by Leia Stone
“Listen, Allie, about last night—”
I cut Tore off with a raised palm. “I said I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. What I do want to do is say goodbye to my mother, who lost a lot of energy last night.” My throat closed up, making me choke over my next words. “There’s barely any life essence in her. I don’t know how long we’re going to be in Jotunheim, and I want to make sure, if God forbid anything happens to her, I at least got to say goodbye.”
“I’ll stand by the entry. But I am not leaving this house.” Tore didn’t budge. It was the best deal I was getting.
“Fine.” I glared at him. When he moved away from my mother’s bed, I turned back to look at her. My mom’s once golden hair was a dull dishwater color. Her creamy skin was almost grey, and her lips were dry and brittle. It didn’t take a healer to know she was barely hanging on. I dropped to my knees at her bedside and rested my head on her upturned palm. At the touch, a fresh series of forgotten memories nudged at my brain—nights watching stars in the backyard, a campfire, my mother’s laughter filling our home with pink, bubbly energy. Oh, Mom.
Grief poured over me in waves. How had it come to this? Was Nott really powerful enough to break through whatever protections the gods had set around their realm and attack my mom? Or had someone else done this for her? Greta said she’d removed six thick energy cords, one from each of my mom’s lower six centers. Whoever had done this was one cord away from draining the life force straight from my mom’s seventh center—the one at the top of her head that linked directly to her soul. As weak as she was from the other six, if one more cord had gotten in there, she would have died—no question about it. As it was, her signature barely registered—and that was after Greta and two of Asgard’s top healers spent the night working on what was left of her energy.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I whispered. “I promise I’ll keep training; keep getting stronger. I’ll work as hard as I can so that when I find the pieces of Gud Morder and put them back together, I can free you. And I can destroy the monster who did this to you.” I pressed my cheek into my mother’s hand and waited for some kind of response. A twitch, an energetic pulse, anything. But she remained still, not so much as a blip coming from the bed.
“And when I do that, and you wake up . . .” I raised my head. “We’ll finally get to know each other. I can tell you what a great guardian Gran was; you can tell me about the year we lived here . . .” A wave of sadness pressed against my chest, and I swallowed the lump that threatened to emerge as a blubbering wail. It sucked that I’d never known my mom, and it sucked that I’d never know my dad. And it sucked that I had to leave on a mission to track down pieces of the only weapon that could avenge my family, without knowing if my mom would be alive when I got back.
My life straight up sucked right now.
“All right, Pepper. That’s enough.” Tore’s husky voice came from behind me. Directly behind me. Liar.
“You said you’d stay at the entry.” I glared over my shoulder through unshed tears.
“Ja. But I also said I took an oath to protect you. And your aura just nosedived from rose to charcoal. I can’t have you go down a dark path before we head into Jotunheim. Dark realms screw with our energy enough as it is.”
“So what, you’re the boss of my moods now, too?” I challenged.
“If it’s in your best interest, then yes.” Tore stepped up. “I am. What are you going to do about it?”
Anger bubbled inside me, percolating from my gut through my chest. My necklace vibrated, and when the energy reached my throat, I unleashed my frustration in a shout. “I can’t take this anymore!”
Tore put his hands on my shoulders and whirled me around. My fingers balled into fists, and I struck him in the chest before I registered what I was doing.
“Don’t freaking touch me!” I pounded Tore’s apparently steel-lined pecs. In one swift movement, he pulled me closer, pinning my arms to his torso. I tried to push him away, but my effort was futile. The guy had a hundred pounds of solid muscle on me, easy. So, I resorted to the juvenile tactic of screaming. “Let me go!”
“Shh.” Tore’s lips brushed against my ear as he whispered. “It’s going to be okay, Allie.”
“No, it’s not!” I yelled into his chest. “Let me go!”
“Shh,” Tore repeated. I kept pushing, but I couldn’t shake the boulder-sized demigod off me. When it became clear Tore really wasn’t going anywhere, my anger dimmed to frustration, then dipped back into heartbreak.
“This sucks,” I said into the grey buttoned Henley at my face. The scents of pine and fresh snow and all that was Tore filled my nose.
“I know it does. I’ve been where you are, Allie.” Tore’s lips still brushed against my ear. He was keeping his voice soft, probably a deliberate choice to soothe the crazy who’d just attacked him. Whatever. He had it coming. “I understand how hard it is to see someone you love hurting, but we are going to fix this. I promise. We’ll find the pieces of Gud Morder, and we’ll fuse them together. We will wake your mother. You will see her alive again if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It feels impossible,” I admitted. Then I shivered. Now that I wasn’t raging like a maniac, I could appreciate the way his hands slid down my lower back, resting possessively just above my butt. My insipid, unrequited crush was working its way back into my space. And I wasn’t doing a darned thing to stop it.
“I know it does. That’s what being a demigod is. An eternity of the impossible. But we slay monsters the same way humans get through their problems—by taking it one step at a time.” Tore rested his cheek on the top of my head, and I shivered again. “So here’s the plan. First, we tell your mom we’ll see her soon. Because we will see her again. Greta’s one of the best healers we have, and she’s been reversing the energy drain since the minute she got the call. She’ll keep your mom alive until we get back.”
“Okay,” I murmured.
“Second, we take our team into the frozen realm, and we hunt. You’ve come a long way in your tracking, and you’ll have your armor with you. Between you and me, and any intel the ravens can get us, we should be able to locate the Jotunheim piece fairly quickly.”
“We have no idea where it is,” I reminded him. “And our bodies aren’t exactly acclimated to a freezing planet.”
“No. But Johann brought plenty of cold weather gear with us from the safe house. And the Alfödr’s ravens will continue to scout Jotunheim while we’re there. Huginn and Muninn will see something that will lead us in the right direction. I have faith.”
I drew a shaky breath. “And then we’ll get the piece of Gud Morder, bring it back to the safe house, and go to the next realm. And the next. And the next.” I tilted my head up so I could look at Tore. “This feels endless.”
“I know it does.” Tore looked down. His face was just inches from mine. “But we will end this. I promise you, Allie.”
My eyes fixed on those pillowy lips as they formed the words. God, they were beautiful. And they were so close to my face. I ran my tongue over my bottom lip at the same time Tore’s hands pressed tighter against my lower back.
“Allie,” he murmured, “Du er så vakker.”
I had no idea what that meant, but I clearly needed to find out.
“Time to get a move on!” Bodie called out from the front of the house, silencing whatever I’d been about to say. “The ravens saw a night elf at the top of Iskandar Mountain. If we want to catch the trail, we’d better Bifrost out now.”
Tore’s low growl rumbled against my chest. “Can you give us a minute?”
“No, it’s okay. We need to go.” I stepped away from my protector. Taking whatever train we’d nearly jumped aboard would have been a bad idea right then. I needed to focus on tracking down the weapon pieces and saving my mom, not on the pillowy lips of a guy who’d probably had another chick in his bed the night before. What would my kissing Tore say about my self-worth? Issues, Allie? Mack would have a field day w
ith that one.
I turned away from Tore’s disappointed frown and stepped out of his thick, muscled arms. Bending down to kiss my mom’s forehead, I made her a promise.
“I’ll be back soon, Mom,” I said. “Right now, it’s time to hunt.”
****
Now that I was a Bifrost travel pro, I didn’t feel nauseous taking the rainbow bridge across the cosmos. I did, however, feel dizzy every time said rainbow deposited me in a new realm. The atmospheric shift of dropping into a foreign gravity shocked my system every time.
Jotunheim was no different. The second we landed in the home of the frost giants, I bent over to get my bearings. A frigid blast of air slammed against my face as I stood, and I pulled my faux-fur lined hood up to block the chill. Good Lord, it was cold. Like the North-Pole-in-the-dead-of-winter cold, and then add more cold on top of that. The Bifrost had placed us at the base of a huge mountain, and it provided a modicum of shelter from the blustering storm that whipped a white frenzy across the tundra. We’d packed for snow—Tore even had his snowboard strapped to his backpack in case he needed to make a Bifrost-free escape—but I seriously doubted we’d brought enough gear to handle—
BOOM.
We all froze as the ground trembled at the sound. Tore met my wide-eyed gaze and placed one finger over his lips. The ground shifted again—the needles on the trees surrounding us shook as clumps of snow fell from their branches. Either Jotunheim was prone to thunder-earthquakes, or we had a giant-sized problem walking our way. The boys moved stealthily into a circle around me, unsheathing their blades as they fell into a defensive formation. The thunderous steps sounded dangerously close, and as I peered around my protectors, I caught a glimpse of a massive beast with pale cerulean skin. Holy mother. Jotuns were way bigger than I’d expected. My breathing stopped as I watched the beast stomp closer to us—the thing was the size of a sequoia. The boys crouched, ready to attack, when the giant suddenly pivoted. It walked away from us, its attention drawn to something in the distance. Thank God.
I exhaled in relief, leaning forward to plop my forehead on Tore’s back. “You could have told me jotuns were that massive,” I groaned. “I about had a heart attack.”
“I thought the name frost giant implied plenty. But next time, I’ll be sure to spell it out for you.” Tore turned around to wink at me. “Everybody, move out. We need to make shelter and come up with a plan.”
My immobile arm saved Tore from a swift punch in the shoulder. The guys had insisted I wear my armor beneath my jacket, and no amount of insulation could keep the cool metal from freezing against my skin. This was miserable. We needed to be in and out of Jotunheim quick, or somebody—me—was going to lose a limb. Suddenly, the wind kicked up a notch, blowing a snow drift in my face and freezing my ears to the point that my head ached. I gave Tore a pointed look as I pulled my hood down further.
“Move out,” Tore ordered. We voiced our consent, some of us through chattering teeth. A quick glance at the sky revealed that the sun was going down, and there was no way we wanted to be caught in this storm once it got dark.
Tore took the lead, guiding us around the base of the mountain and through the trees. I didn’t hear any more thunder-earthquakes, but I kept my eyes open for frost giants, just in case. The storm continued to surge, frigid wind and clumps of snow whipping tiny white tornadoes around us. Strong fingers slipped in between mine and pulled me forward. Tore.
I followed him blindly as icy rain began to pelt from the sky. In an instant, the weather had shifted from snowing clumps to raining ice. I wasn’t sure which was worse. Just when I thought the frozen rocks might actually kill my poor nose, Tore yanked my arm. Stumbling forward, I was suddenly free of the ice-rain. Thank the maker! We seemed to have found some kind of a small cave tucked into the side of a mountain. Mack, Johann, and Bodie filed in behind me. They wasted no time in making a fire with the supplies they’d brought in their packs. And I wasted no time in peeling off my frozen outer layers, and letting my skin thaw next to the warm fire. Mmm, hello, fingers. Nice to feel you again.
Bodie looked up from his spot by the flames and confirmed my worst fear. “We’re going to have to stay the night,” he deduced. “That blizzard’s not letting up any time soon.”
I groaned. But being sheltered in a tight space with one fire and four protectors was infinitely preferable than donating my frozen nose to the frostbite-happy land of Jotunheim.
Tore squinted at the entrance to the cave. “The weather here isn’t normally this extreme. Must be dark magic.”
My eyes widened. “Can it do that? Affect the weather?”
“It’s affecting Midgard, isn’t it?” Tore shrugged. “Nott has some powerful people working for her, they all want a place in her new Midgard.”
This Nott chick was ticking me off more and more.
“Why don’t we take the Bifrost home and then come back in the morning?” I asked.
Bodie shook his head. “Bifrost can’t set down in a blizzard. It could rip us in two on takeoff.”
What? Nobody had mentioned half-ripping during How To Ride the Bifrost 101. I took a calming breath. “So we’re, what? We’re trapped here?”
My four protectors shared a look. “Let’s not focus on that,” Mack said.
Right. Frost giants patrolled outside; dark elves lurked who-knew-where, and we were stuck in a blizzard, with no way out. But we shouldn’t think on it. Snort.
“I know what we need.” Tore pulled something from his pocket, and the guys’ faces lit up. A collective cheer went up around the cave. A glance at Tore’s hand revealed two multicolored dice, each with weird symbols etched into their many sides.
“What is that?” I asked.
Tore leaned closer to me. “This, my dear Pepper, is Asgardian War.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for a further explanation. Tore shook the dice, then threw them onto the packed dirt floor. They landed on two different symbols, and he swore. “Skit!”
Mack pick up the dice and breathed over them, shaking them up before throwing them down. They landed with both sides on the same infinity symbol.
“WAR!” Mack yelled. Johann scrambled to pick up the dice. He shook them quickly, before throwing them down. They landed on opposite shapes, and Johann swore.
Bodie quickly grabbed the dice and threw them down. Same shapes.
“Argh!” Mack yelled as Bodie pumped his fist in the air.
“I win!”
I laughed along with Tore. Somewhere along the nightmare that had been the past few months, these guys had carved out a special place in my heart. All of them—even the ornery one.
Tore’s eyes met mine over the fire. I gave him a tight smile, then snuggled into my faux-fur hood. The boys continued to play their game as darkness descended on Jotunheim. When the last bit of light outside the cave faded to black, the guys put down their dice and snuffed out the fire. They said it would draw too much attention to our hiding spot. That sucked. I didn’t want to be hunted down and crushed by jotuns, but I also didn’t want to freeze to death.
While Tore situated himself near the mouth of the cave, I ducked lower into my coat and settled in for a long night. He turned to look back at me. “Do you sense anything, Allie? Any energy from Gud Morder?”
I took a breath, allowing my awareness to travel out and up. There was a lightness somewhere that nudged at my armor. When my energy reached the top of the mountain it recoiled, pinging back to me as if it had been shocked.
“The top of the mountain . . . it’s dark . . . like, surrounded-by-demons, dark. Something’s definitely up there. Maybe whatever it is, is guarding the weapon.”
Tore nodded. “Okay then, tomorrow we climb a mountain and investigate. Try to get some sleep. I’ll keep first watch.”
Mack and Johann each snuggled to my left, as Bodie lay on my right. It would take all of us working together to keep warm. Falling asleep would be impossible—my teeth chattered as icy snot dripped from my nose, and I cou
ld barely feel my legs.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I croaked a pathetic plea. “Light a fire? Please?”
Tore looked over his shoulder with a frown. “Can’t, or we’ll be crushed by frost giants. Sorry, Allie. Bodie?”
“On it.” Tore’s bestie snuggled closer, throwing his coat over me for additional warmth.
“Thanks,” I muttered, not ungrateful, but not much warmer, either. Sunrise couldn’t come fast enough.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Tore’s body replaced Bodie’s behind me. His arms circled around my torso, and he pulled me close enough that I could feel his erratic heartbeat against my back. His palm spread possessively across my belly, and he held me tight against his body, offering what little heat he had left.
That was when sleep finally took me.
****
When I awoke, Tore still held me, but something even more miraculous had happened. I could feel my toes! I bolted upright, and thank the maker, a fire roared at my feet.
Mack glanced up from stoking the flames with a stick to shoot me a grin. “Morning, Allie.”
I looked outside, where the weather had calmed considerably. The sun was out, which explained the gift of fire at my feet. Bodie and Johann were passed out, holding each other like two long lost lovers. I couldn’t help but snicker as Mack wagged his eyebrows at the two intertwined buddies.
“I love fire.” I put my hands out. “I want to marry fire.”
Tore sat up next to me, looking unfairly sexy with ruffled, morning hair. He rubbed the fresh layer of stubble that lined his jaw and shot me a sly grin. So yummy. “We’ll see if you feel that way about fire when we get to Muspelheim.”
I covered my eyes and groaned. That one was the home of the fire giants—I remembered that much from my Mythology class. I was majorly not looking forward to that stop. Maybe we could save it for last. I pulled my hand away from my face and tried to shift my attention around the cave, since ogling the sexy demi at my side didn’t seem like the most professional way to kick off the day. But Lord, Tore was insanely hot in the morning. Why didn’t he drool and have eye crusties like the rest of us? The boy looked like he’d just boarded down a mountain, with his wind ruffled hair and self-satisfied smirk. Did I seriously sleep in his arms last night? No big deal. No. Big. Deal. I forced my hormones to calm themselves. I needed a female friend stat. I had no idea what all of this meant, and I desperately needed to debrief with someone who was not one of my protectors. Also, not male.