The stone was bloodred.
It glowed violently as if it was on fire … an angry shade of crimson exactly the same color as the iron head of the spear of Odin had glowed. Fennrys cursed himself a thousand times for being so fatally stupid. No wonder Heimdall had been so quick to let them leave Valhalla without the Odin spear. No wonder he’d waited outside the hall of Asgard—where Mason had left her sword in the weapons pile at the doors of the feast hall. Whether she’d taken the spear from inside the hall or not, the real spear—cast with a shape-shifting glamour to look like Mason’s rapier—would go home with her as well when she retrieved it from the pile. And the first time she drew the weapon, it would transform her into a Valkyrie.
Heimdall had planned the whole thing from the beginning.
How could Fennrys have been so blind?
“Mase—no!”
His brain screaming denial, Fenn lunged and drew his own blade, sweeping it in a downward arc, aiming to shatter the rapier while it was still in its sheath. Before Mason sealed her fate, and the fate of the world. Before she became a chooser of the slain.
But the weapon flew from his hand in a wild, off-kilter trajectory.
His entire body arced backward in sudden, shocked rigidity. Immobile …
The Fennrys Wolf looked down to see two elegantly tapered razor-sharp points of a trident protruding from the muscles of his chest and shoulder. It was the same shoulder he’d already been both stabbed and shot in.
I guess third time’s the charm, he thought, with shocked detachment.
The third tine of Cal’s trident had missed piercing his flesh and just sliced along the outside of his rib cage, but two was enough. Especially when Fennrys knew—could feel—that one prong had pierced his lung, and maybe, just maybe, the other had grazed his heart. The heart that belonged to the girl who stood before him clothed suddenly, head to toe, in shimmering silver armor. A winged helmet shadowed her brow above her sapphire-blue eyes. And there was a coal-black raven perched upon the blade of the Odin spear held tightly in her hand.
Fennrys felt his legs give out beneath him and suddenly Rafe was there, catching him, easing him down onto the cool, hard surface of the terrace. Mason watched from above, her expression detached, remote. Goddesslike. But then a tiny shadow of a frown ticked between her brows.
“This is not right,” she murmured softly as she sank to her knees beside him.
The breath bubbling in his lungs was warm and wet with blood.
“I am the chooser of the slain… .”
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“I did not choose this.”
“Neither did I, sweetheart,” Fennrys whispered. “Not this time …”
He’d cheated death so many times. And now, when a Valkyrie knelt on one side of him, and a god of death knelt on the other side of him, and he felt his life truly leaving his body, he thought, Okay. I’m content. If her face is the last thing I see … I’ll go.
But then, as his eyes began to drift shut, his head rolled to the side and he saw a white feather lying in a pool of his blood. The feather from the library. He’d tucked it away in his dagger sheath, and it must have slipped loose when he’d drawn the blade. The feather of his heart … slowly turning red with his blood.
Fennrys thought of how much he’d longed to hear Mason say the words “I love you” to him. As he slipped into darkness, he almost thought he heard her say just that. But then he realized he was wrong.
She hadn’t said “love you.”
She’d said “owe you.”
And she’d said it to Anubis. God of the dead.
XXIII
The sky was on fire.
Rory stood on the balcony of his father’s penthouse apartment, gazing out over a city that, far below, writhed in the grip of a twisted kind of chaos. In the room behind him, the frenzied monotony of the news reports droned on. He’d stopped watching an hour ago and had come out into the chill night air to see—to feel—for himself what was happening. He’d been about to go back inside when the fiery red glow had suddenly erupted from the Rockefeller Plaza’s observation deck, half a dozen blocks to the north, painting the low-hanging clouds in hues of blood and flame.
Roth hadn’t returned, and Rory hadn’t seen his father since he’d regained consciousness. His hands flexed on the balcony railing, one warm—flesh and bone and skin—and one cool. Silver and alien. Magickal. Terrifying …
Powerful.
The whole night was full of power. Saturated with it, soaked to the marrow.
Rory could sense it. He closed his eyes and pictured his father’s diary.
One tree. A rainbow. Bird wings among the branches.
Three seeds of the apple tree grown tall.
As Odin’s spear is gripped in the hand of the Valkyrie,
they shall awaken Odin Sons.
When the Devourer returns, the hammer will fall down on the earth, to be reborn.
Rory could hear the words, thrumming in his head. And he wasn’t surprised when his father suddenly appeared at his side, a silent shadow in the darkness. Gunnar Starling leaned his elbows on the rail, and his gaze drifted down to Rory’s gleaming fingers. He stared at them for a moment, and then he looked up and nodded to the crimson light emanating from the top of the Rockefeller Plaza tower, red as heart’s blood. As father and son watched, a jagged fork of blue-white lightning stabbed down into the center of the redness. Then another … and a third. In the distance, they heard the rumble of thunder. Like the sound of a god waking from slumber.
“It begins,” Gunnar said in a calm voice.
He turned to look at his youngest son, and Rory saw that strands of weird, golden light twisted and writhed in the depths of his father’s left eye. Gunnar smiled, and it was the most terrifying expression Rory had ever seen on the face of another human being.
“The beginning of the end … ,” Gunnar said, turning back to look out over the city. “And who was to know that all it would take was my daughter falling in love?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As this series continues rolling on down the road toward Ragnarok, I find myself in the joyous position of getting to say thank you, once again, to all the people who’ve helped drive this magick bus.
Jessica Regel, my wondrous agent who continues to have faith in me and my stories, is first in line for a suitcase full of gratitude. Keep on keepin’ on! You and Jean Naggar and the whole staff of JVNLA rock seriously hard. Please continue.
Next, of course, is my terrific editor, Karen Chaplin, and all of the industrious, creative crew at HarperCollins: editorial directors Barbara Lalicki and Rosemary Brosnan; Maggie Herold, my production editor; Cara Petrus and Laura Lyn DiSiena, my designers; and Andrea Martin. Thanks, also, to Hadley Dyer and everyone at HarperCollinsCanada for continuing to take such good care of me up here.
My mom and my wonderful family deserve all of the love and gratitude I can give—and then some. So does my awesome collection of friends, both brilliant and bonkers (frequently both). But especially, this time around, Karl (and Nathaniel, Michelle, Mike, and Casey!) for rain-soaked, badass fighting trailer goodness.
And, once again, thank you is not enough for John. I’m running out of ways to say how much it means to have you not only on board the magick bus, but reading the maps, gassing the sucker up, squeegeeing the windshield, and frequently getting out to push when I get the wheels stuck in the ditch. So instead, I’ll just give you the winky-face super-secret signal and hope that gets it all across.
As always, endless thank you to my readers, and to the fans and bloggers who get the word out about these books and make this whole crazy trip worth every mile. Keep those seatbelts fastened … the ride’s not getting any less wild!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by John Rait
LESLEY LIVINGSTON is a writer and actress living in Toronto. She has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in Arthurian lit
erature and Shakespeare. She is the author of Starling, the first book in a darkly romantic series set against the backdrop of Manhattan and Norse mythology. Lesley has also written Wondrous Strange, which on the Canadian Librarian Association Young Adult Book Award in addition to being a White Pine Honor Book, as well as Darklight and Tempestuous. You can visit her online at www.lesleylivingston.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.
ALSO BY LESLEY LIVINGSTONE
In this series
Starling
The Wondrous Strange trilogy
Darklight
Tempestuous
Wondrous Strange
BACK AD
CREDITS
Cover design by Laura Lyn DiSiena
Cover art © 2013 by Michael Frost
Cover photograph of forest © 2013 by Tom Need/GettyImages
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