by Eva Chase
“If I can’t manage to do this by the end of the day, I deserve the shame of being subjected to a rescue,” I said. “Don’t worry yourself too much. How many times have I ventured into the realm of giants and returned as well as when I’d left?”
My brother smiled. “More than I can count.”
Neither of us mentioned the fact that I’d never ventured there both without my hammer and completely alone.
“Should I be worrying about you?” I asked him as he accompanied me through the vast room to the hearth’s entrance. “The darkness inside that you were struggling with—”
Baldur cut off my question with a gentle wave of his hand. “It seems I was fighting so hard against it I only made the pressure of it worse,” he said. “I’ve started letting a little of it out here and there under my control, and I feel steadier every time I do. Nothing could quash my light.”
“I never doubted that.” I patted him on the back before stepping away from him to duck into the blackness of the hearth.
Yggdrasil’s branch into Jotunheim brought me out nowhere all that near any of the major cities. It was the capital I was aiming for, where my ploy was most likely to reach the ears it needed to. Thankfully the isolated terrain where I emerged meant I could coast along with bursts of lightning-twined cloud until I reached one of the better-trafficked roads leading toward the realm’s largest city.
A couple carting smoked meat in that direction gave me an uncertain look but agreed to let me ride in the back, as long as I helped them unload once they reached their shop in town. The only difficult part of the journey was restraining myself from sampling their merchandise, which I had to admit set my mouth watering. I could criticize giants for many things, but they did know how to eat well when they took a mind to do it right.
Perhaps that was where my great appetite came from. The thought settled uneasily in my gut, but I grasped onto it, setting my jaw. I was here as a giant. I had to embrace every bit of me that my mother’s line might have affected.
Who would have thought it might be my giant side and not my godly nature that would help me save Asgard?
Unloading the cart only took a few minutes, even though I played down my strength so I didn’t draw outright stares. Then it was a simple matter of spotting the most popular drinking establishment in town—the one where figures of some influence among their giant peers would be inclined to enjoy themselves.
The streets were quieter than I remembered being usual, but then, I’d only entered this city a few times in the past, and those times many centuries ago. I assumed it was just a slower night until I turned a corner and found myself faced with a chasm that ran straight through the road. It gaped several feet wide, and the buildings on either side had crumbled into it, leaving only ruins that no one had yet attempted to reconstruct. A makeshift bridge of wooden boards weighted with stones spanned it near the spot where I stood.
What calamity had caused this? I approached the chasm cautiously and peered down into its depths, finding only darkness where the sides narrowed. The couple with the cart had made some mutterings about the “splittings of the earth,” but I’d assumed they were talking about a minor earthquake or the like near their farm.
Was this happening a lot? My memory slipped back to Hod’s comments about the cave-ins in Nidavellir. Could the realm of giants be cracking open just as the dark elves’ home was collapsing?
I wasn’t sure I quite felt sorry for the giants, given our history, but the possibility left my nerves creeping with even more uneasiness. At least the general sense that their home was under threat should help me convince whoever listened to the story I had to tell.
I backtracked, not entirely trusting the rudimentary bridge under my substantial weight, and wandered farther through the streets. It wasn’t long before a whiff of ale reached my nose. I followed it to a street lined with restaurants, shops, and taverns.
One particular tavern took up the space of two buildings on the edge of a cobblestone square, its windows bright and energetic voices already carrying through the open windows even though it was only mid-afternoon. That looked like a promising spot.
Girding myself, I pushed past the door into the dim light of the establishment. Giants sat around the many circular tables of heavy oak, most of them with tankards in hand. The barkeep behind the matching counter at the back of the place was just setting out several more frothing mugs for the patrons.
Several gazes turned my way at my entrance. This was where I had to find whatever cunning I had in me. I let my shoulders slump and lumbered over to the counter as if I had the weight of all nine realms resting on them.
“A glass of your best ale,” I said, leaning against the counter. “Ah, no, make it two glasses. No doubt I’ll need more than that before I’m through.”
“Had a rough time of it?” the barkeep asked as he poured my drink.
“You could say that,” I said. “But not as rough a time as we’ll all have if something isn’t done. Those bastards in Asgard! They’ve never missed the chance to lord it over us.”
One of the giants sitting near me glanced over. “What’s this about Asgard?” he asked, his face already flushing.
If there was one thing I knew about giants, it was that you didn’t mention the highest realm unless you wanted to provoke some tempers.
I shook my head as if defeated. “There’s no point in talking about it. Look at us. Look at this city. He’s right. We’re doomed.”
A couple of the other giants nearby peered over at me. “What do you mean, doomed?” the first one demanded. “Speak plainly, will you? I’m not interested in guessing games.”
I eyed him and the others looking our way, pretending to consider. My heart was thumping faster than if I’d been in the middle of a battle, or at least more anxiously.
I could do this. I could be sly—maybe not as well as Loki, but I’d watched him in action often enough, hadn’t I?
Imagining the impressed shock on the trickster’s face when he found out what I’d pulled off bolstered my confidence.
“Maybe you’ll listen,” I said. “The others I talked to were too slow to wrap their heads around it. But you—you seem to know what’s what.”
The giant drew himself up straighter. Another thing about giants: They were so easily manipulated by flattery. Especially when it came to the intelligence they were often accused, with good reason, of lacking. “I’ll listen,” he said.
Some of the others tugged their chairs closer. “What’s going on?” a woman among them asked.
“I saw Surt today,” I said. “I spoke to him.”
A murmur passed through my audience. Even more heads turned my way. “Surt?” someone said. “I haven’t heard talk of him in years. Wasn’t he banished to Muspelheim for that failure of a war against the gods?”
Someone else snorted. “Some victory he brought us. Wipe them all out just for them to spring up again good as new.”
“He was banished,” I said, nodding. “But somehow he’s sneaking back to our realm now and then. Maybe the gods are letting him. I have to think—the things he was saying—Odin must have done more than banish him. He must have Surt in his thrall.”
“What are you talking about?” the first giant said.
I looked down at my hands as if it pained me to say this part. “He was ranting about how weak the jotun have become. How none of us deserve this realm. That the draugr he’s been raising are better warriors than us. I think he means to take the realm by force. Why would he do that if the gods weren’t behind him, urging him on through their awful powers?”
The murmur that rippled around me at that question sounded like agreement. I restrained the urge to smile. My ploy had worked. I’d hooked them.
“A draug fight better than a giant,” the woman who’d spoken earlier muttered. “Any of us could take on ten.”
“I tried to tell him that,” I said. “But he just laughed. He said he’s been building his army just to prove it
to us. It was horrible, seeing him like that. I tried to tell the others I spoke to—we have to help him. Break him out of their spell. Or at least we have to stop him before he tears this realm apart even more than it’s already been shaken.”
“The latter would be simpler,” the first giant said, with an uneven grin that told me I wouldn’t need any more persuasion to send him on the path I wanted. “Surt thinks so highly of himself? I think he’s lived far too long.”
21
Aria
“Well,” Tyr said, clapping his hands where he was standing at the edge of the practice field. “That was quite the show.”
He sounded impressed but wry at the same time, as if he hadn’t expected us to topple that set of targets, but he couldn’t bring himself to find the act all that amazing either. I touched down on the grass, my feet braced against the earth and muscles still humming with adrenaline, trying to ignore the pinch of annoyance.
No one had insisted he stick around and watch our continued training to perfect our combined attacks. If he was bored with it, he could go jerk himself off with his one hand.
“Considering your areas of expertise,” Loki said from behind me, “I’d expect you to know the difference between warfare and entertainment.” His voice had the same edge I’d heard yesterday when he’d talked to Tyr. If anything, after a couple hours of performing with that additional spectator, the edge was even more prominent.
Also like yesterday, Tyr ignored him. “You do seem to run out of targets quickly,” he remarked in Thor’s general direction. Then he turned to Freya. “What part are we meant to play in the battle exactly while this bunch is demonstrating their flashy talents?”
“I’m sure we’ll fight beside them as always,” Freya said, her expression suggesting she wasn’t incredibly fond of Tyr’s attitude either. “We just need to make sure to give them room to work those talents. I’ve seen them in a real skirmish too. It really is incredible the way their magic merges.”
“And if that doesn’t suit you, we already know you make excellent bait,” Loki tossed in.
Tyr did stiffen at that remark. He frowned at the group of us. “I came back because I understood my help was wanted. I’m here to protect Asgard. Is that a problem?”
“Of course not, of course not,” Thor said, stepping forward.
“Come now,” Loki said. “You know me. I always enjoy a good joke. Don’t be so quick to draw arms.” The tension in his posture told a different story. He bent to scoop up an apple that had inadvertently ended up in the jumble of targets we’d hauled out to the field, tossed it in his hand, and caught it. “Let me know when we’re set up for another go. I feel the need to stretch my legs.”
He sauntered off past the nearest halls without another word or a backward glance, still tossing the apple with sharp flicks of his wrist. My gaze caught Baldur’s. He gave me a pained smile as if to say, I suppose it could be worse?
I wasn’t really sure it could be, though. Every time I’d seen Loki in the last few days, he’d seemed more irritable and more distant at the same time.
“We could get carting those new targets over,” Hod said.
He turned his face toward me, including me as well as his twin in the suggestion, but the tug in my gut pulled me toward the slim figure just vanishing beyond the gleaming buildings. “I think I’d better try to talk to him,” I said.
Hod didn’t need to ask me who. “Good luck,” he said, not entirely sarcastically.
I hurried away from them in the direction Loki had gone, letting some of my valkyrie strength and speed flow through my legs. I’d never beat Loki in a race, but he wasn’t walking that fast. I got the impression he hadn’t expected anyone to bother following him.
“Does the great Tyr request my presence?” he asked when I caught up, his gaze still fixed on the forest he was heading toward.
“No,” I said, abruptly annoyed with him. “What’s with you lately? He’s kind of a jerk, but he’s not that bad.”
“Perhaps he should be the one you’re chatting with then.”
I restrained a growl of frustration. As I strode faster to keep pace with him, a hint of scent drifted off his shirt. A tinge of that sulfuric smell I associated with Muspelheim. Had he gone back there again this morning?
My irritation washed away with a wave of hopelessness. I gritted my teeth against the sensation. Loki had given me a whole new life, had seen me as worthy of it when none of the other gods would have looked twice at me. I couldn’t give up on him.
A spark of inspiration hit me with the leap of the apple up from his palm. I walked alongside him a few steps farther, and then I launched myself into the air just as he tossed the fruit. With a whip of my arm, my fingers had closed around its smooth skin.
“Pixie!” Loki said in protest.
I whirled around to face him, hovering a couple feet above the ground with a flutter of my wings, and tossed the apple like he had. “You want it back? Come and get it.”
Even a grouchy Loki couldn’t resist a little mischief. A gleam lit in his amber eyes. “Are you sure that’s a dare you want to make?” he said in the sly tone I was more used to.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Trying to talk me out of it because you’re afraid I’ll win?”
He sprang at me without warning, but not at full-speed—and I’d been waiting for a move like that anyway. With a sweep of my wings, I took off toward the forest. My fingers stayed clutched around the apple. It was an ordinary one, already bruised from being tumbled with the practice supplies, but right then it felt like something precious.
The breeze warbled as Loki dashed after me. I veered one way and swooped another, pushing my wings as fast as they would carry me. Once I was in the shelter of the forest, he’d have a harder time pouncing.
There. I shot between two trees on the fringes, jerking to the side an instant before his hand could close around my ankle. Indignant laughter escaped his lips. He wove back and forth through the brush, never more than a few feet behind me. Then, just as I reached the point where the wilder forest gave way to the apple orchard, he sprang so fast I didn’t even feel him coming until his arm had already snagged my waist.
The sudden tug spun me around as we fell. My wings contracted into my back. Loki’s arm jerked up, his hand cupping the back of my head to protect me from the worst of the impact as we crashed into the soft grass at the edge of the orchard. Which meant he landed over me, his heave of breath spilling hot against my cheek, his lips just inches from mine, his body braced above me.
Even though his arms had caught most of his weight, panic jolted through me at the impression of being pinned down by his body. My back tensed against Loki’s protective embrace. His playful expression vanished.
He pushed himself backward, moving off me as he slid his arm free, and a different sort of panic flashed through me. I was about to lose him again, to lose the pleased light I’d just reignited in him.
My hand darted out to snag in the fabric of his tunic, halting him. “No.”
Loki peered down at me, going completely still. “Ari?”
I inhaled shakily. Too many emotions were colliding inside me. The fact that it terrified me that I might lose him terrified me all over again in turn. When had anything or anyone other than Petey mattered to me even half this much?
If this scenario went wrong, where the hell would that leave me?
I didn’t know, but I did know that it’d be even worse not to have Loki at all. I adjusted my grip on his shirt, willing my breaths to even out. One of his knees had brushed my inner thigh when he’d moved. My skin was already tingling from that contact.
He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t take anything other than what I offered him. I knew that.
“I want this,” I said, holding his gaze. “I trust you.”
Loki flinched. I couldn’t have said what reaction I’d expected, but it definitely hadn’t been that. My heart ached before he even spoke.
“You’d be the firs
t, then,” he said, and hesitated. “I don’t want to stir up those memories, to make you think of… I’m not very good at handling fragile objects, pixie. I have a tendency of breaking them, even if I end up fixing them after.”
The rawness in his voice made my heart beat even faster, but it was a heady drumming now. My initial panic was pulling back, bit by bit, in the wake of the warmth between our bodies.
“Maybe you just think you’re not good with them because no one ever expected you to be before,” I said.
Loki stared at me. “Ari,” he said, and then didn’t seem to know how to continue.
I tugged on his shirt. “Anyway, I don’t break that easily.”
A hoarse chuckle slipped from his lips. His head dipped down, his nose grazing mine. “No, you certainly don’t.”
I tipped my face, seeking out his mouth, and he closed that last short distance in an instant. His lips met mine with a flicker of heat that coursed straight down to my core. He kept himself braced over me, no part of us touching except our mouths and that knee resting just above my own.
That kiss bled into another and another, each one a little deeper, a little sweeter. The nerves still keeping my muscles tight started to loosen. My fingers stayed curled in the fabric of Loki’s shirt, but the rest of me relaxed against the grassy ground. This was nothing at all like those memories he’d alluded to. It was something utterly different. Something new.
Loki eased a little closer, his hips pressing against mine ever so slightly, and my pulse hiccupped. But his tongue teased into my mouth at the same moment, and the fear was overshadowed by that fresh rush of heat.
Our tongues tangled like dancing flames. I dropped the apple I’d still been holding with my other hand and looped my arm behind Loki’s neck to pull him even closer.
He shifted his weight onto one arm so he could stroke his fingers along the curve of my breast. A gentle stream of heat followed his touch. I arched toward him, kissing him harder, wanting more.