Prologue: A Flowering Thorn

Thick ebon blood boiled in the veins of the Troll Queen, black as congealed tar.

The Beast's curse was bearing fruit.

Queen Jarngrimr of the Sorrows waited on the frosty tip of Utgardr's tallest mountain, her steed - a blue roan marked with a white death mask, the gallows itself incarnate - whinnying as the Troll Queen's awaited visitor hiked past the mountain laurel and fir, the girl's stang helping with her belabored, fitful steps.

"I am here, dearest Jarnja. I brought you Lady Freida's most sacred treasure, stolen from the sanctum of her hall Folkvangr in Valhalla for a terrible price. It is all for you, in return for protection for my three children. This cursed rose is my only possession after this godsdamned truce, sweet Jarnja of the Sorrows, daughter of Wotan the Raven and Sithgunt the Seeress, guardian of the Isa tribe of my land of the midnight sun. Please. I have nothing left to give but the petals of this godsvow."

The princess, crowned and bejeweled – frost on her furs and gems - was eight months in, and in heaving gasps, the girl – barely a woman - collapsed. The discerning Troll Queen rushed to her side, helping the princess to stand by her stang with her powerful, furred arms.

"Aslaugh, you have done more than enough," Queen Jarngrimr soothed, taking her temperature with her paw. "A fever. Please, my sweetling, rest. I will give you a ride home on my starlight steed."

"It is a pittance of a price to pay for your protection." The queen rubbed at her sweaty brow, her skin flushed bruise purple.

"Still, you have a babe to think of. You have done far too much. Do not overexert yourself. Be more careful, Asa. Charging me to meet on this mountain all alone, in the heart of Utgardr, when you are due to deliver a babe any day? Whatsoever were you thinking! You are as reckless as always, just like you were in our youth."

"Reckless, maybe, but also brave. It took bravery to fly to Bifrost on my stang, and rob Freida of her sacred heart."

Jarngrimr sighed, laughing slightly. "Bold as always, I suppose. But what else to make of Volva Heith's fosterling?"

"Heh. That is true, alright." Aslaugh looked into the distance, her green eyes apoplectic as she sighed with frightful dues. "Still, I have done far too little," Queen Aslaugh said, her ruby voice like bitter grapes. Her crown of citrine and pearls glimmered under the Northern Lights of Skadhi's Bow, frost in her red gold hair. "Lady Skadhi says that I am her greatest failing, hah! I thought that was when she laughed at Loki for tying his balls to a nanny goat to break her winter's curse over the barren snowy ground, or when Skadhi Ondurdis selected her husband Njordr by his feet alone, not knowing of his homely head or his seaside home reeking of gulls and seaweed, ending in a three night divorce..." Aslaugh squeezed shut her eyes, tears welling blue and clear in their ducts, and she inhaled deeply, resting in the crook of gentle Jarnja's shoulder.

"Gods are never straightforward. It does ill to think that the Divine are speaking the truth as plain as day," Jarnja soothed, sitting the princess down on a granite seat softly, the throne carved by dwarves in ages past. "Trust me, I have oft misguessed the intentions of my sire Wotan. The ways of the gods are Weird and play out like wyrd across sweet Skadhi's Bow."

"I pray that you are right, and that I have not betrayed the gods of our folk by marrying a Latinate prince only to secure a fragile, tenuous peace… Lord Eleleth's magick is too much for us to conquer alone, but with your blessing, my daughters may stand a chance. Here, for you, my sweetest Jarnja."

The princess, barely nineteen, rounded as the moon in the belly with the promised child, exchanged a blood red rose – the goddess Freida's heart of hearts - to the towering rood of a Troll Queen.

The begresar was like an infernal stain on the night, tall as a horse, double jointed, a mix of lion, ram, and ox and bat. Still, she was a friendly sight for Arcadia's queen, who had little allies left. After all, they had been bosom companions in their youth, she princess of the Northern Holds, Jarngrimr princess of Utgardr before her mother Sithgunt retreated into her Seeress keep in the mountains, making Jarngrimr queen.

"Here, it is done. Now please, dear Jarnja, give me what I asked for. This rose will cost me my life, one day. Freida and her Wild Hunt will come calling in seven upon seven years for the thief of Freida's sacred, amber weeping Wanderer's heart."

The troll queen sighed and stooped down gently so that she was eye to eye with the princess Aslaugh. The troll queen's bezels of crimson eyes lit in pity, and she gently plucked the rose from the princess' hands and, in return, offered her a mead horn carved with a bindrune shaped like the Fenris Wolf, Loki Liesmith's and Augurboda's beast child of Ragnarok.

"Drink, and think of better days you will not live to see, but that your daughters will delight in," Jarnja said, voice slow and thick like poisoned milk, her black fur bristling, the troll queen's ram horns shining with helafire as a light snow began to fall.

With a spiked claymore, Jarnja slit her throat clean through to the larynx and bled copiously down into the hoary mead horn. The bindrune on her drinking cup shaped like the Devouring Wolf lit with icy blue runefire, and as the troll queen's ichor poured out until her veins ran dry, the black soup gathered in princess Aslaugh's outstretched hands, pooling in the horn and dribbling onto Aslaugh's muscled, sword honed fingertips.

With a determined frown, Aslaugh drank the ichor down, choking as the thick curse of the troll queen flowed from Aslaugh's throat and down into her ripe belly. Her daughter kicked in response to the blood deep in her womb as the dark magick took hold, and Aslaugh rubbed the unborn infant's thrashing feet fretfully.

"My three daughters that my beloved Volva Heith prophesied I will bear with Hakkon Erikson - they will live, and you will save them, when nothing is left in my enemy's stronghold for them to find succor in, and even the gods are all but gone from Arcadia?" Aslaugh choked, wiping away the black spittle of clotted blood that clung to her bottom lip and stained her white, blunt teeth. "And my family, the remnants of my Isa tribe, especially Volva Heith - they are safe in the heart of Utgardr, far away from the accursed Stronghold?"

Aslaugh wiped her lips and struggled not to vomit as bile rose in her throat at all she had lost, and all she had become. Jarnja soothed her, the sacred rose of the Mother Goddess Freida tucked delicately behind the Troll Queen's ear, a ruddy gold.

"All is arranged according to plan... what are you naming my fairy goddaughter, Asa?" Jarnja cooed at the baby in her belly, lightly tracing Aslaugh's stomach as if drawing filigree in a Latinate monk's cherished illuminated manuscript.

"Turiel. After her grandmother. And the second shall be Yuriel, after my great aunt, and the third shall be Rosiel, for it rhymes with the other names and sounds like our covenant." Aslaugh looked fruitfully upon the Troll Queen's great bat wings. "What will you do with your rose, dearest Jarnja of the Sorrows?"

Jarnja smiled slightly, helping a belabored Aslaugh to stand: "Start an enchanted garden fit for breaking my curse."

"None of the Northern Cunningfolk thought that your sacrifice to create the Stronghold would result in... this," Aslaugh said sheepishly, taking her stang. "Undeath is such a strange thing to see in the light of the godsfearing day."

"Well, it was explicitly a dark working in violation of the frith of the gods. It was worth it, though. All my sins against the gods will all be worth it, to see your bonnie babes born, my dear sweetling Aslaugh. You have sacrificed too, and by Thur's hammer, I pray to the old Jotnar gods of our huldrefolk, that our workings have not been in vain. Stay strong, Aslaugh. The last of my heart's blood will quicken you, change you - do not be surprised if you yourself become a Beast in the end."

Aslaugh gave a sorrowful smile, then a bright, stomach ache of a laugh ripped open her crimson lips. "It is a risk I am fully willing to take."

"Then by the Aesir and the Vanir and all Jotnar, our queenly wills be done!"

Snow piled at their feet as they walked hand in hand down the gap toothed mountain. Ravens circled far above in the crepuscular aether, and the blue death roan of the Troll Queen Jarnja charged off upon the gallows into the blue dread gloaming, queens aback the steed.

In the far flung firmament above, over Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge, the goddess Skadhi sat aback the Northern Lights, her frozen smile as thick as winter molasses. She knew something only a goddess could ken of aeons to come, and like a goddess, told no secrets to her followers.

Lady Skadhi Ondurdis shot one of Jarngrimr's ravens down with the aurora borealis of her bow and felled it into the aether. She scooped it up with her white mittened hands. What Lady Skadhi, goddess of the hunt and winter snow, said to the dead bird's ear, only the Norns could know.

The bird's soul flew away in the wake of the queens, now the Arctic goddess' messenger, following her cherished priestess Aslaugh – perhaps to watch over princess Aslaugh and the budding child, or perhaps for something more. Gods are never clear, after all.

The queens went on, down the mountain and into the night, but only one would come out alive. The queens went into the wildlands, past lindworm and nixie and huldre, and only one would be saved.

Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow is my tale, a curse most dark – to be broken

By a flowering thorn.