by Nora Ash
“You called our love a weakness,” I hissed, my magic flaring, filling me from head to toe. “But it was the only thing that could have spared you a hideously painful death.”
“You bore me,” he easily replied, raising his staff to issue a blast of magic.
But as it tore toward us, I merely lifted my hand, turning the ball of energy into a harmless spray of primrose.
Odin stared, his weathered brow knotting as he murmured, “Freya…?”
Maybe—it was entirely possible, given I’d consumed her only recently—but this burgeoning power within me felt darker than that.
I used it to shield my mates as they charged the Betrayer, teeth bared and weapons raised to end this battle once and for all.
We should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.
Odin engaged with staff and magic, blocking the downward sweep of blades, his body more agile than it had any right to be at his age. But every time he attacked in kind, my shields absorbed the blow, mocking him with its very simple message.
You will never touch one of my mates again.
My men were a symphony, each of them perfectly in tune with the others as they danced around Odin in a lethal ballet. Magni and Modi wound under and through blasts from the god-king’s staff, graceful as twin serpents, while Saga and Bjarni were always there to fend off a vicious jab or a swipe, holding their ground to give the Thorssons the openings they needed to strike at the old man.
Yet despite our efforts, all we could engineer was a stalemate—and that was when Odin decided to up the ante once more.
“Enough of this!” he spat, and making a wide circle with his staff, he slammed it into the floor.
Reality yawned wide, and with a sickening tug, my mates and I found ourselves on a new battlefield.
The one raging at Asgard’s gates.
“Hold the line!” someone shouted over the din of the fray. It was Heimdall, Guardian of the Bifrost, desperately trying to keep the Jotunn horde at bay. “Brace yourselves, and—push!”
Asgard’s soldiers readied their shields, gold glittering in the tattered sunlight streaming through the smoke. And then they shoved forward, into the Jotunns, in a clash of armor and flesh that muddied the air with clouds of dirt.
“Annabel!”
It was Mimir; he was lying in the path of the battle, just barely able to avoid being trampled by both sides as he rolled this way and that with what little power he possessed to do so. My magic came to me instantly, surrounding me so that when I sprinted for him, it knocked the other combatants out of the way, allowing me to plow through them like a bulldozer.
I snatched the prophet up just as Saga grabbed my arm and yelled, “Look!”
There beyond the roiling smoke and dirt stood the god-king Odin. The All Father. The Betrayer.
All the way on the other fucking side of the battle.
“How do we get to him?” Modi asked. A moment later, he was distracted by an incoming Jotunn and forced to fell it with his blade.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, desperately scanning for an easy way across. “Can you cut us a path?”
“I…” Magni hesitated, looking first to his brother, then Saga and Bjarni before he said, “No. Not before Asgard is overrun.”
“Leave that to me,” someone else chimed in.
Someone with a voice like thunder.
I whipped my head in its direction. There, pulling his hammer out of a Jotunn’s pulpy skull, stood Thor himself, drenched in sweat and blood and wearing a grin as wide as the gulf between us and his father.
Modi stared at him. “You’ll help us?” he asked, utterly disbelieving. Even Magni didn’t seem convinced. “Why?”
Thor snorted and hefted his hammer onto his shoulder. “Can’t a father apologize for being an asshole to his sons?”
“No,” the Thorssons answered in unison, to which the god of thunder rolled his eyes.
“All right, then—let’s just say a little birdie told me things might not be quite what they seem.” He turned partly away from us, jutting his chin at the tangle of bodies fighting for survival. “Well, make that two little birdies…”
“Arni and Magga?” Bjarni breathed, his eyes wide. Then he cracked a smile, shouting to the heavens, “Arni and Magga!”
Thor chuckled, returning his hammer to his filthy, blood-caked hands. “Come on, lads—and lady—let’s save the nine worlds.”
With a mighty swing, he brought his weapon down onto the earth, and from the thick clouds above, bolts of lightning raced to do the same.
The storm he’d conjured was indiscriminate. Bodies flew through the air, Jotunn and Asgardian alike thrown from our path as Thor cut a swath toward where Odin stood. Screams of terror and pain mingled with deafening crashes of thunder, and as we followed our divine escort toward our enemy, Odin’s eyes narrowed.
“You seem to be down a man,” Thor observed. “Where’s the Mistborn?”
I shut my eyes. If I talked about Grim now, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see this through.
“Ah,” Thor said after a time. “My condolences. You’ll be wanting to strike the killing blow, then, milady?”
I met his gaze. “I don’t care which of us kills that scheming bastard, as long as it’s me or one of my mates.”
The thunder god nodded. “Fair enough. We’re almost there. Get ready to—”
A bone-quaking roar cut him off. We stopped, eyes on the gates of Asgard, as the Jotunn locked in combat suddenly disengaged and turned as one.
“Shit,” Saga muttered. “That can’t be good.”
The Jotunns’ next cry went up as a howl, and Thor’s eyes widened. “No… He wouldn’t…”
Whatever Thor was talking about, I was certain Odin would. But Mimir filled in the blanks. “He’s given the Jotunn the power of the berserker.”
And he’d aimed them straight at us.
The Asgardians at the gates stood dumbfounded as the Jotunns on the front lines abandoned their assault, instead barreling in our direction, using clubs, swords, axes, and their bare hands to heave any obstacles—including their brethren—out of their way. They moved as a pack, like the wolves Odin had claimed as creatures of his dominion, and Thor cursed before calling out to the contingent around him.
“Asgardians, to me! Now!”
Asgard’s soldiers were quick to obey, though it was hardly an easy feat; the Jotunns who hadn’t received Odin’s gift were still fighting, leaving us caught between two fronts.
“Stay behind my shields,” I told them, raising a barrier in a wide semicircle centered on Thor. “Fight only when you must. Our priority is getting to those gates.”
“Right,” Thor said with a wry smile. “Well, you heard the lady. Keep your asses behind her shield!”
I focused with everything I had to ensure the barrier I’d erected would survive impact with the Jotunns bearing down on us like wild animals. Grim had taught me to channel my reserves, to always give my attention only to the task at hand. Now more than ever, I needed to heed his lessons.
The first berserker crashed against my magic, and I grimaced. This wouldn’t be easy, not with so many of them dead-set on breaching the shield, but the power within me didn’t so much as flicker. It burned like a furnace, unwavering in the face of the onslaught, and Thor and his soldiers pushed our line forward, into the thick of the battle.
But we were moving too slow. Even with a full-fledged god on our side, the sheer number of Jotunn berserkers kept us from advancing at a pace that would make any difference. Asgard was on the verge of falling even after Odin diverted some of the Jotunn forces to deal with us. There was no way we’d make it to him in time to change destiny—not like this.
Sweat beaded on, then dripped down my brow. I had plenty of magic left in me, but forcing it into this shape, for this purpose, was wearing me down, and the nagging fear that I would burn myself out and kill the baby inside me was fucking with my ability to concentrate.
“We can’t go on
this way,” Magni snarled as he fended off a berserker who’d made it around the side of our shield. “Can you put your magic on the offensive?”
I shook my head. “No—not now. I’ve put too much into this shield. And there’s too many of them. If I drop it, they’ll tear us apart.”
“What about a distraction?” Bjarni suggested. He was back-to-back with Saga, ensuring they could keep an eye on both sides of the battlefield. “One of us could break off, draw their attention. I vote for one of the Thorssons.”
“We are not separating,” I bit through gritted teeth. “No more sacrifices. No more heroics. We are in this together. Understand?”
No way in Hel was I losing anyone else.
Suddenly Thor stopped, and I nearly crashed into him, but at the last moment I avoided the collision at the expense of my focus. Our shield flickered and I held my breath, working to stabilize it once more, but something had changed. I could feel it. The air was different, charged with something both familiar and beyond definition—not electric, but close.
Magic. Someone had brought magic—and a whole lot of it—onto the battlefield.
“Well, you wanted a distraction,” Mimir said dryly, and I looked up to see the very last thing I’d expected.
Flanking both sides of the conflict between the Jotunns and soldiers of Asgard was another force entirely. They were poised on the high ground, an army of beings with pale skin, dark eyes, and magic humming in their bright blue veins.
“Mistborn,” Thor murmured, tone heavy with confusion and awe. “But what are they doing here?”
That question was answered a moment later when their general pushed through their ranks on one side. I could sense his smirk all the way from here.
Loki. Fucking Loki had led the Mistborn here—as well as a contingent of trolls.
“Holy shit,” Saga said just as his father lifted a horn to his lips and blew.
The sound rolled over the battlefield like a tidal wave, penetrating the very marrow of my bones. It seemed to slip through me, to physically move between my cells, rearranging them to allow itself passage as it echoed throughout all nine worlds.
“He stole that from Heimdall,” Bjarni said into my ear.
For once, I didn’t care where the hell Loki had stolen his latest toy from. All I cared about was that he was using it to help us win. It didn’t even matter why, so long as he did it.
As the Mistborn charged down upon the enemy Jotunns from either side, bringing with them the trolls as both siege weapons and heavy artillery, it finally gave us the leg up we needed.
“Go!” Thor shouted over the din. My mates and I obeyed, sprinting for the gates of Asgard as the thunder god and his soldiers covered our flight.
The earth shook with the impact of the trolls’ greatclubs, and with the pounding footfalls of the Mistborns’ charge. Rocks and soil and other detritus rained down on us in sudden bursts, and it was all I could do to try to anticipate where it might land so I could redirect our shield.
My alphas were in their glory at last, cutting through any stragglers foolish enough to think us easy prey. We were not only blazing a trail through Ragnarök; we were leaving a wake of blood, heralding Odin’s fall.
But that didn’t mean the god-king wasn’t still dangerous. As we neared, he raised his hands, not to command the forces around him, but to drain them of any magic, any power, residing in their blood.
For all his talk of my borrowed magic, it seemed he had no qualms about outright stealing some of his own. But Mimir voiced the greater threat.
“If he regains his strength, we’re doomed!”
I wasn’t going to let that happen. I might not have been able to save Grim, or Freya, or even my parents, but I could sure as hell save everyone else. All I had to do was—
Here, Grim had told me with his dying breaths, touching my chest. I’m here…
I skidded to a halt, dropping our shield. My mates stopped beside me, weapons drawn and stained with viscera. Together we gazed up at Odin, the source of so much misery, so much death, so much needless destruction.
He thought he’d won. He thought he’d weakened us by destroying Grim. But there was still a piece of my Mistborn mate inside me, one he’d given to me in Freya’s glade when we’d finally reunited with the others.
“I love you,” I said, calling upon that last vestige of him now.
His magic burned cold in my chest, dark tendrils wrapping around my own golden light, not to overcome it, but to help it along. It bolstered me, strengthened me, embraced me from within, caressing me like I wished its owner could do just one more time.
As Odin took his sweet time gathering power, mine was at the ready, eager to serve. I let it free, hurling at him all my hate, all my rage, all my grief and sorrow.
When Odin fell at the gates of Asgard, it was to a wolf composed entirely of magic both light and dark—just like the original prophecy had predicted.
Only the world didn’t end. The skies cleared. The horns grew silent. The Jotunn hordes fled, save for the Mistborn, who held their spears and swords above their heads to signal their triumph.
We did it. After so much loss and so long a journey—we’d won. And Grim had been there too, in the end, though now…
Now he was gone. That last bit of him, the magic he’d gifted me, had dissipated along with Odin’s life. It was over, both the battle and any lingering connection I had to him.
As the survivors of Ragnarök celebrated, I fell to my knees in the dirt, hid my face in my arms, and sobbed.
Thirty-Four
Annabel
I was only vaguely aware of the cheers erupting across the battlefield. Adrenaline still thrummed in my veins, but I couldn’t take in any of the euphoria spreading among the einherjar and Valkyries as Surtr’s army fled, the rift between Asgard and the human world healing in a ripple of golden light.
With every pulse of my heart, the ache of loss penetrated deeper now that I had no purpose left. I had done my duty. I had fulfilled my destiny.
And I had lost part of my soul in the process.
“We should go back. To Valhalla,” Modi said softly. His warm hand closed around my shoulder. “Grim gave his life for every other living being. We owe him a vigil.”
“We owe him a lot more than that,” Bjarni rumbled, the grief in his voice echoing through my own anguished heart.
Saga drew in a deep breath through his nose, visibly steeling himself before he sheathed his sword and turned to me. Gently, he pulled me up into his arms and hugged me tight to his body still caked in Jotunn blood. “Come, Annabel. We need to give him this final honor.”
We left the battlefield amidst cheers, but it felt like they came from somewhere far away—like they weren’t part of the dark, numb world we walked through.
Grim, Grim. Come back to me, baby. Please come back.
The walk up the path leading to Valhalla was a blur, and I don’t think I could have made it on my own. Saga carried me in his arms, like a lost child, and Bjarni, Modi and Magni surrounded us in a tight circle. They were the reason I had to find a way to continue on. Them and the life I carried. His daughter. He had given his life for us; I could not let that be for nothing. I wouldn’t.
I pressed my hand firmly against my abdomen as we crossed through Valhalla’s ports and began the long journey through the quiet hall.
“Trud?” Magni mumbled, his quiet voice cutting through the silence and jerking my gaze up. Ahead, in the middle of the destruction left behind from our first fight with Odin, Modi and Magni’s blonde sister sat hunched over a crumpled figure on the floor.
I opened my mouth, but nothing but a hollow sob came out. Grim. Seeing his body hit me with grief all over again, and something fragile inside of me broke.
I ran. I tripped over the scattered debris and slipped on the floor, but it barely slowed me down. The second I was by his side, I fell to my knees—and dissolved into tears.
“Grim. Grim, my love. My soul. Please come back
to me. Please!”
I bent over him and let the weight of everything that had happened press me into his chest. He was so, so cold. My beautiful, haunted soulmate. My fifth. I had only known the true him so briefly. It wasn’t fair. He had lived in darkness and pain for a millennium, and I was supposed to be the one to finally show him what true happiness was like.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “So, so sorry.”
“Don’t… cry.”
I stilled at the hoarse whisper, my insides flicking from a painful, agonizing mess to numb stillness. My shuddering breath sounded like a thunderstorm in my ears as I slowly, so slowly turned my head.
My eyes slid over his wide chest, up the column of his throat, and finally to his face.
He was as pale as ever, but his eyes… His eyes were open—barely more than cracks, but enough that the pale blue and glowing amber of his irises were visible. He… He was alive?
“Grim!” I cried, relief combusting in my chest so hard I burst into another bout of tears.
He only groaned weakly in response.
A warm hand touched my cheek. “He will live, my sister. But he is very weak. Be gentle.”
I didn’t look at Trud—I couldn’t take my eyes off Grim’s face, not even when Bjarni and Saga fell to their knees on his other side and gripped his hand and arm.
“Brother,” Saga choked. “We thought we’d lost you.”
“How did he survive?” Modi asked. He and Magni knelt on each side of me. I was grateful for the pressure of their bodies, because my head felt too light and my muscles were quickly losing the battle against the flood of emotion.
“I don’t know,” Trud said quietly. “His matebond was broken. He was dead.”
“You are… my soul,” Grim rasped. His hand twitched as if he was trying to raise it, but he couldn’t manage. “He… He did not… break… that bond. I… felt you. Found… Found my way back. To you.”