Lucia the Maiden cracked open her eyes and found herself atop an altar, staring up at a furious goddess. Somehow her younger sister, Regin the Radiant, had found Skathi’s temple and had brought Lucia here.

From one altar to the next, she thought deliriously as her fever raged. Pain roiled inside her broken body. Her fractured limbs… never had she imagined such agony.

“You deliver this into my sacred place,” Skathi the Huntress of the Great North said to Regin, “and desecrate my altar? You court my wrath, young Valkyrie.”

Regin—all of twelve years old, with Lucia’s blood covering her glowing skin—said, “What can you do? Torture my sister? Murder her? She has already survived the first and is about to succumb to the second without your aid.”

“I could murder both of you.”

In answer, Regin pursed her lips, looking as if she were sizing up Skathi’s shins for a good kicking.

Lucia struggled for consciousness, labored to speak. “Don’t hurt her, please… my fault, my fault…” But her words were drowned out by a rumbling boom. This hold was carved into the heights of Godsbellow Mountain, shaken continually by thunder.

Skathi asked Regin, “Why bring her here?”

“Because you’re both neighbor and nemesis to the one who did this.”

Had interest flickered in the goddess’s eyes? “The Broken Bloody One?”

“Aye.”

Canting her head at Regin in an appraising way, Skathi said, “You’re not even old enough to be a true immortal yet. For one so powerless and insignificant, you dare much, Valkyrie.”

“For Lucia, I dare this and more,” Regin answered proudly. “Best be forewarned.”

“Regin!” Lucia gasped. The girl had lost her mind.

“What?” She stomped her foot. “What’d I say?”

Instead of smiting Regin, the goddess impatiently gestured for her guards, the legendary Skathians. They were renowned archers, all females who underwent grueling training rituals to serve the goddess. “Take the glowing one down the mountain. Make sure she does not remember the way back.”