by Eva Chase
My heart lurched. That was Freya’s falcon form. Had she been on the patrol just now—had she seen something?
I hurried over, reaching her just as her feet touched the tiles outside her own gleaming hall. She shook off the falcon cloak with a swish of the golden hair it matched and swiped her hand across her eyes. She looked tired. The impression didn’t detract from her beautiful face at all, but it was unnerving to see all the same.
“What happened?” I asked. “Is Surt making another attack? Do we need to wake everyone up?”
Freya turned her blue eyes toward me, blinking for a second as if she’d forgotten that anyone else might be around. She rolled her shoulders with a twist of her mouth that didn’t quite make it into a smile.
“No attack,” she said. “No sign of Surt. I was out searching for Hnoss—for my daughter.”
“Oh.” From her expression, she hadn’t found the younger goddess. I groped for something to say. “I guess there must be a lot of places to look.”
“Yes,” Freya agreed. “And I’ve been to all of the ones I can think of. It’s been so long… It’s hard to say how her tastes might have changed. I suppose I don’t even know for sure she’s there to be found.”
Her voice wobbled, just slightly but enough to make my throat close up. What would I have done if Petey had been lost to me, not only mentally but completely?
“I’m sure you’ll find her eventually,” I said. “You’d know if something had happened to her, wouldn’t you? You must have the same kind of connection to her that told you and Thor and the others that Odin was still alive.”
“Yes,” she said. “As vague as that is.” Her jaw twitched. She smothered a yawn. Had she been out flying all night? “I’d appreciate that more if it would lead me to her.”
“It’s something,” I said. What I wouldn’t have given for a tie like that to Petey.
It seemed insensitive to say anything like that, but Freya’s gaze turned knowing. The pain this conversation had stirred up in me must have shown on my face—or maybe she could sense it in other ways. She’d told me once that being the goddess of love didn’t only mean the romantic kind but all sorts. And if I loved anyone, it was Petey.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of how hard it must be for you to be separated from your brother, with the things that have been happening on Midgard. You could look in on him, couldn’t you?”
“Not on my own,” I said. “That’s how the dark elves found out about him in the first place.” Even if I’d asked Loki to take me to watch Petey for a few moments hidden by his sly magic, I wasn’t sure that would make anything easier. I couldn’t stay to protect him. It would only distract me from what I needed to do here.
It’d be selfish, asking for that, taking that time and energy just to comfort myself for a minute or two. When we’d stopped Surt, when we knew he wasn’t a threat anymore, then I could go without risking Petey more.
Freya lifted her head at the sound of footsteps. Odin was walking toward us, slow and steady, his posture a little less imperious than usual. When he reached us, he set his hand gently on the small of Freya’s back and inclined his head toward her. “Wife.”
“Husband,” she said in a wry tone, the corner of her mouth curling up. I’d never quite wrapped my head around the idea that the two of them were a couple, but seeing that brief intimacy between them made it suddenly real.
I might have had a lot of beefs with Odin, but I could feel in that moment without even trying that he cared about his wife.
“We were just discussing little ones beyond our reach,” Freya said. “Although I suppose it’s a bit much to call Hnoss ‘little’ at this point. You haven’t seen any sign of her in your glimpses from on high, have you?”
The Allfather shook his head. “I would tell you as soon as I did.”
Would he? I wasn’t sure I believed that, no matter how soft his gaze had become as he looked at her. Mostly because a flinty gleam came back into his eyes the second they shifted toward me.
To be fair, we hadn’t exactly ended our last serious conversation on a positive note.
“You look in from time to time on Aria’s brother, too, don’t you?” Freya said.
Odin’s gaze stayed on me. “Is that what’s weighing on the valkyrie? Surt and his minions have not ventured near him.”
Yeah, I definitely didn’t trust him to tell me if I had something to worry about there. He wanted me practicing with the gods and honing our powers, not fretting about mortals. “Good to know,” I said with forced cheer.
“If it would ease your mind,” he went in on his impenetrable voice, “I could let you see for yourself.”
I would have thought I was prepared for anything he could have said, but that offer left me speechless. Freya blinked at him with unmistakable surprise of her own.
“From—from your seat, up there?” I checked, waving my hand toward his hall at the end of the road.
“Where else?”
“I thought you didn’t let anyone up there.”
Odin smiled a thin and equally impenetrable smile. “You are a special case, are you not? A valkyrie I had no hand in creating, who was never prepared to venture onto a battlefield. And yet it’s through you that my sons and blood-sworn brother have found an even greater strength. If it will keep you from distraction later when it matters most, making a small exception is very little price to pay.”
He had made exceptions before, hadn’t he? He’d brought Loki there for their secret meetings about Odin’s dark plans. A fact which didn’t exactly reassure me. But Freya was nodding now, her own smile growing, as if she thought his offer was a delightful idea.
“You can see him without Surt’s fiends ever knowing,” she said. “You deserve that, after everything you’ve given up for us.”
I hadn’t realized she’d considered how much I’d given up in any detail. Trading Midgard for Asgard must have seemed like a huge step up to her. But maybe all that time worrying about her daughter had gotten her thinking about the many different factors that went into making a place a real home.
Odin was watching me, waiting. What would he make of it if I said no? Was that even a reasonable choice? I did want to see Petey, with every fiber of my being.
“All right,” I said. “Can we go now?”
The Allfather turned with a flap of his great cloak and a beckoning gesture. He strode back toward his hall without checking to see if I was following. I hurried after him, tempted to unfurl my wings and show I could make it there faster than him if I really wanted to.
We went through his hall, past the front room where the group of us had paid our respects before and on into the silent depths between the stone walls. Odin turned through a doorway into a small room that held nothing but a ladder with thick oak rungs. A circular panel covered the ceiling above it. He climbed the ladder, pressed a few points on the panel too quickly for me to follow the movement, and slid it aside. With a short huff of breath, he vanished through the opening.
My heart thumped faster as I clambered after him. I crawled out onto the hardwood floor of an unsettlingly familiar room. Tall windows loomed in a ring around me beneath a high peaked ceiling. A tall wooden chair stood in their midst—a larger and more worn version of the throne-like seat he had in his meeting room below. The whole space smelled like the ozone after a storm.
I was rather intimately familiar with that chair, or at least the construct of it Muninn had brought into being. I’d leaned against it while Loki’s lips and tongue had sent waves of pleasure through my core. I’d perched on one of those broad wooden arms with Thor inside me. The memories sparked a tingle between my legs and brought a flush to my cheeks.
Odin couldn’t know about any of that, I was pretty sure. He’d been stuck in a cage in a cave in Muspelheim when it had happened. And it hadn’t really been this room or this chair. Better to put all that out of my mind.
“How does it work?” I asked, setting my hand on the sid
e of the chair. The wood was surprisingly warm.
“Sit,” Odin said, tipping his head. “Settle in. You’ll see better if you’re comfortable.”
Ah, yeah, I was not going to feel super comfortable as long as I was in this room with the Allfather. But I gave it my best shot, scrambling onto the smooth seat and shoving myself so I could lean against the back of it. My feet would have dangled like a little kid’s, so I tucked them into a cross-legged position instead. My hands came to rest instinctively on the arms of the chair.
“Each of the windows looks out onto a realm,” Odin said beside me. “Can you tell which one is Midgard?”
I studied each of the ones I could see in turn. Symbols I hadn’t noticed before were carved into the stone above each window. That one, like a flame, was obviously Muspelheim. My gaze settled on one at my other side, a tree-like symbol that tugged at me. I pointed. “There.”
“Well done, valkyrie.” Odin nudged the chair, and it glided around to face that window. The view beyond the frame was hazy. As I squinted at it, trying to bring something into focus, a rushing sensation crept over me, as if a sharp breeze were blowing under my skin instead of over it. My breath caught at the base of my throat.
“Let yourself go,” the Allfather said in a low voice. “I’ll help you find your way.” He touched my shoulder, his fingers settling into place with a steadying grip.
My pulse hammered even harder, but I gave myself over to the rushing sensation. Petey was out there somewhere. This feeling would take me to him.
The landscape beyond the window spiraled with flashes of color. My sense of the room around me faded away as if the window had drawn me to it, though I could still feel the hard surface of the chair beneath me. Lakes and hills and buildings whipped by, until my stomach churned with dizziness. Then the view jerked to a halt looking down over a small backyard surrounded by an actual white picket fence.
A boy was sitting at a patio table on the low deck, the sun gleaming in his blond hair, his hand clutched around a spoon he was digging into his cereal bowl. Petey. A gasp escaped me. He was right there, and so real—
The woman sitting across from him—his foster mother—gave him a soft smile as he scooped up the last of his breakfast. “Would you like any more, honey?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” Petey said in his shyly sweet voice, but he smiled back. His blue-gray eyes shifted to the cereal box. He reached out and grazed his fingers over an image there. I peered closer.
It was a photograph of one of the trading cards he collected. The kind I’d always been sneaking him packs of when I’d figured our mom wouldn’t notice. His brow knit as he looked at it, and my gut twisted.
“We already got the prize out when we first opened the box. Remember?” His foster mother got up, taking his bowl, and ruffled his hair with clear affection. “There’ll be another one in the next box.”
“I know,” Petey said, but his expression stayed pensive. Confused. How much could he even remember after Hod had wiped me and the rest of the people he’d known from his mind? Did he know he’d used to have a big set of them, fat enough that he’d needed two rubber bands to hold them in place? Did he have a sense that someone had poured over them with him and brought new ones for him to unwrap?
He got up and went down the deck’s single step onto the trimmed lawn. A plastic tub of toys sat next to the step. He grabbed a couple of plastic dinosaur figurines and started them marching into the grass that came up to their bellies. After a minute, he paused, looking down the lawn as if he expected a playmate to come join him.
This one’s a triceratops, so we’ll call her Sera. I think she’s best friends with your stegosaurus.
Of course she is. My toys are always best friends with yours, Ari. They get lonely when you can’t come and see us.
I know, kiddo. I know. Soon, you’ll get to see me all the time. I promise.
God, how many times had I made promises like that? Promises there was no way in hell I could keep now. Heat built up behind my eyes.
At the same moment, Petey’s chin wobbled.
“Why did you leave me all alone?” he whispered to whatever vague shapes of memories he had of times before.
A sob choked me, and the scene in the backyard hurtled away. I slammed into the back of the chair so hard a jolt of pain shot up my spine. But it was nothing compared to the ache clutching my chest.
“Let me see him again,” I sputtered. “I need to—I have to—”
“I think you’ve seen enough,” Odin said, in a voice that wasn’t quite gentle but wasn’t accusing either. “He’s safe. He’s well looked-after. Isn’t that what was important to you?”
My hands clenched against the arms of the chair. “Yes,” I had to say. It was.
I’d also wanted him to be happy. He was away from Mom and her ranting and neglect. He was away from her boyfriends with their bruising hands.
But he’d looked so fucking sad.
13
Aria
The shakes started before I’d made it out of Odin’s room with the ladder. I managed to hold myself stiffly in control as the Allfather showed me out of his hall. I couldn’t tell what reaction he’d been looking for in me, but I’d be damned if he saw me break down.
I stepped out onto the marble tiles, and a tremor crept across my shoulders. I spun and hurried around Odin’s hall, past the few smaller ones that were no longer occupied along the edge of the city, and into the narrow strip of forest that stretched between the city and the apple orchard that had once granted the gods their immortality.
When the trees had closed around me, I sank down to the ground with my back against a pine. A bird fluttered past through the soft warmth of the morning, and the scent of green growing things filled my lungs. None of it was enough to settle my nerves. I buried my face in my hands and breathed with a rasp, sucking air past my palms. My whole body shuddered.
Get it together, Ari. You’ve been through worse. So much worse.
But I couldn’t erase Petey’s thin voice from my memory. That plaintive question, that he couldn’t even have known who he was asking. All he knew was someone had left him behind, without any ties to the life he’d had before.
I’m sorry, I thought at him, as if there was any chance he’d hear me. I’m so fucking sorry.
Even grappling with my tangled feelings, I didn’t miss the crunch of footsteps approaching. My head jerked up, my body tensing. I forced it to relax as much as I could manage, grateful that no actual tears had slipped out to redden my eyes.
Loki ambled between the trees. He’d picked a deep purple tunic this morning, one that made his ivory skin look even paler and his hair flame even brighter. For about half a second I hoped he’d just been going for a stroll and he might not even notice me, but then he met my gaze so nonchalantly I knew he’d come out this way specifically to find me.
He meandered the rest of the way over and propped himself against the ash tree opposite my pine. “Ari,” he said with a nod of greeting. His tone was light, but his eyes were searching.
“Loki,” I replied. Despite my best efforts, my voice creaked a little. The strain of too much withheld emotion.
“You paid a visit to the Allfather, I noticed,” he remarked.
My hackles rose instinctively. “I thought you said you weren’t tracking my every move.”
He gave me a baleful look. “Why do you assume I was monitoring you?”
Oh. He’d been keeping an eye on all of the comings and goings at Odin’s hall? I couldn’t really blame him for that, considering what the king of the gods had put him through.
“He offered to let me see Petey from his seat,” I said. “I haven’t, not for real, since we left him with the foster family. It was a way to check in on him without throwing off our plans or putting him in danger…”
I hadn’t realized how tight Loki’s expression was until it softened. “Oh, pixie,” he said. “Of course you had to see.” He cocked his head. “What happene
d? If he had been in danger, you’d already be halfway across Midgard to save him. But you hardly look pleased.”
I rubbed my temples. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Somehow I thought he could just move on from the blank slate we left him with. But he knows he’s missing something. How could he not? We left a huge black hole in his memory. And it’s weighing on him. I could see that.”
“What did Odin make of all that?”
“I don’t know.” I threw my hands in the air. “What does he make of anything? He just told me that I should be glad Petey’s safe and not to dwell on it or something. He didn’t seem concerned, if that’s what you mean.”
“No. Of course he didn’t.” Loki let out a ragged laugh, and I realized his stance had gone rigid again. “That’s how he always likes us,” he went on in a distant voice that barely sounded as if it were directed at me. “Dangling over a precipice. Never quite on solid ground.” His mouth closed with a snap. His amber eyes glimmered with a sudden spark. He held out his hand to me. “Come with me.”
“What?” I said, easing myself onto my feet. “Where?”
“Just come.” He grasped my fingers and tugged me into his arms. The next thing I knew, he’d taken off into the air with me braced against him, my head by his shoulder, my hip against his waist.
I had to loop my arm around the back of his neck to hold myself steady as the ground whipped by beneath us. “Loki! What are you doing?”
“Refusing to stand down,” he muttered, whatever that was supposed to mean. The lean muscles in his arms were flexed hard where they were wrapped around me. His eyes were still blazing, his mouth set in a grim line as we soared onward, as much creating the wind as chasing it. The sharp heat of his fiery power seeped from his body into mine. I wasn’t sure anything short of an incoming jumbo jet could have thrown him off course, and maybe not even that.
Sometimes I could almost forget I was dealing with gods. Not now. All I could do was cling on and see where we ended up.