Okay, so maybe that was four words.
31
“That’s all I can do.”
Tyr watched as Mir’s blue healing magic faded to a dull glimmer, the color darkening as it settled over Hunter’s body, a slight blush blooming her cheeks, her chest rising in a slow, steady rhythm as she slept. This was his third attempt, and Tyr prayed for a miracle.
“This will hold her for a few days,” Mir murmured, withdrawing his hand, dark circles beneath his eyes as he met Tyr’s gaze. “Any more, and the magic will do more harm than good.”
“And after that?” Tyr closed his eyes, praying to whatever the fuck gods were left listening to save his woman.
“She’s dying, Tyr. Nothing I can do to change that.” Mir’s edict stopped him dead in his tracks. Over the past couple of hours, he’d entertained that very possibility, always with a big hell no at the end of his wildest imaginings.
“She can’t die.”
“The Orobus took what’s been keeping her alive. There are bills to be paid, Tyr, and Hunter’s had more time on this little blue ball than most. Without that power inside, her life force is fading.” Mir turned around, just long enough for Tyr to see the utter exhaustion lining his face. “I’m sorry, my brother.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. You can’t cheat Fate. You’ve done everything, you gave her this life, she’s had time, and lots of it, Tyr.”
But not with me, Tyr wanted to scream. We haven’t had any time. No fucking time at all. “Bullshit. That is bullshit.”
“Maybe so. But it’s the truth.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Nobody sees anything these days.” Mir shot him a sideways glance. “You know Odin’s the only one who ever really saw the future. And trust me, talking to him these days is a total waste of time. I’m giving you my best educated guess, based on all of the evidence I have at hand. The bastard took the one thing that’s been keeping her alive.”
Standing over the love of his life, Tyr raged. How in the hell had things had gone so far off the rails? This should have been so simple. It would have been so simple, if not for their big, fucking, overblown egos. Where this woman ended, he began. But like a perfect circle, it would collapse in upon itself if the sphere wasn’t complete. That much he knew.
In all of their history, over all of their years, he’d watched over her. He’d watched her grow, thrive, bloom. He’d watched her roar. Like a fucking lion. No, scratch that. Like a fucking dragon. And he wasn’t about to let her voice dim out into some kind of whimper just because he’d tried to do the right fucking thing, for once in his life. He was a god, for fuck’s sake, maybe it was about time to start acting like one. Besides, who said Asgard was gone? No one ever confirmed it. Odin saw the future. But he hadn’t been the only one.
There’d been others who could, long before Odin.
Maybe it was time someone looked them up.
Behind him, Mir’s voice grew impossibly soft. “I’m so fucking sorry, Tyr. Essentially, Hunter signed her own death warrant by saving you.” He turned back to the computer. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Bullshit,” Tyr said again, this time forcefully. “Try again.”
“The Orobus took something vital from her, even though there are no outward signs. Think of my magic as a patch, or at worst, a Band-aid. It will only hold her for a short time. Too much will kill her. Unless we can figure something else out.” Mir drew a raspy, tired breath. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
Tyr stared down at her, guilt eating away at him. Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve, rattling around in his brain until the words were playing in a steady, unhelpful loop. If only he’d managed to lead the Orobus far enough away or completely lose him in the city. If only she hadn’t tried to be a hero.
“Blaming yourself won’t bring her back. And time isn’t something she has a lot of right now,” Mir warned him, heading for the door. “I’m wiped out. And trust me, this wasn’t the only thing that went wrong in last night’s clusterfuck. Freyr and Morgane are lucky to be alive. You are too. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and make these next two days the best she’s ever had. I’ve done what I can.
“Get her out of here, put her in bed, let her sleep. When she wakes up, she’ll need to eat.” Mir paused in the doorway. “You want to show her how you feel? Then don’t squander a moment of it. If this were Syd, you wouldn’t be able to pry me away.” By the time he finished, his face was hollow. “No chance you could work the spell on her again, is there?”
Tyr shook his head. Maybe he could, if only he remembered the spell, or had Hunter’s cursed stone circle set on hallowed ground, or a million other details lined up perfectly.
“All I wanted was to keep her forever,” Tyr said, his words stopping Mir in his tracks. “And I knew the only way to do that was to make her hate me. Better she hate me and remember me, than make love to me just once and forget me.” He shook his head slightly, looking sober. “I wanted to keep her. And that was the only way I thought I could.”
“You really are a cold-hearted bastard.”
“Yes, I can be.” Tyr paused. “But I’d do it again.” A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Yeah. I’d go through everything again, just for these last few days with her.” Not fancy words, but true enough.
“But…?”
“But I’d be a lying bastard if I told you that would be enough.” A lifetime wouldn’t be enough. Damn it, she was meant to be his. And if she was going to burn down the world, he’d stand next to her while she did it. And he’d hold her hand while they watched the flames lick the sky all around them.
“Well shit, you make it sound like it was Fate who brought you two together.”
“Maybe it was,” Tyr told him, an idea kindling. “You know? Maybe it was.”
Tyr scooped her up, carried her to his room, and laid her down, making sure not to wake her. She was a mess, and he used a cloth to carefully lathe her face, wiping the blood, the dirt away. Frowning at the faint scars he’d never noticed before. He watched her sleep, even slept himself for a few hours. When he opened his eyes, she was watching him, the light in her eyes guttering.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, her voice impossibly weak. “I couldn’t leave you.” When he stroked her cheek, the skin was soft, velvety, the color paper-white. He kissed her gently, grateful her lips were warm. Grateful he still had the chance.
“It’s all right. We’ll figure this out, Hunter.” The words, her name, came out whisper-rough. “I’ll fix this.” I’ll save you.
“I don’t believe this can be fixed.” She managed a slight, hoarse laugh. “When I asked you to kill me, I thought I was ready to die.” Tears gleamed in her eyes. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered I’m not.”
The words hit Tyr in the gut so hard he couldn’t move a muscle. “There are things that need to be said between us, Hunter. Things that should be said. Mir said it was Fate that brought us together. Do you believe that?” He licked his lips, Hunter following every movement of his tongue.
“Strangely enough, I do.”
“Would you like to know what I told him?”
She nodded, her eyes huge and shining.
“I told him all the things that I should have said in that cave, when everything was about to end.”
“Which cave?” she asked softly. “Which time? We seem to be developing a bad habit of ending up in trouble in the same place, you know.”
Tyr pressed his lips against her forehead.
“Yes, we do.” Somehow, impossibly, she was making jokes when she was slipping further away from him. “I wanted you to hate me, that day I left and rode away.” At that, Hunter went still, even her breathing seemed to stop. “It was a stupid plan, in retrospect, now that I think about it, although it did work.
“I needed you to despise me. Because once you did, I knew you’d hate me forever. I figured that was my best chance of keeping you, because then, you
’d never forget me.” He tucked her beneath his chin. “Had I spent the night with you I’d intended, my one night with the chieftain’s beautiful daughter, you would have forgotten me.”
“I wouldn’t have…”
“You would have and you know it. But the way you looked at me, circling me on your horse that day, with such hatred in your eyes? If you hated me that desperately, I figured you’d never forget me.”
A wry smile twisted his mouth. “And that was my master plan to keep you forever.”
“That has to be the most boneheaded thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Did you ever forget me? Even once?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Then I guess my strategy worked.”
“You are an idiot.”
Tipping her face up, Tyr kissed her, softly tasting her lips. “You are everything in this world, in this life, that makes me want to see tomorrow. Time with you…becomes irrelevant.
“Because whatever we have, however long we have? Will never be enough. So what do you say, love? Will you share this life with me? For however long we have it?”
“I’m afraid it won’t be for very long, Tyr,” she whispered, her voice rough. She took his face in her hands, her golden eyes brimming with unshed tears. “But yes, I would like that very much.”
His eyes burned too, so much he could barely speak past the lump in his throat. “I thought we’d burn the world down together.”
Hunter kissed him back. “Yes, we might have done that if only we hadn’t been so stubborn.” She kissed him once more, slowly and gently and thoroughly. The kind of kiss they might have shared if they had all the time in the world. But it wasn’t nearly enough as she tucked herself against him and fell fast asleep.
This time, when they woke, the flush of pink in her cheeks was gone, and she barely could sit, relying on Tyr to prop her upright, her hands worrying the edge of the blanket while her eyes tracking his movements around the room, as if finding every nervous tell.
“How bad were things, when I was out?” she asked, her gaze skimming down the front of him. “And did Mir heal me, like he healed you? There was so much blood, I wasn’t sure you were even alive.”
Tyr dodged her probing eyes. “He used his magic on you, yes. As for me, it took some doing for Mir to close the wounds back up, but…nothing I haven’t been through before.”
Hunter wasn’t buying it. “Hmm. The truth, please.” She said it pleasantly enough, but there’d be no evading the question.
“I’m all right,” he said quietly. “But it’s not me we need to discuss. Tell me what the Orobus did to you. I might fix it, if I knew where to start.”
“There’s no fixing this, Tyr. He took his power back. All of it. And now I only feel curiously…empty.” She managed a slight smile. “That’s what’s happening, right? I’m dying?”
Tyr sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her over to him, and kissed the top of her head. “Nope, not today. Right now, you’re going to eat a good breakfast and get at least another eight hours of sleep. Once you get that in, then we’ll talk.”
“Deal.”
Tyr stayed true to his word. He watched every move as she shoveled breakfast into her mouth. Then he gently tucked her into bed. She was barely halfway through arguing with him over how she wasn’t a bit tired when she passed out and didn’t say another word.
If she only knew what she looked like. Curled up in a tight knot like some kind of exotic cat, ivory-skinned with long, dark lashes on her high cheekbones, all that black hair spilling over the pillow. Gods, what was her ancestry, Tyr wondered.
Her father had been a fierce, proud man, but Hunter’s mother? He’d never met the woman.
Heard rumors. Tales, more like. Nothing he put any stock in, since they all had the ring of superstition and fear.
“Sleep, my princess,” he whispered, running his fingers across her beautiful face.
If she was willing to trade her life to an evil god, then he could do the same.
Consequences be damned.
32
“Nice hair.”
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Freyr expected to take some ribbing, but after a few minutes, the joke got really old. “So, goldilocks, let’s hear this proposition of yours?” Loki’s lips twitched. These assholes were enjoying his transformation way too much. But Freyr manned up.
“First, we’ve got to consider the possibility that Hunter won’t be able to close the gate. Whatever happened at the airport, she’s in no condition to destroy the circle, even if we did manage to lure the thing close enough again.”
“Tyr’s out of commission as well.” Mir’s voice rang quietly from the back of the room, and the god looked beat as he cracked his knuckles. “Don’t count on either of them, not for a while.”
Freyr paused, thinking back on the explosion that almost killed him and Morgane. “We used nearly all of our munitions staging those two smaller explosions yesterday. We’ll need more supplies. I’m sending a team down to Valparaiso to the depot. If there are no objections, I need two volunteers.” He nodded as Vali and Balder raised their hands.
“Thirdly…” He took a deep breath. “It’s something we haven’t discussed nearly enough. How is the Orobus accessing those doorways? And what can we do to close them?”
“Do we seriously want to barricade that thing here? On this planet?”
“Not the best option, to be sure.” Freyr nodded, in full agreement. “Look, we’ve been wasting all our time and energy trying to draw him to the circle and lock him away. While we’re getting our asses kicked, he’s getting stronger.”
“He’s getting stronger because he’s using the doorways to siphon energy from the other worlds.” Mir braced his arms on the table as Freyr nodded. They’d discussed this already. And it was time to get everyone else on board. “According to Syd’s newest energy readings.”
“So we’re stopping him,” Freyr told them. “We shut those doors down, lock them up tight. Chicago’s practically a ghost town. There’s nothing left here for him to feed on.”
Aaaand…this was where things got complicated.
Freyr looked over at Mir, and he offered a faint nod of encouragement. “My idea is to have Syd use her magic to seal the doorways. Which will force the Orobus to waste time and energy trying to unlock the doors or hunt for another means to access the other realms.” As there was no reaction from anyone, Freyr plowed on. “He’ll waste his time and his energy to access his resources, which will conserve our own. How close would you need to be, and how long would it take, Syd?”
“A few hours, max,” she answered, nodding as she deliberated. “If he hasn’t imbued any of his dark magic into the stones. In which case, I’ll have to use some fancy spell work to get around it.” Sydney met the questioning glances with an explanation. “When the Orobus entered our world through the Bean…the Cloud Gate, he left imprints all over the metal. Swirling imprints, like fingerprints burned into the stainless steel. There’s reason to believe he’s left some sort of imprint on the stones.” She mused, tapping her finger on her cheek. “If he has, I’ll need time to investigate. Let me take another look at the schematics. Once I’m sure they’re clean, just a few minutes per stone, and I should be able to lock them down. I’m just not sure how long my magic would hold out against him.” She seemed to do a quick calculation in her head. “Maybe a week at the most?”
A week. It would be something. Longer than they had now.
“How do we draw him out of the city?” Sydney asked.
“I had this crazy idea.” He wasn’t sure it would work, but with Tyr out of the picture, this was better than nothing. Tamping down the feeling of gut-clenching dread that came with assuming responsibility, Freyr began laying out his plan. When he was finished, to his surprise, the others were actually nodding agreement.
“If this works, it’s still only a stopgap solution,” Freyr warned them, his nerves relaxing a little as everyone seemed to be on board. �
�And the whole thing depends on Syd’s magic being strong enough to withstand the Orobus’s.”
“Still,” Loki reminded them, “it’s an approach we haven’t considered before. And it’ll buy us time to regroup. Time we need.”
“All right.” Mir met Freyr’s gaze steadily. “Hop to. The faster we get moving on this, the better our chances are.”
Freyr watched them all file out of the room, his stomach finally settling down. As he turned to follow them, he heard a sound behind him and found Loki still seated at the table. “I’ve got something to say to you, goldilocks.”
Here we go, Freyr thought.
“It’s not often someone surprises me,” Loki went on, his drawling voice bored. “But every once in a while, I have to admit, life catches me off-guard.” Loki stood, extended his hand to Freyr. “When you saved Morgane, I swear to the gods, you saved the only thing that matters to me.”
Freyr lost his breath as Loki yanked him into a tight embrace. “And for that, my brother, I owe you everything.”
33
By the time Tyr located the others, there were several surprises waiting for him. He expected chaos. He found order. He expected spirits to be low. They were not. He expected half of them to be drunk, but even there, he was sadly disappointed.
Sober. The lot of them.
There was a new king in town, and he looked…
“Holy hell, what did you do to yourself?”
Freyr looked strangely capable, stripped of his long golden mane and dressed in a plain black Kevlar from head to toe. He looked almost…deadly. He seemed almost…competent. Plans were in the making, plans Tyr had no part of. Even now, he hovered like an outsider over Thor’s shoulders, surveying the schematics strewn across the table littered with empty coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches.
Freyr fanned out the pages and handed him one. “We’ve got some shit in the planning stages, but I want you to look this over with fresh eyes. Especially after what happened last time. I don’t want to get blindsided again.”
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