Overview

Bryndís Vala wakes in fracturing ice in the middle of someone else's war.

She wakes furious. She wakes carrying all the protective rage of a seven-hundred-year-old merged consciousness compressed into one brand-new body she does not yet know how to operate. The first sound she hears is gunfire. The first face she sees is Sigrún Eldjárn-Helgisson — compact, blonde, in SAR red, standing between her and a Conclave mercenary team with nothing but a flare gun and an oath nine generations old.

The bond detonates in the first second of Bryndís's singular life.

Sigrún has been pulling people out of crevasses since she was fourteen. She is the youngest keeper on the Helgisson line. She has the 1761 oath memorized in Old Icelandic, and the oath says specifically: no keeper shall name a stranger to the sleeping flame. Wanting Bryndís is nine generations of her family collapsing in the time it takes her heart to beat once.

The Conclave has moved from surveillance to extraction. The forward base is somewhere in the lava tubes. Bryndís burns things accidentally and refuses to be protected. Sigrún solves problems by going first and refuses to be needed. They cannot afford each other.

The mother who taught Sigrún the oath is sitting at the longhouse table waiting for her daughter to choose.

She is going to choose her mate.