by Ann Gimpel
“Why do ye think?” The question was stark, but her expression had softened. Where truth had sheeted from her, now love did. My heart went out to the Norse goddess of the dead.
“Ye wiped my memories.” Bjorn hooded his eyes until I couldn’t read his expression.
“I had no choice,” Hel said. “I located a childless couple in Vanaheim. They’d lost several babies, and I knew they would welcome you. They did. I kept a verra close eye on things for enough time to satisfy myself they’d love you and care for you.”
Breath hissed from between Bjorn’s clenched jaws; he stretched his hands in front of him, and then curved the fingers into claws. “Look. I understand why no one said shit to me when I was growing up. Or even, perhaps, my first hundred years or so. But if we weren’t facing this disaster in Midgard, ye never would have told me, would you?”
“Probably not,” Nidhogg agreed. “I dinna know of Hel’s trickery for a long while. She barred me from Niflheim during the months of her pregnancy. I’d have sensed ye were part dragon and known it had to be from me.”
“I told you eventually.” Hel let go of his foreleg.
“Aye, after the lad had been fostered. Ye never offered me a choice in the matter.”
“And if I had?” Something cunning slithered behind the question.
“Perhaps we’d have found a home for him in Fire Mountain.”
Hel snorted. “Aye, and that’s almost as poor a choice as Niflheim for a youngster.”
“Ach, for the love of Yggdrasil, would you quit carping at each other,” Odin snarled. “Neither of you had the decency to tell me until the lad was in his twenties.”
“I’d not have said aught to you”—Hel stared Odin down—“except Freya came to me. She’d had a vision, one so compelling she felt obliged to share it.”
Hel walked to Bjorn. “Ye’ve never heard of a Dragon Mage afore this day because ye are the only one. ’Tis the combination of dragon and Norse and giant magics. Freya named you and foretold unparalleled power within you. She also saw a great darkness descend on the Nine Worlds. In her vision, ye sat in the center of a maelstrom, glowing with light.
“No one can hide anything from me,” she went on. “My Eye of Fire ferrets out truth. I understood then that I had no choice but to tell Odin.”
“But not me,” Bjorn cut in, his words lined with bitterness.
“’Twas always my intention to tell you someday. Nidhogg and I discussed the proper timing of such a disclosure, and—”
“I’ve heard more than I want to.” Bjorn switched back to English and chopped a hand downward. “More than enough.” He shook his head so hard, his brains must have rattled from one side of his skull to the other. “Damn it. All of you. Don’t you get it? If I’d had access to this knowledge, I could have prepared for my part in what’s looking a hell of a lot like Armageddon. As things stand, I’m dreadfully out of my depth.”
“Are ye now?” Nidhogg inquired. “When I left you to fight, ye slew hundreds. Perhaps ye’re selling yourself a wee bit short.”
“Not the point,” Bjorn gritted out. “No matter how well I comported myself in an unfamiliar environment, I never got within spitting distance of a comfort zone. If I’d known—”
“Aye, then what?” Nidhogg pressed.
“I’d still have assigned you your duties as chief sorcerer,” Odin cut in. “No one in the Nine Worlds is better suited to the task.”
The ship was definitely listing off-course. I hustled to Bjorn’s side but addressed my words to Odin. “If I’m hearing you correctly, there’s never been another Dragon Mage. I’m guessing one of you”—I looked from him to Nidhogg to Hel—“made up that title. Or did it come from Freya, and you just ran with it?”
“Well, they had to call me something. Or not.” The bitter edge coating Bjorn’s tone had deepened.
I flapped both hands in front of me. “Sorry. This is no more on point than when the bunch of you were bickering and casting blame. Is there a prophecy somewhere that names a Dragon Heir and a Dragon Mage in the same bit of divination?”
“Not that I know of,” Odin muttered.
“Have you looked?” Bjorn shot back.
“Of course I have, particularly after that Celtic bitch insinuated she had inside information from her kettle.” He pulled his black brows together. “We may be related, Son, but it doesna offer you the right to question me.”
Bjorn stopped shy of rolling his eyes, but only barely. “How about the two of you?” he asked Quade and Zelli.
“How about the two of us, what?” Quade rumbled.
“Did you know about me?”
“Of course,” Zelli replied.
“So that must mean every dragon who’s ever overflown my cottage knows too,” Bjorn sputtered. “And all the ones in Fire Mountain.”
“Nay.” Nidhogg was quick to step in. “Quade and Zelli know because I told them.”
Dewi had been quiet, but she shuffled closer to Odin. “Explain why these two with mixed blood were kept secret from me. Had I realized, particularly about Rowan, much damage could have been averted.”
“I have no excuse,” Odin replied, “other than protecting two of my own.”
“From what?” Dewi pressed. “Shame is a negligible commodity when our verra survival is threatened. Not mine. I can retreat to Fire Mountain. Where will you bide after the Nine Worlds have fallen?”
“Dewi’s query pertains to us as well,” Andraste piped up. ”We’d have booted Ceridwen from the pantheon years ago. Long afore she took it upon herself to break the world.”
“That’s a pile of horseshit,” I told her. “You’d have patted her on the ass and told her to do better. Don’t bother denying it. I lived with you for a long time.”
Andraste skinned her lips back from her teeth and hissed at me. I felt like hissing back but refused to sink to her level.
Bjorn looked at Hel. “You’ve cloaked me somehow since even dragons can’t distinguish what I am. Whatever you did that hides my true nature from those around me, undo it. Now.”
“I was kind to you—” she began.
“Only on account of you felt guilty. The only true ‘kindness’ would have been ensuring I knew the truth long before the endgame. Remove whatever you swathed me in.” Compulsion threaded into his command. Would it be enough to force her to his bidding?
“As ye will,” Hel said.
The air around him brightened into a glowing nimbus that dissipated into violet and silver streamers. I stifled a gasp. The goddess of the dead had employed a glamor on him, one he’d had no idea existed. My magic hadn’t sniffed it out, either. His overall appearance didn’t change much, except he added perhaps five or six centimeters of height. The major alteration was his energy, which fairly screamed dragon.
And his eyes. While still blue, they turned into the whirling orbs I’d come to associate with dragonkind.
Bjorn rolled his shoulders back. I wondered if he felt different or only looked so to my eyes. Hell, I wondered a lot of things. Like, would he be able to fly? Would this change his nature, make him withdrawn and bitter? Or worse, haughty like the other Norse gods?
Odin stomped back to his spot at the head of the table and fell heavily into his chair. “We have our weapons in place,” he announced. “Shall we get back to it?”
I twisted around until I faced him. “Whoa! I’m no one’s ‘weapon.’ What I do or don’t do will always be my choice. I never answered to the Celts, and I sure as fuck am not going to start answering to you.”
“Ye doona have a choice.” Odin’s message was pointed.
“You damn betcha I do,” I retorted. “I can walk out of here and let you fight your own goddamned battles. It’s not my fault my mother was a whack job. It’s also not my fault she created the Breaking. I don’t need the rest of you to work on fixing it. Bjorn and I can handle it.”
“What if we need you?” Hel asked softly.
Her question gave me pause. Her tone was open, un
guarded. I’ve never been any good at telling people no, particularly if they’ve come out and said they need me.
Power sizzled around Bjorn. It smelled the same, brine and baked clay, but it was stronger. Without a word, he vanished from the room.
Thor thumped a fist on the table. “Someone go and bring him back. This is unacceptable.”
“Quade is already gone,” Nidhogg said.
I hadn’t noticed him leave, but when I scanned the room, the black dragon was no longer there. Not satisfied Quade would provide what Bjorn needed, I readied my power, intent on tracking his spell while the trail was fresh.
“Ye’re not going anywhere,” Odin told me.
“I’m a free agent. I go where I wish,” I retorted.
A set of claws grabbed me from behind and lifted me until I was level with Nidhogg’s spinning gaze. “I did my son a disservice. Remain here and allow him time to put things into perspective.” The dragon turned me until I perched on a foreleg.
“Quade went after him. Why not me?”
“Quade is a dragon.”
I could tell from Nidhogg’s voice he was fighting to remain even-handed and patient. Wouldn’t take much from me to push him into a far less genteel response. Pointing out I was a dragon too might not be wise. I settled for, “Put me down…please.”
To my surprise, he did.
I backed up a few steps, my mind busy. Something about the way Odin had characterized Bjorn and I as weapons meant he knew something he hadn’t told everyone. Well, maybe Thor knew, or Loki who’d been asleep since I arrived, head cradled on his crossed arms on the table.
About that time, the ravens, Huginn and Muninn—thought and memory—winged through a gap where one of the windows had been propped open. After a few circuits where they flew around the room cawing like crows, they landed on Odin’s shoulders.
“You’re a seer,” I said to Odin. “What have you seen that you haven’t told us?”
A huge guffaw ripped from him. After he was done laughing at me, he said, “’Twould take years, child, for me to detail every vision I’ve had.”
Annoyed at being referred to as “child,” I gritted out, “What I meant was you know things. Things about the Breaking and the confrontations we face. We’re all here. Never a better time to make a clean breast of it.”
“Ye’ve gone daft, lass—” he began.
“Have I now?” I mimicked his brogue. “Ye identified Bjorn and me as weapons. It means ye’ve seen something of what we face. Enough to understand the Dragon Mage and Dragon Heir”—I stressed our titles but might have lapsed into sarcasm, maybe—“have instrumental roles to play.”
I thumped my chest. “As Dragon Heir, I demand—”
Odin bolted upright. “Ye will demand naught from me,” he shouted. Spittle flew every which way, and it made me grateful I wasn’t closer.
So much for reality testing. Following Bjorn’s lead, I summoned a hasty spell and teleported out of there. I’d been sick of the Celts before I laid eyes on them again. While I felt sorry for Hel, none of the other Norse players made me want to so much as tell them good morning.
If it weren’t for the witches, I’d leave Midgard to rot.
I had to pick a destination for my casting, otherwise I’d still be sitting in Odin’s filthy meeting hall listening to his crows castigate everyone. I had two choices. Either Bjorn’s or back to the witches in Midgard. I probably should have gone home, but I was worried about Bjorn.
And damn it, anyway. When had I begun to view Earth as Midgard? Not that it mattered, but I needed to stop it. I did not want to weave any of my magic in with the Norse pantheon. They weren’t an improvement at all over the Celts. In their own way, they might be worse with their secrets and their exiling their own.
Poor Hel. Odin had conveniently forgotten he’d sent her away.
Shouts followed me, but my power is strong. They faded along with Valhalla and Asgard, replaced by the rolling land of Vanaheim. I set myself to come out perhaps half a kilometer from Bjorn’s cottage. Nothing like falling into his lap when he was upset and not expecting me.
For a moment, I caught my breath.
I was still tired, but beyond that, I was angry. Deities, regardless of which pantheon they’d sprung from, were a bunch of assholes. Odin’s offhand comment about “his weapons” rankled.
A portal swooshed into being, and Zelli glided through, landing smoothly not far from me. Before she could say anything, I held up one hand. “You don’t want to stick around,” I told her. “You’re clearly part of Odin’s scheme to turn us into a weapon.”
“I am not here for Odin, but because ye and I are bonded,” Zelli replied and tapped her chest with a talon. “Me. And you.”
“Nidhogg didn’t deploy you to haul me back?” I furled both brows.
She shook her head. “We belong together. Ye left. I followed.” She hesitated. “Nidhogg dinna ‘deploy’ Quade, either. It only appeared so because of Odin’s query. Quade left of his own accord to support the Dragon Mage.”
Mmph. Maybe she was “my dragon,” after all, but I didn’t want to ask pointblank. I had so few allies, I couldn’t risk alienating those willing to stick by my side. People making assumptions about me annoyed the hell out of me. I wasn’t willing to place Zelli in an awkward position by asking something she might not want to answer.
I’d already done that once when I’d demanded to know who my father was.
“Shall we see how Bjorn is?” I asked.
“I’m flying,” Zelli said pointedly.
Sudden weariness rose from my feet and swept over the top of my head. “Does that mean you’re offering to take me? Or are you just stating your intentions?”
Her jaws parted in what might have been a smile, and she puffed steam until I was coated in clouds of it. “I was giving you a choice. Otherwise, I’d have told you to get on my back.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s been a rough few hours.”
“Try days,” she corrected me.
I twisted a thread of power and rode it until I sat astride her back. She leapt skyward. Before we got close enough to Bjorn’s cottage to see it, I heard him bellowing. Even worse—maybe—Quade was roaring right back at him.
Chapter Ten, Bjorn
I’ve always prided myself on being even-handed, even-tempered. Maybe I’d falsely taken credit for something that didn’t belong to me after all. As soon as Hel yanked the glamour she’d shrouded me with, I wanted to kill her and Nidhogg. And Odin. And Thor. And probably Loki. He’d been snoring off a drunk ever since I arrived at Valhalla.
Why stop there? Freya was who’d spurred Hel into spilling her guts to Odin. Worse, I knew Freya. Sort of. She’d called me in on several occasions, and now I knew the reason. At the time, I’d wondered why she’d bothered with someone with inferior magic.
Ha! My magic was as good as it got. No more misplaced modesty in that regard. No more bowing and scraping, either. I was done with my, “Yes, sire,” days. More than done. I wished I could undo every scrap of magic I’d ever worked for the gods. At the time, I’d figured they were doing me a favor, letting me strut my stuff.
Goddess curse them twenty ways from Hel. They had no right to hold the circumstances of my birth secret from me. None. If I’d had full access to my memories and my power, I might have been able to stop Ceridwen. Too late now. What had she called it? Spilt milk.
Spilt, indeed. And rotten as fuck to boot.
No wonder Hel had offered me a place to hide out. She had ulterior motives up the ass. The quorking ravens were the last straw. I had to get out of the meeting room before I did something I regretted. Like thrashing the whole lot of them with lightning.
Not that I’d get very far. The august assemblage would band together, bind me with magic, and toss me into one of the dungeons where I could duke it out with the souls of the dead. I’d be able to cut my way free, but what a horrific waste of time and magic.
Besides, it would appear I had t
he maturity of a five-year-old. I might not be sure who I was anymore, but I wasn’t about to portray myself as a wild card. Hel kept trying to catch my eye, but I refused to look at her. She might be hurt, but she’d done far worse to me.
I’d return to my cottage, grab a few things, and then lose myself in Midgard until my head didn’t feel like it was about to blow into a thousand pieces. Magic jumped to my command, and I was gone before anyone could even attempt to stop me.
Good thing. Regardless of how it would have looked, I’d have employed every weapon available to me had one of them tried to block my exit.
Quade sat in front of my door, tail swishing like a cat’s. Well, maybe a very languid cat, if its tail made clicking noises when scales scraped against each other. “What took you so long?” He grinned at me through parted jaws.
I raked my hair back from my face. No reason to be oblique. Dragons didn’t deal in subtle. “I need to be alone.”
“Ye only think ye do.”
Something about his tone rankled, but I didn’t want to cut my ties with him. Not yet, and I didn’t understand why. Sure, I enjoyed riding him, but I didn’t need him. Especially not now. Breath rattled through my teeth, and I realized I’d clenched my jaw so tight the muscles ached.
I blew out a breath and opened and closed my mouth a time or two. “Look. I’m not trying to be unreasonable. I need time by myself to figure out who I am. When Hel ripped off the glamour—or whatever the fuck it was—a whole lot of things changed.”
“Of course they did.” Quade paused before adding, “Ye’re who told her to remove it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I rocked from foot to foot, too keyed up to remain still.
“Simply reminding you.”
“Pah. No one to blame but myself, eh? Thanks. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”
“For the love of Y Ddraigh Goch, get over yourself. I am in agreement about leaving here for a while. I was going to suggest a borderworld I know, and—”
“I am not going to Fire Mountain,” I spoke over him. “I’ve been there, and it’s not so different from visiting Hell. The other one, not Niflheim’s version. Who’s Y Ddraigh what’s-his-name?”