Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) by Joseph Robert Lewis Page A

to another wing of the estate, to a pair of rooms furnished with very large mattresses and very soft blankets. Thora gestured to the rooms in silence, her dark and haunted eyes staring at them each in turn. She looked exhausted, as though she’d been crying all night and day and had only stopped because her body simply couldn’t cry anymore.
    “You’re going to hunt Fenrir.” The apprentice spoke very softly, her eyes straying toward the floor. “You’re going to kill him.”
    Freya nodded.
    “The reavers are victims, you know,” Thora said. “They all are. They were people once. Our people. Our families.”
    Freya nodded again. “I know they were, just like my sister. Did you lose someone to the reavers?”
    Thora nodded and whispered, “Yes, I did. And he didn’t deserve this. None of them did.” Then she pulled her black shawl tightly around her shoulders and strode swiftly down the hall. Freya watched her go, wondering what the other girl had been like before she lost everyone.
    She was probably just like me. Content. Even happy. Looking forward to the future. And now look at her.
    Wren said her goodnights and drew the curtain to her room, and Freya followed Erik into theirs. Starlight spilled through the barred window onto the bed, and thunder rumbled across the sky as the soft patter of icy rain began to fall on the heavy turf roof.
    Freya and her husband shed their clothing, letting their knives and coats and shirts and trousers all slip to the floor in furry, leathery piles. She watched him move to the bed, his bare chest and arms distorted by the shadows, his muscles rippling like a snow lion’s in the night. Erik stretched out on top of the blankets and closed his eyes.
    Freya paused, then untied the tight cotton stay from around her small breasts and let the cloth fall away. She walked slowly onto the mattress and stood over her naked husband as she stared out the window at the storm growling and pouring on the dark city outside. The cold air swirled over her skin and she felt the gooseflesh pricking down her back.
    The black marks inked into her arms seemed to ripple and come alive in the shadows, and she ran her fingers over them. Katja had made them, working the ink into her skin with a single needle, one prick at a time, to create the ancient icons for bears, and elk, and eagles, and snakes, and everything that Freya had ever hunted and killed. And woven around the black animal heads were the runes, the words of strength and faith and health and luck that her sister had given her, years and years ago.
    Warm fingers played on her ankles and she knelt down on Erik, feeling the heat rising from his bare skin as his hands traveled up her legs and belly and breasts. She sighed and closed her eyes as her husband gently massaged her tired muscles, and she felt his thighs begin to rock beneath her. Freya looked down at him, at the faint smile on his lips and the icy blue glimmers of his eyes. She said, “You know, there are times, not often, but sometimes, when I wish I could hear your voice, not much, but just to know what it would sound like. To hear you laugh.”
    He nodded seriously.
    “Or maybe sing?”
    He shook with silent laughter as he plucked at her nipples.
    “Or just… say my name.”
    Erik took one hand back to sign, “Me too. Sometimes.”
    “But back there, tonight.” Freya sighed again as his hands pressed hard into her thighs and buttocks, and he began shifting her down lower onto his hips. “Tonight, back there, I wish you could have spoken for me. Just that one time. Just because… seeing Katja like that was just, you know, I kicked her.”
    Her lip trembled and she felt the corners of her eyes burning. “I kicked her in the head. In the face. I kicked her so hard. I looked at her and it wasn’t her. Not anymore. And I was scared, and I wanted to get out, and I kicked her in the face, and… a part of me wished that she would just die right there.”
    The tears spilled down