by A. K. Morgen
It meant everything.
I loved Dace. I would always love him. But I couldn’t keep putting him first. There was no one out there who could save him. There was only me. And no matter how much it hurt, I had to start thinking about everyone else. I had to let Dace go, the same way he had let me go. For all of our sakes… we had to let go.
“Ouch.” Ronan winced as Chelle pressed a washcloth full of ice to his broken nose. It was already beginning to swell. He looked a lot less intimidating through watery, red-rimmed eyes than he had with blood running down his face.
“Suck it up. You heal fast.” Chelle scowled, taking his hand and slapping it over the ice.
Ronan hissed in pain, but grabbed the makeshift icepack to hold it in place without a word.
I felt a certain, savage satisfaction in Chelle’s rough bedside manner. Even if he was right, it wasn’t his place to keep the truth from me. Oddly enough though, I wasn’t mad at him for not telling me about Dace. In a weird, messed up way, I respected Ronan.
He’d lost more than most of us, but he still saw the bigger picture clearly. He claimed he was only in this for revenge, but he kept going out of his way to keep the rest of us safe. I never expected that from him. I never expected to consider him a friend. But… I did.
Ronan was my friend.
Weird.
I looked up to find his gaze on me.
“We can’t go back yet,” I told him.
Chelle turned to look at me. Even Fuki lifted his head.
“Even if you’re right, and Idun can’t save Dace, we still have to look for her. If she’s out there, we need to know if she’s working with Sköll and Hati because she chose it, or if she’s being forced to help them.”
“And if it’s the former?” Ronan asked.
“Then at least we know,” I said. Until we knew for sure if we had a rogue goddess on our hands, going back to Beebe wouldn’t make a difference. I couldn’t fight for anyone if I didn’t know what I had to fight.
“So what do we do?” Chelle asked.
I gave her a sympathetic grimace. “You’re going back to Beebe,” I said.
She opened her mouth to argue, but I cut her off.
“You have to go back. We’re looking for someone who might be helping Sköll and Hati. Someone we can’t kill. We can’t afford for anyone on their team to get their hands on you, Chelle.” They would kill her without hesitation. “Ronan and I won’t be able to protect you from her.”
“What else is new?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Her chin had a stubborn tilt to it, as if she planned to dig in her heels and refuse unless we gave her a damn good reason. I didn’t really expect her to agree without a fight anyway. Chelle was scared, but unlike some of us, she wasn’t a coward.
“She’s right,” Ronan said, rocking his chair back on two legs to rest against the wall.
Chelle whipped her head in his direction, pinning him with an icy glare.
“It was different when we were going to see a professor we all knew wouldn’t be able to help us. There was no real danger there, but I can’t babysit you and try to find a goddess, too,” he said bluntly. “Especially if she’s aligned herself with Sköll and Hati.”
“We don’t even know if she’s out there!”
“We don’t know she isn’t, either.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Chelle snapped.
“You do need to be protected though,” I said before Ronan could argue with her further. “Sköll and Hati will kill you if they find you, and we can’t afford to lose you, Chelle. Beth can’t afford to lose you, not now.”
Chelle winced at the painful reminder. For a minute, though, I wasn’t sure whether or not she would back down. And then her shoulders slumped.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go back.”
I stepped up beside her and bumped her with my shoulder. “We need you safe.”
Not because she was quite possibly one of the last two people alive Sköll and Hati absolutely had to kill to succeed, but because she was important to all of us. She was a friend, a voice of reason, and a bright spot in the encroaching dark. We needed her because we were all messed up, and she helped keep all of us sane. No matter what, she always listened. She didn’t judge any of us, or tell us what to do. She listened. She was the descendant of a god, but she was the best reminder we had of what we were fighting for. Humanity, hope, compassion, and everything good we stood to lose.
Leading her into the lion’s den wasn’t an option.
She gave me a half-hearted smile. “I know, but I don’t want you chasing this person down on your own.”
“I’ll be with her.”
Chelle arched a brow at him. “Like I said….”
“Touché,” Ronan said.
Chelle shot him another quelling look, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together in a thin, disapproving line.
I almost felt sorry for him. Whatever sense of kinship Chelle felt for him before his little announcement at the rest stop vanished when he told me I would get everyone killed. Even if she did agree with him―and I kind of doubted she would ever say so―she didn’t agree with the way he’d gone about telling me to stop being a selfish brat.
Ronan dipped his head as if to tell her she won that round, and we all fell silent. Rain still pounded outside, the dull roar rattling the windowpane as easily as claps of thunder did. As Chelle promised, the storm had only intensified.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much worse things were going to get for us before they started getting better. Even though I knew what I needed to do, I wasn’t stupid enough to kid myself into believing it would be easy. I still missed Dace. I still wanted to find a way to save him. But I couldn’t focus on him anymore.
All I could do was follow my instincts, and pray they led us in the right direction.
“Where are you guys going to start?” Chelle asked, breaking the silence.
Ronan didn’t answer, leaving it up to me to decide.
“We should talk to Dr. Michel while we’re here,” I said after a pause.
Ronan shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt.”
No, it wouldn’t. He probably couldn’t tell us anything, but I wasn’t willing to risk being wrong either. “Will Chelle be safe traveling home on her own?” I asked Ronan.
“I think so.”
“You need to be sure,” I demanded of him.
“Ari, I’ll be fine,” Chelle said. “We’ve been so careful since we left your old house. No one followed us.”
I bit my lip, torn.
Ronan offered another option. “We’ll call Gage and have him come,” he said. “If he leaves now, he can be here by midnight, and they can leave first thing in the morning.”
I looked at Chelle who shrugged. “Works for me,” she said.
“Call him,” I decided.
Fuki yipped and thumped his tail on the floor.
He wanted to go with her.
Chelle knelt down beside him and scratched his ears. “I need you to stay with Ari, big guy,” she said. “You’ll keep her safe, won’t you?”
He lifted his head toward the ceiling and howled his promise.
Ronan shook his head as if disappointed Fuki would remain with us instead of returning home with Chelle. He couldn’t quite hide the affectionate gleam in his eye though. Ravens and wolves usually weren’t the best of buddies, but our raven, it seemed, had a soft spot for one little wolf.
“Good boy,” Chelle cooed.
Had Fuki been able to smile, his grin would have stretched ear to ear. He really did like Chelle. I felt bad that he couldn’t go home with her, but Buka didn’t want him in harm’s way. And I’d promised to keep him safe for her.
“We’ll get you out of here in the morning,” I murmured to Chelle, watching the two of them interact. “If you and Gage drive straight through, you can be home by dark.”
“You sure you’ll be okay?” she asked, shooting me a worried glance.
/> “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
o you want to call Dace or should I?” Ronan asked point blank as we sat around the small table late that evening, soups, salads, and fresh bread from Panera spread out across the top.
Fuki lay at my feet, chewing on the rawhide Chelle brought him with dinner.
I hesitated over Ronan’s question for a moment, the desire to hear Dace’s voice a physical ache. “You call,” I said, staring down at my chicken salad. I missed Dace and Geri so much it physically hurt, but I didn’t even know what to say to him.
How do you tell your soul mate you can’t fight for him anymore?
“Alright,” Ronan said, rising from the table. He headed toward the front door without another word.
My heart twisted in my chest.
“You okay?” Chelle asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded.
Chelle reached out and squeezed my hand, not saying anything.
I gave her a weak smile and picked my fork up again, my appetite long gone. I shoveled a bit of salad into my mouth anyway.
We ate in silence for a few minutes; the only sounds the scraping of our plastic forks against the sides of our containers and the steady drip of rain from the gutters. My ears strained for any hint of Ronan’s conversation with Dace, but I heard nothing. Not even a whisper drifted through the door.
“Do you really think Idun is working with Sköll and Hati?” Chelle asked me.
“I don’t know.” I dropped my fork into my bowl, giving up on forcing food down my throat when I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t really been hungry in days.
Chelle sat her own fork down before pushing her plate aside. She looked as sick to her stomach as I felt.
“It’s possible, I guess.” It felt wrong to hope Sköll and Hati held Idun against her will, but I did hope it. I wasn’t stupid enough to count on that though. The odds never really worked in our favor. Perhaps because we were fighting against a prophecy even Odin knew he couldn’t stop.
I think Chelle knew it too. She frowned, obviously deep in thought. Probably trying to work out the answers to any of the million questions we didn’t have answers for. Like where we were supposed to start looking for Idun, or why Sköll and Hati needed her in the first place.
I mulled that question as I fished the chicken out of my salad for Fuki.
It would have been easy to assume they wanted her for her power, but why bother when we were already so much weaker than they were? They didn’t need her magic to beat us, and I was certain they knew that much. No. Whatever they wanted with Idun, wasn’t something so unnecessary.
So far, everything they did was done with purpose. Killing Dani and Chiran. Attacking Dace to get him out of the way. Trying to kill me. Sending me little reminders that I was no safer than Baldr had been eons ago when Loki tricked Hodh into killing him with the poison of the mistletoe branch. Killing the unnamed wolf before he could join the pack. Burning down Dace’s house… Each move designed to help them meet their end goal. So why would they bother with a goddess they didn’t need unless they felt threatened by her for some reason?
I frowned.
Was that why Freki wanted us to find Idun? Not because she could or would help Sköll and Hati, but because Sköll and Hati feared what might happen if she agreed to help us? If that was the case… did she send the flowers? Not to scare or threaten us, but to let us know she needed our help as much as we needed hers?
Something… a missing link… snapped into place.
“I think I know how to find out if she’s working with them,” I said, excitement firing through me.
Chelle looked at me, one brow arched in question.
“The flowers,” I explained in a rush. “I said it didn’t make sense for Sköll or Hati to send us a clue, remember?”
Chelle nodded.
“What if we’re both right? What if Sköll and Hati have Idun sending the flowers, and she found a way to slip a clue in to the last bunch? The delivery guy didn’t know who placed the order, but what are the chances a florist in Arkansas and one in Smyrna have the exact same arrangement, right down to the vase? Or that two different people would send me the exact same arrangement? They had to be ordered from the same place, by the same person, and then sent to local florists for delivery.”
Chelle thought about it and then nodded slowly. “It makes sense,” she said.
“If we can find out which distributor sells the arrangement, we can find out who bought them.” Accessing that information might take a few illegal acts, but I had a feeling Ronan would be okay with that. I personally didn’t necessarily relish the thought of going to jail, but if I was right, knowing the truth would be worth the risk.
Chelle’s eyes widened further as she worked the problem out for herself. “Using a national distributor and a local florist’s delivery service would be a good way to cover their tracks. Doing it like that all but guaranteed we’d go looking in the wrong place.”
And they would have gotten away with it had they not sent the flowers to my mom’s house, too. But Sköll and Hati kept underestimating us. They did it when they attacked Dace. They did it again when they ambushed me without accounting for Ronan. They weren’t as smart as they thought they were.
“What if the flowers were never about you?” Chelle asked.
“Hmm?”
“You were still in surgery when the first arrangement came. What if they weren’t meant for you at all? I mean, Glyffanning doesn’t tell the story of Baldr surviving Loki’s attack. It tells the story of Loki tricking Hodh into killing Baldr, his own brother, right?”
“Right….”
“What if that was the point?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my brow furrowed as I tried to work out what she meant.
“Sköll and Hati knew they couldn’t get to you with Dace around, so they neutralized him. Once they were sure he was out of the way, they attacked you. Had Ronan not been there, they would have killed you like Hodh killed Baldr.”
“You’re right,” I whispered. I hit on the same thing once before, but didn’t really think it all the way through. Sköll and Hati expected me to die when they attacked me. And then they sent their little message, not to remind me they were still out there, but to taunt Dace. Maybe to scare him into keeping us close so none of us went looking for what they wanted to keep hidden. If that was their plan, they’d seriously underestimated us, though, because I didn’t die, and I didn’t stick to Dace’s side. I ran.
“They’re manipulating Dace, trying to force him into a corner,” Chelle said, her cheeks flushing with anger. “They know he’ll put your life before his, and they’re trying to keep him panicked enough to do exactly that.”
“He’s their real target. The one they really want to kill,” I said.
Chelle nodded, her mouth a little “o” of surprise.
The demon wolves didn’t care about me or Ronan. They wanted Dace. They knew he was the real threat. That’s why they hadn’t come for Chelle or Beth, or me. They needed Dace out of the way first.
Anger seared through me, exploding into life in my chest.
Those places where Freki still lingered shifted wildly as my emotions swept through her. She tried to surge forward to defend her mate, her howl an avalanche inside me. The sound picked up speed as it raced through me and erupted from my mouth in a terrifying snarl.
Chelle jerked backward in her chair.
Fuki leapt to his feet, his top lip curling up from his sharp teeth in a menacing display.
The barrier between me and Dace tore apart like fine paper. He and Geri fell into my head in a surprised heap. For a moment, their thoughts whispered through me as they hadn’t since the moment I told Dace goodbye.
Arionna? he asked. Love, hope, desire, and relief all jumbled together in his mind in a wild tangle. His thought contained no fear in that second. No worry or concern or doubt. His response was completely unguarded, exposing him to me fully.
What I saw was so un
like the almost militant order I usually found in his head, as chaotic and jumbled as he always said my thoughts were. Everything chaining Dace down disappeared. All of the fear and guilt he carried vanished, leaving nothing but him and Geri. The golden threads connecting him to Geri pulsed brightly, seeming so much thicker than they usually did, as if, in that moment, they were more connected to one another than they were before I left.
Awe danced through me, spinning like lovers in an intricate circle… and as quickly as Freki’s anger let them in, my shock thrust them out again. The link between us severed with an audible pop.
My ears rang and black spots swam before my eyes.
My heart pounded, each frenetic beat seeming to whisper Dace’s name.
Freki vanished back behind her wall in a blink, leaving me swaying in my seat.
The room spun around me in sickening blurs.
The door slammed hard against the wall. Ronan came barreling in, his cell phone still clutched to his ear. He looked harried as he scanned the room from one side to the other twice, looking for danger.
Dace’s doing, no doubt.
Satisfied we weren’t under attack, Ronan whipped his head in my direction, those black eyes burning into me. He opened his mouth.
“I’m fine,” I said, holding up a hand to forestall him. I gripped the table with the other, trying to hold myself steady when the room continued to spin.
“She’s fine,” Ronan repeated into the phone. He listened for a second, his eyes narrowing, and then held it out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
I steeled myself and held my hand out for the phone.
“Arionna?” Panic licked at the edges of Dace’s tone, his split second reprieve from fear and guilt and all the things weighing him down long gone.
“I’m fine,” I said quietly. I wanted to cry at the sound of his voice and the piercing ache in my chest. Eight days since I saw him last… it seemed like a lifetime.
He heaved a sigh, his breath crackling through the phone.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded. “What happened?”