by Eva Chase
Loki stepped to the side as if he felt the dark elves might as well state their own case. The woman bowed her head to the approaching Allfather. “Great Odin,” she said, her shoulders tensed. “We know we have done you and the people of Midgard wrong. If you would give us the chance—”
“Begone!” he said, as thunderous as I’d ever heard Thor, coming to a stop in front of them. “Begone from my sight. Begone from my realm.”
Hod stiffened where he’d also eased to the side. “Father, I think we should at least hear them out.”
“There is nothing a dark elf could say that would be of any interest to me,” Odin said. “No deals can be made with those who act like vermin.” He waved them off with a sweep of his cloak. His spear gleamed as he smacked the base of it against the marble tiles. “Off with you. Now. Before I decide to send you off in a much more painful fashion.”
“Odin,” I protested, but the dark elves were already cringing in the wake of his anger. They turned and hustled for the rainbow bridge.
“I really think—” Loki began.
Odin swiveled away from him, toward his hall. “I’m not interested in your thoughts on this matter.”
He barreled back to his hall as quickly as he’d come at us, his cloak flapping behind him.
My jaw clenched. No. He was not going to ruin what could be our best chance at winning this war—and getting through it alive—because he refused to consider anyone’s position other than his own.
I darted after him, lifting into the air for the speed my wings could lend me. Odin marched into his hall and flung the door shut behind him with a dull thud. I wrenched it open with a heave of my valkyrie strength and followed.
“Stop!” I said. “We’ve got to call them back. You’ve got to talk with them. If we had them on our side—”
He spun back to face me, his single eye so furious my words caught in my throat. “They mean nothing,” he said with a jab of his finger. “Did you not hear a single thing I said to you yesterday? We will not suffer the excuses of traitors or lift them up when they will play no part in our victory or failure.”
“You don’t know they won’t,” I protested. The door rasped over the floor behind me, footsteps tapping against the floor as at least a couple of the other gods came in behind me. “All you know is we’re important. They could make some difference still, couldn’t they? The difference between it being an easy victory or a hard one. A difference between whether your own sons live or die.”
“They held me in a cage for years,” Odin retorted. “I will not bargain with them.”
“Surt held you in a cage,” I said. “They were following his orders because they didn’t know what else to do.”
“Because you abandoned them,” Loki spoke up, appearing at my left, his arms folded against his chest. He glanced back at the others who’d followed us. “We all did. The realms are failing because of our neglect. So who can say where the fault lies first?”
“This is the hand we’ve been dealt,” Odin said. “I’ve seen how it plays out. I’ve seen all I need to know. For ages I have led you, and Asgard has prospered.”
“The other realms matter too,” Hod said quietly, coming up at my right.
Odin’s eye flashed. “Things will be as they are. We act where we can. There isn’t—”
I was so tired of arguing with him. So tired of it going nowhere. All that frustration tore through me at once, and before I’d thought it through, my body was moving. I threw myself at him.
Odin was a god of war, but he wasn’t the warrior Thor was—and he hadn’t fought anyone in all those years. His spear hand swung around fast enough, but my reflexes reacted faster. I shoved the pole away with my heel and whipped around behind the Allfather before his other snatching hand could catch hold of my limbs. My switchblade leapt into my hand at a tug of my fingers. I grasped Odin’s grizzled hair and slammed the knife straight toward his remaining eye.
My hand jerked to a stop less than an inch from piercing the brown iris. Odin had gone rigid. The hall around us was silent. When I didn’t follow through with the blow, he shifted to shake me from his shoulders, but I was already springing off him. I landed on the floor right in front of him, glaring up at him, the switchblade still gleaming in my grip.
“If I’d wanted things to turn out that way, you’d have no eyes now,” I said. “You’d see nothing except for those ‘whispers and fragments’ in your head. Did they warn you about that? Did you see me coming? Or is it possible there’s a thing or two that you miss?”
Odin stared down at me, his jaw working. A light touch fell on my shoulder. To my surprise, it was Baldur’s clear voice that rang out.
“She’s right, father. You don’t know everything. We all should have a say in how we fight this war—in everything we do from here on.”
Odin blinked at him. “My son.”
Baldur swallowed audibly, but he didn’t back down. “You’ve ruled us well. I love you. But I will not stand beside you if you push every other opportunity we have away. The rest of us have lived almost as long as you now. We’ve seen almost as much—we’ve seen things you haven’t. These are our lives, maybe the last we’ll ever get. We should have as much of a say in how we use them as you do.”
I looked up at the light god, startled by the vehemence in his voice. Baldur’s sparkling gaze was fixed on Odin, his stance firm. With the murmur of other footsteps, I felt four other figures come to stand around us.
“You’ve done enough,” Hod said. “No more lies, no more schemes behind our backs. We deserve that much respect.”
“We all have ideas we can contribute,” Thor said. “We can’t get anywhere if you won’t listen to anyone but yourself. If you’re hiding things from us.”
Odin’s gaze slid to someone now just behind me. “You told them,” he said hollowly.
“I showed them,” Loki said in a low voice. “The circumstances demanded it. And don’t you think it was time?”
“It was.” Freya walked up to her husband, setting her hand on his arm. “Share the burden with us, love. Let us construct this new path together. The rest… The rest we can discuss when the catastrophe is averted.”
Odin’s shoulders sagged slightly. He exhaled in a rush. “I know what I have seen,” he said, but his tone faltered more than it had before.
We had to press this advantage while we had it. “We can call back the dark elves,” I said. “Or—if you don’t want to deal with them, let one of your sons talk to them. You…” The answer came to me as soon as I started to put it to words. “You need to make your peace with Muninn. She doesn’t like Surt. She doesn’t want his war either. But whatever happened between the two of you, she can’t get past it, not without some offering from you. She was one of your closest companions for centuries, wasn’t she? There has to be some way you can win her back.”
Odin grimaced, and I expected him to argue. Then he lowered his head and ran his hand over his beard.
“I may know a way to reach out to her,” he said. “But you must bring her to me first. I will not meet her on Surt’s ground while he still rules.”
23
Hod
“They might be angry after the way Odin chased their three leaders off,” Ari said as we crossed the field toward Valhalla. The grass was getting taller, the soft spears hissing against our feet. I dragged in a deep lungful of its warm near-sweet scent, as if it could last me the entire time I was in the dark elves’ caves.
“We already know Muninn has more than enough anger toward Odin and the rest of us,” I pointed out. “I’m not sure your request will be any more welcome.”
“Mostly Odin,” Ari muttered. “And there’s only one of her.”
“And she trapped us in a nearly inescapable prison for longer than I care to remember.” I reached out with enough sense of her presence to rumple the waves of her hair. “I think we should just say that both of us are heading into a fair bit of danger. There’s no winning the contest of w
ho should be most concerned, valkyrie.”
“Maybe not. I’m still going to worry, though.” She was silent for a moment. Then, so quickly I almost stumbled, she turned and wrapped her arms around me, stopping me with her embrace.
“Ari?” I said, surprised even if I was pleased at the same time. Norns knew our valkyrie could be tender, but I wouldn’t have expected this much affection out of the blue.
My arms came around her, hugging her to me. I couldn’t deny I’d have preferred to never let her go, for neither of us to have needed to venture off into uncertain realms.
“I just… You know how much you mean to me, don’t you?” she said. “You and the others… You mean so much to me that it scares me. But I told myself, I promised myself, that I wasn’t going to let myself back down out of fear anymore. You have to know—in the last ten years, no one’s mattered as much to me except Petey, and you’ve seen how much I care about him.”
“I have,” I said, my voice becoming hoarse. “You don’t need to say anything, Ari. I’m not waiting for something you haven’t given me. The way you are, right now—that’s all I want. I swear it. All right?”
She nodded against my shoulder, but she was still holding onto me so tightly it made my stomach knot—for her, for how hard she tried to do right by everyone, for how hard it was for her to accept that she might be loved as she was. I didn’t think I could have loved her more, and those feelings had nothing to do with what she said or didn’t say.
I brought my hand to the side of her face and eased her into a kiss. She might not have initiated it, but the moment my lips brushed hers, she claimed my mouth, pouring so much passion into our linked bodies that a bolt of desire shot through my chest to my groin.
Later. When this was over, when Surt was conquered, we’d have all the time in the realms to explore each other further than we already had.
The walk through Valhalla was becoming increasingly familiar. I only needed a few brief tendrils of shadow to make my steady way between the rows of tables now. A hint of a chill emanated from the hearth, the doorway beyond it at odds with its normal purpose. Ari stepped through onto Yggdrasil’s path first and waited for me to join her.
“Let’s see who can make it back first,” she said, sounding more relaxed as we started across the trunk.
“I’m not sure this is the right time to have a race,” I said.
“Okay, maybe not. Just—be careful with them, all right? We don’t know how much we can trust them.”
“The same to you with Muninn.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ll be watching my step around her for a long time, no matter how this pans out.” She stopped at the branching that emitted the acrid smell of Muspelheim and squeezed my hand. “I’ll see you soon.”
Somehow that casual promise released a little of my distress at knowing she was venturing off into Surt’s realm yet again. “And I’ll see you,” I said.
She kissed me quickly, and then she was darting down the branch.
I didn’t have to walk much farther to reach the route I needed to take. I squared my shoulders and strode along the branch to the gate that would take me to Nidavellir.
The air that washed over me on the other side was as damp and chilly as before. I tested my footing on the rocky floor and turned my head to where the guards had been waiting last time. I doubted they changed up their preferred post much.
“I come from Odin with an urgent need to speak to any of your leaders.”
The guards murmured amongst themselves without even bothering to address me this time. It sounded as though they were having something of a disagreement, but I couldn’t make out enough words to put together the content of it. I waited it out, shifting from one foot to the other and hoping my discomfort wasn’t apparent.
Finally, one of them moved toward me, a shift in the dank air. “You can follow me? Come on, then. I can’t promise how much he’ll want to see you, though.”
“Whatever you can do,” I said with a grateful dip of my head.
My shadows helped me trace the path of my dark elf guide with only an occasional stubbed toe on the uneven patches in the cave floor. I hadn’t been through here often enough to have formed much of a mental map, but I had the impression we were going the same way as before. That impression was reinforced when I stepped out into a larger room that felt the same as the one where I’d met the local commander on my first visit.
“Wait here,” the dark elf instructed.
For the first few minutes, I wondered why he’d left me unguarded. Then a soft scuffing sound down the tunnel behind me told me that wasn’t the case—he simply hadn’t drawn my attention to my sentinel.
It seemed like longer than the last time that I waited. Perhaps the commander didn’t want to be bothered with me this time. When footsteps finally scraped against the stone floor to meet me, there was a sharpness to them I didn’t remember.
His voice was sharp too. “Blind One. So you return. What is it this time? I’ve already had word that your Allfather ran a peaceful delegation out of Asgard this morning. I don’t see what’s to gain from talking now.”
“I understand that,” I said quickly. “And I apologize for the way your comrades were treated. Odin is still recovering from his imprisonment, and I hope you can understand why he wouldn’t have the most pleasant associations with the dark elves right now. But the rest of us believe we should at least attempt a treaty. He’s come to agree with that stance. That’s why I’m here.”
“Am I supposed to just take your word for it that the Allfather has changed his mind so quickly?”
I dipped my hand into my pocket and held out a carved stone token. “He gave me this as proof that I’m here in his stead, speaking for him.”
One of the commander’s underlings, I suspected, slunk forward and snatched the stone from my fingers. There was a minute of silence as the commander considered it.
Odin didn’t give out those signs of his favor easily. He imbued the runes on them with a temporary magical glow that only he could create, that should tell anyone who saw it that it had come from the Allfather himself, and recently. Of course, that didn’t mean the dark elves had to accept it as proof.
“Your delegation was waiting for us,” I said. “They had something specific they wanted to offer. I’ll hear that offer now, if you’ll let me. I can negotiate on Odin’s behalf. We don’t want to see this realm fail, I can promise you that.”
A rough breath escaped the commander. He flicked the token back at me—it struck my arm and tapped to the ground. I bent to pick it up, my heart sinking at the same time.
“What if we no longer believe in anything you’d promise?” the commander said.
I hesitated, and it occurred to me that talking might not be enough. It hadn’t been enough to break through to Odin. How could it be to shatter the centuries of animosity that must have built up as we’d ignored the outer realms?
“I can show you,” I said, hoping I was right. “You can see me make good on that promise right before your eyes. Take me to one of the caves that’s starting to crumble.”
The commander exchanged a few words with his underlings. Then he sighed. “All right. Come along then.”
He didn’t slow his pace for me or offer any assistance, but that was fine. I kept up well enough as they led me deeper into the warren of caves. A mild claustrophobia prickled over my skin, but I pushed aside my uneasiness. How much worse was it to live in this place all the time and not know when the ceiling might fall on your head?
“Here,” the commander said, drawing to a halt. One of his underlings grasped my sleeve and tugged me forward.
My hand came to rest on the edge of an entrance where another cave split off from the wider passage we were standing in. Even in that brief touch, a shiver ran over my palm. This rock was shifting, thinning—minutely but enough to make anyone wary.
“So? What great godly magic will you work?”
I ignored the skepticism in the comm
ander’s voice, training all my attention on the cave ahead of me. My shadows flowed from my body along the floor, walls and ceiling, relaying information back to me about every dip and crack. And there were several cracks, spidering along the ceiling and the upper walls. I set my jaw and bowed my head.
All this dark rock, this cold mass all around us—it resonated with part of my nature, deep down. I focused on the cracks I could feel almost as clearly as if I were grazing my fingertips over them, pouring more and more shadow into them. Letting that shadow flow on up into the solid rock. Trickling through every gap, every unsteady space. Hardening, solidifying, as cold and firm as mid-winter’s ice.
Pouring all that cool energy through me left my lungs clenching. I sucked in a breath and propelled more forward. I had to do everything I could. I had to ensure not one pebble dropped from this ceiling in the following days, or everything I’d attempted here would be for naught.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before sending forth more shadows sent a splinter of pain through my chest. I eased back, letting the last few wafts of darkness test my handiwork.
The rock all along the narrow passage was smooth now, every crevice sealed. It held firm against my resting hand. I turned back to the commander.
He brushed past me, the closest he’d dared to come to me so far, and stalked into the cave. His feet stilled. He turned, stopped, and turned again. His fingers whispered over the stone surface.
“This isn’t an illusion?” he said, but his voice was already awed. “It’ll hold?”
“Better than any rock you’ve ever dealt with,” I said.
“It’s not enough to fix all our troubles. Not by far.”
“I know.” I inhaled deeply into my aching lungs. “I would come back. Once a week, until such a time as we decided a different arrangement would be better. I’d stay long enough to stabilize another passage like this, or to help clear new caves, or simply to hear your news and pass on any I have myself.”
