Read Online By the Silver Wind by Jess E. Owen - Free Book Online Page A

the Vanir have some courage. My lady, I hope when your son returns, he will repair the damage from all these years, the damage of cowardice and silence.”
    Ragna gazed at her, long, until she realized Eyvin was waiting for an answer. “I hope that too,” she said, and nodded in dismissal.
    “Tyr have mercy on us all,” Eyvin said, turned, gained a running start and flew back to the nesting cliffs.
    For a moment Ragna stood in the falling snow, her gaze drifting to movement that was gryfons traveling to and from the Nightrun River, wandering the nesting cliffs, flying out over the ocean. Her eye settled on the horizon, as it always did, checking each point for sign of gryfon wings.
    Last summer, two gryfons had flown for Shard to seek the exiled Vanir. Eyvin’s first son, Dagr, had flown nightward, seeking his father and any others he could find. A Vanir gryfess, Maja, Halvden’s mother, had flown starward. They had promised to return in spring. There had been no sign, no word in the wind, not a gull or a hint of their return.
    Ragna muttered a curse that was a favorite of Stigr’s, and loped back to the nesting cliffs.

    Sverin’s den was gloomy, though the curtain of snow lent more of a peaceful quality than a grim one, at odds with Ragna’s fierce mood. She landed between Halvden and Vald and trotted forward. “Sverin! I hope you’re pleased. Not one gryfon in this pride will hunt for you.”
    In the corner of her eye Halvden shifted, an ear ticking toward her, but other than that he didn’t move from his post.
    Sverin was in the nest, and shifted to raise his head and look at her for a long, quiet moment. “Nor did I think they would. I’m surprised you did.”
    “I thought perhaps mercy would overcome them.”
    “As it did you? You are a singular gryfess and a queen, daughter of Ragr. Not all are as honor-bound as you.”
    Ragna shook herself of snow and folded her wings, ignoring what might have been a compliment. She didn’t need compliments from him. “Not even your own family? Eyvin herself turned me down.”
    Something flashed in Sverin’s eyes. Whether anger or regret, Ragna couldn’t tell, so severe and tired was his face. “That surprises you?”
    “No. Though she did surprise me by laying some blame on me for not fighting you.”
    Sverin perked his ears. “Now this is something. I wondered too, once. Could you not have raised a rebellion without your son?”
    He appeared honestly curious, but Ragna suspected him of baiting her, of distracting himself from the fact that his own kin wouldn’t take pity on him. She forced her feathers to remain smooth, thinking of all the Vanir whom he’d sent into exile, or those his father had killed. Raise a rebellion indeed. But she would not snap back, she would not argue with him. She would not rise—or sink, rather—to his level.
    “If I could have, the question is long past. I will not dwell on it.”
    He tilted his head just slightly, and she flattened her ears. “Not dwell? How very not-Vanir of you.”
    “You are one to speak of dwelling, Sverin. You won’t even eat a fish .”
    At the entrance, Halvden and Vald shifted, stepping out as far as the ledge would let them, Ragna thought, to give them privacy.
    Slowly Sverin pushed to his feet, and climbed down from the nest to stand in front of her. He had lost significant weight over the winter, and more in the last days. Looking at him, she felt the inverse suffering of the pride—as he diminished, they prospered, even if grief remained.
    “You may have forgotten,” he rumbled, watching her, “but I didn’t kill Baldr.”
    The breath flitted from her chest. Baldr’s laugh, his quick, swooping wings, and his measured voice crowded her memory. Grief and longing and fierce anger thrashed up like a skewered fish in her chest, and she breathed it away. “No, you didn’t. My wrath for you is over other things. As for Baldr, you did nothing at all.”
    “It was war. We were conquering. You