by Eva Chase
I turned. A wall of thick liquid flowed past what I guessed was the cave’s entrance, emanating a red-hot light like the stream where I’d seen him ambushed.
Like… magma? Were they keeping him in a volcano? After everything I’d seen in the last few weeks, it didn’t seem impossible.
Muninn’s voice drifted from deeper within the cave. “You never thought I was capable of something like this, did you? You never thought very much about me at all, except for what I could bring you. Did you even wonder where I was, all this time? Did you assume this place had killed me, not that it clearly mattered to you much?”
“I knew where you were, Muninn,” Odin said, his voice low and rusty. “You didn’t appear to want to be disturbed, so I let you be.”
That sounded like a kind enough answer, but from Muninn’s sharp inhale, it’d somehow made her angrier.
“I had a life,” she said. “A life I could have had for all that time before. I used to think—”
“What?” Odin said after a moment, shifting against the bars. “What did you think, my raven?”
“I’m not yours,” she spat out.
I edged away from them, away from the cage, toward the fall of magma. There was a small gap between the gush and the rock. If this was the entrance, if I could see more from here, maybe I’d have a better idea where we could find Odin… whenever we were able to really go looking for him again. If he was even still here.
My foot scraped the rough stone floor. A curse echoed through my head from some other place. Then a force battered my face with so much power I had to close my eyes and raise my hands to shield myself.
I stumbled backward and spun around, not wanting to accidentally take a dive into that searing waterfall. The uneven ground flipped up beneath me.
That next journey was nothing more than a brief lurch. I dropped my hands and found myself back in the front courtyard of Asgard, crouched on the marble tiles where we’d first arrived. From the slant of the sunlight and the deepening blue of the clear sky overhead, it was evening. The same time it’d have been if we’d never left this spot? I didn’t have any clear sense of how much time had passed in Muninn’s prison, traveling through all those years of memories.
The breeze licked over me with just a hint of a chill. I straightened up. The soft warbling of the water cascading from the central fountain was the only sound. Nothing and no one else stirred in the vast city of the gods, anywhere that I could see.
I hugged myself, wavering on my feet. Was Muninn just waiting to spring some new horror at me? Of course, if she’d wanted to horrify me, she wouldn’t have sent me to a place I had no memories of. When I’d ended up back in some version of Asgard before, it’d always been to join one of the gods in a painful replay of the past. Was she so worn out she couldn’t even bother to come up with a new torture for me?
Where were the other gods, then? Should I go exploring? Or try to bash my way out of this place into wherever they were?
I’d just made up my mind to at least peek into a few of the nearby buildings when the air shuddered. With a grunt, Thor came tumbling into the courtyard beyond the fountain as if out of nowhere.
He hit the tiles shoulder first, just barely protecting his head with the back of his arm. Mjolnir thumped against the tiles beside him. A pained sound escaped the thunder god as he rolled onto his back. I ran to him, my heart thudding faster when I saw how he staggered a little pulling himself onto his feet.
One side of his shirt was stained with blood. His blood, it had to be, because all the rest had turned into those smears of dust that marked my clothes too.
“Ari!” he said with that broad smile, even as he clamped his hand against his wound.
My breath hissed through my teeth. “Sit back down,” I said, grabbing his other arm. “What the hell happened to you? Where did she send you?”
He didn’t exactly listen to me, but he did lower himself onto the stone rim of the fountain, the water in the pool rippling with the impact of his brawny body. He glanced down at his bloody shirt and grimaced.
“Better idea,” I said. “Lie down.”
“I’m fine,” he said stubbornly.
“You’re about to refill the fountain with your blood,” I shot back. “There’s nothing dangerous here, not yet, anyway. And when something does show up, I have the feeling you’ll be better at taking it on if you haven’t been ignoring a mortal wound.”
Thor frowned, his shoulders flexing. My throat tightened. “Please?” I said.
That one word softened his expression. He sighed, but he lay back on the rim. I peered over him, realized there was no way I was reaching the water by leaning, and hopped right into the pool.
Thor winced when I splashed a little water on his side to wash the wound.
“Can you get your shirt off without making it worse?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “You want my shirt.”
“So I can try to bandage you up!” I said, giving him a firm look.
He chuckled and wrenched at the fitted tee on the other side. With a quick yank of his muscled arm, the fabric split from hem to sleeve.
I helped him peel the shirt off, careful around the wound, which I could now see was a wide but shallow scrape across his lower ribs. The bleeding looked to be slowing. I tied together the pieces of shirt as well as I could and wrapped them around his torso with a thicker set of folds over the scrape.
Thor lay back down when I was done. I sat on the fountain rim by his head and squeezed as much water as I could out of my jeans.
“It was battles,” Thor said, answering my earlier question about where he’d been. “Battles, battles, and more battles. I didn’t realize I had so little variety in my life, but it seemed like that’s all the raven could come up with out of my memories.”
“And one of those battles got the better of you?”
“Not exactly.” He paused. “I got tired of all the bashing and battering. Thought maybe I could try a different strategy. Why not? She was shifting the memories all around. Who was to say I couldn’t? So I tried calling a halt to the battle to have a calm discussion about why exactly we were fighting. Because I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t have any idea by that point.”
I nudged his hammer, which he’d laid on the ground beside him, with my toe. “Thor the Thunderer gave diplomacy a shot. Not what she was probably expecting. And?”
He scowled. “They didn’t even stop running at me. I waited to see if maybe, if I didn’t even fight back, that might change something, but…” He motioned to his side. “So much for diplomacy.”
“Well, it’s not really your area anyway, right?”
He was silent for a longer moment this time. “I’d rather it was. But I guess this is what I am.”
The comment echoed Loki’s excuse so closely I had to restrain a cringe. But Thor had told me before how uncomfortable he felt realizing how much of his life had been made up of violence. He’d seemed to think I’d see him as some kind of beast because of it.
I let my fingers brush over his dark auburn hair, displacing the strands that had come free from his short ponytail. “That’s just what she wants you to think,” I said. “I’d like to see her give diplomacy a try.”
He rumbled in agreement. “Should I be coming up with my last words?”
“No, I think you’re going to survive. It looked worse than it was.”
“Oh. Well, in that case.”
He shoved himself upright, ignoring my squeak of protest. With a sweep of his arm, he scooted me into his embrace. He kissed my temple. “I’m glad you’re all right, Ari. I kept thinking… You are all right, aren’t you?”
I thought of all the horrors I’d been wrenched through, mine and others’, in the last several hours, and my stomach knotted. But Thor hadn’t been part of any of that agony. It felt like a relief to tip my head against his bare chest, soak up his body’s heat, and say, “Yes. Yes, I am.”
I didn’t want to move. I wanted to
stay there with his hand stroking up and down my back for a good long time. I was tired too. The smell of him, like warm tangy mead, teased around me. Without thinking, I found myself pressing a kiss to the bulge of his pecs just below his collarbone so I could taste it too.
Thor’s fingers shifted against my back. “Ari,” he said in a voice low with hunger—and a thud sounded behind us.
I leapt up, Thor heaving himself onto his feet almost as quickly. Freya was just straightening up where she’d fallen near the edge of the courtyard. Her golden hair was in disarray, but she somehow smoothed it perfectly into place with one brisk flick of her hands.
“Well,” she said, with slight shudder. “This has been… something.”
Baldur emerged from the air several feet away from her, managing to land on his feet. His youthful face looked weary, but less pained than when I’d found him in the darkness. I hoped Muninn hadn’t found anything worse to torment him with.
His sweeping gaze caught on my hasty bandage around Thor’s side in an instant. He strode toward his brother. “You’re injured.”
The thunder god waved him off. “Ari took care of it. I’ll live.”
“I might as well do what I can while we have a moment.” Baldur’s bright blue eyes darted to me for a moment, looking me up and down as if to confirm I hadn’t taken any new beatings since he’d last seen me.
“I’m okay,” I said quickly. “Take care of him.”
As Thor started grumbling something about not needing to be taken care of and Baldur knelt beside him, the air twanged again. Two more figures emerged at opposite ends of the courtyard almost simultaneously: Hod and Loki.
Hod caught himself with a knee and a hand on the tiles and scrambled up, summoning his shadowy cane with a flick of his hand.
“It’s all right,” I called to him. “So far everything’s been calm here.”
His shoulders relaxed at the sound of my voice. “I tried to catch you when you fell,” he started.
“I know,” I said before he could try to apologize. “She had a few more tricks up her sleeve.”
Loki strolled toward us, taking in the courtyard with his amber gaze and a curious tilt of his head. “I wonder what tricks she has in store for us here. All six of us, back where we started. An interesting choice. Who got here first?”
“I did,” I said. “And then Thor. It hasn’t been that long, though. Maybe half an hour?” If I could rely on my sense of time at all. “I guess she’s run out of horrible memories to throw us into. All that tossing us around really tired her out.”
“We didn’t break as easily as she was hoping,” Hod said grimly.
“And it’s easier to keep us all contained if we’re in the same place?” Freya suggested.
“So she might hope,” Loki said with a sly smile. “I’m all for disappointing her once again. Ari, you still seem to be the key to cracking through these constructs of hers.”
He made a beckoning gesture, and I stiffened automatically. His expression darkened, just for a second.
Hod stepped toward me. “You don’t get to order her around,” he said. “And I’m not sure I’d trust any plans you come up with anyway.”
Loki let out his breath in a huff. “Come on now. Do we really need to act as if the past really did just happen? We’ve coexisted peacefully for ages before now. Do I need to list all the impossible situations I’ve extracted us from before?”
“No,” Hod said. “I let what happened go to keep the peace for too long. We’re all thinking it. I’ll say it. However we get out of here, after this, you’re not welcome anywhere near the rest of us.”
Loki’s jaw worked, but he kept his tone glib. “I hardly think you can make that decision for the entire party. Declared yourself the voice of the group since you can’t be the eyes, have you?”
“Loki,” Baldur said, his voice melodic but steady. He left Thor, turning to face the trickster. “I think you’ve done enough.”
My pulse skittered. This was starting to sound like more than just the bickering they’d done before. “Wait,” I said. “None of this matters unless we do get out of this place. We get out, and then… and then anything you need to decide, you can decide it then.” Fighting with each other was only going to serve Muninn’s purposes.
Hod shrugged. “I’ve already said my piece.”
“Well, fine,” Loki said with a dismissive sweep of his hand. “As if the two of you didn’t fall in with us in the first place because no one else could stand being around constant grimness and the perpetual daze. Thor and I will just have to go adventuring again.”
He cast an expectant glance toward the thunder god. Thor shifted his weight. “When we do get home, I think I’ll be happy to stick to feasting and drink for a good long while.”
“I guess you’ll have to enjoy those adventures on your own,” Hod said. “Just don’t bring them back here.”
“Here?” Loki replied, his tone sharpening. “You mean this prison we’re still stuck in, which apparently you’ve all forgotten—except Ari, of course?”
“Anywhere,” Hod snapped back.
“Okay, just wait,” I said, stepping between them with my arms outstretched. “This is what Muninn wants. We have to work together, try to understand each other—it’s by looking at the past in different ways that we’ve started to bring down her prison. We can talk this through.”
A blaze had already lit in Loki’s eyes. It seared through his voice. “It doesn’t sound like we can. So you’ll cast me out, finally, after all the ages, because of one act over a millennium ago? I suppose that’s Asgardian justice for you.”
“One act that left the two of them dead,” Freya put in tentatively.
“Do you think I enjoyed that fact? Do you think I delighted in that outcome?”
“Yes,” Hod said. “By all appearances you did.”
“By all— You can’t even see— You weren’t even here to know—” Loki threw up his hands.
“Maybe you’d better go now,” Baldur said softly. “When we break the prison, we’ll all get out, either way.”
A tremor ran through the trickster’s body, so sharp I half expected him to explode into flame. His eyes narrowed.
“No.” He spun around, jabbing his finger at one and then another of them. “No. I’m done. Let’s have a real look at the past and see just how very different it is from the picture he painted for you. I’ve kept that bastard’s secrets for his benefit and yours for long enough. Ragnarok was supposed to be the end. I was done with this fucking role. But you all just can’t help shoving me back into it. So, here you go. I’ll be your villain one more time.”
“Loki,” Thor said warily. “What are you ranting about now?”
“You’ll see. Or hear, as the case may be.” Loki shot a fiery look Hod’s way. He motioned to the sky. “Play along with me, little raven. You wanted Odin to fall? Let him fall even farther. Let’s have the tower. Let’s have that night. You can see the memory. Isn’t it juicy enough for you?”
For a few seconds, nothing happened. My heart pounded in my chest. I was just opening my mouth to try to salvage the mess we’d made of this meeting when the halls upended all around us. The tiles bucked up, throwing us toward the sky.
23
Aria
My wings shot from my back. I caught hold of Thor’s hand, the closest of the gods. Then stone walls thudded into place all around the six of us.
We jolted to a stop on a woven rug in a cylindrical room. The ceiling rose to a peak overhead, crisscrossed with rafters and shadows. Windows ran in a circle all around the room. A tall wooden armchair that looked as if it’d sprouted right out of the floor stood in the center. There was no other furniture except a few small tables and bookshelves beneath the ring of windows. A cold night breeze rippled past us, carrying a scent like a coming storm.
Lightning crackled across the sky outside, followed by a distant rumble of thunder. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t like th
e feeling of this at all.
Thor squeezed my hand. Baldur took a step toward the chair. He stared up at it, wide-eyed.
“This is my father’s tower,” he said. “The Allfather’s high seat. I’ve never seen it.”
“Because he never invites anyone up,” Hod said from near my other side. “No one enters the tower except for Odin.”
Thor bent close to me. “From that chair, through those windows, it’s said he can see anywhere in the nine realms,” he murmured.
“He never invited you,” Loki said to Hod, that fiery heat still flaring in his eyes, crackling through his voice like the lightning outside. “No one sets foot in this room except the Allfather—and his closest collaborator.”
“And that’s you?” Freya crossed her arms over her chest, sounding skeptical.
“Do you really think Odin brought one of the treacherous jotun into Asgard, swore a blood-bond with me, just for fun? Surely you know him better than that.”
“Why are we here?” Thor said. “What’s so important that we had to see?”
Loki spun around. “You want to hold the Allfather up on a pedestal? You want to be horrified at the things I’ve done? Everything, all of it, was for him.” He spat out the last word.
Freya’s eyebrows drew together. “What in Hel’s name are you talking about?”
“Let him tell you!”
Loki flung his arm toward a figure that had just stepped out of the shadows. Odin swept his broad-brimmed hat from his head and set it on top of one of the low bookcases. He ran his hand through his grizzled brown hair.
It wasn’t the real Allfather. Even if I hadn’t known he couldn’t be here, that Muninn would never let him free from his cage just for this, my valkyrie nature didn’t respond to this form’s presence with the same tug of recognition.
No, this must be the Odin of Loki’s memories.
And no one else but Loki had been here in those memories. Odin nodded to the trickster as if he’d expected to find him in the room, his gaze skimming right over the rest of us. “Oath-brother,” he said in his low dry voice. “It’s good to see you.”