by Eva Chase
Bound to Gods
Their Dark Valkyrie #2
Eva Chase
Ink Spark Press
Bound to Gods
Book 2 in the Their Dark Valkyrie series
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Digital Edition, 2018
Copyright © 2018 Eva Chase
Cover design: Rebecca Frank
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-15-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-16-1
Created with Vellum
Contents
Free Story!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
More from the Their Dark Valkyrie world
Dragon’s Guard excerpt
About the Author
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1
Aria
You’d think the realm of the gods would be a glorious place, right? All warmth and sunlight and beauty. But as I wandered across the vast vacant courtyard at the edge of Asgard, the gold-gilded stone walls of Valhalla looming at my right and the marble tiles ringing out with my and my companions’ footsteps, I wasn’t sure I’d ever been anywhere that felt quite this desolate or haunted before. A cool breeze tickled over my bare arms, raising goosebumps.
Of course, maybe the actual Asgard would have met my expectations. This was a fake one that I’d been brought to by a fake Odin, along with the four gods who’d summoned me to be their Valkyrie, and Odin’s wife, the goddess Freya. All of whom looked just as unsettled by the fake-Odin’s recent crumbling-into-dust routine as I was.
“The details all look right,” Freya said. She swept her honey-brown waves back behind her shoulders as she took in the space. Her normally smooth forehead was creased with worry. “How could anyone have recreated Asgard this well?”
“Have they even recreated all of it?” asked Loki. The trickster’s amber eyes flashed. “If you’ll all excuse me for a moment…”
He sprang off the ground, his magical shoes allowing him to walk as if flying. In an instant, his tall lanky form had sped away from us into the distance where a whole city of smaller—but still pretty epic—stone halls stood. His pale red hair whipped like a flame in the wind he’d stirred up. He paused so far down one of the marble walkways that I could barely make out his green tunic against the trees beyond him. Then he spun and whisked back to us, his angular face set with a frown.
“Well?” Thor said in a growl of a baritone. He was still testing the weight of Mjolnir, his godly hammer, in his hand as if looking for something—or someone—to smash with it. The muscles in his beefy arms flexed. “What did you find?”
“It appears to be a rather thorough replica,” Loki said. “All the halls, the orchard and the Norns’ forest beyond… Someone has gone to a lot of trouble at our expense. I’d almost be flattered if it wasn’t a very thorough prison.”
My arms itched to hug myself, but I kept them stiff at my sides. “Is there any way out with the bridge gone?” The rainbow bridge fake-Odin had called up, to lead us who-knew-where that wasn’t actually Asgard. My throat tightened.
I’d only left the world I’d grown up in, the human realm the gods called Midgard, because there wasn’t much of a place for me there anymore. Technically, I’d already died there. The gods had called me back into being as a valkyrie after I’d been crushed by a speeding druggie-driven jeep. But I’d been starting to find a sort of home among the gods as they’d taught me to use the valkyrie powers they’d given me… and as they’d started to mean more to me than almost anyone back home, all of them, in their own ways.
Almost anyone. I’d left behind my little brother, who I’d nearly died all over again protecting. Petey didn’t remember me anymore, a fact that sat in my gut like a hard peach pit I’d accidentally swallowed. Hod, god of cold and darkness, had wiped his mind and wiped the memories of him from everyone who’d known him except for me. After our enemies had threatened him to get to me, it’d been the only solution we could see to keep him safe.
I’d come to Asgard with the promise I’d still get to watch over Petey from afar. If he’d been in danger again I could have intervened. Not while I was shut up in some shiny prison, though.
“If it were the real Asgard, there’d be other doorways,” Loki said. “But somehow I doubt that whoever arranged for us to end up here plans on letting us waltz right back out.”
“Not after they’ve gone to this much trouble,” Freya murmured in agreement.
Thor set his strong hand on my shoulder. “There’ll be a way out, Ari. If we can’t find one waiting for us, we’ll just have to bash our way out.”
The trickster raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure you’d enjoy that too, Thunderer.”
“Where’s the raven woman?” Hod asked. “I haven’t heard her among us since before that false Allfather fell.” He trained his dark green eyes toward the others with his usual intensity, but he couldn’t see them any more than he could have seen Muninn, Odin’s raven of memory, who’d helped us with the rescue. Supposedly helped us, anyway.
“I haven’t seen her since just after we arrived,” Baldur said, his voice as dreamily bright as his shaggy white-blond hair. Despite being twins, he and Hod were a study in opposites. Both were strikingly good-looking, like all the gods seemed to be, with a boyishness to their faces and a height that didn’t quite reach Loki’s or Thor’s, but that was as far as the resemblance went. Baldur was brawny and soft and glowing with the light he ruled over. Hod was lean and hard and shadowy.
Their personalities had plenty of contrast too. Baldur smiled gently as he took in the courtyard. “Perhaps she’s searching for answers as we are.”
Hod made a skeptical sound. “Maybe she has the answers, and she has no intention of sharing them. She’s the one who led us to Odin in the dark elves’ caves, isn’t she? She was his raven. How could she not have known something was wrong?”
His blind glower was as dark as his short black hair, but I knew there was more to him than grim snarkiness. Hod kept his tender side tightly under wraps. I’d gotten close enough to see it—and to get a taste of just how tender he could be.
“None of us knew,” Loki pointed out. “I’m his sworn blood-brother. The three of you are his sons. Freya’s his wife. All of us should have realized. But only Ari did.” He cocked his head at me. “Interesting. What was it that tipped you off, pixie?”
The memory sent a shiver through me. “When you sent me to find Odin before, through Valhalla and Yggdrasil, I felt a pull to him.” That was why they’d been conjuring valkyries—the three before me who’d failed as well as me. Apparently Odin had dismissed all the woman warriors he’d brought into his service
a long time ago, but the gods had used their own ties to him to pass that bond on to me as if he’d resurrected me himself. “I didn’t feel any sense of connection with this one. Not even in the caves. I just didn’t realize what was missing right away.”
“Hmm.” The trickster spun on his heel. “I don’t like this at all. Well, let’s take a closer look around and see if we can’t discover the raven’s hiding place. We can give our valkyrie a little tour along the way.”
“A tour of an Asgard that isn’t really Asgard?” I said as the rest of us fell into step around Loki.
“It does look an awful lot like the real thing,” Thor said beside me. He pointed toward one of the nearest halls, with a roof thatched with silver reeds. “I’d almost think that was my hall, my home… if I hadn’t just watched my father crumple into a pile of dirt.” The growl came back into his voice on the last few words.
Right. This trap must be just as painful for the gods as it was for me—maybe even more. They’d been waiting decades to get back home, wondering why Odin hadn’t returned from his travels on Midgard, unable to find him themselves. For just a moment they’d have thought they were finally back, and now they didn’t even know where they were.
I did hug myself then. Nothing about this sat right. I had wings ready to sprout from my back, my switchblade in my pocket, and god-given strength, speed, and sharpened senses at my disposal—and I could do nothing with any of those things to make this situation better.
“Muninn!” Freya called out in her sweetly measured voice. “Come back to us. We should talk this over.”
From the way her elegant hand rested on the hilt of the sword at her side, I wouldn’t have blamed the raven woman for not believing that the goddess of love and war only wanted to talk.
“That great wall you can thank me for,” Loki said, only a little tension in his jaunty tone as he pointed to the high stone wall that lay beyond the halls. “At least, if it were the real one, you could have. A little wagering, a little magic, and we got the whole thing for free.”
Thor raised an eyebrow. “I seem to remember it being a little more complicated than that.”
“You all almost paid our giant builder with my hand in marriage,” Freya said archly. “An offer that got made a lot more often than I can say I appreciated.”
“Ah, but you made such a lovely lure, dear goddess.” Loki winked at her. “I never let you be bound to any dastardly giants, did I?”
“A little less bragging about past exploits and a little more finding our way out of this mess?” Hod suggested.
“I don’t see why we can’t do both. Why, look, this is a spitting image of my own hall, and—”
Loki’s voice cut off with a muffled yelp. He looked down at the marble tile he’d just stubbed his toe on. A crack ran down the middle of it, one side raised higher than the other. The trickster’s eyebrows drew together as he knit his brow.
A deeper shiver ran through me. When Loki let his concern show, you knew something was really wrong. “What is it?” I said.
“This cracked stone.” He prodded the marble edge as we all came to a stop around him. “It plagued me for ages… until one of the craftsmen finally replaced it. The cracked one hasn’t been there in at least a century.”
“In the real Asgard,” Thor said.
Baldur turned, his dreamy gaze focusing a little more closely on our surroundings. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said in his melodic voice, “but that tall pine at the edge of the orchard—it was cut down not long before we left for Midgard last time.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “What does that mean?”
Hod’s expression had gone slack with understanding. “This Asgard isn’t an exact replica of the current realm. It has bits and pieces from different times. Features we were more likely to remember even after they changed?”
“The memories that stood out the most,” Loki said with a nod. “And who do we know who deals in memories?”
Freya’s fingers tightened around the sword hilt. “The raven.”
Loki’s eyes lit with a frenetic gleam. “It all makes sense. How convincing this place is—how convincing that Odin was. How we were all fooled except for Ari.” He nodded to me. “You have no experience with any part of Asgard outside of Valhalla to draw on. No recollections of being in Odin’s presence. So the illusion couldn’t catch hold quite as well.”
“Illusion?” I said. This place felt awfully solid to be just a hallucination or something.
Loki took a step ahead of us, weaving his hands through the air with a flourish. “An illusion constructed out of our memories. Muninn didn’t just lead us into this prison. She created it.”
2
Baldur
“You’re trying to tell me that little raven built this entire place?” Thor said to Loki with a sweep of his arm.
I followed his gesture, taking in the false Asgard again. This time I breathed a little deeper, opened my senses to it a little more freely so I could pick up the emotions floating around me. Tension radiated off my companions, which was why I’d tamped down my sensitivity in the first place. But getting out of here was more important than avoiding some immediate discomfort.
“I’m saying that’s what the evidence suggests,” the trickster replied. “I’ve seen her do it before—conjure objects or scenes out of memories she’s gathered. Odin had her show me things a few times that way. Never anything on close to this scale before…”
He shook his head in awed disbelief at our surroundings. “This must be taking all her energy and concentration to maintain. And she’ll be feeding off the memories she’s gleaning from our minds right now.”
Memories. A dark quiver ran through my thoughts like a sliver of ice. The last thing I wanted to do was dwell in the past. If Loki was right… what else might Muninn conjure out of our histories?
I didn’t let myself glance at Hod, but my twin was there at the edge of my vision, with a shadowy scowl. So many things we’d put to rest between us… and now the raven might stir them up all over again. I didn’t want to think about how much more pain she could cause him as well.
Instead, I trained my attention on the buildings around us, the courtyard we’d left behind, the distant trees. The whole sprawling realm. If Muninn was creating this out of her mind, then perhaps I could reach her emotions through it. Catch some impression that would help us navigate her prison.
Now that I was paying more attention instead of shutting off the negative vibes around me, a faint current of prickling resentment touched me along with the breeze. An anxious twitch. If that was her, she wasn’t feeling very happy at the moment either. If there was some way to connect with her, to appeal to whatever good nature she had, was there any chance that we could sway her actions?
None of the impressions gave me the slightest opening. I didn’t know how to extend my hand to a place born out of a person. What could I say to her when I had no idea where that anxiety or resentment might come from?
When I brought my focus back to my companions, Aria was watching me, her gray eyes clouded with concern. “Did you sense anything from her?” she asked.
When we’d summoned our valkyrie from her death, my contribution had been to bestow her with the same sensitivity to people’s inner life—what the valkyries in olden times would have used to decide which of the warriors on the battlefield deserved to ascend to Valhalla. But that talent wouldn’t be as strong for her, and she didn’t have much practice using it yet.
“I think so,” I said. “Nothing very clear—nothing we can use.”
“Why would Odin’s raven have shut us away in some false realm?” Freya said. “Surely she wasn’t… helping the dark elves in whatever they’ve done with him? If he’s even with them at all.”
“He is,” Aria said. “Or at least he was. I felt his presence clearly from their realm when I first went looking for him.”
“She’s hardly Odin’s raven anymore,” Loki said. “I h
aven’t seen her with him in at least a couple centuries. He never did say how they came to part ways. I’m developing the sneaking suspicion it wasn’t the friendliest of leave-takings.”
“But to turn completely against him, and all of us…” I couldn’t imagine any being’s loyalties shifting so completely.
Muninn and Huginn, her partner and the raven of thought, had been constant fixtures at my father’s side for ages, expanding his wisdom with their own travels. They might have been birds in form, for all Muninn now seemed able to transform into a womanly shape, but their minds had been as deep and sharp as any lesser god’s. What could possibly have happened to turn her into an enemy?
The question made me want to shutter my mind all over again, but I knew that wouldn’t protect me from the darkness lurking here. Not when it was lurking all around us as well as inside me.
My hands clenched at my sides for a second before I forced them to release. I needed to be out of this false place. We all did. The uncomfortable possibilities were wearing at the fragile harmony we’d managed to keep for so long—and the hard-won harmony within my own mind. So many horrible uncertainties looming over us… How long could we all stay strong?
“We have to assume she was working with the dark elves,” Hod said. My brother’s mouth set in a grim line. “She led us astray in their caves—they were holding her false Odin. She couldn’t have pulled that off unless they were in on the plan. And then she tricked us into coming into this prison where we can’t stop whatever else they have planned.”