Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“The organization Ilsa’s and Mary’s visions rendered symbolically,” he said, in his precise dry voice, “has correspondences in the ordinary world. Not proof in the courtroom sense. Not yet. But enough convergence to justify a dedicated response.”
Giovanna added, “The Pretorian Guard has encountered fragments of the same pattern through unrelated channels. Recruitment fronts. Financial anomalies. Certain elite men with a taste for female submission and a practical interest in grids, extraction, and dependency.”
“The Fellowship,” Henrik said.
He looked at me briefly when he said it, and my body gave its familiar humiliating little response to being included by a man’s acknowledgment.
Sven folded his hands on the table.
“The Guard and the Sons of Odin have therefore agreed to a joint initiative based here, at Athena. An intelligence and vision unit.”
Camille, to my left, shifted her weight under the burden of her pregnancy and said, with perfect dryness, “And by intelligence and vision unit, you mean us.”
“Yes,” said Erik. “You and Mary demonstrated great potential when we first made contact with the Guard three years ago. You didn’t see each other in the branches of Yggdrasil, but perhaps that was only because you weren’t looking. We need the benefit of your angle on the vǫlur’s sight.”
“And Lorna,” Aksel went on, smiling at his bed thrall, whose cheeks instantly crimsoned at her master’s attention, “has manifested a talent both for real politics and for a specifically political kind of vǫlva’s perception.”
He touched something on his console and brought up our names, as linked files: Mary O’Toole. Camille Dubois. Lorna Norquist. Ilsa Matthews. Under each appeared biometric summaries, reproductive status, organizational affiliations, and a field marked Vǫlva Capacity, which I found somehow just as humiliating as my nudity.
“You will function together,” Aksel said. “Observed, managed, and where useful deployed in conjunction with our existing channels. The arrangement is experimental. Its strategic value is potentially high.”
Lorna lifted her chin a little. “Function together in what sense?”
It was Matthew who answered, his Greek profile grave in the cold light of the screens.
“In every sense that produces results.”
That could have meant visions. It could have meant fieldwork. It could also have meant exactly what it sounded like, in a world where men arranged women’s bodies for use first and asked theory to catch up later.
Mary went still beside me. Camille gave a tiny exhalation through her nose. I felt my face warm again.
Sven said, “You have all borne children or are bearing them, including Ilsa, who has only just begun her pregnancy. You have all shown capacities the rest of our women do not possess in the same configuration. You are bed thralls, yes. But you are not merely bed thralls. Together, you form something new.”
Henrik’s mouth moved faintly, into a small smile that brought warmth to my chest.
“So we’ve chosen a new name for you.”
There was a pause in which I became acutely conscious of my own skin, my bare feet on the heated floor, the nearness of the other women’s bodies, the men’s composure, the absurdity and inevitability of naming as an act of power.
Then Sven gave us our new designation, one that sent a thrill up my spine as I wondered what it would mean, to us and to the world.
“You will be the Sisters of Freya.”
EPILOGUE
Ilsa
Six months later Henrik surprised me with a trip back to Sicily. I had really begun to show by then. My center of gravity had shifted. My dresses fell differently. Men’s eyes, when they rested on me in public, slid not only to my face and my breasts now but to the swell of my belly, and every such glance reminded me that I carried my master’s child beneath my heart.
I felt slower, yes, and heavier, and easier to tire. But I also felt strangely more integrated. Less divided against myself. The frantic, dissociative quality my desire had once possessed had softened into something denser and more rooted. Submission no longer felt like a dramatic departure from my identity. It felt like one of the forms my identity had always wanted to take.
The surprise of Sicily therefore affected me in two opposite ways at once. On the one hand, I felt instantly girlish with delight. On the other, I felt a solemn little thrill, because I understood at once what it meant to come back here in this condition: rounder, fuller, carrying the proof of what the tree and the bed and Henrik’s body had made of me.
I felt him watching me when we first approached the hidden way through the rock. His hand stayed at my elbow over the trickier footing, protective without fussing. I wore a loose pale dress and flat sandals, my braid over one shoulder, my pendant cool against the top of my chest. The Mediterranean air smelled of salt and sun-struck stone. The sea looked almost indecently blue.