned out his rant. Ceolbert was dragging Hunwald away now that the ambulance had finally arrived. As she watched them go, Eivor’s heart slowed down; the world seemed to slow as well. Dimly, she heard Vili telling Birna, “You should see the other guy. I might have lost a tooth, but I kicked ‘im in the ballsack,” to which Birna replied, “A man after my own shrivelled heart you are, shitsticks.” A grumpy-looking Valka was massaging her temples, explaining to Stowe that she’d clocked the guy at her feet because he’d made her spill her drink on her dress, “And do you know how much it cost to dry-clean so fine a fabric, do you?!” Brothir and Broder were spinning a yarn to the bouncer about how Rued had tripped over his own laces (white on black boots, Eivor noted with some disgust), which had resulted in the tosser hitting himself—repeatedly—in the nads on the way down; the bouncer—a lovely chap indeed—agreed with their story, 'accidently' stomping on Rued's nose once the twins were done.

And then Eivor was meeting a very familiar pair of clear, twinkling blue eyes. Half of Randvi’s mouth was cocked into a smile; Eivor’s heart sped up, fluttering like a bunch of butterflies. Ah. She had fallen back to shitty metaphors, and she hadn’t even had a drink yet. Nice.

“It’s a shame, really,” Randvi told Eivor. “I would have looked forward to hearing the rest of your show.”

“We could still play,” Eivor said, dumbly, because of course she did. Once more the clear tinkle of Randvi’s laughter rang in the air. Eivor’s insides turned to mush. Those poor butterflies… “You, er, you throw a mean right hook.”

“It’s as your friend Stowe said. I also spent my youth getting into scraps with people twice my size.”

“I would have paid good money to see that,” Eivor blurted out, and here came that sweet laughter again. Eivor puffed out her chest, feeling a surge of almost chauvinist pride; maybe she was doing something right, in the end. “'Til then, I can pay you a drink. Or two.”

Randvi smiled—a cat’s smile, full of delicious promise. “Good. I’d wondered when you’d ask.”

Chapter Text

“So,” Hytham asked, once they were about to climb the stairs up to Oswald and Hunwald’s flat, “how long have you been playing Dungeons and Dragons, Eivor?”

That was a question Eivor should have expected. Her first, innate response, as the bonafide jock who had played rugby all throughout secondary school, should have been to sneer and scoff, preferably while snorting inelegantly and spitting said snot over the sidewalk. But she’d gone past that—had aged past that. So instead Eivor answered, “Just played a couple of times, actually. Hunwald is starting a whole campaign tonight. Or so he told me.”

“Interesting,” said Hytham. “It’s sure to be fun, then.”

It hadn’t taken much convincing to drag him here; Eivor’s flatmate was a new arrival to the blight on the world that was England, and he hadn’t made a lot of friends other than the third resident of their shared tenement, a man named Basim. The latter apparently worked in the same history department where Hytham was doing his Masters. Basim did not spend much time at their flat, often fucking off to God knew where to do God knew what. Even after a few months of living together, Eivor didn’t know what to make of the guy; most of their exchanges had been done through arched brows and passive-aggressive looks (more aggressive than passive on her end of things). Hytham assured her that Basim was a good sort, but Eivor wasn’t quite convinced. For one, creepy bugger could learn how to use a goddamn door to let himself in rather than climb through the window, as he often did. They weren’t in some shitty video game after all.

“I think my brother played a few times with his friends,” added Randvi. She’d let her hair loose tonight, and now there was a test of Eivor’s resolve if there ever was; her stray curls shone like copper in the rays of the setting sun. Randvi then glanced aside, smirking a little. “When he was in primary school, that is.”

“How are they?” Eivor asked. “Ari and Thora, I mean?”

Her smile grew fond. “Ari is still a little sh—snot. He’s taller than me now, the useless git. Thora has her hands full with her business.”

“And the wee ones, I bet.”

Randvi laughed. “And the wee ones, yes. Detestable muppets they are. Can’t wait til Jul—Christmas,” she amended, for Hytham’s sake. “It’ll do me some good to see them again.”

“I understand the feeling,” said Hytham. “I’m a bit homesick too.”

Eivor threw one arm around his shoulders. “C’mon, let’s get your mind off all the shit going in your life. We’re here to have some fun, yeah?”

“We are,” he said, mirroring Randvi’s smile. “Thank you, Eivor.”

Eivor didn’t knock on the door when they arrived; instead, she shouldered it open, calling loudly, “Hey ho, nerdlings!” On the couch, two curious faces turned to face her: Hunwald, beaming as always, and a girl she didn’t know. Ceolbert was sitting at the table, fiddling with some papers. “Hey, Eivor!” he said, waving back.

Eivor put her hands on her hips, wrinkling her nose as if smelling something bad. “Ah, the stench of desperation and virginity! Hadn’t smelled that one for years!”

“Har de har,” said Hunwald, rolling his eyes. Still, he came to clap her proffered hand. Eivor’s cousin was wearing a shirt depicting a pixelated taco; underneath it were written the words, ‘It’s Dangerous Taco Alone, Take This.’ His feet were snugly encased in slippers shaped like unicorns. “Don’t just stand there, people, come on in, come on in!”

When Eivor, Hytham and Randvi were finally gathered in the living room (decorated with well-kept houseplants—surely Oswald’s touch—and colourful posters of various nerdy properties), Hunwald spread his arms wide and solemnly announced, “Welcome to our humble abode—the Otaku Dungeon!”

“I never agreed to that name!” said a voice coming from the kitchen. Oswald was cooking—of course he was the designated cook around here. Hunwald could have made water burn, while Oswald’s pastries were the stuff of legends.

“How is it coming along?” said Hunwald, sneaking up to his brother to grab the spatula the latter had been using to stir the sauce. Ignoring Oswald’s feeble protests, he shoved it into his mouth. “Hm! Not bad, not bad… you’re definitely going somewhere, yes! But make it spicier!”

“Shoo, shoo!” Oswald said, taking back the spatula and whacking Hunwald with it. As the latter scampered, grinning like a gremlin (she’d taught him well, Eivor mused, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye), Oswald pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “God, but you’re useless…”

“At least he’s cute,” said another voice from the couch. A curvy young lady with red hair was sitting there, failing to hide a smile behind her hand. Eivor recognized her from all the mobile phone pictures Hunwald kept enthusiastically shoving in her face. “You must be Eivor,” she said, standing to shake her hand. “I’m Swanburrow.”

“The pleasure is all mine, oh fair one,” Eivor said, bowing and bouncing her eyebrows. Swanburrow giggled, while Hunwald whined from behind, “Oh, come on, Eivor, that’s not fair!”

Soon, introductions were made in the cramped space of the dining room. Hytham’s very polite greetings were mirrored by Ceolbert’s very polite welcome. Meanwhile, Oswald’s best friend Tewdwr stiffly shook hands with everyone as if this was a very important business meeting, and not simply an occasion to faff around in pleasant company. Randvi took place among the group like she had known them forever; she was good with people, that much Eivor had to admit. Already she seemed to have struck a friendship with Hytham on the way here: they shared an interest in social justice and environmental issues, and Hytham had been quite impressed by Randvi’s dreams of working in politics at a local level (Eivor had also been surprised to learn they were both fans of murder mysteries and spy fiction; she’d filed that information under ‘good things to know’).

While Oswald busied himself around the kitchen like a harried little bee, Ceolbert taught the basic rules of the game to Hytham and Randvi. Afterwards, they all scarfed down a rather delicious lasagna, which was made all the better by the addition of a scrumptious chocolate cake (Oswald was on a roll tonight; Eivor wondered what had gotten him so fired up). Once they were done with supper, Swanburrow got up, kissing Hunwald on the cheek.

“Well, I’m off to wrestling practise,” she said. “Have a nice night, Hunnie bear.”

“You too, my Scandinavian beauty, my suplexing Valkyrie, my northern Venus—”

Rather than have him babble on, Swanburrow leaned to bump her nose against his. Then she turned to leave, waving them goodbye as she lingered in the doorway. Hunwald seemed misty-eyed for a moment, lower lip wobbling.

Then he clapped his hands, saying, “Alright, alright! May I have your full attention, please? My dear fellows, my dear ladies, I bid you welcome, to the home and mind of one Hunwald Mercer, Dungeon Master—and Twitch streamer of some renown and repute!”

(Oh God, Eivor thought, he still believed this was a viable career path? From across the table, Oswald was rolling his eyes, giving Eivor all the answer she needed).

Hunwald steepled his hands together, grinning mischeviously. “What will you find there, I wonder?”

“Nothing good, I’ll wager,” said Eivor, prompting him to throw a piece of popcorn at her head. Eivor caught it with her mouth, to Randvi’s giggling delight.

Hunwald cleared his throat before continuing, “Yes, well, now that your bellies are full of delicious, delicious cheese (and even more delicious cake, thank you ever so much, Ozzie boy), let’s hear it! Describe your characters to the table, oh wonderful guests of mine, let us meet all those heroes starting their adventure tonight…”

Hytham nodded, taking his sheet in hand. “Well, my character is a half-elf rogue named…” He checked his notes, muttering something in Arabic. “Akhom. They used to be part of this guild of assassins and thieves, but they had to escape once they discovered proof that their master had betrayed their brotherhood. After failing to kill him, Akhom went on the run to hide from their former brothers and sisters, who would stop at nothing to see them dead.”

“Niiice,” said Hunwald, rubbing his hands together; had Eivor imagined it or was there an evil glint in his eyes right now? “Gives me a ton of ideas, I tell you.”

“Thanks,” said Hytham, reddening slightly. “I’m not, er, used to be making stories. Translating them, yes. Putting them back together piece by piece, fragment by fragment… all in a day's work for me. But coming up with something interesting? Imagining my own narrative, my own characters? That’s not usually up my alley, so to speak.”

“Your studies must be very interesting,” said Oswald, and Eivor stifled a snort. She knew it had been a genius idea to put these two together in the same room; give or take a few minutes, and they were sure to geek out together, Hytham over history and Oswald over… well, the lad was doing his Masters in agriculture and rural development, which was probably very interesting—if your name wasn’t Eivor, that is. Maybe Hytham would reveal himself a secret fan of soil science. Maybe.

Oswald’s character, which he described after being coaxed away from his mobile phone (it was not like him to be so distracted, Eivor thought with a frown), was a halfling druid named Midge Mallark—a sweet old thing with a stooped back and a thick head of grey hair that had a distinct green tint thanks to all the algae that kept growing in it. Dame Midge had left her forest commune—and the dozen of rambunctious grandchildren who ran about the place—to find the source of the corruption currently besieging the woods surrounding her beloved village. She knew how to brew a calming, cleansing cuppa tea—as well as transform into a bear of prehistoric proportion that could tear off the jaw of a grown man with her… bear hands.

(Oswald, world’s treasure that he was, had laughed and laughed at this bad pun.)

Ceolbert’s wizard was a middle-aged (that is, old as balls by human reckoning) elf named Agrippa Scipio (“Named after two of Rome’s greatest generals,” the lad had admitted, the tip of his ears going red). Scipio had been a soldier of some repute who had lost an arm and a leg while saving his commanding officer from certain death. The army had rewarded this act of great bravery by discharging him from their ranks. Undeterred by this loathsome betrayal, Scipio had chosen to learn the arcane arts, going through grueling years of studies to become a wizard of great power; then, those who had closed their eyes to his potential would rue the day they had kicked him to the curb like yesterday’s garbage.

Tewdwr was playing a dwarf cleric—and like the man himself, his character seemed to have a broom lodged somewhere the sun did not shine. Myradin Grymbeard (“How is his beard grim?” Eivor had asked, in genuine puzzlement “Does it have frowney faces in it or something?” Tewdwr had only answered by puckering his mouth as if he was someone’s disapproving Catholic Grammie) was the ‘hope of the Dwarven people’, whatever the hell that meant. Eivor had almost fallen asleep when Tewdwr had enumerated all of Myradin’s great accomplishments. There’d been something about a hometown tragically destroyed, a prophecy made by a dying seer, and a dwarven lady with lovingly described tatas falling at the hero’s feet, crying out, “Oh my love, I will wait, I will wait always for your return!” Eivor wondered if Tewdwr had even thought of a name for this well-endowed plot device. She had a few suggestions if he ever needed any.

As for Eivor…

She had first declared that her barbarian would be a silver Dragonborn named Thrud (“Would she have dragon tits?” Eivor had wondered at first, to the amusement of Randvi and the exasperation of Tewdwr, whose glare was so potent it could probably burn holes in the carpet). Thrud, daughter of Thrym, was a devout of the faith of Bahamut, the Great King of the Dragons, and she carried his message of redemptive justice through the sacred art of draconic throat singing and the gentle touch of her fists.

Eivor had played the character before, in the few of Hunwald’s one-shots that she had joined. Ceolbert had advised her to choose a class that fought on the frontlines (“Much easier to manage than a spellcaster,” he’d said in all of his boyish and nerdy wisdom), and so Eivor had happily slid into the skin of a big dumb brute whose only purpose was to scream, “For Bahamut!” before pummelling whatever enemies she encountered into a bloody puddle.

Then Randvi had flickered through the pages of the thick (too thick) game reference manual, falling on a depiction of a small reptilian creature. “Oh, this one is cute,” she said. “He’s wearing a tiny top hat. I like that.”

“Kobolds,” Ceolbert explained. “They’re often used as enemies in low-level encounters. Not very bright, usually.”

“A friend of mine played a kobold rogue,” Hunwald added. “Her name was Pancakes, she was tons of fun! She didn’t have a nifty hat, but she did have a mushroom growing on the top of her head.”

“I’ll play a kobold,” Eivor said, eyes fixed on Randvi, heart beating madly in her chest, “and her name will be… Toot Toot Boop McSnout.”

“I’m sorry, what,” said Oswald, while Randvi snorted out a laugh, and that was—quite about the cutest sound Eivor had ever heard in her life. Victory, she thought, not without a hint of chauvinistic pride.

“Are you sure?” Ceolbert said. “Kobolds aren’t known for their strength, and you’ll need it if you want your barbarian to have a decent damage output—”

“I changed my mind,” Eivor blurted out. “I’mma gonna play a bardbarian. Toot Toot will split skulls apart—and sing about it,” which prompted Catholic Good Boy Tewdwr to utter, “Jesus Eff Christ.”

“But you can’t cast spells while you’re in a berserker rage,” Ceolbert said, his poor, overly rational mind struggling to make sense of such stupidity. “Bard and barbarian don’t quite work well together. Maybe you should—”

“I think it’s a fun idea,” Randvi told Eivor, eyes sparkling. “My Sigrún will gladly have Toot Toot Boop McSnout, stout berserker and skald, along for the ride.”

Eivor made a bow. “Then I will certainly make sure to sing of the lady Sigrún’s battle-glories while we meander the many paths laid before us by the whims of the wyrd.”

Said Lady Sigrún was an aasimar fighter, born with divine blood in her veins. Her goal was to gain the gods’ favour through battle to become a Valkyrie, like her distant ancestor. The lady Sigrún was tall, buff, and clad in gleaming plate armour from head to toe. In one hand, she wielded a hammer capable of summoning the fury of the storm; in the other, she cleaved enemies in two with her axe.

God. The game hadn’t even started yet, and already Eivor was utterly smitten.

Chapter Text

It all started innocuously enough. Toot Toot, travelling troubadour and blood-soaked berserker, met her future companions at an official gathering organized by the High King of Wherever the Fuck they all happened to be (Ceolbert, being the good boy that he was, carefully noted every bullshit name Hunwald threw their way, but Eivor was not so fussy about details). Things had—predictably—gone to shit when a magic-induced explosion had torn through the hall, killing a number of important dignitaries as well as the king himself (“Did you steal that idea from Dragon Age of all things?” Oswald had asked, which had prompted Hunwald to redden and sputter, “S-Shut it, will you!”)

Toot Toot and her fellow adventurers had been tasked with finding the culprits behind this terrible incident by the Royal Chancellor, who also happened to be the Archmage of the king’s court (“Oh, that guy is evil for sure,” Eivor had commented. “A politician as well as a wizard? Rotten to the core, I tell you.”)

For days, the party had followed the same lead, which had gone from fairly warm to frigid as a nun’s wet farts. As they dicked around in search of more clues, Toot Toot and her companions met an increasing number of people on the road; refugees fleeing the arrival of a great army, it seemed. Even as Hunwald described in great purple prose the depths of their misery, the horror of all they had witnessed, Eivor found herself sporting a madcap grin, pounding her palm with one fist. “Finally, some action!” she—or, more precisely, Toot Toot—had cried out. “My blood needs warming up for Chrissake—er, I mean, for Bahamut’s sake.”

“For one more day, you trudge through the throngs of travellers,” said Hunwald (sweet baby Jesus, but that alliteration; boy seemed proud of it, smug, even.) “The farther you go, the more the roads start to clear. The people are gone; the surrounding villages are empty. Where have they gone, you wonder? Then, in the distance, you hear a strange commotion…” He made the sound, a soft, drumming-like kind of noise. “Scipio, you might remember what it is… if you manage your history check, that is.”

Ceolbert rolled his twenty-sided dice. “A fifteen,” he told his brother.

“Then it is easily recognizable to your soldier’s ear. That is not one, but two armies on the march. And they are very close indeed…”

“I can go ahead to scout,” said Hytham. “I have to make a… er, what was it again?”

“Stealth check,” said Ceolbert, as helpful as ever. “Followed by a perception check, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I’ve got twenty-two,” Hytham announced. “And… seventeen?”

“You easily make your way forward,” narrated Hunwald, “unseen by any prying eye. Safely hidden atop of the hill, you spot your quarry: two great seas of soldiers spreading as far as the eye can see, amassing over both sides of a river. You recognize the standard of the army that is closest to you: that’s the two-headed eagle and three golden crowns of Mercianglia. And across from them, you see…” He made a dramatic motion with his arms, loudly announcing, “Why, but a great horde of Orcs are facing the brave warriors of your kingdom! Filthy, screaming Orcs by the thousands, thumping on their shields loud enough to drown out the thunder rolling over the horizon! You feel the blood leaving your cheeks, your mounting dread leaving you frozen on the spot. By all the gods, but you’ve never seen such an armada!”

“Maybe they’re not our enemies,” Eivor said, with a shrug. “Maybe we can all hold hands and dance and sing Kumbaya together.”

“Orcs are Chaotic Evil by nature,” Ceolbert explained.

“Well, that’s stupidly reductive, innit?” Eivor shot back. “And goddamn racist.” Then, with an evil grin, she said, “Well, c’mon, we shouldn’t just stand around, limp dicks in hand. Let’s go kill the bastards.”

“We can’t just rush in,” Tewdwr sputtered; for some reason, he always sputtered whenever he was around Eivor, as if her very presence made the words all jumble in his mouth or something. “That would be suicide.”

Randvi steepled her hands together; she must have been about to use that great big brain of hers to concoct some genius strategy. Nice. And very, very sexy of her. “There must be a bridge, yes?” she said. “If we make the river overflow, that will force our enemies through a choke point. That will remove the advantage they have through superior numbers.”

Ceolbert raised his hand. “I can control or create a certain amount of water, yes. Oswald, do you have anything that could help? Usually, druids have that kind of spell too.”

For some reason, the latter was fiddling on his phone, eyes glued to the screen. Eivor cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed, “Earth to Oz boy! Bertie asked a question, you dolt.”

“Wh-what?” Oswald squeaked, so startled by her shout that he damn near yeeted his phone over his shoulder. His cheeks were a brilliant shade of pink. “O-Of course, yes, I can cast water spells, I-I can help, yep, yep, yep…”

“Good,” Randvi said. “Then that’s settled. I will take the front with Eiv—Toot Toot while you boys handle the river. Akhom, you will provide ranged support. Myradin… keep an eye out for wounded, will you?”

Everyone the table met her gaze, before nodding to give their assent. Ceolbert was looking at Randvi with one of his rare, faint smiles. “Randvi, that was a brilliant idea. We might have a chance yet, thanks to you.”

“Keep that praise coming,” she said, and Eivor immediately thought, oh yes, oh yes I will.

“Then your strategy is decided?” said Hunwald. “Alright, alright! Time to roll out that battle map!”

The ‘battle map’ was a nightmare that harkened all the way back to those geometry classes Eivor had hated so much in primary school. It was like someone had taken graph paper and decided, ‘oh, hey, make it span the whole of a table, huh, why the fuck not.’ With washable marker pens, Hunwald drew the outline of a river, then placed a number of tiny figurines on each side of it. “There are your allies,” he said, pointing at one group, “and these are the Orcs currently stuck on the other side of the river.”

“Is it time to roll initiative?” asked Ceolbert.

“Patience, young padawan, patience!” Hunwald motioned at six figurines huddled in a corner of the battle map. “Your characters start here, at the top of the hill, some hundred feet away from the rest of the battlefield. You will have to run if you want to reach your allies in time.” After a slight pause, deliberately added to rack up the tension, he announced, “Alright, people, roll for initiative!”

Ceolbert and Oswald were up first, which was lucky. Together, the lads made the waters of the river surge with nature’s fury, blocking the advance of the Orcs, who instead were forced through the bridge, as Randvi had predicted. Then came Hytham’s turn.

“Akhom,” said Hunwald, “you’re at the back of the group, still hidden from view. What do you want to do?”

“Can I spot the commander? Or at least whoever seems to be in charge of the Orc army?”

Hunwald had him roll a perception check. It was a success. “Why, you can’t miss him. The Orc leader is twice as large as the other ones—and as twice as mean-looking too. With some horror, you notice that he wears the skulls of his enemies around his neck in a grisly trophy, and that his face is smeared with the still fresh blood of the innocent. Why, but he seems a formidable foe indeed!”

“I wanna fight him,” Eivor said, and Tewdwr rolled his eyes, because of course he did, the tight-arsed wanker. “In an epic duel, man to—Orc to teeny, tiny lizard lady. How can I get to ‘im?”

Randvi turned to her. Her grin was most decidedly un-Randvi-like. “I could throw you over the river with my shield. Like in that first Wonder Woman movie—you know, at the beginning, when the Amazons are fighting against those German soldiers?”

Of course Eivor remembered. Of course she did. Who the hell could ever forget that shot of Robin Wright in the air, shooting three blokes in one go like she was some bonafide Greek goddess put on film for glorious posterity? Eivor was dumb, but she wasn’t that dumb.

She bounced her eyebrows, making finger guns at Randvi. “I like the sound of that, I do.”

“Eivor, you’re probably half his size,” Ceolbert countered, ever the sensible one.

“Make me bigger, then. You still have that Enlarge spell, right?”

“Then Randvi wouldn’t be able to throw you, Eivor, she’s strong, but—”

“You cast it just as I jump from the shield. Bam, problem solved.”

“That wouldn’t make any sense, physics-wise,” said that wet blanket Tewdwr. “You’d drop down the moment you would grow bigger. Your additional mass would simply drag you down to earth! It won’t work.”

“How aerodynamic is your lizard, Eivor?” Hunwald asked, sounding genuinely curious.

That got the table going. After a few savant calculations, courtesy of Hytham, Hunwald was giddy with anticipation. Eivor’s strategy was sound, real-world physics be damned.

“It doesn’t make sense, and it’s dumb as all heck,” he said, rubbing his hands together in glee, “but I love it. Throw that lizard, Randvi. Let her rip.”

The lizard was thrown, grown to gigantic proportions by the touch of magic. Eivor thrust her greatsword forward, hoping to cut through the air, wink, wink, nudge, nudge (again, Oswald gave a cute snort at the bad pun, pure soul that he was). That prompted Hunwald to say, rather cheerfully, “Oh, it’s just like that Shooting Stars meme with Palpatine!” and he started to hum the tune in question. Oswald played the video on his phone, wriggling his shoulders to the beat while Eivor and Hunwald flat out showed their best moves. Randvi was stifling her laughter. Hytham, poor soul, seemed utterly mystified. Tewdwr, of course, was on the verge of having some sort of conniption. Apparently, he hadn’t been given the memo that the best D&D games all happened to have impromptu karaoke sessions.

While Toot Toot soared through the air, making her pterosaurian ancestors proud (at this point Ceolbert helpfully reminded everyone that pterosaurs weren’t really dinosaurs, which brought back fond memories of his five-year-old self, who had been utterly obsessed by the topic), Hytham asked, “Can I run over the railing of the bridge, parkour style? I want to get on the other side without, er, getting squashed in all of that fighting, you see?”

“Parkour!” Hunwald exclaimed. “Like some kind of super stealthy assassin from a video game. I love it! Roll me a dex check to see if you make it without getting hit or falling into the river.”

Hytham succeeded with high colours, and fleet-footed Akhom ran alongside the railing, evading the mass of warriors entangled on the bridge. By the time he had gotten to the other side, Toot Toot was making her… not-so-graceful descent toward the Orc commander. Everyone grew very tense for some reason. Eivor scowled, wondering what had gotten them so tightly wound up.

“You’ll have to roll an acrobatics check,” said Hunwald. Seemed like he was enjoying himself a bit too much, the wee bastard. “See how you fare on the way down…”

The others waited with bated breath as the dice bounced—slowly, too slowly, as if it was mocking her too, the piece of plastic trash—across Eivor’s tray.

It landed on a one.

“Oh,” said Hunwald, with a stupidly smug smile. “Bad luck.”

Toot Toot came at the Orc commander like a scaly, smelly cannonball. Thankfully, she slammed sword-point first, skewering him like a particularly nasty-looking kebab. But that was not all; thanks to Hytham’s precise mathematical figures, they knew Toot Toot would crash into the Orc commander with a force equal to her mass multiplied by the universal gravitational constant and the speed she had gathered over the span of her flight.

Simply put, the poor bugger was skewered like a kebab, squashed like a bug and sent yeeting in the form of a great big puddle of gore.

That meant a lot of dice throwing to calculate the damage dealt both to Toot Toot and her unfortunate victim. “Oh, shit!” Hunwald exclaimed. “He’s not dead yet! Our boy is down to one HP…”

Hytham shyly raised his hand. “Eivor is still beside him, yes?” (“Yes, in pieces herself,” Hunwald confirmed, “but she is there, in mangled body if not in spirit.”) “Does that mean I have the advantage to make a stealth attack?”

Hunwald stared at him. Hytham stared back. This went on for a few precious seconds. You could hear a pin drop right now.

“That’s,” Hunwald said, his brows rising up to his hairline, “that’s overkill, dear sir.”

Hytham continued to stare, hands folded primly in his lap; how could anyone ever say no to that sweet, innocent face, Eivor wondered? The guy was good, that much she had to hand it to him.

“Alright, shoot,” Hunwald said, with the weary sigh of someone who had spent a great deal of his spare time preparing a battle encounter, only to have his players mowing down enemies the way he and Eivor went through fresh brownies made by Oswald (that poor, suffering soul). “Do your damage. Spare him from his suffering. Poor bugger…”

The world held its breath. All eyes were on Hytham. Beads of sweat formed on his brow. He threw his dice.

He rolled a twenty.

Critical hit.

“So,” narrated Hunwald, “after suffering the indignity of taking in damage nearly all of his health points (that he didn’t even have any more, courtesy of one Toot Toot Boop McSnout) through one single knife wound, the Orc commander draws his last breath, choking on his own blood as he struggles to hang on to the thread of his life. Still, the horde remains, ever so wary now that—”

“I cast Fireball,” said Ceolbert, while Oswald announced, at the same time, “I cast Flaming Sphere.”

Hunwald made a sound like a wheezing kettle. His epic army took nearly 86 points of fire damage in one go (“Isn’t it like using napalm? Wouldn’t that be a war crime?” Hytham asked, to which Eivor shrugged.) “I guess they all burn to a crisp, then,” he said, almost surly. “But wait! Eivor—I mean, Toot Toot—you feel big, greasy hands taking hold of your battered, broken body. A survivor, singed but not out for the count yet, has managed to crawl over to you. Before you can move or utter a sound, the Orc hurls you into the air, toward the raging river—where you will surely drown if no one is there to catch you!”

Randvi took this as a challenge. “I rush toward her,” she said, blue eyes ablaze. “I use every ounce of the strength still present in my body to run and get to Toot Toot in time. Once I am close enough, I leap through the air, arms open and ready.”

Eivor could imagine the scene all too easily. The sun peering out of dark clouds, just to halo Sigrún’s golden mane at this very moment. Her muscles, swollen from the effort and glistening with sweat. Her lovely face twisted with righteous fury, mouth open in a defiant roar as she raced against time, against death, to protect one of her precious battle-companions.

At the very last moment, Lady Sigrún’s powerful arms clasped around Toot Toot’s bloodied figure. The would-be Valkyrie brought her wounded companion close to her heart, shielding her body as she met the ground in a practised roll. Then, Sigrún was on one knee, holding Toot Toot in her lap. Their gazes met. Sigrún’s hair caught in a breeze, like a trail of gleaming gold behind her head. The world seemed to have come to a stop, if only to give Sigrún and Toot Toot a moment to breathe, a moment to contemplate the sheer gravity of what had just happened, a moment they could share between themselves and no one else—

“Do you,” sputtered Tewdwr, pointing back and forth between Randvi and Eivor, “do you have to play-act like… this… in front of everyone? I mean—it should—I would think—”

Hunwald was not so flustered. In fact, he seemed impressed. “Sigrún,” he narrated, “you hold in your muscled arms the frail, fragile form of Toot Toot, the hero of the hour…”

“Wait, isn’t Toot Toot bigger than usual right now?” Ceolbert pointed out.

“…Sigrún, you are utterly crushed under Toot Toot’s formidable weight. You, er, you might need medical assistance as well, now that I think about it…”

Thankfully, someone in their group had been bright enough to choose a class capable of casting healing spells. Myradin Grymbeard went around the battlefield like a vertically challenged Jesus, (inappropriately) touching people to magically cure their wounds (did he even asked for their permission, Eivor wondered?) Once he was done, the group gathered together to nurse their wounds and discuss what to do with the few surviving Orcs.

“They might have something to do with what happened in the royal capital,” mused Ceolbert. “It can’t simply be a coincidence that the king is murdered just as an army comes marching at the city’s gates.”

“But how do we get them to talk?” added Oswald.

“Easy peasy,” said Eivor, crossing her arms over her chest. She’d worn a sleeveless t-shirt today, despite the slight chill in the air, and so her tats and biceps were on full display. She hoped Randvi enjoyed the show. “We beat them up until they start coughing answers.”

“That would be war crimes!’” Tewdwr said, deepening his voice. Chap was particularly fussy about doing character voices, he was. “’I cannot let you harm these prisoners!’”

Eivor snorted. “What, the Geneva Convention exists in this world or something?”

“Eivor,” Oswald hissed, “you’re breaking character.”

“Well, I sure want to break their bu—”

“What will you do with these prisoners?” Hunwald repeated, a bit more insistently. “Some of them are in a pretty bad shape.”

“Wait, Tewdwr,” Eivor said, “I’ve got the best idea ever. Use that ‘Spare the Dying’ spell of yours to stabilize them. Then I can punch these chucklefucks a coupla times to get more info outta ‘em. And when they die from all that punching, you cast that spell again so they come back to life. It’s foolproof!”

“That’s a terrible idea!” That wasn’t the Myradin voice; Tewdwr really was full on miffed. Eivor fought the urge to smirk at him like a total tool. “Why would I do that?!”

“I kneel beside one of them,” said Randvi, “and I tell the Orc soldier that we will tend to their wounds and treat them fairly, as fellow soldiers met in honourable battle on the fields of war. But they must tell us who they worked for. More is at stake here that they’ll ever know. We must succeed in our mission or else chaos will overtake the land.”

“Roll me a Persuasion check,” asked Hunwald.

Eivor grimaced; Lady Sigrún was a total unit of a woman, but for some reason, that didn’t necessarily translate to a high Charisma score. Now there was something stupid if Eivor ever heard one. Just by the simple act of existing, Lady Sigrún warranted perfect scores everywhere, in her honest opinion.

(She was a lot like Randvi in that regard, really.)

Randvi rolled her dice. Again came that sweet, satisfied smile as it landed on a fourteen. “That’s fifteen in total,” she told Hunwald. “Does that work?”

Hunwald nodded. “You have shown honour as well as courage on the battlefield, Lady Sigrún, and so he agrees to speak, if only to keep his life. You learn that—”

Eivor wasn’t listening, not really. She had come down from her high, and now she was wondering… what did it all mean, truly? It had been a few months since that dreadful night at the bar; there, she and Randvi had shared a few drinks after the coppers had taken that bastard Gorm away, and they’d talked and laughed the night away. But then, nothing, nada. Eivor didn’t want to make the first move—didn’t feel like she could make the first move. That was her brother’s ex she was in love with. What the fuck would Styrbjorn and Rosta—would Sigurd—say if Eivor were to bring Randvi back to dinner as if she was some random girl she’d picked up from the nearest drinking hole? Styrbjorn—well, he would say nothing, because that’s what he did whenever the goings got rough, he just shut down even as Eivor screamed and begged to be noticed, to be seen. As for Rosta… Eivor felt a cold dread coiling in the pit of her stomach. No, she couldn’t disappoint her mother again, not after all the shit she’d put her through in those years that had followed her marriage to Styrbjorn.

(Eivor briefly wondered how Varin would have reacted to the situation. It pained her that she did not remember her father well enough to know.)

She was still mulling over these thoughts even as she left the boys’ flat, Randvi and Hytham in tow. These two were speaking together, laughing as if they were the closest of friends. Eivor felt a surge of heat in her blood as she imagined the two of them togeth—no, she told herself, don’t go there, Varinsdottir, you stupid, stupid bitch. Hytham was a nice bloke—one of the nicest she knew, really. They would be good for each other. He would make her happy. Already Randvi was looking at him with such a sweet smile that—

“Eivor?” came Randvi’s voice, taking her out of these gloomy musings. “Are you listening?”

“Wha?” Eivor said, turning to face her and Hytham and— “Oswald? Wait, what? Why the hell are you following us around? Don’t you live here?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Oswald replied, brows furrowing. “I just said that I’m going to the flicks with a friend of yours. She’s just finished her shift at work.” As Eivor turned to goggle at him, he sputtered, “Er, she wanted to see that new Spider-Verse movie, and she hadn’t anyone to go with her, so…”

“’She’?” Eivor said, amused and baffled in equal measure; now there was a curve ball she hadn’t expected… “You’re going on a date with—”

At the same moment came the shriek of an engine and the screech of wheels against asphalt. A motorcycle had just swerved by the sidewalk, its driver clad in a leather jacket and tight jeans. The newcomer removed her helmet, revealing a familiar face: piercings lined in both ears, blue eyeshadow darkening her lids, black hair shaved in an undercut by the side of her head.

Oswald waved. A little too enthusiastically. Jesus H. Christ, but he was wearing a cardigan over his buttoned-down shirt. Eivor wished she’d had the time to set up an intervention. She felt like she was letting a poor little lamb march into the wolf’s den.

“Good evening, Valdis,” he said, taking the spare helmet she was handing over to him. “How was work? That pesky co-worker of yours didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”

Eivor raised her brows. Oh, so they’d already reached the stage of exchanging work-related gossip? Interesting.

“It was fine,” Valdis answered with a shrug. She nodded toward Eivor. “Good to see you, Eivor. Had fun with the lads tonight?”

“Always,” Eivor said, stifling a smirk. That explained why Oswald had been glued to his phone all night; there had been a pretty girl writing him back, of course that took precedence over everything else. “Take care, you two. And be safe on the roads. That’s my baby cousin you’re carrying in that death machine of yours, Valdis.”

Oswald glared at her. Considering he looked like he’d been dressed by his mam for a date with a girl he met in church, he seemed about as threatening as, well, a sheep wearing a cardigan.

A playful smile showed on Valdis’s lips for a fleeting moment, her teeth slightly showing. Goddamn it. She was going to devour the poor boy whole—and he was probably going to enjoy it, Eivor surmised. Blech. She was going to need to pour some bleach in her eyes after that image…

“Duly noted,” said Valdis.

Oswald climbed behind her, gingerly wrapping her arms around her waist. Eivor couldn’t see his face because of the helmet, but it was clear from his body language that he was very uncomfortable with the current placement of his hands. Poor lad. He never had been any good with the ladies.

“Be home before your curfew, young man!” Eivor called as Valdis started the engine. Oswald moved his hand almost as if he’d wanted to make an obscene gesture at her. Almost.

After they had sped away, Randvi jabbed a thumb in the direction they had gone. “So, er, him. Him and her.”

Eivor shrugged. As far as she was concerned, Valdis had found the fucking jackpot. “Yeah. ‘im and her.”

“Good for her, really.”

Perhaps at last that would convince poor Oswald to finally get a more flattering haircut. Those neatly parted, curly bangs had been cute in the early years of secondary, when he’d been the school band’s star clarinet player, but now…

(Then again, maybe Valdis was into the whole angelic choirboy look. Who knew?)

“Wanna grab a bite?” Eivor found herself blurting out, turning toward Randvi. “That cake was delicious murder on my stomach, but I’m still starving.”

“There might be some kebab place that’s still open,” Randvi said. “I’m always up for late-night shawarma.”

“Yeah,” said Eivor. “I’m buyin—”

Randvi put a hand over her chest. Eivor’s heart made some kind of sick flip inside her ribcage. It shouldn’t have been a pleasant sensation—but it totally was, and she found herself grinning like a goddamn fool.

“No, you’re not,” Randvi said. “Last time, you bought the drinks. I’ll pay tonight.”

Eivor jammed her hands through the pockets of her jacket, affecting a cool pose. “Alright, alright, then. Lead on, m’lady.”

Randvi shook her head, smiling slightly. “Eivor… you’re the one with the car keys, remember?”

Someone cleared his throat behind Eivor, startling them both. Hytham was raising his hand, gingerly. “Er… am I included in these plans? Eivor, you’re my ride home, remember?”

Eivor gaped at him like a goldfish that just had been plucked from the confines of its bowl. Fuck. She’d just… forgotten that he was there. “Er… I mean…”

Randvi snorted, bumping her shoulder against hers. “It’s fine by me. Maybe we’ll be better off with a chaperone to make sure nothing… untoward… happens. Right, Eivor?”

Hytham muttered something in Arabic, rubbing his face with both hands. Still, his smile returned not long after—though there was something of a mocking glint in his blue eyes now. “Come on, then, you’re both in luck. I just so happen to know where they make the best shawarma in town.”

Chapter Text

“That Ragnar Lothbrok,” Oswald said, as the credits rolled on screen, “is a total idiot.”

He and Valdis were observing their Saturday night tradition of watching the telly before going to sleep. They had powered through that first season of Vikings on Netflix over the last few weeks, after finishing The Last Kingdom, which was set in the same time period. It was a good show, Oswald had to admit, but…

“How so?” she said, looking up at him. Valdis was curled close against him—very close in fact. That was a new development; in the early days of their courtship, whenever she’d invited him back to her flat to watch a movie, Valdis had always sat ramrod straight on the sofa, one shoulder width apart from him.

She had told him she wanted to take things slow, which was to be expected considering how her last relationship had ended. The first time Valdis had asked him to spend the night, she’d added, almost miserably, “Just to sleep, I mean. I’m not ready—because of him, I tend to—”

Oswald was a sworn pacifist, but at those words he had been filled with the urge to find wherever that arsehole Rued had been rotting to slug him again. Instead, he had said, perhaps a bit too earnestly, “Valdis, it’s fine, everything’s fine, I just—I love being with you. Going on hikes, doing museum tours, playing board games—I’ve had a lovely time doing all of this with you, Valdis. The… the… sex thing…” Oh God, he had barely been able to say it out loud; it had seemed as if his brain had been superheating, making him even more incoherent than usual. “Well, that can wait. Indefinitely, if that’s what you’d, erm, prefer. You, er, you deserve to feel safe. And comfortable. H-Happy, too. Anything else is… well, it’s not as important, I think.”

She’d said something in Danish, then, something that sounded like, “Hvordan kan en som dig være ægte?” Oswald had blinked, not quite understanding what she meant (she’d spoken as if going through a mouthful of mashed potatoes, and he was rusty on his Norwegian anyway), and he had asked, “Wh-what? What makes you say so?”

“Forget about it,” Valdis had replied, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder. The tip of her nose had brushed on the bare skin of his neck, making his hair stand on end. “Let’s just choose a movie for tonight, ja?”

“Okay,” he’d squeaked in response.

(He also very much remembered that she had added, sotto voce, “…not indefinitely,” which—well, it had been quite a bloody miracle that he’d been able to focus on the movie that had followed. By all means, he should have been left an incoherent mess of man after that comment.)

Tonight, she was half-asleep against Oswald, clad in one of his jumpers (though her pajamas shorts left her legs bare, which was puzzling; wouldn’t she get cold, he wondered?). The wool was scratchy against his skin, and one of his arms was starting to go numb. Still, Oswald wouldn’t have budged an inch even if he had been offered a million quid. She was warm, so warm. And frankly he couldn’t quite imagine a better fate than becoming her favourite human-shaped pillow.

“Well, yeah,” Oswald told her. “Cheating on Lagertha was the terrible decision of the year, really. What did he think would happen? He had the perfect life: a loving wife, a wonderful son, a thriving community… and he just throws it all away? As Eivor would say, he’s a total tool.”

“Oh, so Lagertha is perfect, is that how it is?”

What? was Oswald’s first thought. That had been quite the leap she was making. Oh hell, he then realized, seeing how intently she was looking at him. You’re on thin ice, mate.

…why had he just imagined these words as if Eivor had said them?

For some reason, Valdis kept biting her lower lip, as if to keep herself from smiling. Still, her eyes betrayed her amusement. Well, well, Oswald thought. Two could play at that game, he decided. Tongue firmly planted in cheek, he said, “Why, yes. I mean, have you seen her?”

“I have,” she said, patting his chest; Oswald’s heart sped up as he became minutely aware of the slight pressure of her fingers over the well-worn fabric of the old t-shirt he wore to sleep. She had long, pretty fingers, a musician’s fingers. Valdis had once shyly admitted to him that she wanted to go back to school to get her license and teach music to secondary-aged students. Oswald had assured her that she would have his whole-hearted support in this endeavour, should she ever choose to take it.

“She is something all right,” Valdis added, “and that pikansjos Ragnar doesn’t deserve the likes of her. But she’s not my favourite character.”

Oswald managed enough presence of mind to utter, “Which one is it, then?”

Was that a faint blush upon her cheeks? No, surely Oswald was imagining things. “Athelstan,” Valdis mumbled, finally.

“Athelstan? The English monk? He’s your favourite character?” The doe-eyed, mild-mannered priest certainly had been given a compelling character arc throughout the season, Oswald supposed. Valdis mumbled something in Danish that sounded suspiciously like ‘skuespilleren’ and ‘sød’. Oswald frowned as he puzzled out her words. “You think the actor is good-looking?”

“What of it?” she grumbled, in a light-hearted manner. Again, she muttered something in Danish (“Han har smukke øjne…”) though this time Oswald understood her well enough. He has pretty eyes…

“It’s just—I’m surprised, that’s all. I thought you’d prefer someone like Ragnar. Or Rollo. They’re certainly, well, handsome, by the usual standards.”

Instead of answering, Valdis looked up at him and asked, “Growing up, who was your favourite character in—hva er navnet på Engelsk, that cartoon with the dragons—Sådan Træner Du Din Drage?”

“How to Train Your Dragon?” Oswald ventured.

“Yes!” She gave such a sweet, genuine smile that Oswald’s cheeks sweltered if someone had lit a furnace under his skin. “Your favourite character must have been Astrid, I’m sure of it.”

She’d pronounced it the Scandinavian way, the syllables as soft as silk—and that also made Oswald’s heart give a pleasant flutter. Dammit all, he cursed inwardly. Get a grip, Oswald Elmham. Valdis continued to look up at him, coyly fluttering her eyelashes, which was wholly unlike her hardass self. Of course she enjoyed tormenting him. Of course.

“She was,” Oswald managed. “I mean, she’s smart, strong, capable—really, what’s not to like? You know, I’d have thought she would have been your favourite too.”

Eivor had certainly been fond of her character, back in those far-flung childhood days where they had all gathered in their grandparents’ basement to watch movies while the adults mingled in the living room to talk of mundane matters. Sigurd had never joined them, of course; he had been a surly teenager then, a bit too old to watch kids’ flicks with his baby cousins.

“Mine was Hikke,” Valdis said, rather softly. She scrunched up her nose a bit, which—oh God, that expression made her look utterly adorable, Oswald thought with some despair, and he pressed his mouth into a thin line to keep himself from squealing like a boiling kettle. “Hiccup,” she amended. “He was my favourite, growing up.”

Oswald laughed. “Really? Well, I guess he is the main character, so—”

She touched the tip of his nose with one playful finger, and the whole of Oswald’s face exploded with heat, any additional word turning to inelegant gurgles in his throat. Valdis chuckled, a delightful little sound indeed—and, yep, there went the rest of his brains, scrambled to tiny chunks just like the eggs he ate at breakfast this morning. Unfortunately, Valdis had a good grip on him, and thus Oswald could not make his escape in the hopes of chucking himself out the nearest window.

“For one so perceptive,” Valdis said, relishing in those words as if they tasted like whipped cream, “you sure can be naïve sometimes.”

“Er,” was Oswald’s eloquent response. “S-Sure. If… if you say so.”

“Good.” Valdis nuzzled closer to him, making herself comfortable, no doubt. “Do you want to start that second season of Vikings?”

For some reason, he sputtered, “We could, erm, watch Dragons instead? Just for, er, old times’ sake?”

“Old times’ sake.” Valdis sighed contently. “Yeah. I like the sound of that.”

Chapter Text

Eivor looked at Hytham. That blue-eyed bastard had the gall to stare back at her, the picture of innocence. She quirked a brow. He only shrugged.

“Really, Hytham?” she said. “Really?”

“You have to start small,” he told her, so gently she nearly wanted to throttle him. “I won’t have you break your neck at your first lesson, you know.”

‘Small’ was selling it, well, short. The wall facing Eivor wasn’t a wall. Bloody thing came just short of her chest. A grandma with broken legs could probably have vaulted across while flipping the bird to all curious onlookers. It wasn’t a challenge. It was an insult to her biceps, and she was very proud of them, thank you very much.

Basim was smirking. Of course he was, smarmy git. He had probably tagged along only to act all superior while Eivor was led around by the hand like some dumb useless brat. But according to Hytham, he had been the one to teach him the basics of the art of parkour. The bastard had to have some talent and experience in the matter.

And frankly Eivor would be all too happy to wipe the smirk from that smug face. So maybe it was a plus that he’d come with them on this (too) bright and (way too) cheerful summer morning.

They had come to the park at first light, to avoid being swarmed by screaming and snotty kids—and to make sure the cops wouldn’t come sniffing around as well. Eivor wasn’t exactly happy to have been taken out of bed that early, but the whole thing had been her idea, so…

She crossed her arms over her chest, inhaling deeply to clear her mind. Unlike the boys, she was wearing only a light plaid shirt while they were clad in jackets and hoodies. Seems like they weren’t quite used to the English weather. Eivor was seized with sudden wistfulness as she remembered the crisp coolness of Norwegian mornings. She missed so many things about her country of birth: all that snow piling in winter to make icy mountains, those vast, untouched spaces, those days spent playing outside pretending to be an explorer of old… She wondered if she would some day think of England as her home. No, Eivor immediately thought. Norway still held her heart—and she suspected she would feel that way until her dying days.

“So?” Eivor said, finally. “What do I do, then?”

“Here, let me demonstrate,” said Hytham. After backing away a little, he took off in a run. In a fluid, practised motion, he leaped over the small wall. Eivor lifted one brow, grudgingly impressed. It had been a simple move, but masterfully executed.

Hytham was smiling as he jogged back to them. “And?” he asked Eivor. “Do you think you can do that as well?”

“I worked at a climbing gym for a year,” Eivor answered. 

Place had been run by Hemming, Vili’s father. Eivor had loved working there, it had been one of the best jobs she’d ever had, but then Hemming had died, and… She stifled a sigh at the memories. Vili had been left adrift in a sea of his own sorrows, and she’d lost yet another father figure—so they had fallen in bed together, another fuck-up for the ages. It had been a messy affair; she’d been grieving, and he’d been grieving, and they had both been filled with so much pain and anger, a fury mindless enough to set the two of them ablaze. Eivor would have happily let the whole of her life burn to ashes, but Vili, in a surprising show of maturity, had regained enough presence of mind to break things off. It was a miracle that their friendship had survived that wreck of a romance.

Basim held up a hand. “First things first. Do you know how to fall safely, Eivor?”

God, but she wanted to smack that pompous-looking face. Did he ever stop grinning? “I played rugby when I was in secondary,” she told him, bluntly. “I know how to fall, you wanker.”

He made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Then, do give us a demonstration, please.”

Eivor shot a long-suffering look at Hytham, but the latter only nodded. With a dramatic sigh, she executed herself, rolling in the lawn. She glowered at Basin as she got to her feet. She probably now had dirt over her jeans and bits of grass in her hair. Maybe that was why Basim looked like he was about to burst out in laughter, the tosser.

“You won’t always fall on such soft surfaces,” Basim told her. He motioned at a basketball court. “Can you do the same here without hurting yourself?” 

“Easy,” Eivor said with a scoff. Her knees protested as she hit the concrete tarmac. Fuck, she was not as young as she used to be. Still, she managed to get to her feet in one fluid motion, shooting a glare toward Basim from over her shoulder.

“Very impressive,” Basim said, raising both brows, earning himself a sigh from Hytham.

Predictably, Eivor’s temper flared. She marched up to him, pointing at his face and growling, “I’ll show you impressive—”

Hytham muttered something in Arabic, pinching the bridge of his nose. “People, people!” he said. “We are not children, are we?”

“No,” said Basim, still smiling, “and our friend here doesn’t like to be led around by the hand, I believe. I think Eivor learns more by challenging herself, by going beyond her own limits. Am I not right?”

Fucker. He was absolutely right, but Eivor would die rather than admit it. “And?” she told him, cocking her chin at him. “What do you suggest we do about it?”

Hytham raised his eyes heavensward. Basim met Eivor’s glare and said, “A race. I have no doubt you are talented enough to give me trouble.”

“You have no idea,” Eivor said, finding herself smirking as well.

“These two, I swear…” Hytham grumbled.

Basim pointed at a small building near the park. “See that laundry line on the roof? First one to get there wins the race. Any path, any means is allowed, as long as you get there.”

“Got it,” said Eivor, prompting another mutter from Hytham.

“Eivor, wait a moment,” he said, taking her aside. “Are you sure about this?”

She stretched, first spreading her arms, then her legs. “‘Course. You know me, I never half-arse anything.”

“Map out your pathway before you go. You can’t think while you’re free-running. The whole of your attention must be focused on what your body is doing. Nothing else matters.” Hytham’s gaze was earnest, if a little worried. “Trust your instincts, your gut feelings. Not your brain.”

“Got it,” Eivor said. With a lazy grin, she clapped him on the back. “Relax, mate! This can’t be more dangerous than being punted around by a bunch of very buff ladies, right?” Ah, that had been the good old days, she thought with a smile. She’d met Birna while playing rugby; they’d scuffled like wildcats on the field, before bonding on the bench over the number of bruises they had gotten.

Hytham smiled ruefully. “Don’t make me regret putting my trust in you, Eivor.”

Eivor laughed, before turning to Basim. He looked supremely unconcerned, like he was just about to jaunt through a meadow all twee like. That piece of shit. Eivor was going to enjoy putting the fear of the old gods in him.

They started side by side, with Hytham raising his hand in the air. “One,” Hytham counted, “two, three…” The muscles in Eivor’s legs were swollen, ready to propel her forward. God, but how she relished in that anticipation, in the not-so-healthy spirit of competition. “Go!”

Eivor nearly did not hear him; she was already running. Her trainers made a satisfying, rubbery sound as her feet hit the ground. If she had been her younger, less confident self, Eivor would have glanced aside to see if Basim was gaining on her. But now she didn’t give a pig’s fart; she knew she was fast and strong, not because she was cocky, but because she was sure of her own damn worth.

Eivor’s mind emptied of thought; she was but a body, eyes trained on her destination, legs extending and pushing on the concrete to take her there. The small tenement building had a stairway built at the side. She did not head in that direction; it would have been far too easy. Instead, Eivor made for a couple of large waste containers. With a slight huff, she launched herself on top of one, her arms burning deliciously from the effort. 

She could not help but grin. This was the life. The wind in her hair, cool against her shaved sides. The adrenaline, coursing through her veins like liquid fire. Her muscles straining from exertion, reminding her that she was gloriously alive. 

For a moment, splendid and shining, she was not Eivor; she was not that disappointment of a daughter, the spurned lover with so many failed relationships, the unlucky idiot going from shitty job to shitty job. For a moment, nothing else mattered but the race. 

For a moment, Eivor just existed, untethered, free from earthly worries.

Her destination was close in sight. Eivor just had to jump from the roof where she was currently running to the next one. It was only a slight gap. Eivor’s cocky kid self would have laughed and leapt over without a second thought.

God, it felt good not to think about all the shit going on in her life, not to waste any brain juice on things like family problems or paying the rent or the fact that, even after she’d been given all the right signals, Eivor still couldn’t make a move on Randvi, like she still had weird hold-ups about her being Sigurd’s ex, like she ought to feel ashamed for betraying her brother after the fucking stunt he’d pulled, like she had to punish herself for someone else’s mistakes and—

Eivor’s feet slipped from under her.

She still made her jump—but it wouldn’t be enough, she wouldn’t make it. Eivor hit the other wall, the collision knocking the wind out of her lungs. Still, she managed to grab the ledge in one last desperate motion. From below, she could hear Hytham crying out her name. Fuck. The blood was pounding in her ears. She was not so high up—but in her fall she could still break a leg. Or two. Goddammit. She could almost hear Sigurd chuckling and saying, again, Eivor? When will you stop getting into trouble, sister? He would always say it in a tone that truly meant, do I have to save you? Again? Her eyes burned from the shame.

And the worst of it would be that Basim would end up winning the race, that smarmy little—

“Eivor!” said a voice above her head. She looked up, blinking—and not believing her eyes. Basim was extending a hand to her. “Come on! I’ll lift you!”

She took it, mutely, and the man struggled to draw her up. He was fast, true enough, but not very strong, it seemed. Basim huffed and panted as Eivor found solid ground beneath her feet. The laundry line was but a few paces away. Basim could have left her to rot; he could have easily won and gone back to laugh at her face. But he hadn’t.

“Are you alright, Eivor?” Basim said, after regaining his breath. His damned grin was gone, finally wiped from that smug face of his. “Are you hurt?”

She glanced over to the laundry line. “The race…”

His smile returned, though this time it was softer than usual, more genuine. “We can finish together. Come.”

They hobbled toward their destination. As they reached it, Basim clapped Eivor on the shoulder. She did not even think to glare at him in response.

“Congratulations!” he told her. “You did well, for a first timer. Why, you have natural talent, my friend. Only…” A hint of his usual mischievousness showed in his dark eyes for a moment, making Eivor scowl. “Keep your mind unclouded, Eivor. This isn’t a hobby where one can afford to make mistakes, you know.”

Not so long ago, Eivor would have snapped at him for being such a condescending prick. But now… she thought back to a childhood filled with resentment, she remembered hours spent in detention because she’d gotten in trouble yet again, she recalled years of being deemed a troubled child because no adult around her seemed willing to listen while she screamed and screamed to get their attention. 

But Eivor wasn’t that child anymore. She understood the difficulties her mother had faced in the wake of her father’s death. And she knew Styrbjorn had done his best even if sometimes it hadn’t felt that way. Eivor was tired of being angry—of being that small girl crying and bleeding on the ice, seeing her father’s corpse still holding the wheel in that twisted wreck of a car, one blue eye opened wide and unseeing.

So instead, Eivor swallowed her pride and said, ruefully, “I know. I just have a lot on my mind, these days. Hytham warned me. I should have listened to him.”

Basim nodded. “Quite understandable. You’ll do better next time, I’m sure.”

Poor Hytham was wringing his hands together by the time they returned to him. “Eivor, I’m so sorry!” he said, running over to her. “This was a bad idea, I shouldn’t have—”

Eivor winked at him, playfully punching him on the shoulder. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, pretty boy. I fully take responsibility for my shitty choices in life. Wouldn’t be fun anyway, right?”

Basim nodded as if these were very wise words. Hytham only sighed in exasperation. Then, his face slackened with surprise.

“Oh, God, the cops!” he called. “There’s a car, just over there, at the other end of the park, it’s—”

Basim met Eivor’s gaze. She mirrored his smug grin—and took off. Basim ran right alongside her, graceful as a street cat.

“Hey, wait!” Hytham cried out from behind. “Guys, guys, wait for me!”

Chapter Text

Eivor anxiously tapped her foot as she waited for the door to Valka’s home to open. It was a bright and early summer morning, birds chirping in the trees, people and pooches walking in the streets. Still, Eivor felt uneasy. Her phone seemed heavy in her pocket, reminding her of the reason why she’d set out so early to meet her friend. She did not dare take it out to see if Sigurd had left another of his inane messages.

Fuck. She did not know if she wanted to pummel him or drag him home for a much-needed intervention. Eivor cursed under her breath, looking heavenward. Valka would know what to do. She always did. Hell, she was fully equipped to deal with that sort of mess.

Finally, blessfully, the door swung open. Eivor greeted her friend with an awkward grin, but Valka only raised a brow. She was the picture of witchy elegance with her long, black dress and the lacy shawl draped over her pale shoulders. The only hint of colour on her person was a blue, pink and white flag that was pinned over her heart. Valka was ready for the afternoon, which they would spend together at Pride with the rest of their girls.

But right now Eivor needed her help for something else…

“Eivor,” Valka said, dipping her head, “it’s good to see you.”

“Hey,” Eivor said, “thanks for letting me come. Er, shouldn’t we…”

“Come inside. I’m not quite finished with my mother yet.”

“Got it,” croaked Eivor, following her friend inside the house.

The cottage Valka shared with her mom was small, but warm and inviting. Wide open spaces let in natural light, while a number of potted plants brought life to every room. Eivor had to hide a smile at the sight of the sofa; she’d spent so much time there, watching crappy B horror movies with Valka until the wee hours of the night. This was her second home away from home—and Svala, Valka’s mother, had been like a second mom, fussing over her and listening to her teenage woes without a word of judgment.

The woman was seated in a plush reclining chair, a blanket draped over her knees. Svala’s stare was unfocused, and she kept muttering something in a low droning voice. Eivor’s heart sank at the sight. Svala had been a beloved pillar of the community as the owner of the local pharmacy. Her illness had robbed her of a bright, curious mind—and, Eivor feared, of the fierce love she’d always shown to her one and only daughter.

A woman in a nurse’s garb stood by Svala’s chair, smiling and speaking softly to her. Valka joined her, a frown touching her fair brow.

“Mamma?” she asked Svala. “Eivor is here. You remember my friend Eivor, right?”

Eivor approached, feeling small and stupid as a child. She forced a smile. “Hey, Svala. How's it going?”

The woman did not answer, and Eivor’s spirits plummeted to the pit of her stomach. The nurse, Gudrun, patted Svala’s arm in a sympathetic manner.

“I’ll be going now, Mamma,” continued Valka. “I’ll be back this evening, after supper.”

“Pusen?” Svala suddenly said, eyes regaining a bit of brightness. “Pusen min, where are—”

Valka kneeled before her mother, taking the woman’s hands in her own. “I am here, Mamma. I will go soon, but you will be in good hands with Gudrun here. She will take good care of you.” Valka’s eyes had grown misty. “I will be back soon, Mamma, don’t worry. I promise you.”

She kissed her mother’s bony fingers, then stood on unsteady feet. Svala muttered, “Pusen, pusen,” looking lost and frightened. It seemed to take much willpower on Valka’s part to let go of her mother’s hands.

Gudrun went to comfort her charge. When Svala finally calmed down, the nurse exchanged a few words with Valka. Eivor’s friend was sniffing a little when they both left the house. Eivor patted her shoulder. Still, in the span of a heartbeat, Valka regained her composure, going back to her usual cool goth queen self.

“How is she?” Eivor asked her.

“She was in a good mood today. Sometimes she’s… more agitated. Aggressive, even. It’s like…”

“She’s a different person?” Eivor added, mutely. She thought of the reason why she had asked for Valka’s help today—and felt like a total bag of dicks. Her own problems seemed rather inconsequential in comparison to the hell Valka was currently going through.

Valka nodded, her expression grim. “I know it’s not her, it’s her illness. It’s starting to get too much to handle. Soon, I’ll have to…”

“Find some nice place for her, yeah,” said Eivor dully. Valka remained silent, but Eivor could see the telltale furrow forming on her brow. With Svala in a nursing home, Valka could surely not pay the expenses on the house where she’d grown up, not with a pharmacology student’s (nonexistent) salary. Eivor’s friend would be faced with a terrible dilemma in the near future—and she would potentially have to grieve the loss of her home alongside the loss of her mother.

As Eivor looked at her with sympathy, Valka shook her head and said, “I’d rather not speak of it right now. What is it you needed, Eivor? We’re only going to meet the girls after dinner for the parade, after all. Is there something else?”

Eivor sighed, then motioned at her car. “C’mon. We’ll talk on the way.”

The story escaped Eivor’s mouth in a jumbled mess as she drove them to the café where they would meet Sigurd. Valka remained silent and thoughtful as Eivor told her how Sigurd had started messaging her again a few weeks back.

“I thought you had blocked him,” Valka commented, prompting a groan from Eivor.

“I should have!” Eivor exclaimed. “Fuck, but he deserved it. The way he treated Randvi…”

“I know. What did he say?”

Eivor resisted the urge to bang her head on the steering wheel. “At first, he just said he missed me, and… yeah, that got to me, right? He fucked up, but he’s still my brother, you know? I miss him too.”

“Go on.”

“Then his messages started to get weird. He started to ask me what I thought about the world, the deeper meaning of life. He was like, what if we all have a purpose here? What if we’re special—one cut above other people?”

To her credit, Valka responded to these outlandish words with only a raised eyebrow. “Strange. He’s never been the spiritual or religious type.”

“I know!” said Eivor. “That’s why I’m freaking out so much! And now he says he wants to introduce me to a friend of his. A friend who ‘opened his eyes to the truth of the world’ or some other bullcrap. I did a background check on her: lady’s part of some group called the ‘Instruments of the First Will’. Sigurd joined a fucking cult… probably just ‘cause he wants to bang some weird chick! You see why this is so messed up?”

Valka looked at her phone for a moment, then frowned. “From their website, it seems like a cult alright. ‘Reclaiming the cult of the old gods’, ‘unlocking one’s true potential’, ‘understanding past selves to guide us toward a better future’... this isn’t treading new ground, really. Yet I’ve never heard of them.”

“We gotta stop Sigurd before they force him to do some weird culty shit. Like, what the fuck do they mean by ‘finding one’s true self by the gift of pain’?”

“Eivor,” Valka said, looking at her with a gentler expression, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink. This will be up to Sigurd to decide, not us.”

Eivor tightened her hands around the wheel; she couldn’t say anything to that. She almost wanted to turn back, to leave Sigurd to deal with his own shit. Yet her heart twinged at the thought. Eivor would have said, not that long ago, that he had burned all bridges with her when he’d made the brilliant idea of sticking his dick somewhere it shouldn’t have gone. But now that he needed her help, she found herself rushing to lend him a hand—as he had done so often in their childhood, acting as her protector on so many occasions.

Finally, she sighed, moving to park the car in a vacant spot. “Alright,” she conceded. “But I’m not going to let this go without a fight, you hear me?”

Valka gave a sly, slight smile. “That’s my girl.”

The café was unlike any place Sigurd would usually visit; with its subdued atmosphere and oldie-fartsy kind of woodwork, it seemed more like a hangout for caffeine-addicted university students and snotty bougies. Indeed, Sigurd—with his Viking-inspired haircut and buff, tattooed arm—stood out like a sore thumb among the hipsters and the nerds.

But then again, so did his date.

The woman—Eivor remembered her name was Fulke—had short blond hair styled in a bowlcut, of all bloody things. She was wearing black leather trousers and a jacket covered in studs and buckles; she wouldn’t have looked out of place in a rave. Joan of Arc by the way of the Matrix. Or a BDSM club. Eivor had to fight to keep herself from laughing at the incongruity.

“Eivor!” Sigurd exclaimed, making to embrace her with his only remaining arm. Eivor realised just how much she had missed his hugs as he crushed her against his chest. When they parted, Sigurd grinned and patted her on the back, “Dammit, sister, it’s good to see your grim mug again!”

Eivor smirked. “Who are you calling ugly, arse-chin?”

Sigurd laughed, motioning to his companion. “I told you about Fulke, yeah? She was eager to meet you.”

Eivor glanced over to the woman, feeling her smile grow cold. Yeah, I bet she was. “Yeah. Nice to meet you.”

“Sigurd talked a lot about you,” said Fulke. “I’m glad to finally make your acquaintance, Eivor.” She had a slight accent, one Eivor couldn’t quite place. The woman then turned to Valka, sizing her up, one goth to another. Eivor nearly snorted at that; her friend was pint-sized, yet she had more presence in her pinky that this lunatic had in the whole of her body. “Who’s your friend?”

Valka smiled politely and extended her hand—which was more than Eivor would have done, to be honest. “I’m Valka, a friend of Eivor’s. She talked to me about your… faith, and I was interested to know more about it.”

A spark of interest flashed in Fulke’s dead fish eyes. “Is that so?”

“Then, come on!” said Sigurd. “Let’s go order something, I’m starving.”

Two baristas greeted them at the counter: one gangly young man with a smattering of freckles over his face, and a cute, short-haired person with a nose ring. Once Eivor and the others had taken their orders, they sat in a more secluded section of the café, to have a little bit of privacy.

“Eivor, Eivor, Eivor,” Sigurd said when they had all taken their places. “God, how long has it been, sister? Too long, that’s for sure!”

And whose fault is that? Eivor thought, temper flaring. “How have you been?” she said instead.

“I’m doing better, yeah,” Sigurd replied, with a somewhat wistful expression. Then he grinned at Valka. “I wasn’t expecting you to come as well, old friend.”

“I was feeling nostalgic,” said Valka. She glanced over to Fulke. “And curious.”

“Oh, I have a feeling you two would get along,” said Sigurd with a laugh. “You’re both, er…” The two women looked at him. Valka’s expression was cool and composed, as always, but Eivor expected that she longed to say, ‘Are you kidding me right now…?’ Sigurd coughed awkwardly, before adding, “You’re, well, the spiritual sort, is what I mean… it’s… it’s inspiring, really.”

Since when Sigurd had been interested in the spiritual stuff? Fuck, this chick had messed him good. Was she that good in bed? Eivor stifled a grimace at the thought. Now, that was a cursed image if there ever was one…

“Eivor told me you are a follower of…” Valka made as if she was looking for the word. “What was it called again?”

“We are the Instruments of the First Will,” Fulke said. Bitch looked proud. And a bit scary. Deep bags encircled her eyes, which made her piercing gaze even more unsettling. Did she truly believe the bullshit she was peddling? If not, then she was a damn good actress.

“Sigurd called you spiritual,” Fulke said to Valka. “What faith do you follow?”

“I’m a believer of Ásatrú,” Valka explained. At Fulke’s blank look, she added, “Forn Sed. The Old Faith.”

“Ah,” said Fulke, “a neopagan. We have much in common then.”

The slightest frown touched Valka’s brow; Eivor doubted anyone but her had seen this subtle mark of disdain. Valka managed a mild smile—one that did not reach her eyes, however. “This is why I wanted to speak with you, yes. I’ve read… a lot about your organisation on the way here. Finding new ways to reinvent old faiths is an interesting topic, I think.”

Fulke nodded. “Bridging the past to the present, yes. Not many are aware, but we walk in the footsteps of the Ancients.”

Jesus Fuckin’ Christ. How the hell did Valka manage to listen to that claptrap and keep a straight face? Eivor felt like she was about to piss herself from bottling in her laughter.

“There are many examples of the gods walking among mortals in the sagas, yes,” Valka said in a level tone.

“And now we find traces of them in our own selves,” said Fulke, turning to Sigurd with an overly proud expression. “I see Tyr’s fairness and strength in Sigurd when he tells me of his life experience, for one.”

Eivor stared at her. Is she for real? Did she pick up the one god missing a limb because… Fuck, but she wanted to throw up. Or to throw hands. Honestly, BDSM Bowlcut Lady had gone to unsettling weirdo to fucking evilest bitch ever in the span of a heartbeat.

“By suffering, one awakens to their true selves,” Fulke said. “By focusing on the pain, one’s eyes are opened to the truth of our divine lineage. Such are the main tenets of our faith.”

“You see, Eivor?” Sigurd said. “All this shit that’s happened to us… it all has a purpose.”

A purpose. It was fine that Sigurd had suffered—that his life had spiralled out of control after that motorcycle accident where he’d lost an arm—because all of it led to some bullshit greater purpose. All the painful stuff they had gone through their lives—Eivor’s father dying in front of his helpless daughter, Valka’s mother losing her own damn mind—Fulke and the rest of these arseholes all saw it as some kind of inspirational bullshit, like a story from a feel-good movie where people walked away from their trauma with a big, beatific smile. Shit, but that was evil.

“Listen, you,” Eivor growled, half-rising from her chair, “I dunno what the hell my brother sees in that bullcrap of yours, but—”

“Eivor!” Sigurd exclaimed, while Valka sighed, rubbing her temple.

Fulke, however, only nodded, as if this was expected. “Yes, yes… you have a touch of Thor about you, I see. Or… Sigurd told me you’re not the kind to stay in one place for long. He said that you have a wanderer’s soul.” She made a humming sound, meeting Eivor’s glare head-on. “Odin, perhaps?”

Eivor’s hand tightened into a fist. Valka tugged at her sleeve, telling her, “Sit down, Eivor. This isn’t the place.”

Eivor cast about a glance. The few patrons sitting around were staring at her; one woman had her mouth puckered in a look of disapproval. The two baristas were frozen on their spot. Nose Ring had lost their smile. Freckles stopped wiping the mug he’d been cleaning. Eivor’s face grew hot. Fuck. She thought she’d grown better at this. That she’d grown past erupting into petty rages. Again she was proved wrong.

“Sorry,” Eivor muttered, getting back into her chair. She wanted to crawl into that fine wooden floor—or to punch the daylight out of that cultist freak. Her expression was a deal too smug-looking for Eivor’s taste right now.

Sigurd shook his head. “Eivor, Eivor… you never change, do you? My god, but what are we going to do with you, sister?”

If Valka hadn’t been holding Eivor’s wrist under the table, that fist would have come flying for Sigurd’s face. Instead, Eivor stared at him, fuming. She was about to ask Valka to leave these two pisspots to their mind games when her friend took out her phone. Looking at the screen, Valka said, “Twenty-three.”

Fulke’s brow furrowed. Sigurd blinked awkwardly, uttering, “Wh-What?”

“Lawsuits,” continued Valka. “In the last five years, there have been twenty-three lawsuits against members of the Instruments.”

“Which have been withdrawn,” Fulke said, eyes cold.

Valka did not look at her; she continued to scroll down her phone. “In five cases, there have been rumours of plaintiffs being harassed. Three concerned former members who claim to have been subjected to treatments that worsened their mental health. Two journalists investigating the organisation were laid off from their jobs recently, reasons unknown. One woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted by the mentor assigned to her.”

Sigurd’s face had gone bone white. “Where… where are you getting all this?”

“I hang out with heathens and neopagans,” Valka said with a shrug. She showed her phone to Sigurd; Eivor saw that she had been looking at a Discord server. “They did the research for me while we were speaking. My friends are quite invested in uncovering frauds for the blight they are, you know. They give pagans a bad name.” She fixed a pair of cold blue eyes on Fulke, and the latter flinched. “People like you disgust me. You prey on the vulnerable to fatten your pockets. Worse, you do it by misusing their faith.” Her nostrils flared. God, but Eivor had rarely seen her so wound up. She grinned widely, feeling like a little kid in a candy store. “I’ve half a mind to let Eivor beat the crap out of you,” Valka continued, “but she’s my friend, and I wouldn’t want her to be in trouble for the likes of you. So piss off, and never show your face again.”

Fulke’s face was hard and cold as marble. She then turned to Sigurd. “Are you really going to let her speak to me like that?”

Sigurd cursed, surging from his seat. Face red, he opened his mouth to say something, but Valka looked at him, and he hesitated, to Eivor’s great surprise. 

“We only want the best for you,” Valka said, the worry evident in her voice. “We’re your friends, Sigurd. Don’t shut us out. Please.”

“Er, excuse me?”

Eivor startled, looking aside. Nose Ring had left the counter, and they were wringing out their hands next to her. Behind them, various clients of the café were glaring in their direction.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” the poor barista said, “but you’re disturbing the other customers. I’ll have to ask you to leave, please.”

Fulke threw them an absolutely chilling glare, but Valka smiled and said, “Of course. We’re sorry for the trouble.”

As they exited the café, Fulke turned to Sigurd and said, “I’ll call you soon. Goodbye, Sigurd.” She hadn’t even looked at Eivor and Valka. Before Sigurd could utter a sound, Ms. Belts ‘n Buckles turned on her heel, crisply walking away. 

Eivor whistled as she went. “Now there’s a bag of crazies if I ever saw one.”

“Eivor,” Sigurd warned in a growl.

Valka held up a hand, silencing him. “We’re late for our meet-up with the girls, Eivor. We should get going.”

“Yeah,” Sigurd said, sounding like a fucking petulant brat, “you should go.”

Hell. Was he that pissed that Eivor had ruined his booty call? Hadn’t he heard the golden rule of not putting your dick in crazy? Again she was seized with the urge to flip him the bird and blithely walk away. Maybe that’s all he deserved.

“Well, I’m off then,” said Valka. She looked at Eivor, her gaze insistent. “I can get there by walking, Eivor. No need to trouble yourself on my behalf. You can join us later, if you want. I’m sure the girls won’t mind.”

Eivor’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah. See you later, Val.”

She was left on the pavement with a glowering Sigurd. Great. Just what she needed. She was sorely tempted to let him hang out to dry; after all, this was a mess of his own doing. Eivor sighed, jamming her hands in the pockets of her jeans.

“C’mon, you nitwit,” she said. “Let’s find somewhere we can talk in peace.”

“Why should I go anywhere with you?”

God, but she wanted to throttle him. That wrung a smile out of her. Same as usual, then. “‘Cause you’re my idiot brother, and I’m your stupid sister—and unlike that psycho friend of yours, I actually care about your wellbeing, you git.”

She was relieved when he agreed to follow her to a nearby park. They sat on a bench, watching their surroundings for a moment: the park was popular with women jogging in tight yoga shorts, people walking their dogs, and fat squirrels… squirrelling about. Sigurd remained stubbornly silent. Not that Eivor was inclined to fill in the silence; two could play that petty game. Valka would have rolled her eyes if she had seen them. And Randvi… Eivor’s stomach twisted. She did not dare imagine what Randvi would have said if she had caught them moping like a pair of misbehaving children. Really, Eivor, she could almost hear Randvi say. That’s not very sexy of you…

It was this thought more than anything that drove her to say, “Hey, mate, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for everything to go… so badly.”

Sigurd snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

Was she really that good of a lay? Eivor almost asked. At the last moment, she schooled herself and said, “Did you believe all that stuff she told you? About you being like… some weird avatar of the god Tyr or something.”

“Does it matter anymore?” Sigurd said, wearily. “Valka was right. It was too good to be true—and I fell for it like a total dumbarse.”

“Valka also said she targeted you because you were in a vulnerable position,” Eivor reminded him. “These people are good—hell, they’re professionals. They know what they’re doing.”

Sigurd passed a hand over his face. “You don’t have to twist the knife in the wound, Eivor. I know I’m a fuckup. It was just good to pretend that I could be anything else for a while. That I’m more than the disappointment of a son who won’t take over Daddy’s company.” He signed, before adding, “That I’m more than the piece of shit fiancé who—”

Again, Eivor felt a flare of that familiar temper. “Who fucking cheated on the woman he was supposed to marry?” Was he truly trying to play up that card for sympathy? Maybe he deserved that punch, after all.

Sigurd muttered something, evading her gaze.

“What?” Eivor challenged. “If you’ve got something to say, then speak up.”

After what felt like an eternity, Sigurd croaked, “We’d already broken up when that happened.”

“…did Randvi know about that?” Eivor growled, earning herself a wince on his part. Oh, but how she enjoyed prodding into that metaphorical wound. Prat deserved it.

“Goddammit, Eivor!” Sigurd exclaimed, surging to his feet. “You don’t know what happened, so get off that high horse, will you?”

She lifted her chin, goading him. “Yeah? So tell me, dickhead. Tell me why I shouldn’t have a go at you right here and now.”

Sigurd swore, kicking at the ground. For a while, they glared at each other, unwilling to give up ground. Then he slumped beside her, sighing once again. “Ah, fuck it. You deserve to know. We were a bad fit from the start. That’s all.” 

Eivor lifted a brow, unimpressed with that shitty explanation. 

“Alright, alright!” Sigurd said. “You know her dad is a business partner of the old man, right? We thought… we thought that would make them happy, to have the two of us together. We wanted to get them off our arses, you see? Dad kept telling me how to live my life, and I… well, I just wanted to find a way to finally shut him up and do my own thing, yeah? And Randvi…” He shrugged. “I don’t really know why she agreed, in the end. She had her own shit to deal with, but she never really told me what it was about. Ask her if you want to know.”

Eivor nodded. “Go on.”

“And then, there was the accident, and… the whole fucking thing fell apart. I’d been lying to myself. She’d been lying to herself. We were two lonely people thinking we’d have a better go at it as a pair. That’s not really a good foundation for a relationship, yeah? Randvi was the first to realise we were a lost cause—and she decided to break things off.”

“Wait,” said Eivor, “she’s the one who…”

“But as I said, that’s her story to tell.” Sigurd groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Turns out I’m shitty boyfriend material as well as a shitty heir to dear Daddy’s legacy.”

Eivor’s anger dimmed, replaced by a deep sense of familiar weariness. “That’s why you were willing to believe in Fulke’s bullshit. At least to her, you were someone.”

“I was a gullible little bitch, more like. God, but how pathetic can one man be?”

For a moment, Eivor was silent. Then, very quietly, she said, “You’re someone, to me. You’re always been someone. You were someone when I had no one else. You were someone when I needed a friend—a brother.”

Sigurd turned to her, quite suddenly. His eyes seemed a bit misty. “Eivor, I…”

“C’mon, you wet piece of shit,” Eivor said, opening her arms. “I’ve been talking ‘bout my feelings for a while now, and you know how I hate the touchy-feely stuff. Gimme a hug and let’s call this quit, eh?”

He laughed. God, but she had missed his laugh. “Hah! Now you’re the Eivor I remember.”

Chapter Text

Eivor was met with a joyous chaos of colours and noises as she turned the street. The parade was already in full swing: people danced in floats and waved rainbow flags, all to an infectious beat coming out of the car leading the line. Girls held hands with other girls, boys dipped other boys while kissing. Participants everywhere wore their colours proudly; a grinning Eivor gracefully accepted a tiny pink, yellow and blue pin from a pretty boy with purple hair, putting it over her heart. Then she set out to find her pack, those lovable idiots she’d grown to cherish and call her own.

Birna was the easiest to spot; she was sitting on the shoulders of a burly and moustachioed leather daddy, shouting raucously as she swung a truly enormous Lesbian Pride Flag. In fact, the whole of her outfit featured orange and pinkish hues, and her cheeks were painted the same colours. Next to them were the rest of Eivor’s friends: Soma, Valka and Randvi. The latter’s face brightened as she spotted Eivor, waving at her. Dammit. Seeing that smile, Eivor felt butterflies fluttering in her stomach. Recalling how her conversation with Sigurd had ended did not help. Eivor swallowed deeply, and she jammed her hands into her pockets, feigning nonchalance as she made her way toward her friends.

Birna jumped to the ground, coming to meet her. “You’re late!” she said, grabbing Eivor into a headlock. As the latter grumbled and ineffectively tried to pry herself free, Birna added, “Where have you been, Wolf-Kissed?”

Valka pointedly glanced at Randvi. Eivor felt her stomach twist; she hadn’t told her she would meet with Sigurd before coming here. She opened her mouth, fumbling for words.

“We had some errands,” Valka cut her off, saving Eivor’s arse, as always. “Eivor told me she’d catch up with us later on—and here she is.”

“Is your cousin coming to join us too?” asked Soma. “Ceolbert?”

Eivor shook her head. “Lad’s not a fan of crowds. And he still isn’t sure if he wants to come.” Poor boy was drowned in worries these days; he was starting uni this semester, in a prestigious engineering program. Eivor knew he was going to ace all of his classes, as he had always done, but humble Bertie had always been an anxious sort, striving for perfection in everything he undertook.

“Why wouldn’t he?” said Birna. “We’re a welcoming lot, we are!”

“He’s still figuring himself out, give him time,” said Eivor. At these words, Soma nodded sagely. Not that long ago, she had been the one in that position. This was the first Pride in which she’d agreed to join the rest of the girls. Eivor was glad her friend had finally found herself; she had gone through a long and difficult road to self-discovery.

After a while, Valka said, “We should get going, shouldn’t we? We’re blocking the way.”

“We should,” Randvi conceded. She seemed curious, and from the look in her eyes, she would surely ask for details about Eivor’s ‘errand’ later on. Eivor stifled a sigh; she could not put off that conversation forever, could she? Again she remembered Sigurd’s smile. I’m not surprised, really, he had told her. Why don’t you tell her how you feel? It wouldn’t be my place to judge, after all.

Stupid git. Eivor would almost have preferred it if he'd gotten angry at her confession rather than give his blessing.

“Come on, then!” said Birna. “Let’s go, ladies!”

They blended among the crowd, and Eivor’s uneasiness soon melted away, replaced by infectious joy. There were old friends and new faces alike around her, a glorious variety of people bearing all the colours of the rainbow. Wide-eyed twinks rubbed shoulders with wise old biker butches. A posse of drag queens scuttled by, towering over everyone with their high heels and flashy headdresses. By the pavement, passersby waved and took pictures; Eivor even posed and flexed for a pair of giggling girls. Randvi rolled her eyes in a good-natured manner when Eivor turned to her, grinning and bouncing her brows.

As the afternoon went by, they encountered familiar faces. Eivor’s ex, flame-haired Ciara, greeted her with a hug—and a lascivious look (which was a welcome boost to the ego, Eivor had to admit). She also sent a smile Birna’s way. As Eivor quirked a brow at her, Birna coughed, explaining, “Ah, well… we broke up a few weeks back. It was nice. Really, really nice. But she wasn’t… we weren’t…”

Eivor patted her on the back. “I get it. You weren’t on the same page relationship-wise.”

“Yeah, I’m not saying she wasn’t a great lay, she was, but…” Birna was smiling, but there was a wistfulness to her eyes. She shot a subtle glance to Soma. For many years she had carried a torch for her oldest friend—but sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. On one cheek, Soma bore the colours of asexual pride; on the other were the green, grey and black of the aromantic flag. Birna might have been crass, and she might have acted as if she was driven by nothing but baser instincts, but in truth Eivor knew that she longed for love, true love. Eivor wrapped one arm around her friend’s shoulders, giving her a squeeze. She hoped Birna would find it one day; girl deserved it after all the heartbreak she had suffered.

Not long after, Eivor spied a pair walking shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing a pride flag they wore like a cape. She grinned, breaking into a run to clap the fairer-haired man on the back. Erke wheezed, before turning to face her.

“Eivor!” he exclaimed, as she crushed him into a hug. Eivor then turned to his partner, doing the same. Stowe chuckled, awkwardly patting her on the back.

“I’d thought I’d see the two of you today!” Eivor said. “Damn, but it’s been far too long. How have you two been?”

Erke grinned, showing his left hand. A silver band gleamed around his ring finger. By then, the rest of the group had caught up with them. Birna, being a romantic at heart, grinned and whooped at the sight. Valka offered her warm congratulations, while Randvi asked about the details of the upcoming ceremony. Eivor sadly wondered if she was thinking of her own engagement, broken after Sigurd’s, ah, ‘indiscretions’. If so, then Randvi did not show it; she smiled from ear to ear, wholly happy for their friends.

Erke and Stowe joined them for the rest of the day. Once the parade was over, they all headed to their favourite pub for a well-deserved pint. When they were all served, Birna enthusiastically called for a toast.

“To all of my favourite bitches!” she said, before adding, for Erke and Stowe’s benefit, “That includes you two idiots as well, mind.”

“To friendship,” said Soma, raising her drink.

“To love!” Birna exclaimed, making Erke cheer—and Stowe hide his face with one hand. The man did not enjoy having people’s attention upon him.

“Here, here,” said Valka.

“To love and friendship,” Eivor agreed. Randvi was looking at her from the side. Eivor sipped her Guinness, feeling her cheeks heating up.

Time in good company was time well-spent. Still, while her friends were drunkenly exchanging barbs (sadly, Eivor herself had to remain sober to drive Valka home), Eivor absentmindedly checked her phone. Hunwald seemed to be streaming something on his Twitch channel. “Tonight I’ll be playing Baldur’s Gate 3!” he announced, to the great excitement of his comment section. Eivor watched him for a while, eventually writing, “That buff devil lady seems promising.” At her words, Hunwald brightened up on screen, saying, “Oh yes, Karlach is definitely best girl!” His watchers went wild in the chat channel, expressing their admiration of ‘Mama K’ over and over again.

Eivor snorted, switching to Instagram. Oswald had uploaded something to his page, it seemed; he and Valdis were smiling and standing cheek-to-cheek, with a beautiful, verdant scenery stretching behind them. “Top of Mount Snowdon together!” said the caption beneath the picture. On Valdis’s account, there was another photo, of a happy Oswald posing beside a red wagon. “He really loved taking the train to the top,” wrote Valdis. Eivor could imagine all too well the fond amusement her friend had felt at the sight.

The evening was well-spent (and Eivor’s friends were well on their way to becoming totally wasted) when Valka announced, “I should be going. My mother needs me.”

Eivor nodded. She’d had only one drink, knowing that she would have to play designated driver. Birna and Erke tried to get them to stay. “The party’s just started!” said the latter, while Birna exclaimed, “Aw, c’mon, we’ve got an engagement to celebrate!”

Those were excellent arguments, but Eivor knew Svala must have been anxiously waiting for her daughter. Valka was probably also quite worried about her mother. Eivor was surprised, however, when Randvi stood as well.

“I should go too,” she said. “I have to wake up early for work tomorrow.” 

Tonight Randvi had told them at length of her new job; she was the assistant of a LGBT-friendly candidate who wished to win local elections. Eivor felt almost self-conscious. She had started to work for two old family friends, Hjorr and Ljufvina, who owned a construction company specialised in the restoration of historical buildings. Still, it wasn’t the most well-paid gig. Randvi, for her part, was very much on her way to become Someone with a capital S. Evidently, they would make a rather odd pair—if Randvi was still interested, that is, Eivor thought with a pang.

“Aw, really?” said Birna, slumping over the table. “Man, you’re all so boring and respectable now. Even Eivor. You used to be wild, Wolf-Kissed.”

“Seems like I’ve been tamed at long last,” Eivor answered, with a sidelong glance to Randvi. She was glad to hear a chuckle from the latter.

“Would you be so kind as to give me a lift home as well?” Randvi asked, twirling a strand of red hair around her finger. Ah, hell. She was being all coy and playful. Lady was truly a fine strategist at heart.

“Of course I will,” Eivor muttered, cheeks flushing. “Anything for you, Red.”

Eivor drove Randvi to her flat after getting Valka home. The ride was unusually silent; neither of them knew what to say, it seemed. Sigurd’s words kept playing on loop in Eivor’s mind, which was not helping her predicament.

“I knew you liked her,” Sigurd had said, shaking his head. “Hell, I think I’ve always suspected, even when we were together. You’ve never been the subtle sort, after all.”

“You’re… you’re not mad?” Eivor had replied.

Sigurd had sighed. He’d looked old and weary as he had added, “I should be, shouldn’t I? Really, I should be mad as hell that you meant to steal my girl. But… I didn’t treat her right. I didn’t treat you right. Why should any of you listen to what I have to say?”

“We care about you, Sigurd.” As he had lifted one brow, Eivor had muttered, “Well, I care.”

In the end, her brother had laughed. “I’m not surprised, really. Why don’t you tell her how you feel? It wouldn’t be my place to judge, after all.”

Eivor’s heart hammered in her chest at the memory. Sigurd didn’t care if she got with Randvi. Hell, he was happy for her—for them. He’d grown so much in that time Eivor had been a stubborn arse who kept refusing to speak to him—and she had changed too, for the better. She wasn’t the angry child who needed him to be led out of the darkness anymore; she had so many others around her, dear friends who had taught her so much. She performed with her band on the regular, and the Raven Feeders were becoming a household name in the underground punk community. She still played Dungeons and Dragons every Monday, joking and laughing alongside her sweet nerdy boys. And she could now easily outrun both Basim and Hytham whenever they practised their parkour skills, finding freedom in the thrill of the race.

Yes, Eivor was no longer that lonely little girl who had met—and escaped—Death on that cold winter night. After all these years, she had finally found peace—among her pack, her people.

Eivor stopped the car in front of Randvi’s tenement building. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. God, her hands were sweaty. She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. How pathetic was she, unable to flirt with a pretty girl? Birna would have laughed at that sorry sight.

Finally, Randvi murmured, “Would you… would you like to come up for a cup of coffee?” To Eivor’s surprise, she sounded nervous. Had her cheeks darkened in a blush? No, that couldn’t be right.

“‘Kay,” Eivor blurted out, heart thumping in her ears.

They walked in silence to Randvi’s door. Again, Eivor was shocked to see her friend fumbling to find her keys. She remained quiet as she followed Randvi inside her flat. It was small, with sparse furniture. Still, Eivor recognised Randvi’s homely touch in every corner. Pictures and paintings hung on the walls; Eivor knew all too well who were the happy red-headed people smiling at her from every photograph. The portraits and landscapes brightening the flat also bore a familiar signature; Thora, Randvi’s sister, had painted them all.

“She’s good,” Eivor commented, as she examined one of them more closely. It depicted a snowy fjord hidden in mist. Eivor’s heart twinged with homesickness at the sight.

Randvi laughed. “She’s got all the artistic talent in the family. Meanwhile, I couldn’t draw a straight line even if I wanted to.”

For a moment, she busied herself in the kitchen. Eivor watched her, still tongue-tied. Seeing Randvi in this domestic setting, hair unbound and cascading over her shoulders, it made Eivor think about, well, certain things. She pictured waking every day to a lovely face and a lovelier smile. Would their mornings smell of coffee and fresh toast? How sweet it would be, to steal some quick kisses before rushing off to work? Eivor’s cheeks coloured again. Such mundane sights she’d just imagined… but oh God, how she longed for these moments. How she wished to share them with Randvi—to share this ordinary life of hers with someone she loved.

“Randvi,” Eivor croaked, finally finding her voice, “Sigurd told me that…”

Randvi hovered in the doorway, coffee mugs in hands. Her mouth tightened slightly. “Sigurd told you what?”

Eivor waited until Randvi had put down the mugs on the table. “He said you had already broken up with him when he slept with that girl. Is that… is that true?”

Randvi sighed and sat down. Circled the top of her mug with one finger. “It is.”

“Then… then why did you—”

An ugly laugh escaped Randvi’s mouth. “I was hurt. I was sad. And I was angry. It felt good, to be petty, to let everyone think I was the injured party in that whole mess. I didn’t care that it made Sigurd look bad.” She looked at Eivor, eyes filled with weariness. “I’m not perfect, Eivor. I messed up—and Sigurd paid the price for my mistake.”

“No, he didn’t—” Eivor began, hoarsely.

“Eivor, listen. I know you want to put me on a pedestal. I won’t say I’m not flattered that you think so highly of me. But I spent six years of my life with someone who didn’t know my true self, warts and all. I don’t want that again. I need to know if you’re willing to accept the bad along with the good. If you’re willing to accept that we’ll have some downs along with our ups. Because love is not the smooth and perfect thing that all the stories have made it out to be. I need to be sure, Eivor.”

Of course, Eivor wanted to blurt out, but she kept her mouth shut. That was her infatuation speaking; that was her stupid horny self, which was shouting at her to drag the perfect woman sitting before her back to bed to make her scream. But that was not what Randvi wanted—at least, not all of it. Randvi wanted the smell of coffee in the morning and kisses before work as well. She wanted love—beautiful and ugly and perfect love.

Finally, Eivor nodded, throat tight with emotion. “That’s what I want, too. I want you. All of you, warts and all.” She coughed awkwardly. “That’s, er, meant as a figure of speech, by the way. I don’t think you really have—”

Randvi laughed. Oh, how Eivor loved that sound. If she could hear it the rest of her life, then she knew she’d die with a smile upon her face. She would have lived a life worth living.

“Oh, you,” Randvi said as she stood up. She touched Eivor’s cheek in a light caress that made the blood in Eivor’s veins sing. “You always act so cheeky, but in truth you’re so easy to fluster. It’s really, really cute.”

Eivor cupped her face as well. Randvi’s skin was smooth; was it that silky soft everywhere, Eivor wondered? She longed to find out. 

“I’m gonna make a confession,” Eivor said, pitching her voice lower. Randvi’s eyes widened slightly, and she gasped. Success, Eivor thought, stifling a smirk. “You’re the only one who ever flustered me, Red. You’re that good.”

Randvi’s eyes gleamed playfully. “You could stay the night, if you want. I could show you what other things I’m good at.”

In response, Eivor brought their faces closer. Their kiss was soft, almost chaste. It still sent sparks across her skin. The two grinned as they separated. Without missing a beat, Randvi launched herself at Eivor again, this time for a deeper, hungrier kiss. Eivor brought their bodies close, prompting a delightful little sound on Randvi’s part. She lifted her off the ground, making her twirl. Randvi laughed again as Eivor covered her neck in kisses.

Needless to say, the coffee remained on the table, cold and undrunk, for the remainder of the night.