Brimstone Kiss: Phantom Queen Book 10 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries)

by Shayne Silvers

  “Ye mean Hilde,” I said, shocked to make the connection. “Hilde was Brynhildr’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, shouldn’t Hilde have her mother’s armor, then?” I gestured to the mannequin. “Why is it here?”

  “Hilde earned her own set, one she had forged by the dwarves of Svartalfheim. The legacy of this armor is not an easy one to carry. After it was removed from Brynhildr, she used it as a shield to escape the wall of flame before returning it to the Allfather in this sad condition. I was there when he received it.”

  Freya looked away, then, clearly troubled.

  “What is it? Is this armor cursed, or somethin’?”

  “No, not exactly. It’s curse is on the world, not the wearer. You see, when Odin last laid his eye upon it, he told me it would be worn again by another champion...in the days leading up to Ragnarök.”

  21

  I pointed at my chest, my eyebrows climbing so far up my forehead I thought they might disappear beneath my bangs at any moment. Was Freya seriously talking about me? She thought I was the “champion” meant to wear Brynhildr’s armor? And what was with this Ragnarök business? I shook my head as I repeated the questions buzzing around in my head out loud.

  “You have been chosen,” Freya replied with a shrug, as though that should have addressed all of my concerns at once.

  Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

  “So what? Listen, I’m not goin’ to lie to ye and say I haven’t dreamed about gettin’ me own fancy suit of armor—especially after I saw Hilde in hers back in Boston. But that doesn’t mean I want her mom’s hand-me-downs, or to kick off Doomsday in the process. I mean—”

  “Stop being so disrespectful,” Freya snapped, her power swatting at me so fast across the face that it was a full second later before I clutched at my stinging cheek. “Brynhildr’s warrior spirit chose you. It called to you.”

  “And what if I refuse?”

  “Then you refuse. But you should know what you are walking away from.” Freya gestured to the armor, her eyes flashing with barely restrained anger. “This is the armor of the first of the Valkyries, forged by Sindri and Brokkr, themselves. Whoever wears it, provided the armor is whole, can pass through the mists of Niflheim unmolested. Indeed, she could even walk through the gates of Helheim without drawing unwanted attention.”

  I gaped at the goddess, then turned to stare at the suit of armor. So, this was the key Freya had mentioned—the aid she’d promised. Except...she hadn’t known I would find this room, so what had she intended?

  “What’s the catch?” I asked suspiciously, still studying the armor, my eyes drawn inexorably to its flaws.

  “Before I let you take it, before I give you my blessing, I want you to swear fealty to me as Brynhildr once swore to Odin. To serve me as a Valkyrie.”

  I’d have been lying if I said I was shocked by her condition. Frankly, I’d expected something like this from the moment Freya experienced my power firsthand. In her eyes, I was an asset—a valuable tool to be employed. Indeed, in that context, our earlier conversation made a lot more sense; she hadn’t been trying to help me sort through my existential crisis, she’d been trying to recruit me.

  “I don’t t’ink so,” I replied after pretending to give it some serious thought. “I’ll take the blessin’ ye promised and be on me way, if it’s all the same to ye.”

  “Please, don’t be so hasty. Think about it. You told me yourself you felt incomplete. That you lacked control.” Freya laid her hand on my arm. “You would be welcome with us. I could help you discover your true potential.”

  “And what d’ye get out of it?”

  Freya jerked her hand back as if I were a stovetop. Indeed, it appeared I was; her hand smoked, the flesh pink from contact as white heat roiled off of me in waves. The goddess shook her head, looking forlorn.

  “Something is coming,” she said. “I only want to protect what is mine.”

  “And d’ye really believe strong armin’ me was goin’ to get ye what ye want?” I shook my head, trying hard to see past the white flames licking at the edges of my vision. “Doesn’t anybody ask for help, anymore? Or are goddesses too good for that?”

  “Are you saying you’d have agreed to help out of the goodness of your heart?” Freya retorted, her own temper flaring. “Do not think me a fool.”

  “Then stop actin’ like one and t’ink, really t’ink, about what I’ve done for ye so far. I told ye about Nate, told ye about what Magni and Modi said, told ye about Hilde, and all I asked in return was your help to save someone I want to protect. And instead ye offer me slavery? Fuck that.”

  “Not slavery!” Freya flung out one arm. “Do my Valkyries act like slaves? Do I control their every action? Do I tell them who they can and can’t love? Of course not. So you can stop pretending like you understand the bond we have. Do you have any idea what it meant to me to find out Hilde was alive? What it meant to see Kára’s face when you spoke of Nate Temple? They are like daughters to me.”

  I started to say something, then thought better of it; our fight was about two more tirades from devolving into a literal altercation, and I wasn’t eager to find out how much power I did or did not have in her realm. Instead, I took a deep breath, letting that white fire peter and die out. After several more just like it, an idea occurred to me—a possible solution that might satisfy both of us.

  “Give me the armor, and I’ll find Hilde for ye.”

  “That’s—wait, what did you say?”

  “Ye wanted to make a deal, so this is me negotiatin’. I won’t swear fealty to ye. Not to anyone. Ever. But I don’t expect ye to give it to me for nothin’. So, in exchange, I promise to find Hilde and pass on the message that ye want to talk to her.”

  I watched the gears in Freya’s head churn, her expression shifting so slowly from anger to acceptance that I wasn’t certain until the last moment whether she’d even consider my terms.

  “Two weeks,” she replied, finally.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll give you two weeks after you leave here to find her and get her to return. If you fail, then you will swear to serve me in her place.” Freya held up a hand. “I swear not to interfere, in any way. If Hilde comes home, the armor is yours to do with as you see fit.”

  “Home?”

  “Asgard.”

  After a brief review of Hemingway’s hierarchy of realms, I realized Freya was talking about the first of the Nine Worlds—home to the Aesir, by all accounts. I felt immediately daunted by the request; I had way too many loose ends to tie up back in Boston without tacking on a time-sensitive reconnaissance mission. What if I couldn’t get to the Valkyrie in time? Or worse, what if Hilde refused?

  “Two weeks isn’t long enough,” I argued, hoping to renegotiate. “Me body isn’t even in the mortal realm right now, and I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to return.”

  “Where did you leave your body?”

  I hesitated, uncertain whether to tell Freya the truth.

  “I promise I intend you no harm,” the goddess added, perhaps sensing my discomfort.

  “It’s bein’ guarded by a witch on an island in the Titan Realm. A realm that has no exits, from what I’ve been told.”

  “Nonsense. Every realm connects. You simply have to find out where the veil is thinnest. But I take your point…I’ll give you a month. After you return to the mortal realm. But no longer.”

  I closed my eyes, weighing Freya’s offer. On the one hand, agreeing would give me the means to infiltrate Helheim and find Ryan—essentially the reason I’d agreed to die in the first place. On the other hand, failure to find Hilde for any reason could land me back here in a month’s time, provided I survived this and ever made it back to Boston. Only this time I’d be Freya’s freshest cadet, forced to polish steel boots until they gleamed and to ruin my excellent posture with all that ridiculous bowing.

  Of course, there was really only one answer to give, no matter how I rati
onalized it.

  “Alright,” I said, praying I wouldn’t regret this. “Ye have a deal.”

  22

  The armor was made up of perhaps a dozen intricate parts, each of which had to be applied in a specific order, and most of which required the tightening of some strap or the snap of some clasp until I began to seriously worry whether I’d ever be able to take it all off when the time came—because I certainly wasn’t going to get it all back on without help. Perhaps sensing that would be the case, Freya began naming and describing each piece as she went, bidding me to recite after her like a priest extracting wedding vows.

  “You’ll have to come up with a name,” Freya said as she adjusted the last few bits, tugging the chainmail down and brushing some debris from the plackart.

  “A name for what?”

  “For your armor,” the goddess replied, as though that were obvious. She rapped her knuckles against her breastplate, seemingly pleased by the resounding clang, before holding the last remaining piece out to me. “Every Valkyrie must name her armor. Often these names live on as an extension of their wearer.”

  “Didn’t Brynhildr give it a name?”

  “She did, but the armor no longer belongs to her. It is not so strange a practice. A sword used to kill and a sword used to protect may appear the same, but their legends will never coincide.”

  “Aye, that makes sense. What about Róta’s armor? What name did she give hers?”

  “Róta dubbed hers ‘fire-slayer’ in our tongue. Even then, she dreamed of taking on the sons of Surt when the fire giants come to destroy the world.” Freya shook her head, her tone far too wistful for the context of what she was saying.

  “Right.” I turned the helm over in my hands, captivated by its savage appearance; the beak was cruelly pointed, the sides swirling, the comb and back spiked with steel tail feathers. Indeed, the armor as a whole had a vicious cast to it that seemed at odds with the sets I’d seen until now.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Ye said this armor was crafted by someone important—”

  “Sindri and Brokkr,” she supplied. “The finest craftdwarves this side of Asgard. Loki once lost a bet to them and ended up with his mouth sewn shut for thirty years. Good times.”

  “What was the bet?”

  “That they couldn’t create something as pleasing as he had. In the end, they created several exceptional pieces, including Mjolnir.”

  “And did they forge every Valkyrie’s armor?”

  “Ah, so you noticed.” Freya was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. “No, they did not. Brynhildr was Odin’s champion, and to honor her was to honor him. So they fashioned armor that could change at the whim of the wearer with the slightest understanding of seiðr magic. They even gave Odin the design, which spawned the creation of the sets you’ve seen until now. But this...this was the first.”

  “The prototype, huh?” I ran a finger along the beak of the helmet. “Does that mean it’s better than the others, or worse?”

  “Hard to say,” Freya admitted. “Many of us thought it a clever creation, but the Allfather always suspected the dwarves had outdone themselves in crafting such a thing. Nothing as devastating as Mjolnir, of course, but the fact that it was the last they ever forged together always concerned him.”

  “What about this?” I asked, tapping the rune that had been engraved in the center of the breastplate, obscured once more by the blackened chainmail.

  “Dagaz,” Freya intoned, her eyes tracing what appeared to be an hourglass turned on its side. “The dwarves never explained why they chose that symbol. You see, the rune has many meanings. But it is best known for its most noble translation: Hope.”

  Hope.

  The word was accompanied by a thrill of recognition, a nagging sense of familiarity. I turned the helm over and slid it on, the beak obscuring the top half of my face. And yet, somehow, the instant I secured the strap beneath my chin, I could see as though nothing obscured my vision. Indeed, once complete, the armor—which had felt almost oppressively heavy to this point—lightened to the point I felt like I was wearing the world’s comfiest pajamas.

  “D’ye have a mirror?”

  “Of course, come,” Freya said, her voice catching with emotion at the sight of me in Brynhildr’s armor. She escorted me through the secret door—no longer locked—and down two flights of stairs before angling into another room. A chamber full of gleaming steel piled high along the walls, separated categorically.

  Valkyrie armor.

  A whole freaking room full of Valkyrie armor.

  “I was going to bring you here and have you choose your own pieces,” Freya admitted. “That is traditionally how we have done it. What they pick often says a lot about the wearer and the path they will take.”

  “And what does me choice say about me?” I asked, trailing the goddess, marveling at how freely I could move despite the wealth of metal layered upon my person.

  “Nothing. But then you didn’t do the choosing.”

  Freya reached a small recess covered by a scarlet curtain and peeled it away, revealing a gilded floor-length mirror. She then held up a hand, however, as if to stall me.

  “First, the blessing.”

  “Ah, right,” I replied, having almost forgotten. “Is there somethin’ special I need to do?”

  “Yes. Stand still and stay silent.”

  “Easier said than done,” I joked.

  Freya shot me a dark look, and I clamped my mouth shut and mimed locking my lips with an invisible key. The goddess nodded, satisfied, and reached into a pouch on her hip. From it she drew out what looked like multicolored, irradiated sand; it shone brightly against the skin of her palm. As I watched, she licked two of her fingers, dipped them into the magic dust, and drew a rune across the visor of my helm, then the palms of my gloves, and finally over the space where my heart lay. The symbol—an angular “B”—began to pulse and throb with light, brightening so quickly that I had to shut my eyes to keep from being blinded.

  When at last I could open them, I found Freya beckoning me towards the mirror, then stepping away as though allowing me to look for myself. I didn’t hesitate; I wanted to see the whole package.

  I wasn’t disappointed.

  “I look…”

  “Scary,” Freya finished for me, admiring her handiwork; whatever she’d done had made the armor appear good as new. “Like a mortal child’s nightmare come to life.”

  “I was goin’ to say ‘badass’, but I guess I can’t argue with ye.”

  I ran my gauntleted hands over the freshly fixed armor, awed by the brazen nature of its accentuated curves and fearsome trimmings. True to Freya’s assessment, I looked like something out of a demented dreamscape—both terrifying and captivating all at once. And yet, the rune across my chest read “hope,” as though the contradiction were worth acknowledging. Like a parent standing in front of the dream car with the keys dangling in hand saying “I know it’s pretty, but don’t you dare drive too fast and wreck this thing.”

  “And it filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before,” I murmured, struck by a half-remembered line of poetry from an old favorite of mine. I patted the breastplate. “I t’ink I know what I want to call her.”

  23

  Freya and I stood at the base of the tower after I’d spent perhaps the past half hour relearning the signs Hilde had shown me back in Boston while Freya fed me relevant information about Niflheim. We’d even exchanged the occasional pleasantry, including a few anecdotes about Hilde; Freya had been quite relieved to discover that her Valkyrie hadn’t given me a set of contraband armor but the uniforms the Valkyries passed out to the hugr to keep them appropriately outfitted. I, of course, had been less than pleased to learn I’d been given some poor phantom’s hand-me-downs from Pluto’s Closet.

  Hah.

  As I prepared to depart, however, Freya got serious again, repeating the terms of our deal as though I might have forgotten in all the excitement. I had
n’t. Indeed, I was more aware than ever that I had responsibilities waiting for me in the mortal realm once this was all over—starting with Max, who still hadn’t arrived to honor Hades’ side of the agreement. At this rate, I was beginning to think I’d have to track the brujo down, myself. Of course, if I did, that at least meant I could avoid meeting up with the Temples and passing along the god of the underworld’s enigmatic message.

  Sulfur linings.

  “And you’re sure about the name?” Freya asked, drawing me back to the moment at hand, her head cocked as though my choice had baffled her. But then, that didn’t surprise me; I wasn’t sure how much Edgar Allen Poe the Norse gods had access to.

  “Nevermore,” I said, relishing the sound of it even as I flicked the edge of my pauldron with a closed fist, transforming the armor into a pair of boots, jeans, and a white crop top under a leather jacket. I wasn’t going for fancy; according to Freya’s description of where I was headed and what waited for me there, flashy wasn’t my best bet.

  “Does it mean something special to you?”

  “It’s from a very well-known poem written by a rather troubled mortal. This armor reminded me of a few stanzas, that’s all.”

  “Ah, so like the title of a bard’s song,” Freya replied, appreciatively. “That’s sensible. Many tools of war are honored in such a way.”

  “I suppose so,” I replied, shrugging. “Nevermore isn’t the title, though. The poem is called ‘The Raven.’”

  Freya’s face went shockingly pale.

  “What, is that like some Nordic taboo?” I asked hurriedly, startled by her reaction. “I didn’t just guarantee me own death by callin’ me armor that, did I?”

  “No! No, it’s nothing like that. It was just a surprising choice, that’s all.”

  “Why?” I showcased my body as though she could see the intricate armor lying beneath the illusion. “I mean, its design practically screams bird. It’s black. Lots of sharp, pointy bits. Why shouldn’t I have thought ‘raven’?”