The Apple Throne Read Online Free PDF Page B

seething? Because I told you I couldn’t imagine you without your berserking?”
    He only grunts his acknowledgement.
    “You retained your power, Soren,” I whisper. “But I have lost mine.”
    “What?” He turns around against me, cups my elbows. “What do you mean?”
    I cannot meet his eyes and stare at his smooth chest. A small skid of scars glints at his collarbone. I’ve no idea how he received it, though they look like claw marks. Claws I should have seen. “It’s been eighty-five nights since I’ve dreamed of anything.”
    Silence is the only response, but his fingers tighten on my arms.
    “I am not what I once was,” I continue, trying to sound stronger and more certain than I feel. “I am barren of my power. No dreams, no seething, because I am Idun.”
    “But
why
?” he says, voice scoured dry as a desert. “Why would she do that to you?”
    I shake my head. “
She
did not do it. It’s a consequence of being forgotten, of being pulled out of the fate of the Nine Worlds. I am not connected to it, and so I cannot connect. It is simple.” My voice is terribly thin.
    “No.” Soren transfers his hands to my face. “Astrid, I remember you. You affect my destiny and are connected to it. You must be.”
    “If I was, I would dream of you. I’m not part of the world.”
    He kisses me. Not soft or kind, but to prove something. I hang from it, from his kiss. He wrenches away and sinks to his knees, burying his face against my belly. “Astrid, you’re a part of
my
world,” he says, so low, so embarrassed as he always sounds when he says something romantic.
    I bend over his head, nuzzling the soft buzzed hair. I’m sure of nothing, except this.

Eighty-six nights
.
    He leaves at dawn, twenty-four hours after he came, but not before taking my fingers and tracing them along the apple tree tattoo partially inked onto his right forearm. The roots bind his wrist, the trunk follows his veins, and the apples dot his skin like blood. I refuse to cling, but tears fall from my eyes and I scrape them away.
    There are tears in his eyes, too. “Only three months,” he says casually, as if it’s nothing.
    “Only three months,” I repeat, hating to be reduced to this.
    He nods, those full, soft lips of his forced into a smile. He drops my hand to walk to the gate. “Dream of me,” he says, as if it’s a promise that he’ll make it happen.
    Sorrow worms its way through my bones, and also a bright desire to return that impossible pledge.
    Soren touches his chest, just over his heart, before finally turning to go.

Eighty-nine nights
.
    The moment Soren left my orchard, I began gathering all I would need for a grand seething circle.
    If he is right and my fate remains connected to his, I want to prove it. I
must
prove it.
    Fallen apple wood and twigs, dry leaves and used paper for the fire; fresh mead from the Bears; a jar of red lipcolor the goddess Volla gave me when she came last month; and I beg Lofn to bring me a cat’s heart or the heart of a chicken or turkey if its all she can manage. The heart will be my seething supper, to ground me here in the living world.
    It takes three days to be ready, after eighty-nine dreamless nights.
    My mom taught me that dusk is the best time for seething, when shadows press between day and night, when the light is diffused and there is no point of reference for the time, no sun and no moon if it can be managed. It would be best to have a crowd, some to drum a heartbeat rhythm for me, some to sing, some merely to stomp and dance and raise energy. It would be best if Soren were here, to focus me and to catch me when I fall.
    I will fall.
    It is the nature of seething.
    I light my fire, which will shoot taller than me for a time. I unroll my seething kit, the smooth leather covered with pouches of herbs and medicines, charms, runes, drugs and poisons to evoke the proper response in my body. I remove the small store of corrberries—tiny, dried-out, rusty things—and my