“Let me go, Skalla,” I choked out, scrabbling at the fingers that threatened to crush my throat. His snout gleamed as he snarled in my face. Though we were cousins, our fathers being brothers, we looked little alike. Skallagrim took after the snouted, scaly Bohnebregg berserkers on his mother’s side, while I had features from my Sionnachan mother. We both had wings, as all stone sky gods did, and star maps. But that was largely where our physical similarities ended.

Unfortunately, I was the smaller of the two of us. Strong, like all stone sky gods were strong, but weaker than my cousin, especially in his fevered rage. My last clash with him had nearly killed me, and I’d spent the stars knew how long slumbering under the sand-battered mountains of another world, trying to regain enough strength to face my cousin again and to bring him here, before the council. I’d finally woken and managed to drag him to Heofonraed through the stone sky door. But we weren’t finished yet.

I need to get him into the hall.

I jerked in Skallagrim’s grasp, my wings trapped and shuddering beneath me, pinned behind my back to the stone. This was bad. I’d let him gain the upper hand, and I was still weakened from our last battle and opening the stone sky door into Heofonraed.

Surely the council must know we are here. We are right outside their gates!

Even beyond the bulk of my cousin’s body, I could see the Eaforswynne – the two massive horned boars that stood guard at the base of gates so high the tops became a blur among pale and shifting clouds.

Using every bit of strength I had, I smashed my fist upward into Skallagrim’s injured eye. He howled. Silver-white blood, the same colour as my own, poured from the wound. I used that sliver of a moment, his distraction, to loosen his grip around my neck. My wings pushed against the stone of the ground, and before Skallagrim could pin me again, I launched into the air, dragging my cousin up with me.

“I call upon the Council of the Gods to open the gates!” I shouted as my cousin fought me. “You must bind Skallagrim!”

The Eaforswynne watched me from below, their red eyes rolling further upwards in their great white heads to keep us within their view. But otherwise, they did not move.

And neither did the gates.

“Cursed stars,” I hissed as my grip on Skallagrim faltered. He wrenched away, dark green wings beating hard. His star map lit up the spaces between his scales, golden, like cracking sunlight. The veins of that light webbed over his torso and along the gargantuan spread of his wings, the same way mine did, but gold where my star map was blue. A tumble of tangled black hair whipped around his face as his wings beat mercilessly.

“End your rampage, Skalla,” I rasped, hoping against hope that there was still some shred of sanity in there somewhere. Once, Skalla had been my dearest friend. Once, he had been clever and charismatic, beloved among both his mother’s people and the stone sky gods. I could still see him, beautiful and powerful, a prince grinning on the banks of the largest Bohnebregg river, his hair bound in a sleek braid adorned with the loving sheen of the setting sun.

But that Skalla was not this Skalla. I did not know the beast before me. The beast who’d already tried to kill me once and who’d smashed his way through untold worlds since then.

A desperate sorrow pierced me when I realized there would be no calling him back from the brink now.

I turned my attention from my cousin, hoping that the gates had opened and cursing murderously to see that they remained closed.

“Open the gates!” I bellowed. I barely got the last word out before Skallagrim caught me in his claws, dragging me back down to the sleek stone below. I beat my wings furiously, trying to remain aloft, knowing that the next time Skallagrim got me beneath him, I’d be doomed.

But it was little use. My beautiful, broken cousin was too strong. He’d kill me and I’d really die this time, bleeding out on the white stone of Heofonraed.

I reached for the shining, carved stone of the gates as Skallagrim’s weight bore me faster and further downward. Pain lanced up my tail, my spine. It felt as if I were being torn in two. My wings pulling me upward with all their strength while Skallagrim clutched at my waist, claws slicing, yanking me back down.

We hit the ground with a terrific smash, landing between the Eaforswynne. The giant boars snuffled and snorted, angry with how close we’d gotten to the gates when their masters so clearly would not open up to us.

Why will they not open? I asked myself dizzily as Skallagrim once again seized my throat in his brutal grip. The Council of the Gods was supposed to be open to the petition of any stone sky god who needed help or guidance. And they were the only ones strong enough to restrain a god gone mate-mad.

So why would they not answer me?

I got no reply. Not from the Eaforswynne. Not from the gate – so close and so closed that it seemed to mock me. Not from the silent stone sky council, hidden in their halls. Not from Skalla, either. My cousin scraped his knees along the stone on either side of my chest, bearing down on my throat with all his strength. I clawed at his shoulders, his neck, his once-regal face, but his scales deflected my weakening claws. I scratched at his bleeding eye, but he seemed past the point of pain now and did not let go. His other eye was fixed on me, burning and bright. The only thing I could see. The only thing left as everything else went dark...

Until it was gone. I gasped as the pressure at my throat instantly eased. Someone had pulled Skallagrim off of me. Relief mingled with regret swept over me as I forced myself up into a standing position. Relief that the council had finally heeded my calls and opened the gates to help me. And regret at the fact I’d now likely never see my cousin again.

But...

The gates had not been opened.

A lone male restrained Skalla. I could not see him well – he stood behind Skallagrim, and though he was about as tall, Skallagrim was broader, blocking my view. But even so, I recognized the arm looped around Skallagrim’s neck, muscles straining beneath black hide interspersed with the glowing stars and veins of a magma-coloured star map.

Maerwynne.

I still did not understand why the council had not opened the gates. But I did not allow myself to stand idle for long. Maerwynne was a powerful stone sky god, but, like me, he was no match for Skallagrim alone.

But between the two of us...

Between the two of us, maybe we’d be able to finally kill him.

It was what I’d wanted to avoid. It was why I’d used all my strength to drag Skalla here in the first place. To bind him instead of end him.

But he was already overpowering Maerwynne.

And I had no choice but to attack him with everything I had. I flew at my cousin, snarling and striking as he shoved Maerwynne away. Maerwynne jumped back into the fray immediately, trying and failing to catch Skallagrim’s heavy, smashing limbs. One of those limbs – the boulder of his fist, it turned out – connected with my temple and sent me reeling. I staggered, righting myself just in time to see Maerwynne thrown against the white stone so hard a crack formed beneath the black and red lines of his body.

A mere moment later, Skallagrim was in the air, throttling upward, fist rising.

No!

I knew what he was doing.

“He’s going to open a sky door!” I need not have bothered saying it. Maerwynne knew it already. He launched into the air, and I followed, my weary wings straining.

But we were both too slow. The sky turned dark and opaque ahead of Skallagrim, hardening into stone. Skallagrim brought down his fist against it, cracking it with a catastrophic boom. The door was open now – a wide, dark crack in the stone of the sky. Without a glance back, Skalla hurled himself inside.