The Beautiful and the Faultless | Cami O'Connell

Chapter 7

"Esther did not want her," said Dahlia, no longer speaking kindly. "She promised me Freya, and I have her now. I will do no such thing as returning her."

"Is our child to have the same fate?" asked Einar, looking at his wife. "Will it also be condemned to live with her? She does not even treat Freya with kindness."

"We will be there to help give the both of them affection," said Frida, who though just as vengeful as Dahlia, seemed to have more maternal bones in her. "They will be just fine."

"I do not like this, Frida," said Einar. "You said yourself that you were starting to doubt—"

Frida suddenly looked frightened. "What is the meaning of this?" asked Dahlia sharply.

"I-I merely had concerns about doing the spell immediately after our child is born," said Frida. "I have not abandoned our plan, I was only hoping to wait longer before we link her."

"It must be done immediately!" said Dahlia. "Before she even begins to show signs of magic!"

Einar got to his feet, standing tall over Dahlia. "I have as much desire to be rid of the Vikings as you do. I already promised my help in battle, but I will gladly rescind it and take Freya and Frida with me and you will never see any of us again."

The memory suddenly changed.

There were several men and horses in a patch of grass, and she could tell they were preparing to go into battle. Frida was standing off to the side, watching Einar as he mounted, apparently in the lead. Ingrid assumed he must have been as Mikael was— a leader, a warrior, the one everyone else looked up to.

"Come back to me safely," she told him, before holding her more swollen belly and heading back into her hut after blowing him a kiss.

Dahlia emerged from where she'd been watching in the bushes. "Dear brother," she said, addressing Einar as if she actually considered him family. She took his hand. "I will care for my sister in your absence."

"You had better," said Einar, who didn't trust her. "I will return by the next full moon."

Dahlia seemed to know that he would return, alive and in one piece. So, whispering a spell, she squeezed his hand tightly. A small skull-shaped mark appeared on the back of his hand, but it faded instantly, prohibiting Einar from realizing it was there.

"A blessing, for you," said Dahlia, pretending the spell was a good thing, in case he'd noticed it. "You will return safely."

Ingrid was already crying from the pain of Klaus biting into her throat and being rather violent as he fed from her. But more tears flooded out when she realized that her father hadn't simply died in battle. Dahlia had cursed him to die. Otherwise, he would have made it home.

The final memory was more painful than the last.

"This is ridiculous," said Frida angrily. "For months I have insisted we wait and you refuse to see that your magic might hurt my child!"

"You are acting just like Esther!" accused Dahlia. "Shying away from magic, for what, a family? For motherhood?"

"I will not abandon my magic as our sister did!" shrieked Frida. "But I can sense that the spell will harm my baby! You saw how Freya looked the first day after the spell. She was ill for a week. My child would be a newborn— she would not survive it!" She scoffed. "Perhaps Einar was right. Perhaps we should have left. This is not the revenge I had in mind, Dahlia, you have twisted all of it out of some grudge against Esther!"