Falling for Gods: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Their Dark Valkyire Book 3)

by Eva Chase

  With Odin’s blessing, the six of us were able to emerge from Asgard over the desert plain almost instantly from the rainbow bridge. We hovered above the dry earth and plateaus of reddish rock for a moment to get our bearings.

  “So we just rush right in and blast them like before?” I asked. I agreed with everything Loki had said before, but at the same time the idea didn’t sit completely right with me. The dark elves weren’t going to be too keen on having any kind of conversation with us if we kept slaughtering them on sight.

  Maybe they deserved it. On the other hand, that was probably how the gods had felt about Loki, and taking a heavy hand with him had led straight up to the end of the world, as far as I could tell.

  “If they don’t attack us, there won’t be any need to blast anyone except the guards,” Hod said beside me, but he turned his gaze my way. “Unless you’ve sensed something that suggests we should be more cautious in our approach?”

  I couldn’t offer anything except for my general sense that Odin knew a shitload more about this situation than he’d been sharing with us, but that wasn’t concrete enough to hang a hat on. I wet my lips, willing the nervous patter of my pulse to even out. “No. Not so far.”

  “Let’s move in then,” Freya said, brandishing her sword with a gleam of her magic.

  “When I give the battle cry, the five of us attack together,” Thor reminded us. “We took them down last time without even knowing how to use our combined power. This time should be even easier.”

  I nodded. Baldur shot me a smile like a beam of light. “We’ve got this.”

  We swooped down toward the spot I’d indicated, the base of a ruddy mesa with a sprinkling of green on its high flat top. As we sped toward it, a dabbling of shadowed cave entrances came into view, along the ground and up to several feet higher. In the middle of them lay a craggy opening with that ominously deep blackness I’d felt from the gate on the other hillside.

  If that wasn’t enough to identify our target, several dark elves stood in the shadows of the rocky outcroppings around it. The daggers and spears clenched in their pale hands shimmered with the same fiery energy as those some of the elves who’d come at us last time had carried. Weapons charged with Surt’s searing magic.

  Thor bellowed, and I slashed my switchblade through the air. This time, none of that lightning I still didn’t know how to consciously summon leapt from my fingers. But it didn’t matter. I was flinging myself into the fight, and four heartbeats around me thumped in time with my intentions.

  A swath of shadow-tangled fire crackled over the guards. Thor’s hammer whirled into their midst trailing knives of light. The flames whipped faster as the hammer passed through them, and a dark blaze formed around Mjolnir itself. When the flaring of light and dark faded, the guards’ bodies were scattered, smoking, across the dusty ground around the gate.

  That small contingent hadn’t stood a chance against all of us in sync.

  We landed in a semi-circle, braced for a fresh wave of attack. I scanned the caves with my valkyrie sensitivity. “There are a few more here,” I said. “It doesn’t feel as if they’re moving. I don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Maybe lurking with more of those explosive contraptions,” Thor muttered.

  “All right then, dirt-eaters!” Loki called out in a tone that was somehow dark but jovial at the same time. “Show yourselves, and we won’t be forced to burn you right out of your hidey-holes.”

  A shuffling sound reached my ears. We all turned toward it, and the shadow at Baldur’s feet rippled. A clump of grass it touched shriveled. What the hell? My gaze jumped up and caught on the clenching of his hand. Was he okay?

  I didn’t have the chance to find out right then. Four rounded faces topped with black hair appeared at the entrance to one of the caves farther down the side of the mesa. All four of the dark elves had their hands raised in a gesture of appeasement.

  “Please,” the young man at the front said, his expression tight. “Just let us get back to Nidavellir before you close it up. That’s all we want.”

  The woman just behind him snatched at his sleeve. “What? No. What’s the point? We’re better off staying here.”

  His eyes widened as he looked back at her. “But—it’s home,” he said quietly.

  Her mouth opened and closed again. “Is anywhere really home now?”

  She sounded so hopeless it wrenched at me. Freya clapped her hands. “Make up your minds what you want, or you won’t be around long enough to get anything at all.”

  The man tugged at the woman’s hand, and her head bowed. They and their two companions dashed through the gate’s opening.

  “They’ll bring more guards!” Thor protested.

  I readied my blade, but no one emerged from the darkness of the elves’ realm. An uncomfortable ache crept through my chest.

  Some of the dark elves were vicious. Some of them had delighted in hurting us. The woman who’d taunted me about Petey came to mind. But that bunch—they’d seemed so torn, so worn down…

  My gaze slid toward Hod, who was still at my right. His mouth had curved into a frown.

  “We sealed one before with our powers combined,” Loki said, striding forward. “Let’s see if we can conjure up the same effect again.”

  I shook off as much of the creeping dread as I could. “On Thor’s cue?”

  Thor raised his hammer, and his cry echoed through me and the others, shaking off most but not all of the heaviness that had settled around my heart.

  11

  Hod

  My footsteps thudded dully across Valhalla’s worn floorboards, as if they knew I wasn’t meant to be there. I might be able to fend for myself as needed, even contribute to a larger battle, but no one would ever mistake me for a warrior. The lingering scent of now-stale mead made my nose itch. But this was the fastest way to get where I wanted to go.

  There’d been plenty of drinking a couple hours ago. By the time we’d returned to Asgard, the spirit of victory had taken hold. We’d feasted and laughed, and if Ari had seemed a little more reticent than usual, I could have blamed it on the stress of the last few weeks.

  I didn’t actually believe that was all it had been, though. Since I’d turned in for the night, or at least attempted to, I’d had two voices cycling through my head. Our valkyrie’s, saying, We obviously can’t assume we know everything just from how it looks. And that of the dark elf woman hesitating by the gate: Is anywhere really home now?

  Something wasn’t right. Something more complex than the jealousy my father had blamed for the dark elves’ betrayal. The sense of it gnawed at my bones.

  I should have been able to go to Odin with that understanding. Should have been able to trust that his wisdom would guide us. But look where trusting him had gotten us so far. When was the last time he’d given us a straight answer? He’d been there to meet us when we’d stepped off the bridge with claps on our shoulders and that warm Allfatherly praise he could pull out when the situation called for it. Proud and benevolent.

  What a crock. The bastard had ordered my death over a murder he’d all but orchestrated. To restore the fucking balance, to set the stage he wanted for Ragnarok—who in the realms knew? I doubted he’d ever own up to the truth.

  I stopped at the smoky smell that clung to the hearth area and forced myself to exhale slowly. Forced my fingers to retract from where they’d started to dig into my palms.

  That kind of anger wasn’t going to serve me well. When this war was over, my father and I would hash out all of this, calmly but definitively. Odin wasn’t going to listen to raging or ranting. I had to draw on the cool stillness of the shadows I carried with me.

  Especially now. I traced my hand along the polished stones of the hearth and ducked beneath them. Cinders crunched under my boots. Silence closed in around me as my feet hit the rough bark of Yggdrasil’s path.

  What I was about to do might be foolhardy, but on the other hand it might very well be the least I could
do. We needed answers. I needed answers. Who better than me to interact with the people who dwelled so much in darkness? Thor or Loki they’d have seen as an immediate threat. Baldur… I didn’t think he’d have had any idea where to begin. And I wasn’t going to ask any more of Ari, not when she’d already shouldered so many burdens that weren’t meant to be hers.

  She’d asked us to look beyond the obvious. I might not be able to see, but I could still do that much for the woman I loved.

  I didn’t need vision now. I was the Allfather’s son, and his blood sang through my veins. The branches of the great tree resonated at different frequencies as I passed them, leaving a faint aftertaste on my tongue. A hint of grass and soil that was Midgard. The floral sweetness of Vanaheim, Freya’s former home. A salty chill I knew was Niflheim, the realm of ice. And then a damp mossy impression that could belong only to Nidavellir, home of the dark elves.

  I tested the branch with my feet and then walked cautiously along it. A quiver of energy emanated from the gate at its end. I paused there for a moment, dragging in a breath, gathering strands of shadow around me like a shield. Then I strode into the gate’s embrace.

  The air contracted around me, and a second later my boots hit uneven stone. A cool dampness congealed against my skin. Only the faintest current stirred the air around me. I reached out one hand, and it found a rough rocky wall just a couple of feet to my left.

  The gate still quavered behind me. As long as I stayed where I was, I should be able to step right back into it when I needed to.

  I wasn’t alone. In the moment it took me to get my bearings, a shoe scuffed against the stone floor somewhere not far ahead of me. There was a faint rasp of breath. The air shifted minutely against my skin. They were gesturing to each other, I thought. Maybe still concealed in dark alcoves that would had hid them from anyone relying on sight.

  The dark elves had fallen on Ari when she’d come this way looking for Odin. They’d slaughtered the three valkyries who’d come before her, from what she’d said of the vision Muninn had shown her as a threat. But attempting to kill a god was an entirely different matter. I might not have been able to offer much of an offensive on my own, but with my shadowy magic and the gate at my back, these mortal creatures weren’t likely to hurt me either.

  People, I reminded myself. Not creatures. They might have thrown themselves at us like animals more than once in the last few weeks, but they still had far more reason than a warg or a draug did. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.

  “What are you doing here, god of Asgard?” a sharp voice called out when I didn’t move. “We have nothing of yours.”

  I turned my head toward the sound in as close a semblance of meeting the speaker’s eyes as I could manage. “I’m not here to take or to attack,” I said. “I’m here to learn. Who do you answer to? I’d like to speak to them.”

  Murmurs passed between the gate’s guards—in the tongue of the dark elves, but I’d studied enough languages in my reading to recognize the words for blind one. They’d identified me. Good. That should work in my favor. Make me seem even less a reason for concern.

  “Why should he come to you?” asked a different voice, this one female. “Maybe your friends are waiting on the other side of that gate to burst through.”

  “If we wanted to launch an assault, don’t you think there’d be easier ways?” I said.

  “You expect us to trust you an awful lot when you don’t trust us at all,” she retorted. The others muttered in agreement.

  They might have a point. Simply arriving here braced for an attack wasn’t all that great a show of good faith. My chest constricted, but I nodded. I’d come this far—I’d see my private mission through.

  “I’ll come with you to a meeting spot farther from the gate,” I said. “But we will go slowly, and we will not go far. I’m already on your ground here.”

  More muttering, this round so low I couldn’t make out the words at all. The man who’d spoken first let out a huff.

  “Come,” he said. “Then we’ll see if the commander will meet you.”

  One of them touched my arm. I managed to detach it gently rather than yanking it away as I’d wanted to. “You walk,” I said. “I can follow you well enough.” I’d keep a better sense of space if I was navigating by my own powers.

  I extended a length of shadow like a cane and treaded after the two guards who were leading me. My back prickled with the awareness of the few we were leaving behind. Technically I was now surrounded.

  Between my free hand following the wall and the shadow cane testing the space around me, I formed a mental map in my head as I followed the scrape of the dark elves’ feet. The tunnel curved to the left. We passed another cave opening at our right with a waft of slightly warmer air. After about five minutes, my guides stopped in a space that felt about the size of the dining room in my hall back in Asgard. My shadows flicked across walls sloping up toward a high ceiling.

  “Wait here,” the man said. The woman stayed, leaning against the wall with a rustle of her clothes, as he hustled off. I stood still and straight, fighting the impression that I might be making a horrendous mistake.

  It seemed a long while that I waited. My mouth grew dry, my shoulders stiff from standing at attention. Then several sets of footsteps sounded in the passage where the guard had disappeared. The clink of metal reached my ears.

  The commander had brought more guards. I had to hope they were intended for his protection and not to try to capture me.

  They drew to a stop at the mouth of the passage. I suspected he hadn’t even entered the room. His gravelly voice carried across the room to me.

  “You wanted to speak to someone in charge. Here I am. I can’t speak for all the dark elves, but I’m the best you’re going to get. What do you want, god of darkness?”

  I found I didn’t know what to say other than the truth. Maybe Loki would have had some sly way of getting at the subject he wanted, but I didn’t see much point in beating around the bush. Mostly I wanted to be done with this and gone from here, back to the open warmth and fresh winds of Asgard.

  “I want to know why you’ve allied with Surt against us,” I said. “Why you’ve been killing humans for him. Why you helped him capture Odin.”

  The commander let out a hoarse laugh. “And you figure I should tell you just because you asked?”

  “I think something must have gone wrong. This kind of violence hasn’t been the way of the dark elves in the past.”

  “‘Gone wrong’,” he repeated, with what sounded like a shake of his head. “And you have no idea. This is what it takes to bring you to our doorstep. What are you even offering if I tell you there is something wrong?”

  “Perhaps we could help you set things right,” I said. “In a way that doesn’t require debasing yourself for that monster.”

  “Monster?” the commander scoffed. “The giant is the only one who’s stood up to fight for our survival. While you and your fellow Asgardians lounge around enjoying your lovely city, forgetting the rest of us even exist.”

  My jaw clenched. “I’m here now. I’m listening now. Whether you take this chance is up to you. If the gods ‘forget’ you after this, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

  “Oh, so this is one more way to wash your hands of us, then? I’m not sure I even believe you don’t know. Your great Odin was down here to witness the state of things for himself. And doesn’t he see all when he looks down over the realms. But what has he ever cared for anyone but his own?”

  The last words rang with bitterness so pungent it seemed to sear right through my skin. Right down to the smoldering anger I’d tamped down earlier. Before I’d thought through my response, it had already tumbled out.

  “What makes you think he cares about even his own all that much?”

  The commander paused for a moment. “Strange words from one of those who was very anxious to get him back.”

  He sounded skeptical, but there was something more o
pen in his tone now. Something curious. I barreled onward.

  “You know who I am, don’t you? You know my story. You know who ordered my first death. I saved him, yes. That doesn’t mean I’d defend his every action. I’m here because I don’t trust every act he takes. Whatever’s happened, whatever he might know about your complaints, he hasn’t shared that with the rest of us. I swear to you, I want to know even if he doesn’t.”

  Silence hung between us. When the commander spoke again, his voice was raw.

  “I still say you’re hundreds of years too late. That’s how long it’s been since the caves started collapsing. Should I tell you how much smaller our realm has become as the rock grows more brittle? How many have died with the ceiling of their homes crashing down over their heads? How the gardens we once maintained have begun to shrivel with rot? What it’s like to hear the sobbing of children who are hungry or ill or homeless every day of your life?”

  A wave of horror rolled over me. “I didn’t know,” I said.

  “Of course you didn’t. Why would you think about things like that off in your fancy halls where all is well? We made you your weapons and your armor for your war, and then when the end was over, what use did you have for us? When have any of your kind set foot in our realm of their own accord since Ragnarok?”

  He stepped back with the tap of a spear-end against the rock floor. “We haven’t lowered ourselves to anything. The world we live in brought us low. We’re just trying to claw our way back up. When it’s that or watch your people die, I wonder if you’d really choose any differently. Take that back to Asgard, Blind One.”

  12

  Aria

  In that first early hour after I woke up, when Asgard was quiet and the sun just rising over the majestic buildings, I could almost forget we were on the verge of war. I stopped outside my hall, soaking in the dawn light. Then I spotted a golden falcon plummeting from the sky.