by Amy B. Nixon
“There you have it,” he said, stepping back to lean against one of the walls. “That’s how and when your water element broke out.”
“Awesome!” I nagged acidulously. “Are we done now?”
“By all means, go and let me get back to my real job.”
He gestured to the door. I didn’t wait for a second invitation.
My irritation meter reached such brutal heights, I couldn’t wait for Dann to show his face in my sleep, so I could scold him for agreeing with the Council’s decision to assign me this asshole as a mentor.
***
But he never came. My night was devoid of his presence, just like my days. And it got me thinking.
Why was I suddenly so infatuated and overtaken by my thoughts of him? And why was I so suspicious, that I kept overthinking it?
Because you have trust issues, that wise voice spoke in my head. Also, Aurora told you he has insipid playthings. He denied it and she hates you, but what if he is the one who’s lying? You’ve been lied to by two boyfriends before. And you’ve even been cheated on by one of them. Lightning struck twice. What if it’s striking for a third time?
I had to pull the plug on this madness before it was too late.
There was an Elemental test soon. There were monsters waiting for me off this island. Guys and romantic shit should have been the least of my problems.
On the following evening, I climbed to the ninth floor, determined to push His Excellency out of my thoughts.
“Good evening, Miss Dustrikke,” Hallvard greeted me, looking above my head, diagonally and slightly to the side. Typical.
“Good evening,” I replied, eyeing every single mummy behind the table. No sign of Dann.
Get over it and focus!
“Your mentor’s reports state three of your elements have broken out.”
“I can’t control water.”
“We know.” Johanna Larsen spoke this time. She didn’t look angry or disappointed, just old and expressionless. “Please demonstrate your control over the fire and air elements. Sever the flames from the candles in the candelabra on your left and bring them to our table.”
“But… That means using my fire and air elements at the same time.”
“Yes, Miss Dustrikke.”
The candelabra held exactly nine candles. I had come across this digit so many times since coming to Norway. One had to wonder if it held a special meaning for necromancers. Or Norse pagans in general.
Shaking my head, I imagined the forces of air and fire flowing through my eitr core, each of them separating into two equal parts, then each of them flowing through my hands. During my exercises with Brühl, we had never simultaneously experimented with two elements.
You’re a damn Dustrikke. Start acting like it.
Shivers spread underneath my skin, as if my heart delivered liquid eitr instead of blood into my veins. The flames flickered and rose, as though the wicks were severed, but kept burning. Swaying my hands towards the Council and willing the flames to follow my movement, I smiled with relief, witnessing how my elements weren’t failing me.
“Very well, Miss Dustrikke,” Hallvard proclaimed. “I would like you to form a vortex through your air element, sweep the flames in it, and keep them ablaze.”
Keeping the flames afloat was one thing. But creating a vortex and sweeping them in it while preventing them from being extinguished? Writing a code in that absurd COW programming language sounded easier than this!
I applied my good old Pilates breathing techniques for a few seconds, still eyeing the flames.
You can do this. You’re a direct descendant of Linnea Dustrikke. You made a Draug on your first day here, and you didn’t even have your Eitrhals then. You swept the entire ocean away from that fjord without practicing your water element even once.
Keeping my right hand steady and focused on the fire element, I swished my left wrist in circular motions, creating a whirlwind of air current.
Speeding up my left hand’s motions, I plucked one of the flames and swerved it into the vortex, while still keeping my right hand concentrated on the fire. When the flame flickered, but didn’t die down, I felt my face stretching into a wide grin.
See? You can do it.
A second flame joined in, spinning vigorously inside the vortex. One by one, the rest followed, until the flames became nine blurry sparks, dancing in perfect unison.
Inexperienced novice, my ass! Eat your words, Monika!
All of a sudden, the flames stretched, increasing in size. I focused on my right hand, trying to control them. No matter how much strain I put on the entire right half of my body, how many F bombs I dropped in my head, or how many times I told myself to concentrate, the flames kept increasing.
Finally, they overtook the entire vortex.
“That’s enough, Miss Dustrikke.”
I was staring at a gigantic flaming tornado!
“That is enough, Miss Dustrikke. Extinguish it.”
The blazing flames obviously didn’t give a rat’s ass about Hallvard’s words, because hard as I tried, I couldn’t overpower the insanity before my eyes.
“Miss Dustrikke!” Monika’s mother raised her voice. “If you don’t extinguish it right this instant, we will be forced to do it for you, which will result in you failing this test!”
I grabbed the chain of my Eitrhals with both hands, took it off, and threw it on the ground.
But the vortex kept spinning with the same size, force, speed and blazing light. No. Fucking. Way. Was I doing this? On my own? Without the Eitrhals strengthening my magic? I turned my hands up and down, examining the bare skin. It wasn’t being cut and glued back, like Aurora’s had been when she couldn’t control her spell.
A bitter sound, resembling a chuckle, escaped my throat.
“Miss Dustrikke!”
“Okay.” I laughed out the word like a crazy person. “Okay, yeah, I can do it.”
Shifting my weight between both legs and licking my lips, I shot my hands in the air, palms facing the spinning vortex. The lights trembled, but didn’t budge an inch.
Come on, I told the whirlwind, if I can light you up, I can also extinguish you.
Regardless of my attempts, nothing happened. Inhaling slowly and staring at my creation, I decided to take a shot at something even crazier.
Water, I thought, flow through me.
But the water element was feeling shy tonight.
A whiff of annoyance spun through my core. Seriously? I influenced the ocean, but my element was hiding now? Now? When those fucking mummies were testing me…
Before I could finish my thought, thousands of incorporeal needles pierced my skin. It felt as though they were having a fucking race at who’d be the first one to poke a hole through me. And as soon as someone gave them the green light to start their abuse, a stream erupted from the ceiling, pouring waves and waves of water over the vortex, until they completely drowned the fire.
Something pushed on my shoulders, my knees started shaking, I fell to the ground, and the waters disappeared as suddenly as they had manifested in the first place.
“Miss Dustrikke!”
Through heavy pants, my eyes scanned the room. Hallvard Nordstrøm got off his chair. In the blink of an eye, he was kneeling on the ground, putting the Eitrhals back on me.
For the first time ever, Hallvard looked directly into my eyes. His were the very same hues of pale blue as Dann’s eyes, almost icy, but they weren’t cold. Wide open, they stared into mine with pure terror.
“Do not take your Eitrhals off!” he ordered in a trembling voice.
His hands had landed on my shoulders, and even though the necklace was on me, he didn’t lift his palms. His fingers clutched me too tightly, like they mirrored the fear from his eyes. His lips were pursed in a thin line, and he looked almost as if he was trying not to breathe.
If I’d thought Dann’s lurking was creepy at the beginning of November, I didn’t have any words to describe exactly how cre
epy his uncle’s actions were.
There was something off about this entire situation. Why had he rushed to me when he didn’t even want to look at me? Why was he holding on to my shoulders like that? Why was he being still and refusing to inhale, when breathing was the most basic and instinctive thing all creatures did?
“Okay, I won’t take it off, I promise,” I uttered, drawing as far away from him as his grip allowed. “Can you please let me go, Mr. Nordstrøm? It’s starting to hurt.”
His pulled away with a loud gasp, fixing his horrified gaze on his own hands.
“You… are… dismissed,” Hallvard muttered in broken syllables.
I got up and swallowed loudly.
“Did I pass your test?”
“You’ll receive the results tomorrow morning.”
Monika’s mom had answered on his behalf. Now, he stood totally expressionless, looking at a blank spot on the wall across the table. The other Council members were silently looking directly at me.
“Oookay,” I muttered, turned around and walked out.
This place was fucking insane, and while I had gotten used to some of the craziness, the insanity meter just went flying through the roof!
***
I woke up to bright lights.
Violently piercing my eyelids, they burned my retinas, and I had to raise my hand in the air, so I could recover from the painfully blinding sensation. Slowly blinking and swearing like a sailor, I finally got used to the intrusive light.
Instead of coming from the window, it came from the door leading to the small corridor and my bathroom.
Silver and lucent, its shine was like nothing I had seen in all my life. Dazzling in its brilliance, it enchanted every cell of my being. I simply stared at it, completely mesmerized, until I realized it was shaped like a gigantic gateway. At least three people could have walked through it, standing next to each other, and neither of them would have obstructed the other two’s path. Stretching all the way up to my room’s tall ceiling, the top was round and arched. All that was missing was a threshold and someone to walk through it.
That someone wasn’t far behind.
One by one, a total of five humanoid figures jumped out of it, all of them dressed in black hooded cloaks. With each jump, threads of silvery light stuck to the black cloth, as if the dazzling matter from which the gateway was made unraveled, then sewed itself back together.
As I watched the same process over and over again five times in a row, a distant memory surfaced in my mind. Monika and Dann had both mentioned I’d need to get the hang of portals before I could go on the floating islands.
Was this what portals looked like?
The five figures lined in front of their gateway in a circular, almost crescent-like formation.
“What’s going on?” I asked, jumping out of bed and taking a stand a few steps away from them. “Who are you?”
“Neptunia Prata.”
The voice seemed to come from the one in the middle. Each syllable was accompanied by a strange echo. It warped the sound and made it bounce off every single surface in the room, including the soft ones which should have been sound-absorbent.
“Who are you?” I repeated, readying myself for the worst – an attack.
The figure on the far left took a step closer, but didn’t speak.
I was never one to flee from a direct conflict, especially when others openly provoked me. Furthermore, my Elemental test had made me more confident in my powers. And I sure as hell wasn’t going down without a fight, regardless of who stood before me.
“Back away,” I warned, raising a hand, “or you’ll fucking regret barging in here.”
“Wait.” The figure spoke in a male voice, but it sounded like the previous – warped, inhumane and unnatural. “You know me.”
“Do I?” I snapped with irritation, curling my other hand in a fist.
“Yes, you do,” he said in English, and the resonating, sound-warping echo disappeared, leaving only a quiet, velar, deep voice which I couldn’t confuse anywhere. “She bade me travel to a place where travel one cannot, to meet with fair Mengloth. Do you remember?”
The darkness falling over his face remained true to the mystery, but the clear sound of his voice gave it away. I didn’t need a visual confirmation to know who he was. He hit the same low notes. He had the same accent in English. And when he recited that poem, he brought the same strange feeling I had experienced on a November night in the castle’s library.
No matter how many times I’d told myself to get over this fling between us, how many times I’d decided it was a bad idea, how many times I’d tried not to think about him… Damn it! Hearing his voice made me all tingly and shit.
“Dann?” I whispered, taking a step forward, then another and another, until I was a few inches away.
He didn’t reply.
I reached for his hood. The fabric was ethereal, almost slipping from my fingertips, and I barely managed to roll it back, enough to see him.
But instead of Dann, I saw something else.
His skin, once smooth and natural, was now ripped open. Someone had taken a knife and swung at his face again and again, carving jagged, gaping wounds. Chaotic and uneven, they slashed his cheeks, nose, jaw and forehead in so many places, my eyes kept running around frantically while tracing them up and down. Instead of showing blood and tissue, his torn flesh burned in bright emerald greens, cutting through the skin underneath every wounded crevice.
“What…” I whimpered, staring into a set of blazing pits, which once held the most captivating arctic blue eyes. “What are you?”
“Livløs.”
Loki’s Reward
Three days earlier
The Munkurin Rock
Faroe Islands, Denmark
“Rise, Dann Nordstrøm, descendant of Aia.”
I obeyed Njord’s command, rose from my kneeling position, and faced the god’s eerie form. It was four times the size of a regular Midgardian. Monochromatic and slightly translucent, it resembled a spirit’s apparition rather than a fair-haired Vanir deity. I had summoned him here, standing on a boulder in the middle of the ocean. Same as I had done at the beginning of December shortly after leaving Nordstrøm Island.
“I beg your forgiveness for the intrusion.” Although this wasn’t the first time Njord was hearing my words, they were sincere. “I need an audience with your daughter, Freya of the Vanir.”
“Same plea as before, necromancer?”
“Yes, dear and just Van. Freya knows what I’ll ask, therefore she still refuses to grant me her audience. I’ve searched all Nine Realms for a way to break the curse she cast upon the Nordstrøm and Dustrikke lines. All my attempts were futile, which is why I’ve returned to ask for your help.”
“And you are convinced the last daughter of Dustrikke will reciprocate your heartstrings?”
“Yes. Learyn Dustrikke is not affected by Freya’s spell. She doesn’t even know about the curse.”
“Have you given into my daughter’s spell, son of Nordstrøm? Have you acted upon the attraction it bestows? Have you laid hands on the Dustrikke girl?”
“No,” I lied, keeping a stern expression while replaying memories of the first time I had Wandered into her dreams. I remembered her nightmare and how her eyes were my undoing.
Those damned, cursed eyes!
I knew I should have seen Death herself in them. But instead, I saw the humanity, compassion and warmth of the unspoken gratitude behind them. Her guard was down, there was no trace of her bitter attitude. I was mesmerized by the relief gleaming in her eyes, derived from the fact that everyone was safe, including my sister. My sister. The one who had hurt her, who had taken her life. She asked me about my sister’s safety before worrying about her own!
Before I could stop myself, I lifted a hand and cupped her face, caressing the heart of gold she hid under a shield of vulgar wrath and mordacity.
Learyn kept staring at me without pulling away. I wondered if she
could tell by my expression how the evergreen and olive hues locked within her stare pierced my soul in an excruciating way. I wondered if she could see my overwhelming need to kiss her, and how my longing was more harrowing than ever before.
Don’t do it.
This kiss wasn’t going to lead to some forbidden love story.
Don’t do it.
This kiss was going to lead to a quite literal and irreversible death for both of us.
Don’t do it.
This kiss was going to lead to a string of events, which would unleash Freya’s four-hundred-year-old plan to annihilate my entire family. This kiss was going to erase every single Nordstrøm from existence. This kiss was going to destroy the Dustrikke bloodline as well.
As if they had a mind of their own, my fingers gently fondled her skin and slid under her chin, tilting her head. She was close, so unbearably close, only a mere breath away.
My heartrate quickened, racing too rapidly. I couldn’t think clearly any longer. How was it possible? How could this tiny, broken girl have the power to conquer my decorum and common sense? How could she erase my own pain, when she was constantly angry and hurting?
Do. Not. Do. This.
My heart skipped a beat, I took that short breath, erased those few inches between us, and did the unthinkable.
And now I was lying straight to Njord’s face about it.
He clicked his tongue twice. “Shamelessly, you are lying to Vanaheim’s wisest. And wherefore you stand devoid of slightest effort to appear guilty for your treacherous misdemeanor?”
A cold fist curled around my heart. He knew?
“I beg your forgiveness for my foolish and remiss behavior, dear and just Van. I feared if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t be as generous as last time, and you would send me away.”
“Though yet again you seek me for a passage into Sessrúmnir? When you could easily Wander into Asgard and knock on Freya’s doors?”
“I have no right to ask you to change your daughter’s mind, so I only ask you to persuade her to open her doors and listen.”
“Oh, yes, you are indeed a shameless necromancer.”
Brutal realization stormed over me, but it arrived too late. I had summoned a Van, though what stood before me was a different deity. There was only one god in the entire multiverse, brazen enough to impersonate him.
