As with all the bridge stones I used—and all the Alfar before me had used, when there had been more than just me—this one stood a distance apart from civilization, in a clearing on a hilltop. White-barked birches guarded the perimeter. Tall grasses green enough that my eyes ached to look on it filled the center. The sun stood just above the eastern horizon, spilling rose-gold light across the rune-carved alabaster obelisk at the clearing’s center.
But the gleaming white had been cracked and blackened by fire. Soot and weather-crusted ash coated the misshapen communication crystal in the stone’s eye. The birches that surrounded it were all slender-trunked—new growth and not the same trees I recalled at all. All the brilliant colors, all the plant life, were new growth covering the burnt-out shell of a burnt-out world. Bittersweet anguish filled my heart.
I was home. But it would never truly be home again.
An early morning breeze stirred the leaves overhead, spinning them like emerald discs, and sifted through my hair. Despite the overwhelming sadness that filled me, for the first time in forever, I felt like I was actually breathing.
I hadn’t been here since bringing Odin and Thor and Baldur, when they’d come to investigate why my world had burned.
Of all the places to run to now.
But maybe that was all right. Pain as fresh as the day after Alfheim’s destruction stabbed through me when I realized where I’d brought myself. But no one here would present a threat to me. Heimdal couldn’t follow. And no one else lived here.
I didn’t think Heimdal could follow, anyhow. Even as I thought it, I wondered—Heimdal had figured out how to cut my magic out of me. Had he also figured out how to bend it to his own will, somehow? He must have, in order to return to Asgard after he’d cast me out. In order to return to Midgard now in pursuit of me.
That thought tore my eyes from drinking in the colors of Alfheim and drove me to my feet.
If Heimdal could follow, then maybe he wouldn’t think to look for me here, at least not right away. I’d refused to return before. He might think I would refuse to return now.
“What just happened?” Claire’s voice was small and came from near my feet.
Claire leaned against the guidepost, a combination of pale flesh with dark clothing and hair, like a snippet of black and white film in a Technicolor world. She pressed her hands flat against the ground on either side of her and turned her head slowly from side to side as she took in the abruptly new view.
“Are you hurt?” I looked Claire over as she spoke, but the other girl didn’t appear to have a scratch on her. No blood. No visible bruising.
“No.” Claire hesitated before adding, “So… is this a dream? I wouldn’t think to ask if it was a dream if it really was. Would I?”
All things considered, Claire sounded calm and reasonable. No traces of outright hysteria, at least.
“We just… traveled.” Keep it simple, at least to start. Test the waters one step at a time. “A long distance. Very quickly.”
“Right.” Claire kept looking around. She didn’t stir from her seated position. “And you… made that happen? There was a… tunnel? Lots of colors. Flashes of light.”
Claire believed in ghosts and witchcraft, I suddenly recalled. Convincing her to believe me might not be as difficult I’d normally think.
A second later, Claire proved my instincts right. She tipped her head back and peered up at me, wide-eyed.
“Magic?” She intoned the word with sheer awe, the way most people used disbelief when they spoke the word.
“Magic. Yes.” I glanced around the clearing one more time.
Still no signs that Heimdal or anyone else intended to come after us. Maybe my imagination was just too pumped up. Too much had happened in the last few hours. I was still processing.
Heimdal couldn’t follow me here. In Alfheim, Claire and I were the only living beings.
Another twinge of old grief. I avoided looking too hard into the trees. I didn’t want to glimpse what lay beyond them. I still wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
“Magic,” Claire repeated in a whisper. “Like, a spell? I didn’t hear any incantation.”
Claire shoved herself to her feet and brushed absently at the butt of her jeans. A multitude of bracelets, black and gold and red, jingled against her wrist.
“It’s not really a spell.” I couldn’t recall ever having explained my magic to a mortal. To anyone, really. No one had ever asked. “It’s about light. I’m an… Alfar.”
I didn’t offer the translation, “light elf.” I’d lived on Midgard long enough to suspect that uttering the word “elf” might trip even Claire’s open mind toward believing I was making things up.
“I’m not from your world,” I added. “I’m from here.”
Claire ceased brushing dust and grass from her tattered jeans and looked around. Her eyes still seemed too wide and unfocused, and I frowned. But she seemed coherent enough.
Under the circumstances.
I pressed on with my explanation. “My people can manipulate light.” I caught myself. “Could. They could. I can. I sort of… bend it, until a way opens to someplace else. Like a bridge.”
Bivrost. Little rainbow.
“Like a wormhole.” Claire stood in place and turned slowly. “Wow.”
“I guess.” I had no idea if they were at all similar. But if it helped Claire believe, then fine. Like a wormhole.
I glanced around again, myself, but I was doing more thinking than looking.
We couldn’t stay here forever. Sooner or later, I needed to take Claire back to Midgard. And I needed to figure out how to evade Heimdal for the long term. The thing was, I’d only ever thought about wanting my magic back so I could leave Midgard. I’d never planned where exactly I’d go after that.
“So, where is here?” Claire asked from beside me.
“Alfheim.” I turned to face her, preparing to ask what part of the mortal world she’d be all right with being set down in. The nearest bridge stone to the part of North Dakota we’d just fled was in Grand Forks. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea—too close to the place we’d just left—but there were others on the North American continent. Or maybe Claire would want to visit Europe.
Claire stared at me. Her eyes remained wide.
Fresh concern tweaked at my gut. Her face really was very pale, even for Claire. Her pupils, though, those were what really stopped me. They were enlarged to nearly taking over her irises, unnaturally large for the amount of sunlight that drifted between the tree branches.
“Cool.” Claire whispered the word, her mouth barely moving.
Claire wavered on her feet. I reached for her.
What the hell kind of drug had her asshole boyfriend fed her?
Or maybe she has a concussion from you crashing your Jeep with her in it.
It was possible that being unexpectedly yanked to an entirely different world played a part in things, too.
As I closed my fingers around Claire’s elbow, her knees gave way. I lurched forward and managed to catch most of her weight against my body. She leaned heavily into me.
“Let’s just sit back down,” I suggested.
Claire didn’t argue. As I eased her toward the ground, she twisted her face and peered up at me.
“Joel might get worried,” she murmured.
The boyfriend, I assumed. What I couldn’t quite fathom was why she cared if he worried.
“He’s not good for you.” I hadn’t intended to say it out loud, but what the hell. What was the deal with jerks who somehow managed to convince perfectly sensible women that they were—
With Claire halfway to the ground, I froze.
I’d smelled something dark earlier when talking to Claire—twice, once in the Cox General Store’s back room and again on my cabin’s doorstep. I’d written it off as stale weed smoke and incense.
Now, it swirled again into my senses. Again, it seemed less like a simple smell and more like a weight in the air. Maybe b
eing on my home world had sharpened my senses, but here in Alfheim the scent darkened even further, until it seemed to affect more than one sense. It felt almost like a presence.
I inhaled sharply. My fingers dug into Claire’s arms, drawing a murmured, “Ow.”
21
* * *
Six years past and worlds away
The season of Asgard never really changed. It hung in an eternal combination of winter and summer, an endless season of brisk air and clear sky, of emerald leaves and lush grass against a backdrop of chill winds and snow on mountain slopes, all filtered through the icy dome that protected it from the greater winter outside.
The stark cliff top on which we stood felt like true winter. Black clouds churned overhead, threatening a storm. Frigid air stirred restlessly, chilling me to my bones. Bare trees guarded the sentencing ground, black branches spiked against a storm-gray sky. Patches of ice glittered on the rocky ground.
The Aesir ringed the sentencing ground, a smaller, grimmer circle inside the naked trees. Red-faced Thor stood with his fists clenched more tightly than ever. Frigg had ceased weeping. Blank eyes stared from her brutally cold face. Odin’s expression was no less hardened and no easier to look at.
All the gods had come to watch Loki die. Even if the presence of all the Aesir had not been required for an execution, I thought they would all have shown up. The decision had been unanimous and immediate. Heimdal alone had raised the question of what effect Loki’s death might have on the treaty situation with Jotunheim.
“It doesn’t matter,” had been Odin’s ice-faced reply. “We will deal with them later.”
Loki stood in the center of the sentencing ground. His sharp features had twisted into such hatred that I no longer recognized him. His auburn curls clung tightly against his skull, dark as dried blood. A crackle of lightning lanced the clouds above, briefly illuminating all the stark, sharp lines of his face.
Iron shackles circled Loki’s wrists and ankles, and chains driven into the stony ground held him in place. Silver light and runes limned with sapphire blue winked along the shackles’ surfaces, a reinforcement wrought by Heimdal. Heimdal’s magic alone could have held Loki every bit as securely, but holding Loki for an extended time would tire Heimdal.
And it would take some time for Loki to die.
“This is wrong.” My voice wavered.
I stood beside Heimdal, near enough to Odin that he could hear me. Heimdal’s head twitched in my direction, although he didn’t look toward me. Odin didn’t move.
I hadn’t been part of the council which had decided Loki’s fate. I wasn’t, so far as they were concerned, even supposed to be here. Not one of the Aesir had asked if I thought Loki deserved to die for his crime.
Maybe he did. Maybe it was only my upbringing that insisted no one deserved death, the echo of my father’s voice even now reminding me that no one can change without being given another chance. Maybe it was my itinerant compassion, insisting that what Loki had endured at Baldur’s hands cast Loki’s actions into the light of self-defense.
If Loki was telling the truth. I was the only one who’d ever been tempted to believe him. And Loki had, just as Heimdal had tried so many times to warn me, been using me to help carry out his plan to commit murder.
But my father’s voice did ring in my ears, my conscience insisting that a death sentence was nearly as wrong as the murder that had inspired it. The Alfar would not have condoned this action.
I was the only Alfar who still had a voice.
And I still, looking at Loki’s twisted expression, couldn’t decide if I saw the wickedness of a man who’d deliberately murdered another or his defeated hatred for abusers from whom no one had protected him.
“It’s not humane.” My voice wavered a little less.
Odin’s head moved this time, although he also didn’t look all the way around. “We are not human.”
I opened my mouth to continue my argument. “If Baldur had not—”
“Iris.” Heimdal’s hand encircled my wrist. “Hush.”
His voice held as much chill as the air around us. His fingers slid lower and closed around mine. I couldn’t tell if he intended to comfort me or merely hold me in place, errant child that I was.
“You have no say here, little rainbow. We never have.” Emotion thickened Loki’s voice—what emotion exactly, I couldn’t tell.
Fresh grief welled tears into my eyes, and I couldn’t tell for whom I wanted to weep.
“Silence!” Thor’s outburst crushed the cliff top’s stillness.
“There will be enough of that soon, won’t there?” Loki glared at Thor and then at Odin. Defiance snarled through his words. “You brought it on yourselves. Everything I’ve ever done.”
“No.” From beside me, Heimdal spoke with a deceiving calm. “But you have brought this on yourself.”
Loki jerked his gaze from Odin and turned the full force of his glare on Heimdal.
Heimdal stood firm. Only his jaw worked.
“Once, you had our trust.” Heimdal’s voice lowered. Gentled. “We called you brother. It’s you who’s left us no choice.”
“Do you know what Heimdal did? Nothing.”
Only with effort did I resist the sudden urge to yank my hand from Heimdal’s grasp. At the same time, I wanted him to pull me entirely into his arms and tell me none of this was real.
“Enough.” Thor didn’t bellow this time, but he sounded like he wanted to. “The sentence has been decided. Carry it out.”
Heimdal’s jaw clenched again, but he said no more.
My jaw clenched, too, and my heart thudded against my rib cage. I wanted to keep objecting, to point out that Loki’s actions could very well have been considered justifiable. If Loki had seen no other escape from what he had implied was continuing abuse at Baldur’s hands…
“He twists the truth to suit himself.”
If there had even been continuing abuse. Or any to begin with. Hadn’t I experienced for myself how Loki exploited circumstances and manipulated people? Thor was an overgrown child of a man, but bruise or not, I’d never seen him actually lift a hand against Loki. And Baldur…
I knew what I’d seen.
But I didn’t know what I’d seen.
What if everything Loki had ever told me had been a lie?
What could I do about it, even if it had been the truth?
And so I stood there, trembling on the edge of taking action but with no idea what action to take. Or whether it might, in truth, be better to take no action at all.
Odin stepped forward beside Loki and lifted his hands. The air between his fingers darkened. Thickened. What magic he wrought, I couldn’t tell exactly. The darkening was no trick of light magic but something else entirely. It smelled like rotting vegetation and wood smoke.
Between one blink of my eyes and the next, Odin held a snake in each hand. Their coils undulated, a muted deep green that might have been beautiful under other circumstances.
Their appearance was not something I’d expected. No one had explained how this would work.
My heart raced. Heimdal’s fingers squeezed mine more tightly. He’d told me not to come. I began to understand why.
“You’re soft-hearted and so easily hurt.”
The snakes hissed, opening mouths that seemed too large for their slender bodies. Revealing fangs that seemed too large for their mouths.
Every bit of defiance drained from Loki’s face. By the way his eyes widened, I guessed that no one had told him this part of his sentence, either. My stomach tightened.
Odin hefted the snake in his right hand. When he spoke, his voice was the very essence of winter wind. “This venom is a distillation of all pain you’ve caused others. Every betrayal. Every wound. Every agony.”
A new expression flashed across Loki’s face. It could have been regret—or merely fear.
Odin lifted the other snake. “This contains the guilt and remorse that should be yours. Together, they will tai
nt your blood and drip through your veins, burning you with what you’ve inflicted on others.”
Odin paused. He stared at Loki with frozen eyes.
“You will remain chained here, for however many days it takes you to die.”
Days. Not minutes, or even an hour. Days of agony. I watched the same horrified understanding trace itself across Loki’s face.
The snakes hissed. Loki opened his mouth—to object? To defy Odin even now?
Before Loki could speak, Odin stepped forward, extending his arms.
The snakes leaped forward, arcing out of Odin’s hands and onto Loki’s body. One sank its fangs into Loki’s shoulder, the other into his neck.
Loki shrieked.
I echoed his cry with a gasp of my own. I flinched back, as much from the agony in Loki’s voice as from the sight, and lifted my free hand to my face.
But I couldn’t look away.
The snakes worked relentlessly. Lightning-fast, they withdrew their fangs and went after Loki again, arching back and striking with flashing, dripping fangs into Loki’s neck. His head. His face.
Again. And again. And again.
Loki never stopped screaming. A convulsion shuddered through his body. He didn’t fall—the shackles holding him wouldn’t allow it. But his body shook. He thrashed, trying to get away from the striking fangs, but there was nowhere for him to go.
Sobbing now, I took a step back, squeezing shut my eyes and turning my head to the side. Why I wept, I wasn’t sure—could I really weep for Loki even now, after he’d killed Baldur? That act had been cold. Deliberate. Murder.
Desperation.
Maybe I cried for myself. Whatever the reason, I stood there, eyes shut and tears rolling down my face, while Loki’s screams wore away his voice to a ragged moan.
Heimdal’s hand again tightened around mine.
I didn’t care. No matter how much comfort Heimdal offered, it wouldn’t make any of this less wrong. I ached with helplessness. If I’d had any power at all to stop this senseless punishment—a punishment he may not even deserve…
Any power at all.
Something fluttered in my mind. It felt the tiniest bit like hope.
Bridge Burned: A Norse Myths & Legends Fantasy Romance (Bridge of the Gods Book 1) Page 13