by C. R. Jane
Ares Is Mine
Hades Is Mine
Haven Realm Series
Hunted (Little Red Riding Hood Retelling)
Cursed (Beauty and the Beast Retelling)
Entangled (Rapunzel Retelling)
Wicked Heat Series
Wicked Heat #1
Wicked Heat #2
Wicked Heat #3
Elemental Series
Taking Breath #1
Taking Breath #2
Fallen World Series Co-write with Mila Young
Bound
Broken
Beautiful Beasts Academy Series
Lions and Lies (FREE)
Manicures and Mayhem
Diamonds and Demons
Chapter 1
You don’t become a human by parts: an arm here, a knee there. It happens all at once. One moment I was perched next to Odin, clawed feet gripping the rocky ledge and every glossy black feather in order, and the next I was sprawling on an ass I’d never had before, flailing limbs now strangely long and bare, my head totally off-kilter.
The Allfather of the gods looked down on me with an arch of his thick gray-brown eyebrows and started to chuckle.
“Why, Muninn, whatever has gotten into you?”
Before I could answer, the same transformation came over my brother of sorts, Huginn, at Odin’s other side. His raven body, sleek and black as mine had been, shot up into a tall, gangly man in a black shirt and trousers. He stumbled back against the cliff face.
I braced my hands—hands, I had hands now—against the gritty stone and looked down at myself, struggling to focus my thoughts. I’d come out just as thin and pale as Huginn, wiry muscles standing out in my arms and my calves beneath the loose black dress that covered the rest of my human figure. Two small mounds of breasts gave a slight curve to its bodice. The fabric wasn’t half as shiny as my feathers had been. Even in it, I felt horribly naked.
The wind buffeted us, rippling the dress and licking under it over my human skin. It tossed strands of smooth black hair across my face. The smells of the battle raging on in the valley below us came duller to this new nose, but I wrinkled that nose all the same.
My tongue flicked out to taste the lips I hadn’t had until just a moment ago. “What…” My voice came out soft but a little hoarse, an echo of my caw in it. I’d never spoken to Odin from my throat before, only mind to mind.
The Allfather was outright laughing now, with a thump of his spear-turned-walking stick against the ground. His brown eye, the one not scarred over, twinkled with delight.
“Well,” he said in his deep dry voice, “it looks as if I’ve spent so much time in the realm of man that the essence of man—or woman, as the case may be—has rubbed off on the two of you. I can imagine you’ll be of even more use to me when you can shift from form to form.”
When we could shift—yes, damn it, I wanted to shift again. To shrink back into my feathers and stretch my wings at my sides.
I shoved myself onto my feet, swaying as I adjusted to new ways of keeping my balance. The clanging and shouts of the battle continued echoing up. But Odin was much more interested in watching Huginn and I for the moment.
My hands flexed and clenched. I sucked in a sharp breath of the blood-tinged air. My chest felt as if it were gripped by tight talons.
“How do I change back?” I croaked.
“However you changed in the first place, I expect,” Odin said.
But I hadn’t meant to change. I hadn’t done anything. I shifted my weight, twisted my arms, and could find no sense of how to shed this knobby, clumsy body I’d come into.
Odin stroked his silver-flecked beard. “Perhaps you simply need enough motivation,” he said in a teasing voice. With a sweep of his arm, he propelled a wave of air into me. It shoved me over the edge of our perch.
A cry broke from my throat as I plummeted toward the battle we’d come here to watch. My arms wheeled in the air, but no feathers sprouted from them. Swords flashed and muskets sparked in the chaos of bodies below. The ashy stink of burnt gunpowder filled my mouth.
Fly, damn it, fly. I had to fly.
I couldn’t.
The magic Odin had summoned cushioned my fall just enough that I smacked the ground and rolled with a shock of pain but no cracked bones. A cavalry man’s horse thundered past me. My groping hand brushed the gore on a fallen soldier’s eviscerated chest, and I shuddered.
The boom of a musket sounded right over my head. Someone groaned and gurgled. Bodies surged around me with flashes of metal and spurts of blood.
Terror squeezed my throat. I was one of those bodies now, a delicate-skinned human bound to the ground, the heart in my chest pumping blood just as easily spilled.
The jolt of panic shot straight through me—and my form contracted. I flung myself out of the fray in a burst of feathers. With a screech, I propelled myself up to Odin’s ledge as fast as my wings could flap, my raven’s heart still racing with a fear I’d never tasted before.
The town smelled. Every human town did, from dumped excrement and rotting food leavings. My human nose might not have been as sensitive to blood and gore, but tonight I found the putrid essence of mortal waste more offensive than I ever had before when I’d traveled through as a raven.
Maybe that displeasure wasn’t because of my sense of smell at all, but simply because my other senses seemed to dampen in this body. Normally I lived on a plane partway between the present and the past, memories seeping from every mind around me to mingle in a vast soup—one I could stir if I wished with a flutter of my wings, a jab of my beak. In my human form, the world of the present met me more solidly. The memories still drifted around me, but more faded, like wisps rather than a steady current.
The strangeness of it unnerved me, but Odin was still delighting in our newfound shapeshifting ability. He’d wanted Huginn and I to ramble around town in human form to see what we could glean from conversation instead of simply observing from a distance.
I scratched at an uneasy itch that crept across my shoulders and swallowed the last morsel of bread I’d scavenged—an act also significantly more difficult as a human being. Talking hadn’t been all that hard once I’d gotten used to my voice. I might have spent the many ages of my life before now as a bird in body, but my mind was as honed and complex as any human’s or god’s. The trouble had been in finding any conversation all that illuminating.
The people in this town talked either of the war or of their daily concerns: the food they were going to put on the table, the ache of their shoed feet. They remembered the march of soldiers and a peaceful time before, when they hadn’t needed to mutter about the war at all. None of them had given me any particularly thrilling stories to bring back to the Allfather.
I caught up with him in the town square, where he was devouring some sort of sandwich and nodding as Huginn gesticulated through his own account of whatever he’d learned. My fellow raven, the master of thought, had settled into his new form more quickly. But then, his business had always been the present—and the future. He must enjoy having it made even more concrete.
“Well, then, my raven of memory,” Odin said, beckoning me over. “What tales do you come bearing?”
“The same as always,” I said. “They fear the war, and it excites them. Some think back to times of greater comfort and others to those they’ve lost—with pain or with relief. A few remember battles long ago that they feel were either much less fraught or more. Humans are hardly consistent.”
“Such sour words.” The Allfather tipped his head to the side as he considered me. The brim of his broad hat shadowed his face, but it couldn’t dampen the gleam in his eye. “I’d almost think you were sulking, Muninn.”
I resisted the urge to grimace at him. This human face could certainly pull a wide range of expressions. “Why are we even here?” I demanded. “Why do we linger anywhere in Midgard so long, so often—often enough that our entire beings are starting to change?” I flicked my hand toward
my body.
Odin still watched me. Could he see how much this morning’s tumble into the battle was still gnawing at my nerves?
“There’s much to learn from humankind as they and their civilizations grow,” he said. “They never stop changing. Walking among them, drinking the same air, tells me far more than simply watching them from my high seat above. Would you rather ramble around Asgard in the peace and quiet for the next hundred years?”
Yes, I rather would. Especially when my own memories rose up of how we’d spent most of the hundreds of years previous.
“It’s always the wars you seek out,” I said. “The battles and skirmishes and sieges. Weapons blasting and stabbing, blood and guts scattered all around. Suffering.” So much bloody suffering. My memories of Midgard were a long stretch of yelps and sobs and shrieks.
“War is one of my domains,” Odin said. “And I can learn a tremendous amount more from times of suffering than those of happiness. People can be anything when they’re happy. It’s when they’re frightened or in pain that their deepest essence rises to the surface.”
I did grimace at him then. “Or maybe Ragnarok gave you too much of a taste for destruction.”
Odin let out a huff, but he sounded less amused than he usually did when I spoke my mind. Maybe I’d had a little more on my mind to speak today than I usually did.
“I think we serve a great purpose here,” Huginn started, the damn ass-kisser, but Odin cut him off before he could get any further.
“There are worse places we could travel to, you know. The Allfather’s cloaked, broad-shouldered form loomed even taller as he gripped his spear. “It seems to me a little perspective may have been lost over the years. Now that my ravens are more adaptable, perhaps we should check the lay of the land in the other realms too. For a change of pace, if you’re that eager for one.”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t like the thread of darkness ringing through his voice. But he was already spreading his arms and summoning down the vast shimmering bridge that would take us back to Asgard and his great hall of doors.
“Of the nine realms, Midgard has always interested me the most,” Odin said as we strode across the bridge, his magic urging us faster. “Asgard, there’s nothing left to know of. The others I thought I’d explored thoroughly long ago. But it has been a long time, and Norns only know what may have changed. I should not neglect any of them.”
“Where would you have us go, Allfather?” Huginn asked with a bob of his head.
Odin frowned. “Let me think on it. Where should we start? What will my raven of memory truly appreciate?” That teasing gleam had come back into his eye.
It was full night in Asgard when we arrived. No one lingered in the shining courtyard to ask how our travels had been. Odin headed straight to Valhalla, the now empty hall of warriors. Huginn and I hurried along behind him.
I brought up the memory of the one time I’d shifted back, in the midst of the battle, but my body didn’t respond. I gritted my teeth. Why was this human body so stubborn? If I was investigating a realm I hadn’t been to in ages or possibly at all, I wanted to do it on wings at least to start.
Odin’s footsteps rang out down the long hall with its thick shadows. He strode straight to the end where the vast fireplace stood and waved open the door to the great tree that led to all the realms.
Yggdrasil stretched out on its side over a fathomless chasm. The shadows seeped into the crevices in its ridged bark. Ahead of us, one branch and then another veered off into the thicker darkness where the doorways waited.
We stepped out onto the branching path, our feet rasping over the rough bark. Odin marched on at the lead. Several paces along, he pointed to a branch that stretched out to the left. “Huginn, you can drop in on Niflheim. Explore and return to tell me what you’ve observed.”
“Yes, Allfather,” Huginn said, his eyes shiny with nervousness but his jaw set. He darted down the path and vanished through the maw of the doorway at its end.
I followed Odin past another branch and another. No matter how much I prodded at my body with my mind, it wouldn’t budge. Transform. Become a raven. My skin prickled, but nothing changed. I swallowed hard.
“Allfather—”
“Muninn,” he said briskly, and pointed to the right. “I’d like to hear what you make of the current state of Muspelheim. I feel I’ve avoided that realm far too long. Bring its memories back to me.”
My legs balked. “I think it would be better if I could first—”
He spun with a sharper flash of his eye. “You asked to leave Midgard. You asked to delve into something new. Now off with you.”
He gave me a shove like he had on the ledge that morning. I didn’t have time to let out more than a squeak of protest before a gust of magic swept me along the great tree’s branch and tossed me through the doorway at its end.
Chapter 2
I careened out into a space almost as dark as the one I’d left but streaked through with ruddy light. My human body sprawled on hands and knees against rocky ground so hot it singed my skin.
I didn’t even have time to scramble to my feet when a roar blasted my eardrums and my side. A punch of hot, putrid breath sent me tumbling head over heels toward the nearest ruddy glow.
Another stink filled my nose: molten lava. A stream of the pulsing magma wove through the rock just ahead of me, its heat wafting over me and crackling through my hair. I swallowed a yelp and hurled myself in the opposite direction, just as the creature that had roared at me pounced.
Claws raked across my shoulder, but I managed to spin to the side, out of the main force of the beast’s charge. Pain splintered through my arm and back.
I staggered, and the thing whirled on me. I could see it now: an immense sinewy dragon with scales that looked as if they were made out of chunks of rock glued together by still-glowing magma. Its eyes shone like red-hot embers, and they narrowed as they focused back on me.
It opened its mouth, revealing sharp crystal shards of teeth. Another acrid gush of breath seared toward me. I couldn’t help crying out as the heat lashed my skin.
I didn’t know where the hell this was or what was going on. The only thought that shone through my haze of panic was away. I had to get away.
I threw myself away from the dragon’s next swipe, my frantic gaze searching for the door I’d fallen through. I couldn’t find it amid the shifting shadows. The dragon lunged, claws screeching against the stone, and I leapt in the opposite direction. My heart thundered in my ears. Was there somewhere I could take shelter to gather my wits, anything to shield me…?
The dragon whipped toward me, and I didn’t dodge fast enough this time. Its foot slammed into my back, claws digging open new wounds and the impact slamming me into the ground. My chin knocked against the rock, and finally, like a miracle, my body realized that this particular form was not doing me any favors.
With a rippling that was both relieving and painful, I contracted into my raven self. The snap of the dragon’s teeth that would have taken off my human head closed around the air above me, and I took off in a mad flapping of my wings, so fast I left at least a few feathers behind me.
As soon as I soared high above the rocky terrain, a blast of hot air that had nothing to do with the dragon hurtled into me. It took all my strength to keep myself upright as I tried to dive out of it. But the dragon was leaping into the air from below, and the wind buffeted me from all sides. With my avian pulse rattling through my veins, I simply flapped my wings as hard as I could and sped off. Away. As long as I was away, I’d be safer.
I dodged a jutting spear of rock and a pool of magma that spurted flares of fire up toward the ashen sky. The tips of my wing feathers turned crisp as cinders. After a time, the dragon was nothing but a distant roar, and then nothing at all. But the wind kept whipping around me, smacking at me from the side when I least expected it, filling my throat with charred heat.
An ache dug into my back where my wounds had reformed on
my raven body. My wings started to falter. I peered down at the dark gray stone and the maze of magma streams that cut through it, searching for somewhere to set down and gather myself.
A rough-hewn structure against a low cliff up ahead caught my eye. Blocks of stone had been stacked into a somewhat haphazard-looking building with a wide doorway. A strip of ragged cloth hung across the entrance. The house hardly looked bigger than a chicken coop, but at this point I wasn’t going to complain. I just hoped whoever was living in there was friendlier than the damned dragon.
The pain in my back stabbed deeper as I descended. My wing-beats stuttered. I crashed more than landed on the ground outside the hovel, and my body sprang back into human form.
Wonderful. I groaned as I pulled myself onto my knees. When I touched my shoulder, my fingers came back sticky and red.
At least I could talk to my potential host in this form. They might have seen an intruding raven as only vermin. Most mortal beings didn’t have quite the respect for my proper form that they really should.
I heaved myself to my feet and staggered forward. I had to clutch the side of the doorway as I eased the flap of cloth aside.
The interior was larger than I expected. The manmade structure I’d seen outside was only a fore-room that held an equally rough stone bench. It led into a cave that must have been a natural formation in the cliff. I eased forward over the uneven rock floor, my teeth clenched against the throbbing in my back.
“Hello?” I said. My voice came out in a faint croak. I tried to swallow and barely could. Did this place even have water? Surely the inhabitants didn’t drink the magma.
No one answered. I wavered and then pushed on into the cave.
After a few steps, a faint illumination caught my eye. A crystalline patch on the cave ceiling emitted a dull red glow. I could see by it, but it made the space look as if it were painted in blood. Very homey.