by Eva Chase
Do you really want to see how much worse this can get?
I couldn’t even open my mouth to curse at her. My jaw stayed clamped tight. Outside my bedroom door, the stairs stopped creaking. Trevor padded across the hall.
Fucking God, no no no no. I squeezed my muscles against the paralysis, but I couldn’t budge an inch. More sweat trickled down the side of my face, leaving a chilly path in its wake. I willed my wings to emerge, to propel me off the mattress, but they stayed locked inside me. My lip pinched as my teeth bit down on it. The pain didn’t jar me loose either.
The door eased open with a soft squeak. Trevor’s broad, gut-heavy form stood silhouetted on the threshold. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Under his breath, he started to hum that damned song, that stupid fucking song about daisies and sugar that had been all over the radio for months and still made me want to vomit when I heard it.
Back then, I’d have squeezed my eyes shut. Pretended I was asleep, that I didn’t know what he was doing, couldn’t feel any of it, couldn’t care. Maybe if I gave him nothing, he’d get bored of the groping and the rutting against my pajamas.
Except it hadn’t worked. He’d gotten more creative as time went on. Oh, please, no, let this not be one of those times. Let this at least be early on, when it was easier to shut out.
He ambled across the room and stopped at the side of the bed, beaming down at me with that sickly crooked smile. This time, I glared back at him as if I could throw him out of the room with the power of my horror. My body cringed beneath the blanket.
He bent down to grasp the corner, and another figure emerged from the darkness right behind him. Hands clapped, and my mom’s former boyfriend burst into flames.
The flare of the firelight glanced off Loki’s light red hair and pale face. His amber eyes seemed to flare too as he watched Trevor crumble to the ground in a heap of dust. He kicked at the smoldering pile with a sneer. Then he turned to me. “I came as fast as I could. I’m sorry he got that far.”
I snapped upright and in the process discovered that I could move again. A sound almost like a whine emerged from my throat as I scrambled off the bed, swiping at my arms as if the itch of the blanket and the memories that came with it might follow me. My shoulders were shaking.
“Ari…” Loki extended his hand and then paused with it halfway between us. Not knowing whether I’d want whatever comfort he was planning to offer, I guessed. I didn’t know either. Another shudder wracked my body.
Control. I had to get control of myself. I still had to get out of here.
“Thank you,” I managed to say, stiffly but steadily. “I… Thank you.”
Loki nodded, his gaze fixed on mine. His hand still hovered in the air between us. He shifted his weight as if to move toward me, and the stairs creaked again.
I froze, my stomach flipping. Another creak, and another. He was coming again. Another Trevor. Fuck, no.
Panic took over. Before Muninn’s invisible force could shove me back down on the bed, I bolted for the door.
21
Loki
Ari’s distress radiated off her as if she were in full nuclear meltdown. I’d been able to feel it thrumming through the ever-shifting walls of Muninn’s prison, growing sharper and more frenetic as I’d tried to follow our thread of connection to her. Now, watching her dash from the bedroom into the hall, it wracked my nerves.
So much pain contained in that small body. If she’d just talk to me, let me help her fight it…
I hurried after her. There was no way I was letting her out of my sight now. Muninn could throw a thousand walls up and I’d outpace them all to stay with our valkyrie. She’d needed me in there, and she’d need me again. Whether she liked that idea right now or not.
Ari swerved in the hall toward one of the other doorways, but as she ran for it, the floor dropped beneath her feet like a trap door opening. She dropped through it with a yelp. Cursing, I dove after her.
We landed in her kitchen, kitty-corner around the Formica table. On the other side of the room, a teenaged boy with a head of messy blond waves like Ari’s was attempting to stare down a middle-aged guy who was a few inches taller and several wider, with a bald patch at the back of his head he’d inexpertly combed over.
It took me a second to recognize him in the glare of the kitchen’s lights. Bald Spot was the man I’d just fried in Ari’s old bedroom.
“You get out of this house, and don’t you even think about coming around here again,” the boy was saying, his voice ragged and his face flushed red. “If you ever touch her again—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid,” the man said. “That girl makes up all kinds of crazy stories. Whatever she told you—”
Ari made a wounded sound. “No. Francis. No.”
She shoved herself around the table and reached for the boy—for her older brother—but this once Muninn wasn’t building with solid matter. Maybe she needed to preserve her energy, or maybe she saw it as a new form of torture. Ari’s hand passed right through her brother’s arm. He kept talking at a desperate pace as if he hadn’t noticed her at all.
“She didn’t tell me. I found proof. I know what you did, you sick fuck. So if you don’t get the hell out of here, I’ll—I’ll call the police.”
The man had tensed, but he kept his voice even. Even and dark. “You don’t want to do that, Francis. Do you have any idea how they’ll treat her if you feed them some story—”
“It can’t be any worse than what you did to her,” Francis snapped back.
Ari cried out and lunged at him again, but she caught hold of nothing but air. Her brother threw himself at the man with fist raised. The man dodged to the side, slamming out his arm to deflect the blow and shoving back at the same time.
Francis careened to the side, his head hitting the sharp corner of the counter with a fleshy crack. A sob broke from Ari’s throat. She dropped with her brother as he collapsed, blood flowing from the wound on his head.
“Ari.” I bent over her, touching her shoulders, but she smacked my hands away.
“Leave me alone. You don’t— Francis…”
She pawed at his head as if she could heal the wound with strength of will alone. Muninn had let him turn solid now. Blood streaked across Ari’s palms. My gut twisted, but for once in my long existence I hadn’t the slightest idea what to say that might be welcome, that might soothe her anguish even a smidgeon.
He was lying there… lying there like Baldur had. Pale and bloody and totally innocent. I closed my eyes against the image.
By the Allfather, how could she have reacted in any other way to that scene in the courtyard? The crime I’d committed echoed one of the most horrifying moments of her life, only this time with me in the role of villain. I was lucky she was even tolerating me in the same room as her.
I might not ever be able to fix this. She might not ever forgive me for one act committed ages before she’d even been born.
That knowledge sank heavy in my chest. All right. That was a fact. But it was also a fact that I wasn’t in the habit of giving up just because a situation looked dire. If there was a way to fix this, to repair the wreck I’d made of whatever we’d had, I’d damn well find it. Especially if in doing so I also struck a blow against this damned prison.
After a few minutes, Ari sat back on her heels with a stuttered sigh. She swiped at her face with the back of her hand.
“It’s not him,” she said to herself. “It’s not him. It’s Muninn’s idea of torture. But she can’t really hurt him.” She raised her head and shouted at the ceiling. “I’m not falling for this!”
The body deflated with those words. In a matter of seconds, there was nothing left of the supposed Francis except a smear of dust. Even the blood on Ari’s hands crumbled into dust. She swiped them against her jeans and stood up.
“We’ve tired her out,” she said to me. “She can’t keep anything up very long anymore, not without all her concentratio
n. And it’s not worth it if it’s not working. Not torturing us.” She shot another glare at the ceiling with that comment, just as a woman appeared in the doorway.
Ari’s mother. They weren’t that close a match, but I could see Ari’s heritage in the narrow gray eyes, the slant of the woman’s nose. The corners of her mouth dug deep as it curved into a scowl.
“You had to go and ruin everything,” she said, jabbing a finger at Ari. “We were fine. Just fine.”
Ari’s fingers clenched against the table-top. She took a step backward. “No, we weren’t.”
“You never could be satisfied with the way things were. Always had to make everything about you. As if any man would look at a scrawny thing like you and want that.”
“Shut up.”
“Francis would still be alive. I’d still have Trevor. We were making a real life for ourselves and you took it all away. If you’d just kept your stupid mouth shut—”
“I did, you fucking bitch!” Ari yelled.
Her mother froze, as if even this construct of Ari’s memories didn’t have a response to that. I was willing to bet Ari had never screamed like that at the real one, however much her mother had clearly deserved it. That moment’s hesitation did give me an opening, though.
I held up my hand, a surge of heat racing through me. “Permission to light her up?”
Ari’s jaw tightened, but her lips curled into a grim smile. She nodded with a short jerk of her head.
I snapped my fingers, and a spurt of fire shot up from the floor to engulf this figure of her mother.
Like the man upstairs, the construct crumbled before it even really started to burn. Not the most satisfying vengeance.
Ari sagged against the table, but her shoulders stayed tense. Her gaze lingered on the doorway. Braced for some new horror to emerge.
The moment stretched. Nothing else appeared. Muninn had switched to torturing my fellow gods for a bit, I had to guess. Or else she was even more tired than Ari had suggested—too tired to do more than hold these walls in place.
“You should never have had to see that again,” I said into the silence. “Muninn deserves to have her head shoved up her ass and pulled right back out of her neck for putting you through it.”
Ari’s lips twitched at my creative imagery. She pushed away from the table. “Why are you here?”
“I’m trying to look after you, as difficult as you seem intent on making that task.”
Her gaze snapped to meet mine. “Who says I need looking after?”
“I think we all do in this warped place, don’t you?” I cocked my head. “It doesn’t matter what you think of me, pixie. You’re my valkyrie. I’m the one who dragged you into this mess—which has turned out to be a far bigger mess than I anticipated, unfortunately. So, even if you’ve decided to hate my guts, I’ll still be here to burn up any assholes who need burning.” I waggled my fingers in the air.
She let out her breath. “Yeah. They did need that.”
Her head drooped again. I swallowed, but curiosity wriggled up my throat anyway. One of the milder of my many flaws.
“She really blamed you like that, didn’t she? Your mother? Muninn didn’t just make that up.”
“My mom… lived in a reality where nothing much mattered except that nothing could ever be her fault.” Ari lifted one shoulder and dropped it in a half-hearted shrug. “In a way she was right. If I hadn’t been here, if I’d been better at hiding it, Francis wouldn’t have died. Trevor wouldn’t have gone to jail. Everyone would have been happier.”
My jaw set against another flare of anger. “Everyone except you.”
“Well, I didn’t count, in her equation. I really didn’t tell, you know. Two years, and it kept getting worse, but he’d always say, if I said anything, I’d be the one who got in trouble. I knew who my mom would believe. I knew Francis couldn’t really do anything, not without ending up in the line of fire too…” Her voice wobbled.
“It isn’t your fault,” I said sharply. “Don’t you dare take on one speck of the guilt that piece of human excrement should be carrying.”
Her head jerked up again, her eyes startled. Did it really surprise her that I was angry about this? I didn’t know every detail of what that bastard had done, but I’d seen enough in that scene and in every reaction Ari had when anyone got close to her…
“I could burn him up for real, you know,” I said abruptly. “When we’re out of here. An inexplicable case of spontaneous combustion. Really it’d be a kinder end than he deserves.” But so very, very satisfying.
Ari’s gaze stayed on my face for several seconds. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think that would actually make things better.” She looked away, braced against the edge of the table. “If I’d just fought back, if I’d screamed and hit or found some other way to show him he couldn’t get away with it… But he could. He probably sized me up and knew I’d be too weak.”
She sounded so defeated in that moment that my rage burned through me twice as hot. “You weren’t weak,” I said. “You were a child in a horrible situation. Trying to protect yourself and your brother like you always do. Taking it all on yourself so no one else had to be hurt. You were so fucking strong that even when the worst thing possible happened, you got through it, you kept going. You didn’t let that despicable woman crush you. You didn’t let the past break you.”
“But maybe I did,” Ari said. Her grip on the table tightened. “You don’t know… It’s been ten years since I last saw that asshole, and I still haven’t managed to get him out of my head. I can’t completely relax with anyone; I can’t completely trust anyone. No commitments, no risk that I’ll get hung up on the wrong guy, because it feels like it’d be so easy to end up trapped like that again.”
“Ten years isn’t that long after trauma like that,” I said. The bitter weight I carried under my rage twinged in agreement. Centuries and centuries sometimes weren’t enough.
She shook her head. “You don’t even see it. You… You were the first person I’ve hooked up with who I knew I couldn’t just walk away from the next morning. The first person in ten years where I didn’t already have one foot out the door. And I fought it; I didn’t want to take that chance, because I knew I wasn’t going to want to walk away.”
My heart squeezed. And then she’d ended up trapped in here with me, finding out just how wrong I could be. She’d given me that trust…
“So, why did you take the chance?” I asked quietly.
Her shoulders rose and fell. She glanced at me sideways. “I felt like you understood. You understood, and it didn’t stop you from wanting me.”
“It still doesn’t,” I said, not that hooking up was very high on my to-do list at the moment. I’d have been happy simply to have her welcome my embrace, to let me take a little of the burden she’d been carrying too long. “I’ve seen all that, I’ve heard everything you’ve said, and I still think you’re one of the strongest human beings I’ve ever met, Ari. I wouldn’t even recommend many gods take you on.”
The edges of the room shimmered. I went still, watching from the corner of my eye. Muninn’s constructs were becoming even more fallible. Maybe it wouldn’t be long before we could shatter them completely.
“I don’t understand,” Ari said, turning to face me. “How could you have done that to Baldur? To Hod? You put both of them through so much shit—you murdered Baldur and made Hod feel like he was the murderer…”
My stomach clenched into a ball. I kept my voice even. “I never lied to you. I told you I was a villain. I’m sure the others told you plenty too. I am what I am, Ari.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “If you’re such a villain, then why are you trying so hard to help me? I have trouble believing it’s just to get into my pants again.”
“No one’s ever that black and white. I’m allowed my finer moments.”
“So, why didn’t you make that one of your finer moments?” she demanded. “You had a choice, didn’t you? Were y
ou really just so pissed off at the stupid game that you thought murder was the answer?”
Despite my intentions, I bristled. “It was a lot more complicated than that. You saw one fragment of the history. I had my reasons.”
“Then tell me them, instead of all this garbage about ‘I am what I am’!”
My stomach clamped tighter. “That’s the truth,” I snapped.
“Is it?” she said. “Or is it just easier to avoid answering the question if you claim you’re a bad guy and wash your hands of everything else?”
The accusation struck deeper than she could have realized it would. I managed to contain my flinch. If she’d known, if she’d had any idea…
But wasn’t that just how she’d been arguing with me about her supposed weakness?
The walls around us wavered, more obviously this time. Ari’s eyes widened. She pushed off the table, taking a step toward the cabinets. Then, with a heave, she threw herself forward with a smash of her fist.
The cabinets, the counter, the wall collapsed inward into darkness. Ari let out a cry of victory. She was just swiveling toward me when a gust of wind blasted up between us and tossed her right into that void.
22
Aria
Lord help me, I was so sick of being tossed around. As I spun into the blackness, I focused all that frustration on my memories of a sweet yet hoarse voice and a flutter of dark wings. Where was Muninn? Where was she, so I could punch her in her little raven face? She’d thought showing me all that history would wear me down? It’d only made me even more eager to tear her down—one feather at a time, if that was what it took. We were almost there. I knew her strength was flagging.
My wings flapped and banked. The darkness shifted around me, and I was back at the cage I’d seen Odin in before.
The Allfather was slumped against the iron bars, his head bent to the side and hat drooping low. His presence reverberated through me. The ring of fire continued licking at the base of the cage. A more muted reddish glow seeped over the rock all around—a cave. This was a cave somewhere.