Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2)

by Karissa Laurel

  Maybe Thorin had thought my despair deserved some alone time, because he was absent from camp when I eventually crawled through the tent flaps and shuffled into the moonlight. All traces of Thorin’s deluge had sunk into the dry earth, but the new crevasse remained. I walked over to it, sat down, and dangled my feet over the edge.

  Thorin naturally moved as silently as a ghost, but the skitter of rocks and crunch of grit announced his approach, as though he meant for me to hear him coming.

  “What do we do next?” I asked.

  Thorin crouched beside me and tossed a rock into the chasm, and it tick-tacked all the way to the bottom, bouncing off the walls as it went. “We should go to Vegas. I think Skoll would go back to Helen to give her a report, to hide out until he recovers. We also need to start looking for signs of Surtr’s sword.”

  “You want to kick Skoll while he’s down?”

  “That would be ideal,” he said, staring into the shadows of his ravine. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go back to Alaska.”

  Thorin’s head jerked up. His eyes cut to me, and the moonlight glowed in their dark depths. “Really?”

  “I felt close to Mani there. I’m missing him very badly right now.”

  Thorin nodded. “Of course.”

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I can’t go home—it would bring trouble to my connections there. I’m half surprised Helen hasn’t already used them to get to me.”

  “She’s always been single-minded. Now, she has a lot of variables to juggle. She might not risk going after your family for fear of spreading herself too thin. I think we shouldn’t underestimate her, though.” Thorin paused and exhaled. He looked down, found another pebble, and threw it into the ravine. “I would be wrong to dismiss your concerns about your family. They are a weakness for you, and the best way of dealing with that is to end this matter as quickly as possible.”

  “Las Vegas is the reasonable choice,” I said. “If you think that’s where we should go, then I won’t argue.”

  “We’ll leave in the morning. It’s about six hours until sunrise. You should try to get some sleep.” Thorin stood and held out a hand for me. When I took it, he pulled me to my feet. “When this is over, I’ll take you back to Alaska. We’ll go on one of Mani’s favorite hikes.” Again, that unexpected empathy—Thorin kept me guessing. Always guessing.

  “I thought Mani and I would be together forever, that I’d always know everything about him. He wasn’t supposed to be a stranger to me.”

  Thorin had the sense to keep quiet rather than offer clichéd prattle to try to comfort me. We walked back to the tent, and I gathered my sleeping bag and laid it out inside. Thorin zipped the flap behind me as I snuggled down into my cocoon of insulation.

  “Thank you,” I said through the thin nylon walls.

  “For what?”

  “Fighting Skoll… saving me from losing myself again.” After pausing to let out a big yawn, I said, “And thanks for letting me sleep. The fire always wipes me out.”

  His footstep scraped over the ground. “You don’t have to thank me. Just get some rest. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

  “Okay,” I said, yawning again. “Good night, Thorin.”

  “Goodnight, Sunshine.”

  At dawn, Thorin woke me. We put away the entire campsite without a word. Not until we had our packs in place on our backs did he breach the silence.

  “I brought the truck close. You won’t make it far in those sock feet.”

  “That was nice of you. I appreciate it.”

  Thorin shrugged. “Don’t give me too much credit. I was partly being nice and partly not wanting to waste any more time.”

  He stepped close to me and pulled something from his pocket. It was Mjölnir, the chain-and-pendant version. He swept my hair aside and fastened it back in place around my neck. It hung down low, the charm falling into the neck of my jacket and settling against my skin as though it belonged there. As though I had always worn it.

  “We’re not hunting the desert anymore,” he said. “There’s no need to hike. I’m in a hurry to move on.”

  “What did you do with the bodies?” I had noticed when we finished packing up that the wolves were gone.

  “Buried them. Seemed the decent thing to do.”

  Unshed tears burned in my throat. I said nothing but nodded. The wolves were wild beasts, creatures of the natural world—not my brother, not a friend or a person—but I mourned them anyway. Theirs were three more lives lost to Helen’s scheming. Their deaths weren’t fair, even if they were sick and suffering. At least Thorin had given them quick mercy.

  Once we stowed our packs in the back of the Yukon and climbed inside, I jacked up the heater. Thorin maneuvered, slowly and carefully, over the bumpy terrain until we reached pavement. The moment our wheels touched asphalt, he stomped on the accelerator and put the Mojave in our rearview mirror.

  Later, when Thorin’s cell phone picked up a signal, it beeped, letting him know it had messages.

  “Check those, will you?” He dug the phone from his hip pocket. “It’s probably Skyla wanting you to call her.” He was wrong.

  Val’s voice played over the speakerphone: “Baldur’s gone. There is a handbasket on its way to hell, or maybe I should say on its way to Hela, and I’m pretty sure he’s in it.”

  “Get to the point,” Thorin grumbled.

  “Baldur said something about having found Nina, and he was going to get her. I’ve been calling him ever since. His phone rings straight to voice mail, and he’s refusing to respond to any of my other attempts to contact him. Call me.”

  The message ended, and a monotone phone voice announced that Thorin had no new messages.

  “Not now…” Thorin groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. “Call Val. Find out what he knows.”

  Val picked up on the first ring. “Thorin, thank the gods.”

  “It’s me,” I said. “We got your message. Thorin’s driving. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “What happened?” Thorin’s voice carried a hint of exasperation.

  “Baldur got a call a couple of hours ago—right after we got back to Vegas. He started acting all secretive, going outside so I couldn’t hear his conversation. A few minutes later, he came into the room and said, ‘I found Nina. I’m going to get her,’ and then he left.”

  “You didn’t stop him?” Thorin asked.

  “How am I supposed to stop the Allfather when he wants to go somewhere? One minute he was there, and the next”—Val made a snapping noise—“he was gone.”

  “He didn’t say where he was going? When he would be back?”

  “No. He just went. He looked half crazed.”

  “We’re on our way back. We’ll go after him as soon as I get there. Keep your phone at your side. Call me if anything changes. We should be there in another hour or so.” With that, Thorin ended the call and dropped his phone into the console between us.

  “You know,” I said. “From the moment I first met him, Baldur seemed a little… unstable. It’s gotten worse.”

  “I’ve not seen him like this in a long time. His experience with Helen was…” Thorin scratched his jaw while he thought of what to say. “It was torturous. It broke him. He’s not the person he was before.”

  “You’re going after him again?”

  “I have to. If Helen gets her hands on him, I’m not sure he’ll survive it.”

  “He’s immortal.”

  Thorin looked at me from the corner of his eye. “That’s even more reason to keep her from him. She can’t kill him, but she can make him wish he was dead.”

  When we reached the outskirts of Las Vegas, Thorin’s phone rang again, and Skyla’s name flashed on the caller ID. Thorin held out the pho
ne to me. “You should probably answer.”

  I swiped the Answer icon and uttered the beginning of a greeting, but Skyla cut me off. “Stop talking and listen to me.”

  “Okay, okay. What’s going on?”

  Skyla’s voice shook as she said, “You have to get out here, now. The Aerie’s been attacked.”

  “Attacked? What are you talking about?”

  “Put her on speaker,” Thorin said, and I did as he instructed.

  “Someone set fire to the place, and it’s burning right now, as we speak. More like a bomb than a fire. It trapped some of the Valkyries in the dormitory wing. They couldn’t get out. They… they…” Skyla muffled a moan, but her grief carried across the airwaves, regardless. “There’ve been women on guard duty since your dream, Solina, but they didn’t know what was going on until it was too late. It all happened so fast.”

  “What about you?” I demanded. “Are you all right?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I was out in the training barn. The dormitories, though… By the time we broke through the fire, she… she…” Skyla fell into weeping again and couldn’t finish her story.

  “She who? Who did this?”

  Skyla took a deep, wobbly breath, trying to regain her composure. “Tori. One of the sisters here fought her, tried to stop her, but she got away.”

  “How many?” asked Thorin, his tone flat and lifeless. “How many were lost?”

  “M-maybe half. We managed to save some of the women. Some are still on the fence. They’ve already been taken to the hospital. Maybe fifteen of us are left, but they’re spooked.”

  Thorin gripped the steering wheel tightly enough for his knuckles to go white, and the leather creaked in protest. “Skyla, something’s come up. We can’t come to the Aerie right away. I want you to try to hold the survivors together. Don’t let anyone leave. Solina and I will be there as soon as possible, but it may be a day or two.”

  “Wait.” Skyla’s tone changed from pained to confused. “What are you talking about? What’s happened that could be more important than this?”

  “Yes, Thorin,” I said. “This is no coincidence. Not after my dream about the fire sword. This might be our chance to track down Surtalogi. We have to go before the trail goes cold.”

  “I have other obligations,” he growled.

  “What the hell is he talking about, Solina? And what dream are you talking about? What sword?”

  “He’s talking about Baldur,” I said. “He’s gone again. The dream is a long story. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

  “Baldur’s insane.” Skyla had moved past confusion and was steaming toward fury. “He’s put everything in jeopardy with his bullheaded pursuit of a ghost. Let him go. This is more important.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “Look, Skyla,” Thorin said. “Do what you can. See what you can find out. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “The hell with that,” Skyla said. “You listen to me, Aleksander Thorin, I don’t care—”

  Thorin cut her off. “End of discussion, Skyla. Solina will call you back to update you soon. Bye-bye, now.” He swiped his thumb over the screen and dropped the phone into the console between us.

  I stared at him, mouth agape, not quite believing what had happened.

  “Have you lost your mind, too?” I said. “I will not risk my life on another wild-goose chase for Baldur. We’re done with that. You said so yourself. Baldur released you from your vow. He’s a god. He has to bear the consequences of his actions. He can take care of himself.”

  “No, he can’t,” Thorin said. “He’s out of his mind. He has to be protected from himself.”

  The mercury of my internal rage thermometer crept higher. By the way he kept a death grip on the steering wheel, I gathered Thorin was feeling something similar. In another minute, one of us would probably explode. I hoped it wouldn’t be me as my flare-ups tended to be messy.

  “To what end?” I asked. “What does going after him do for us in the grand scheme of things? It puts everything in danger. You curse me for taking stupid risks, but when the shoe is on the other foot, it’s perfectly justifiable.”

  Thorin pounded his fist on the dashboard. “You don’t understand.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned in. “Then explain it to me.”

  Thorin turned toward me, and where I expected to see rage, I found panic and desperation. “There are thousands of years between us, Baldur and me. That doesn’t get wiped away with a few words. It has always been my duty, the God of Thunder’s duty, to protect the Allfather. It’s hardwired in us and not something easily overcome.

  “When Baldur came out of Helen’s underworld after Ragnarok, he was shattered. He was wasted and mostly out of his mind. He was supposed to be the next Allfather, but he was a raving, mad ghost of what he used to be. He was—” Thorin choked, coughed to clear his throat, and continued. “He was covered in scars and half-healed wounds from the hundreds of times he tried to kill himself. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t do it, that Helen could keep him alive no matter what he did to himself or what tortures she exacted on him. He kept trying anyway.”

  I covered my mouth after it fell open. “Oh my God,” I said through my fingers. “I didn’t know.”

  “How would you? But maybe now you understand why I have to help him. I have to find him before Helen takes him again. He won’t survive it this time. She’ll keep him alive, but he’ll be dead inside.”

  The intensity of Thorin’s feelings ignited the air between us. I wanted to reach out and touch him, reassure him, but I refrained. Touching him might have brought forth a vision, and I didn’t want to invade the sanctity of Thorin’s thoughts or share in the horror of his memories.

  “Of course, you have to go. I’ll go to Skyla by myself. Like you said, Skoll’s off somewhere licking his wounds. I’ll be safe for a little while. I’ll go to the Aerie and learn what I can about what happened, then I’ll come back to Vegas and—”

  “No.” Despite my efforts to avoid him, Thorin reached across and grabbed my wrist. I braced myself against the avalanche of images his touch evoked: a scarred and broken Baldur, recently emerged from Helen’s domain as Thorin had seen him so many years before. He was pale and so weak that Thorin had to carry him. Knots and snarls tangled his hair and beard, and he was muttering a litany of senseless words, every one in three being “Nanna,” as Nina was known back then.

  I swallowed the sob forming in my throat and jerked away. Thorin scowled and opened his mouth, probably to say something harsh, but he stopped, having noticed my distress. He studied my face. His gaze fell first to his hand and then to mine, and the sternness in his face eased. “You saw it? You saw Baldur, how he was?”

  I nodded and bit my lip, afraid to say anything because I was pretty sure the only thing that would come out was a sob.

  “So you see? You understand why I have to protect him.”

  I nodded again and blinked back tears.

  “But I told you I wasn’t going to let you out of my sight again.”

  “I can’t leave Skyla.” My voice was low, raspy, broken. “What if this is our chance to track down Surtalogi? We can’t waste this opportunity.”

  Thorin turned and stared at the road and ground his teeth together. “Dammit.” He pounded the steering wheel. Three more times he brought down his fist, accentuating his words: “Damn, damn, dammit.” I marveled that the steering wheel hadn’t crumpled under his assault.

  I reached to pat his shoulder but drew back. No touching him for a while if I could help it. I didn’t need to see any more of his horrible memories. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The moment Thorin and I walked through the door of Baldur’s Bellestrella villa, Val swept me up
in a bone-crunching hug. Though it obviously pained him to do so, Thorin agreed to our separation, and he all but ordered Val to go to the Aerie with me. Usually, Val would have balked at Thorin’s officiousness, but Thorin’s edict probably mirrored what Val would have done anyway.

  “Don’t you need Val to help you?” I asked.

  Val scowled at me, but I ignored him. Having Val at my back, a second pair of eyes watching for treachery among the Valkyries, was probably a good idea. If he could do that without expecting anything from me in return, I would have had fewer reservations about pairing up with him.

  Thorin shook his head. “By keeping you safe, Val will be helping us all. I don’t like it, but sending him with you is the lesser of two evils.”

  Val huffed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “I’m confident you’ll serve your purpose if you can keep your focus on the job at hand, rather than trying to get in Solina’s pants.”

  Val threw back his shoulders and smirked at Thorin. “How does it feel, going to bed every night with nothing but your self-righteousness?”

  “Oh, good God almighty,” I said. “You two are worse than a couple of tomcats whenever you get together.”

  Val turned his smirk to me. “Meow, baby.”

  I threw out a hand, like a cop trying to stop traffic. “Save it, Val. We’ve got to hit the road. I want to get to the Aerie before the trail gets cold. Skyla’s about to flip out.”

  “How’s that different from any other day?”

  “Call me as soon as you get there.” Thorin pointed, not quite shaking his finger at me. “I want a play-by-play report. You call me and tell me what you had for breakfast if there’s a chance it has a bearing on the fire sword or Helen.”