Mist remembered to breath. “He isn’t dead. He isn’t dead.”
“Death is not the worst fate that can befall man, elf or god.”
Mist found that her skull was filled with stars and silk and the scent of a thousand primroses, and there was almost no room left for questions. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you help him?”
“I have not been blind, even in the Shadow-Realm. And I have seen him as he truly is—traitor to the Aesir, Loki’s pawn, uncontrollable monster. I mistakenly believed he was capable of serving me, but his insanity had gone too far.” She bowed her head. “On the other side—”
Mist’s stomach heaved. “What did you see … on the other side?” she asked.
“You know, Daughter.” Freya said gently.
29
Danny, Mist thought, her legs beginning to buckle. Dainn killed—
Her knees struck the ground before her thoughts could reach their terrible conclusion, and the poppies flattened under her weight. They withered and died, red petals turning transparent against the ice.
All at once her mind was clear again. She lowered her head, took a deep breath, and got to her feet.
“What did you see?” she demanded, holding her mother’s gaze.
Freya lowered her arms and took a step back. “What did you see, Daughter?” she asked. “Why did you leave him behind when you returned to this mortal city?”
“To help Hild and Sleipnir,” she said, not caring whether or not Freya believed her.
“And why did they require his help, if all the enemy are dead?”
Don’t talk about Danny, Mist thought, hearing the command as if it had come from somewhere outside herself. And she realized that she’d never once spoken his name to Freya aloud, even when she’d briefly told the Lady about finding Hild and Sleipnir on the steppes. Not once had she explained how she and Dainn had found the portal, though she had never noticed her own omission. And Freya had never asked her how it had come to exist, though the Lady had to know that neither Mist nor Dainn could have created it. If she assumed that Loki had found a shortcut to Sleipnir’s hiding place, wouldn’t she ask why Loki was so conspicuously absent?
Would she know that Loki had a son who appeared so human, and yet harbored such astonishing power? And if she did know, what would she do if she had such a child in her grasp?
Svardkell—Mist’s father, and once Freya’s mate—had warned Dainn to “protect the boy.” Dainn had believed that boy to be Danny, and Mist knew he was right.
But Svardkell had not mentioned Freya. He had not asked Mist to approach her mother for help in protecting one who was important enough to die for.
Maybe he’d known Freya too well. Maybe he knew that her love wasn’t gentle and kind, but ruthless and cruel.
She’d do anything to win this war, Mist thought. But I won’t.
“I know what Dainn is,” Mist said. “Everything he is. I’m not giving up on him. You can either accept that, or—“
“I can’t find him anywhere.”
The elf, Harald, spoke as he approached her from the portal, and Mist realized that she had never even noticed his absence.
He had been to the steppes. And now his long face was grave, his eyes apologetic as they met Mist’s.
“I am sorry, my lady,” he said. “He is gone.”
Mist closed her eyes, shutting out the elf, Freya, all the terrible things that had happened in the last several days.
Dainn had made his decision. She’d asked him to wait for her, but he’d taken the choice out of her hands and removed himself from the equation.
Mist felt as if the beast had raked its claws across her chest, cutting through flesh and ribs and grasping her heart in its massive paw.
“Mist!”
She opened her eyes at the sound of Hild’s voice. The Valkyrie was leading Sleipnir through the portal, which had abruptly expanded again to allow the big horse’s passage. As soon as they were through, its mouth snapped back to its ever-shrinking diameter like an overstretched rubber band.
Hild paused to look over the carnage, only the hard set of her lips betraying her emotions. Her gaze fell on Freya without recognition.
“Hild!” Mist said, running to grasp her Sister’s rough hands. She nodded to Odin’s mount, wishing she could read his thoughts, and lowered her voice. “Listen to me, but answer quietly. Where is Danny?”
With a slight frown and a searching look, Hild matched Mist’s low tone. “He isn’t here?”
“No. And he was riding Sleipnir the last time I saw him.”
Hild muttered a curse in some obscure Russian dialect. “Spider rode off with him before I could stop them, and when they came back to the cottage three Jotunar attacked us. Jotunar disguised as Alfar. One of them carried Danny off. Spider and I went after them, but we were—”
“You can explain later,” Mist said, cutting her off. “Did you see him at all after that?”
Hild shook her head. “I didn’t see Dainn, either,” she said. “Has something—“
“The situation is complicated, and I’d rather we speak in private.” She glanced at Freya, who seemed completely absorbed in her conversation with Harald. “I’m going to need your help cleaning up here and getting these people off the street.”
“So many,” Hild murmured.
“New recruits came in while I was gone. Innocent mortals died today.”
“And Alfar, I see. What do you want me to do?”
“Help us with the survivors. Ask Rota and Bryn what needs to be done.”
“It will be good to see them again. What of Sleipnir?”
“We have a good-sized abandoned factory we’re using for a temporary shelter. There’s plenty of room there until we find a safer place to keep him. And Hild, say nothing of Danny. Not to anyone.”
To Mist’s vast relief, Hild didn’t ask for her reasons. The pale-haired Valkyrie nodded and led Sleipnir onto the street. The horse stepped lightly on the ice, his nostrils flaring and head bobbing at the familiar smells and sights of battle. He looked once at Freya, his ears laying flat against his head.
Mist turned back to the Lady, not much caring if her divine mother had been offended at being ignored. “You got your wish,” she said. “Dainn isn’t coming back.”
“It was never my wish,” Freya said with an expression of profound sorrow. “He served me well.”
And you promised him things you could never give him, Mist thought. You made him what he is as much as Odin ever did.
”It’s done,” Mist said. “What can you do to help us now?”
The Lady should have been angry at Mist’s disrespect, but she only nodded her head with all evident grace. “I can bring comfort to the living,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears. “I truly grieve for you, my daughter. But we do what is best for Midgard. For these mortals who are so willing to die for you.”
Not for me, Mist thought. Never for me.
“I hope you don’t require my followers to kowtow to you the way Loki expects his to do.”
“I require no deference,” Freya said. “Only respect. When, of course, you have properly introduced me.”
So, Mist thought, she had been stung when Mist hadn’t brought Hild to meet her. That suited Mist just fine. “Do you intend to stick with that body?” she asked.
“It cannot contain my magic indefinitely, but it will give me time to build another shape more appropriate.”
They parted, Mist slowly going numb as she tried to make her mind function a little longer.
Dainn was gone, but she had to find Danny. If a Jotunn disguised as an Alfar had run off with the boy, he could already be back with Loki. In fact, Mist was willing to bet on it.
Oh, Loki hadn’t won completely, Mist reminded herself. Sure, he’d managed to open a bridge to the Shadow-Realm of Jotunheim while Mist, Dainn and Danny were on the steppes, and that meant he could probably do it again, but he’d lost Jotunar, including many of his new war
riors. He didn’t have Dainn. And he’d have to reckon with Freya, after all. And maybe the other Aesir, if Freya meant what she’d promised this time.
But if he could make Danny do what he wanted, Mist thought, it was going to get very ugly very fast. Much uglier than anything they’d witnessed on this modest field of battle.
Who would protect Danny then?
Mist found the will to exchange a few words of encouragement with her Sisters and the Einherjar as they prepared to escort the Alfar and mortal recruits back to the factories. The snow-laden air was oppressive, the mist of condensation obscuring everyone’s faces as the uninjured carried the casualties on foot or, for those able to ride, on the Einherjar’s bikes.
It was not an easy journey. The Alfar warded the procession from mortal sight and worked with the humans as they had during the battle, though the two groups hardly spoke to each other. As they moved away, Mist began to clean up the mess still left on the ice, though her magic was more than a little shaky after the energy she’d expended. She was amazed she could use it at all.
She was too weary to be surprised when Freya and Lord Konur remained to help her. Amongst the three of them, they managed to clear away all traces of the battle. Only Loki’s black ice remained, beyond their combined abilities to remove.
It was only then that Mist realized that Silfr was standing off to one side of the bridge. It was as bright as if it had never seen mud and ice and the soil of another country.
She didn’t have the heart to ride it back to the loft.
Hardly able to walk, Mist staggered after her ravaged army. She’d taken no more than few steps when the elf-lord took her arm and refused to let go until she accepted his support. She looked over her shoulder once to see Freya gazing at the portal as it finally vanished.
Loki was patient. He watched on his monitor as the Sow’s child and her followers gathered up their dead and injured. Even Freya, easily recognizable in spite of her elven disguise, assisted Mist in cleaning up the battle site and disposing of the Jotunn bodies. He was pleased to see that none of them could remove the ice.
Everything was going his way. Well, he admitted to himself, nearly everything. His losses had been modest, considering Mist’s and Freya’s combined talents, and though both the bridges and the portal had closed, he would be able to move his warriors more widely around the city even before he brought more across from the Void.
Now that Danny was home again, he wouldn’t have to wait long. The one fly in the ointment was Freya’s return … but he’d only had theories to go on, not facts. And there were positive aspects to her reappearance that might outweigh the negatives.
If she had returned in one piece, Dainn hadn’t been nearly as effective as Loki had feared in separating her from Mist, and Freya had almost certainly taken care of whatever “struggle for power” his Jotunar had sensed in Ginnungagap. Odin would be neutralized again, even if Freya had been unable to find a way to make his condition permanent.
Loki drained his glass of plain orange juice and set it down, rather pleased with himself for taking it straight. Of course, Orn really had escaped, just as Loki had told Dainn and the others when he had taken Mist’s shape. Vidarr’s astonishing stupidity was responsible for that. But unless the raven, intelligent though it seemed, had far more autonomy than it had thus far displayed, its behavior dovetailed very nicely with Loki’s notion of a brief awakening and counterstrike by Odin, followed by Freya’s ultimate victory. Its loss was of little importance, though Loki would have his people on the lookout for the bird. He didn’t like leaving loose ends.
There would be a few less such open questions by dawn. Freya had rejected Dainn and given him up as lost, a perfectly sane reaction given that she’d have discovered very quickly that he had betrayed her in favor of her daughter. Loki was rather surprised that she hadn’t tried to kill him.
“Tried” being the operative word. Loki doubted she could even come close unless she used the Eitr, and he suspected she’d needed that to put down Odin’s “uprising.”
Perhaps she guessed, or sensed, more about Dainn than he’d believed.
And what, Loki wondered, must Mist be thinking now? She’d also lost Dainn, and she could blame at least part of that on the child she had tried to help “save.” She knew now that Danny was Loki’s son. Dainn would not have kept that from her once he had enlisted her help in protecting the boy. And she would know how powerful Danny was, the feats of which he was capable, the ruination he could bring down on her and her allies.
But she wouldn’t know the one essential fact that could alter her entire attitude toward her enemy’s offspring. And if Freya had seen Danny on the other side of the portal—which, given Loki’s somewhat spotty intelligence of the events on the steppes, was quite possible—she would surely try to convince Mist that the child must be destroyed for the sake of Midgard.
Without Dainn’s influence and appeal to her sentimentality, would Mist agree? Even if it meant saving this world?
Loki shook his head with a soft laugh. No, not Mist. Such a suggestion from her mother might actually backfire on Freya. And the Lady was certainly intelligent enough to realize it … if she understood her daughter at all.
But Dainn had also failed Mist. He clearly hadn’t told her of Freya’s intentions for her, thwarted though they had been for the time being. And once the Lady discovered what had really become of her former servant, Freya would do her best to make Mist believe that Dainn had deceived and forsaken them both.
Returning his attention to the monitors, Loki changed the image to a view of Danny’s room. If the boy seemed to have reverted to his usual state, silent and staring and rhythmically rocking to music only he could hear, Loki knew that relapse was illusory.
Danny was different now. Dainn had awakened him, just as Loki had hoped. “Sir.”
Nicholas approached Loki’s desk with a respectful bow. “The limousine is approaching the building.”
“Excellent,” Loki said. He exchanged his clothing with a sweep of his hand, donning casual but impeccably tailored attire that perfectly suited his form and face, and walked into his private sitting room. Scarlet was waiting with a tray of drinks.
Loki waved it away. “Not now,” he said. “But I may call for refreshments when my guest arrives. Tell Nicholas to make him feel welcome.”
Scarlet walked away, gracefully balanced on her spike-heeled pumps. Loki sprawled on the couch, observing Dainn’s approach on his tablet. Even on the small screen he could see how haggard the elf had become, how weary, how utterly defeated.
He was not coming to fight. There was no evidence that the beast rode on his shoulder. Surely he realized that he was as hopelessly out of his depth now as when he had come to kill Loki after Hrimgrimir’s ill-fated attack on the loft.
The elf’s tender, all-too-fragile heart would make him helpless, especially when he had nothing else to live for.
Or die for.
Loki’s heart began to beat a little more quickly, a sensation he found quite pleasant under the circumstances.
“Sir,” Nicholas said from the doorway, “he’s here.”
“Send him in,” Loki said. “Alone.”
Nicholas nodded and backed out the door. A moment later Dainn walked in, still half-dressed and barefoot, his once-sleek hair a mass of tangles laced with bits of dead grass and leaves, his eyes bloodshot and his lips cracked. He still moved with elven grace, panther-sleek, and even now he was the most beautiful creature Loki had ever beheld in any of the Nine Homeworlds.
Dainn stopped just inside the doorway and turned a hollow gaze on Loki. “Where is the boy?” he asked.
“His nurse will bring him up presently,” Loki said, stretching his arm along the back of the couch. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?”
Dainn turned to walk out the door.
“Wait,” Loki said. “You did come to see him, I presume? You are concerned for his welfare, after all you have attempted to do for him
?” He patted the couch beside him. “I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
“Nothing you have to say interests me,” Dainn said in a voice as barren as the steppes. But he didn’t walk away. He simply stood, lost to himself, bereft of something essential he had possessed in full measure the last time he and Loki had met near the loft. Something Loki felt as a void as deep and vast as Ginnungagap.
Dainn had lost his magic.
For one of the few times in his life, Loki was in no mood to gloat. He felt nothing but a kind of shock dangerously close to pity. For an elf, to be stripped of magic was not merely to lose the use of spells and the ability to shape the natural world. It was a severance from all that made Alfar what they were, from the life of nature that flowed through them wherever they walked.
For Dainn, it must be like being blind and deaf and crippled all at once, stumbling through a world stripped of meaning or context.
Perhaps it was even worse than the beast.
“Nicholas!” Loki snapped.
The young man appeared instantly behind Dainn.
“Help Lord Dainn to the couch and tell Scarlet to fetch blankets and water.”
Nicholas took Dainn’s arm gently and steered him toward the couch. At first Dainn resisted, his muscles tensing, his lip beginning to curl as if the beast were about to awaken. Loki had already prepared a spell to counter any attack, and he gathered it around him now.
But there was no change. Dainn let himself be guided to the couch, sat stiffly as far from Loki as possible, and stared at the opposite wall. When Scarlet arrived with the requested items, Nicholas settled one of the blankets around Dainn’s shoulders and Scarlet offered the bottle. Dainn ignored them both.
“Drink,” Loki said.
Dainn turned his face aside, but his body rebelled against his mind and he drank it dry in less than a minute. Loki gestured for another bottle, but this time Dainn refused to be coaxed.
“Let me see me the boy,” he said.
“I show you kindness,” Loki said, getting to his feet, “and yet you never see fit to show me the slightest gratitude.”
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