Because they understood each other. The last few years with Kirby had impacted Starkad as much as it had her. Something about him was different that hadn’t budged for centuries. And it reflected back on her. It didn’t change the fact that her time with TOM caused her so much harm, but seeing even a glimpse of joy poke through was incredible.
THEY MOVED THE CONVERSATION back to Starkad’s hotel room, and for the first time in days, something felt right in Kirby’s world.
She was still adjusting to being involved in the decision-making side of missions. She liked it. She appreciated that Starkad always had her back when she said something. Then again, he always had. During her hearing with TOM. Saving her after. Taking her thoughts and instincts seriously on mission. His concern when she called after the bombing, and the way he’d accepted everything she said, rather than questioning whether or not her past had come back to haunt her.
She’d never realized how much respect he showed her, until she had butted up against Min’s questioning everything in London.
It was nice to be heard, even if the discussion was largely the men throwing out names of supernaturals they knew, and then nixing them as potential sources of information.
“What about Aeval?” Min asked.
“Who?” Another name Kirby didn’t know. Then again, she didn’t to know them all. Most of that information wasn’t important to a group of people trained to only focus on and kill specific gods, the way she had been with TOM.
Starkad furrowed his brow in that deep-concentration way she used to swoon at the sight of. “She’s queen of the fae.”
“There are fae?” Kirby didn’t know how she felt about that.
“There are,” Starkad said. “I don’t know her personally.” He looked at Gwydion. “I didn’t think you two were on speaking terms.”
Interesting. “Ex-girlfriend?” Kirby asked.
Gwydion chuckled. “I keep thinking I can move on from you—she was one of those attempts—but you keep sucking me back in. Hoping to do the same to you.”
“Pretty sure you did that once already.” She hoped he would pick up on the innuendo.
Gwydion’s smirk was the perfect confirmation. “Nice one.” To Starkad, he said, “Aeval will see me. Especially if Kirby joins me.”
Starkad’s arm tensed where it rested against hers. “That sounds dangerous.”
“I promise you it’s not. It’s hard to explain, but it won’t be an issue.” Gwydion looked Kirby over.
The appreciation and faint amusement in his gaze lifted some of the shadows lingering around her. “I never thought I’d get to meet a fairy.”
“You will have to leave the weapons behind,” Gwydion said, “but you don’t need them anymore.”
“So we’ve seen.” Min’s mutter was soft, but the hard edge sliced through Kirby.
She ignored him. “They make me feel safer.”
“No iron.” It was one of the few times she’d heard a no arguments tone from Gwydion.
Most other metals didn’t exactly make for great weapons. “No iron.” She’d make the concession. If he trusted this woman, Kirby supposed she could go without. Not that she liked having to do so. This whole you trust them so I will thing was spreading thin.
The four of them wrapped up what was a flimsy plan at best—go visit Aeval and take things from there—and Gwydion and Min stood.
Starkad slid Kirby a room key. She shouldn’t have expected anything different from any other mission, but the sight cut through her worse than normal.
“You sleep in separate rooms?” Gwydion sounded surprised.
“And the two of you don’t. Do you have a point?” Starkad’s tone and expression gave away nothing.
Gwydion shook his head. “No. See you both in the morning. Unless you’d like to join us?” He focused on Kirby.
She could. Her body heated to scorching at the idea of another night with them. So where did her hesitation come from?
All of the people she fucked thought she was someone else. She never used her real name or gave them any pertinent information. But Min and Gwydion saw her for her, and still thought she should be someone else. Her most recent encounter with Min proved that. He still wanted his Kirby in his bed, not her.
“Actually, I need to talk to you.” Starkad’s request saved her from having to make the decision.
She swore the tension in the room thickened like instant pudding, but she was grateful for the reprieve.
“No worries.” Gwydion waved a casual hand, but his tone defied the words. “We’ll catch up in the morning.”
Kirby settled back in her seat. This was familiar—Starkad’s hotel room, the unrealized sexual tension, the completed mission planning, the key she didn’t want to pick up. But it was filtered through a lens that distorted it.
She twirled the rectangle of plastic on the table, and watched it spin.
“You can stay here, if you’d like,” Starkad said. “It’s not a command or an assumption. It’s an option. ”
A bitter laugh bubbled in her throat, and she choked off most of it. “No. We’re not doing that. Don’t be like them. Don’t change who we are just because I’ve got a few new memories.”
“I’m not.” He sank in his seat—the casual posture she was used to seeing at home. “This isn’t a matter of share my bed; I’ll finally give you what you want. I don’t expect you to magically be the woman who gave me immortality. I don’t want that. If you’d like some company, with no expectations, stay.”
But that was the problem. He never had expectations, and she always did. This switch that had flipped with him was different from Min or Gwydion’s, but it was just as bad. “Don’t. Don’t treat me differently than before. Nothing has changed.”
“You’re right. And at the same time, everything has. I don’t have to keep secrets anymore.”
Kirby’s harsh chuckle escaped this time. “And that’s the problem—that you still think you had to before.”
“See this from my perspective. Trade places for me for a moment. If it were you, looking for me—if you’d lived through the centuries, knowing I’d died a dozen times, and then you found me as a young man—would you have told me everything up front?”
“Yes.” Her certainty was only external. Would she really have done things much differently than he did? She had no idea what he’d been through over time, but when she thought Brit had killed him, Kirby wanted her to suffer for eternity.
“You wanted to know about you in your first life,” Starkad said.
So he had understood her flimsily coded plea over the phone. It was nice to know the double talk hadn’t changed between them. “There was a man in London, behind the bombing... I recognized him from school. He was younger. I don’t remember his name.” She still felt a twinge of ambivalence about that. Why did it matter? “He’s dead now.”
Starkad didn’t flinch. Because of course he didn’t; he was responsible for her being a part of this lifestyle. This was what he’d wanted for her. “What happened?”
Kirby related the incident in the hotel—her recognizing the TOM, and Min’s letting him go. Irritation flashed across Starkad’s face, and she felt a smidge of vindication. She went into detail about passing the TOM agent on the street, then finding the shop owner dead.
When she reached the explosion, her brain stalled. It was a struggle to wrap her thoughts around summoning shield against the rubble. That she’d done it instinctively. That moment wasn’t what she needed answers about, anyway.
“We were in an ambulance, because emergency services showed up and insisted on checking us out, and he—the TOM—was masquerading as an EMT. This power flowed through me. Words that weren’t mine. Arrogant. Vengeful.” The memory left a bad taste in her mouth.
Starkad raised an eyebrow. “Which part of that wasn’t you?”
“Funny.” But she felt a little better at the trace of humor in his question. “It was like someone else—this original her—was speaking instead of
me, about how he didn’t deserve to go someplace like Valhalla. It didn’t feel like anything I’d say. And then I touched him, and he was dead. The power that I had to do that... I’ve never felt anything like that before.” What bothered her about it?
Where the hell was that instinct when Mark was standing behind her, with a gun pressed into her back? Why did it come naturally for her to direct this new power at an almost stranger, but not at the man who tortured her for the majority of her teenage years?
Min thought she’d acted irrationally, but he didn’t get it. Hesitation, not eliminating obvious enemies, had cost her too much. Starkad understood that.
None of this internal exchange made her feel any more in control of her reactions at the scene.
“Technically, you’re not allowed to take a life as a Valkyrie if you don’t send the warrior to Valhalla.” Starkad’s light tone cut through her self-doubt.
She forced a smile. For all the concerns she had about the situation, pissing off the gods didn’t even make her Top Ten list. “Or what? I’ll anger Odin? Freya?”
“She won’t like it.”
Part of Kirby winced away from the reality of his statement, but she was grateful for the chance to take a tangent. She could redirect her angst to something she didn’t have control over. “Did she really tell you no?”
“She also told me you still pray to her.”
Kirby should have known better. “Not after this.” Admitting it hurt. She was tired of having her trust and faith ripped to shreds.
“I’m sorry.” Starkad sounded genuine.
At least the mistake of following Freya had all been Kirby’s. It wasn’t as though promises were made and broken. “The gods disappoint, right? That’s why we don’t have an issue, defying their arbitrary commands?”
“True.”
“So this thing I did—taking his life, saying that stuff...” Kirby didn’t want to drift back on topic, but her brain wouldn't let it go. She needed a reason for her inconsistent actions.
“Sounds a lot like you, back then.”
Wonderful. She was making irrational decisions because she had dead people living in her head. “You didn’t say her.”
“There are things about you that are different. You’re still your own person, but you have their memories, and it’s all your soul.” Starkad lightly slapped his palm on the table in a steady pattern as he spoke. He was struggling with parts of this as much as she was.
And that was comforting. “None of the others were like she was then. Or like I am now.”
He shook his head. “You grew more reserved as the centuries passed. As civilization hid its desire for destruction under language and learning and art. And you were raised differently in each life.”
“At least I was frequently the fantasy girl for someone to win and own.” Her amusement was laced with sarcasm.
Starkad raised his brows in question.
Her smile was genuine this time. The bleak humor in the situation gave her a twisted kind of satisfaction. “Farmer’s daughter, lady in waiting, artist’s muse, preacher’s daughter, general’s daughter...”
“Highly trained assassin for vengeful gods,” Starkad supplied.
That hadn’t made her list. “Whose fantasy is that?”
“Mine. Except that I’m not looking to own you.”
She believed that. He’d made a lot of decisions on her behalf that she didn’t agree with, though she understood why more each day. But when she wasn’t hurting herself, he trusted her opinion and respected her choices.
He never would have questioned her actions in The Ritz, the way Min did.
Starkad sighed and flexed his fingers. A tell he never let show in public. He was as restrained and composed as she was if anyone else was looking. “I’ve never been through what you go through when your memories come back,” he said. “I can tell you whom I knew back then, and whom I know now. I can tell you that you’re more like you were in your first life than I’ve ever seen or heard about in the time in between. And I can tell you that I always fall for the parts that never change.”
“Like what?” This was something else she struggled with. Starkad, Min, and Gwydion spoke about these other women she used to be like irresistible forces with a magical energy that drew them in and made them fall. Kirby didn’t buy it. “You keep talking about how you always love me. How there’s always a similar thread. I don’t see it in them or me. I don’t even know who I am. How do you?”
“You’re always compassionate until someone proves they don’t deserve it.” He reached across the table and covered her hand. The simple gesture blanketed the roaring chaos in her head. “Always intelligent. Fierce. Defending those who can’t defend themselves.”
“You speak quite highly of these dead women.” A hint of bitterness slipped into her voice.
Starkad stroked a thumb along her knuckles. “I speak that highly of you. I haven’t been blind for the last decade.”
A fist clenched around Kirby’s heart at the genuine affection in his voice. She didn’t want to feel that now. Not after everything that had transpired between them. “I knew you were watching,” she teased.
“I’ve told you that.”
“But I like hearing you admit it.” She couldn’t hide behind the playfulness the way she wanted. The world and revelations of the last week weighed too heavily on her. “Thank you. For the information. For helping me try to pursue Hel and Loki.” She pushed past the desire to stay here all night, and forced herself to stand. “I should get back to my room.”
He stood, but didn’t turn away before she saw the splash of regret. “All right. One more thing before you go.” Starkad strode to his bags, dug to the bottom, and extracted a leather sheath. He returned and handed her the dagger.
A familiar shock spilled through her when she brushed her fingers over the worn leather. She knew what she’d see before she slid the blade free. The light in the room seemed to vanish into the onyx blade. The dagger had been hers in her first life. The first thing about her past that felt like it belonged to her, and not to someone else.
The bone hilt fit her hand perfectly. She stepped back from the table and made a few tentative swipes. “You still have it.” Why did the words lodge in her throat with emotion?
“I promised you I’d keep it safe.”
“But... why now?” She’d never seen it in any of her other lives. Not that she’d had many with Starkad.
He closed the distance between them again and rested his mouth near her ear. “Because this time, you’re coming back to me.”
A shiver of heat blanketed her. Kirby pulled back to meet his gaze. What she saw staring back from crystal-blue eyes was too complex to put into words, but it made her heart soar and die at the same time.
Starkad pressed his lips to her forehead and muttered something in a language few spoke anymore.
She still recognized the, Be safe, my love.
“You too,” Kirby whispered and strode from the room. It was the hardest time she’d ever had, walking away from Starkad, even though she was only going next door and it was the right thing to do.
Chapter Nine
Kirby struggled under Mark’s weight. Her limbs felt coated with concrete with each punch she tried to throw, or kick she tried to execute. Terror clawed at her senses, and she couldn’t grasp the training that said she had this. She was supposed to be better than this, and she was failing.
“We all could have been happy together.” There was too much joy in his voice as he ripped off her top. “But you were never anyone. A name with no history to back it up. Your entire legacy is a lie.” He was the room-service waiter now.
Defiance pushed a retort to the tip of her tongue. An argument, that she didn’t even know his name. She wasn’t the one who would fade from the history books. That had already been proven.
The protest froze in her throat. She wasn’t those other women. The original Valkyrie was a different person.
Pain seared
through her body when he sliced a blade across her throat. Not the good kind of pain. There was no rush of endorphins here—only the gurgle of blood, bringing agony.
“Hmm... you’re healing.” He was Mark again. “That means I can play with my toy all night.” He dug the knife under her ribs.
A whole new world of pain shredded through her, and a scream tore from her throat. Kirby didn’t want him to see her breaking, but she couldn’t hold back the terror and suffering.
Each jagged slice her felt like a portion of her body was being clawed away, and then healing again.
“We’ve always known who and what you are.” Loki’s voice filled the room around them, but she couldn’t see him. “We gave you to him, and you broke. What a disappointment.”
Rage joined her terror, and Kirby grabbed for everything she had. She was a fucking Valkyrie. Mark would suffer, and this time it would be at her hand.
Nothing happened, except the sound of three men’s laughs filling the room.
Kirby’s eyes flew open, and her heart skidded into her ribcage over and over. Whispers of the dream lingered with pain in every spot Mark had cut into.
Above it all, she heard the snick of a latch, and the hotel-room door closed, cutting off the light from the hallway.
Her room at the Waldorf Astoria, in New York, swam into view around her. At least Brit wasn’t in this dream, but it was a shame killing Mark hadn’t banished him from the paralyzing taunts from her subconscious.
The odd thought rattled in her head. She didn’t know a Mark or a Brit. She climbed from her bed, navigating the darkness with ease, and grabbed her dressing gown. She tugged the silk on over her nightgown.
The set was a gift from Gwydion. She’d never worn silk before she met him. Even if she’d had the money, the fabric had become nearly impossible to get when the imports from Japan dried up.
Gwydion had gone up to the roof, like he did so many nights. She'd never followed him before, but tonight she needed to see him.
Death in the Night (Legacy, #2) Page 8
