Tyler peeled a whimpering Jules from his arm. “You have it all wrong.”
Dalia broke the spell sparking between us, leaving me dizzy as she turned on her son with the full impact of her fury. She’d seemed composed, but the swirling heat in the room told me that Tyler had a way of getting under my skin. “Pray tell, my son, what I’ve misconstrued about this situation?”
He didn’t flinch under a wave of power that would have made my knees buckle. “Just because you can see all in your domain doesn’t mean you can understand it.” He took a step towards her, showing he was either very brave, or very stupid. His short hair flew back against an invisible hot blast. “I’ve been among the other gods,” he growled. “I know what they’re like.” He clenched his fingers into fists, as if enduring unpleasant memories. “They all think they’re the strongest and everyone else is inconsequential. If you and those under your protection are being attacked, it’s because they hold something of value, not because Baldr believes he can’t defeat you without weakening you first.” He braved another step and ran his fingers over Dalia’s desk as he leaned. The wood creaked under his touch as if he held a weight that betrayed his own threatening tidal wave of power. “We’re going out there. We’re going to figure out who and what we’re up against. You can help us, or you can stay out of our way. I don’t give a damn.”
I held my breath in the ensuing moment of tension that threatened to tear the room apart. Tyler broke it with a growl and took Jules by the hand. “Come on,” he said. His gaze flashed to mine and my powers hummed on the edge of my senses. I suppressed them, in no way wanting to contribute my own power of time manipulation to a moment I didn’t want lasting any longer than it already was.
Once again, the sting of rejection flashed like a supernova in his eyes and he left the room. An icy chill swept through my chest, reminding me that every time I hurt Tyler, I hurt myself.
Will ran his fingers through mine, a comforting warmth that tugged me out of a vortex of guilt that threatened to take me under. “You ready to go?” he asked, his eyes kind. He knew I didn’t want to hurt Tyler, but as always, he was there for me.
I looked back to Dalia and she grinned at me, flashing her unnatural golden teeth that I suspected were quite real. “You go ahead,” I said. “I have something I’d like to talk to Dalia about alone.” When he gave me a raised brow, I squeezed his hand in return before pulling away. “I’ll be fine. Just wait for me outside.”
Seeming satisfied with that, he moved to leave, but paused at Dalia’s desk long enough to give her a glare. It wasn’t a threat, but a warning that said she’d better not do anything to me or she’d have to deal with him. He didn’t care about his own life when it came to me—that much was already apparent by the fact that he was a Valiant and I was still alive when I’d been the one assigned to reap him. If he sensed what I had about Dalia, then he understood she liked to collect things. She wasn’t going to collect me.
When Will left us alone and closed the door behind him, I turned to Dalia. She tilted her head to the side and swept an appraising look over my frame. “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” she said. Her eerie gaze transformed with bolts of blue as she used her powers to look deeper into my being until it felt like a thousand tiny electric bites fled across my skin. She laughed when I stiffened. “You don’t trust me.”
I propped my hands on my hips and hoped I looked brave even though I trembled under her scrutiny. I wasn’t fooled by Dalia’s appearance. She’d earned the title of ‘god’ by no small means. “You haven’t given me a reason to trust you,” I countered. “In my world, trust is earned.”
She smiled, her teeth gleaming against the iridescence of her work lamps. “And in my world, alliances mean something.” She glanced at my locket. “When you accepted my hospitality, you engaged an alliance between the house of Frigg and the house of Heimdall.”
I groaned. I could kill Tyler. “It was just a night in a couple of beds you weren’t using anyway,” I complained. “If that’s a problem, we’ll go sleep on the street.” We had plenty of money left over from selling Sam’s car to find ourselves a place, but Dalia didn’t have to know that. She might be all-seeing, but she wasn’t all-knowing.
“No,” she said. “You won’t risk leaving my protection.” Her eyes darkened. “I’m grievously familiar with the darkness that chases you.”
I flinched under the haunting echo of her words. In such a small room, sound shouldn’t travel the way Dalia’s words did. “Is that how you know I’m a Frigg?”
She chuckled. “We have kindred gifts, little Valkyrie. I bend space, and therefore must bend time as well. The two are one and the same. Where my results are in teleportation of the Bifrost, yours seem to be the other end.”
It should have unnerved me that Dalia could sense my latent powers, but she was an all-seeing Norse goddess and I was two-feet from her plethora of telescopes. “And what darkness do you speak of?” A shiver ran down my spine. I had a feeling she already knew what settled its icy claws in my chest every time I caused Tyler or Will pain. It had something to do with my powers over time and space, and the keeper of the Bifrost was one of the only people in the universe who’d be able to enlighten me.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” she assured me before shaking a broken telescope at me. “Now, we’re allies until you break our truce with an act of violence.” She grinned. “You’re welcome to try, of course.”
I sighed. Her relaxed posture didn’t fool me. I knew that if I made a move to strike, she’d send me to the afterlife in two seconds flat—probably with a telescope shoved into my brain. “You already have an alliance with Odin,” I countered. “You sold your own son to make that happen. If you’re looking for an alliance with Freya, I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong Frigg. My mother and I don’t exactly get along.”
She laughed. “My son is even worse than you. It was his idea to become a Valiant so that he could impress some Valkyrie brat.” She twirled a telescope across her fingers. “Not sure what happened to her. Lot of good it did him to give up his Immortal life for a creature that can’t return his love.” She sighed. “Hopeless boy. In any case, at least it wasn’t for naught. He comes to visit his beloved mother now and again.” Her eyes went soft as she looked at the door. “He’s a good son, when he wants to be. I miss having him around.”
By some miracle, I managed to keep my face expressionless. Had Tyler become a Valiant… for me? “I see.” My words came out flat as I strangled my vocal cords by sheer will.
She wielded her telescope at me and narrowed her eyes. “Now, don’t you go spreading rumor around to your Valkyrie friends that my boy is some sap. I’m telling you these things so that you know he’s a good boy, but if I find out you been goin’ out blabbing, you’re going to find a pissed of Skuld in your closet the next time you go for a change.” She grinned, the motion coming out menacing. “They like those puffy pajamas.”
My lips twitched with repulsion. How much did she see? “Noted,” I said, but I understood her protectiveness. She wasn’t the only one who knew that Tyler was more than just his hard exterior. “Tyler has his secrets,” I admitted. “I have no desire to share what little I know with any of my sisters.” I straightened. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’m not looking to make alliances. I’m looking to break them.”
She raised a perfectly smoothed brow. “Oh?”
While I imagined that Dalia didn’t approve of Tyler being under Odin’s power, it was nothing compared to how I felt about Will’s predicament. I hadn’t forgotten the fact that Tyler was here to bring Will back to Odin to begin his eternal servitude, the price for Immortality. I was just as trapped, constantly under my mother’s determination to control me. It was time that I took a stand and took power over my own soul. “From what I remember of you,” I said, shredding free a screaming memory from Grimhildr’s programming, “you’re a neutral party. I’ve fought the Skuld before and I remember you. All you did
was watch us die.” My sisters had fallen at my feet, their screams the last thing I heard before they turned to ash. It wasn’t because Dalia was cruel, she simply did not fight in a war that wasn’t hers in the first place. Now, though, that had changed. Baldr wasn’t going to leave her be any longer. “You prefer the gods don’t have alliances,” I continued as I paced the small space in front of her desk. “You believe Immortals shouldn’t govern themselves as monarchs with separate territories, but instead work together as a council of sovereigns.”
Dalia leaned forward, her chair creaking on its wheels. “Go on,” she said.
I ignored my locket that burned against my collarbone. Had it gotten hotter? “I want my memories back,” I insisted. “If you tell me what you’ve seen in your forest, then it will help me stop this new threat that takes lives. You don’t need another Huldra. You have me.” Embers licked against my skin and I knew it wasn’t my powers reacting to the threatening interest in Dalia’s eyes. My mother’s power knew my alliance went against everything she wanted for me. “Do you know how I can reclaim memories suppressed by Grimhildr’s programming?”
Dalia hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, but you won’t like it.”
Of course, the only way to reclaim my memories would be by using the most fundamental element in the universe: the sap of Yggdrasil. All souls coalesced in its power, eventually composing everything that cultivated Immortal technology. That realization made me sick to my stomach and was a segment of my Valkyrie training that Grimhildr freely gave.
The only way to get Yggdrasil sap was from the Einherjar… or a freshly sacrificed soul.
“That’s unacceptable,” I whispered, my voice having gone scratchy. I collapsed into the singular chair that sat across from Dalia’s desk.
The shifting lights across Dalia’s irises flashed. “I’ll admit something to you, Valkyrie. The only thing I can’t see is complete darkness. Baldr has discovered my weakness and now he exploits me with it. I asked for the Huldra because I knew it was a deal my son would never agree to. The truth is…” She hesitated as she sucked in a breath. “The truth,” she tried again, her gaze fixated on a place beyond time and space that no mortal would ever see, “is that the darkness that chases you is what chases me, and it terrifies me.”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “So you can’t help me?”
Her gaze cleared and her relaxed demeanor settled around her shoulders. She turned to her work again, seeming to find solace in her telescopes. “Perhaps. The Yggdrasil sap has many restorative properties. It could give you what you seek, and at the same time, rid me of a darkness that tromps in my woods unchecked.” She shook her telescope at me. “If you see that sap just lying about, then using it is how you make sure those lives weren’t lost in vain. Giving it purpose is how you stave off suffering and pain, for the sap of Yggdrasil will find itself roots, in one way or another.”
I should have been afraid, but all I could think of was how the Yggdrasil sap could help me wrest my rightful memories from Grimhildr’s oppression. I would know what I’d discovered before Freya had taken my memories. I could save myself from the downward spiral I found myself on with the foothold my memories could offer. “I’ll do it,” I said, straightening. “I’ll find out who is killing people and I’ll put a stop to it. Just tell me where to start.”
Dalia’s lips stretched into a grin, her golden teeth flashing before she jumped to her feet. I watched her, every muscle in my body taut with expectation. Heimdall was unpredictable and I knew better than to trust any deal we made.
She rummaged through a chest and tossed cracked and old telescopes onto the floor. “Ah.” She pulled out a tiny, rusted tube with a foggy lens, then she tugged me to my feet before placing the cold metal in my hands. “There we are.” She patted my hand. “Take a look. This is a special telescope I made when my boy went romping around looking for a Valkyrie’s heart to break.”
I gave her a raised brow. “Aren’t telescopes for seeing things far away?”
Dalia rolled her eyes, the motion making her look mortal for a split second before the eerie effect of her irises made me want to look away. “I’m a goddess, remember? I don’t make ‘actual’ telescopes. My creations see what isn’t meant to be seen. Some search for violence. Others can spot love miles away.” She tapped the metal in my hands, her fingernail pinging across the surface. “This one sees my worst fear.”
I frowned, but curled my fingers around the device and positioned it over my palm. Rusted splinters stabbed into my fingertips no matter how carefully I handled it, proving that Dalia had reservations when she’d crafted this particular telescope. If this device showed Dalia’s worst fear, I had reservations of my own.
Curiosity winning over, I peered through the lens. At first, I didn’t see anything other than a darker version of my skin. When I turned my hand over and looked at my palm, however, I gasped. An unmistakable blemish curled over the folds of my hand, settling into the crease directly beneath my thumb. It shifted like a shadow, but stayed in place even when I moved my hand to a different angle of Dalia’s studio lights.
“What is that?” I asked, my face still pinned over the bronzed eyepiece.
“Suffering,” she said simply. “Darkness thrives in pain. Her voice turned ominous and distant. When I pulled the scope away, I found Dalia’s eyes unfocused and the blue spirals of her irises swirled like a violent storm. Mesmerized, I held my breath as she continued, and I realized she was speaking prophecy, looking through those folds of time and space that connected us. “An ancient god waits beyond, called by the one who will usher it into this world moved by the greatest force of all.” Her eyes flinched to mine, an impossible power crushing into me and making me freeze. “Suffering that comes from love.”
Dalia’s prophecy faded with the lights in her eyes and she slumped into her chair as if exhausted. “Sorry.” Her voice dropped into a yawn. She lifted a hand to cover her mouth. “That happens sometimes when I’m around a Frigg.”
I froze. She knew I was a Frigg. Did that mean she knew who I was?
“There’s not many of you,” Dalia continued, “but you’re attracted to me like flies. Time benders can’t get enough of the Bifrost.” Relaxing, I moved to give her the scope back, but she waved me away. “Keep it as a token of our alliance.” She glanced at the wall, her eyes swirling again with faint power and I knew she was looking through it at the sky. “Be sure to look at the heavens at night. Maybe you’ll uncover more secrets that I’ve been too much of a coward to face myself.” She gave me a golden grin. “Sorry, dear. I fear our time together passed more time than we realized.”
With that sinking feeling, I left the Bifrost with Dalia’s soft chuckles fading behind me. When the door swept closed at my back, a sudden thud hit my chest. I couldn’t resist the urge to grab the knob and open it again.
My senses were right. The room had completely transformed. What had once been Dalia’s workshop was now a small closet filled with wine bottles. I sighed and let the door swing shut again.
I don’t know how long I stood there staring at the closed door that had once been the entrance to the Bifrost. I was glad that she was gone, but in a way, I felt trapped on the wrong side of the world. What good was I to anyone here, in my mortal body and with my weak heart?
As if in response to my doubt, Will’s heat radiated behind me. I turned and looked up at him, unable to hide the guilt that streaked across my face. “Sorry,” I managed to say. “How long was I gone?”
He crossed his arms and only the slight bulge of a vein at his forehead betrayed I’d concerned him. “A while.” He glanced at the scope I still clutched in my hands. “Did she hurt you?”
I shook my head and my hair curled over my shoulders. I brushed it away. “No, I’m okay.” I peered over his shoulder only to find an empty hallway. “Where’s Tyler and Jules?”
He shrugged. “You were taking too long. Tyler didn’t seem very concerned and Jules could only talk about food.�
�� He growled. “Might have told Tyler a thing or two of what I thought about his mother.”
I bit my lip to keep a laugh from escaping. “Is that so?” I smiled, already finding myself relaxing in his presence. “I assume Jules got what she wanted if they’re not here.”
“Naturally,” Will said, leaning against the wall. “Tyler took her to a local café. Apparently they have fresh fruit and berries fit for a Huldra. Unsurprising, seeing that Dalia has a hoard of them around here. Gotta keep the ones that take mortal bodies fed.” Will shook his head. “You know, they’d make a cute pair if Tyler didn’t have such an obvious thing for you.”
I narrowed my eyes. Even though the jealousy in his tone annoyed me, I liked that he wasn’t shy about showing his possessiveness over me. He didn’t like it one bit that Tyler and I seemed to have a connection, and no matter how well I tried to hide it, Will knew me too well. “It’s not—” I protested.
Will cut me off with a sharp wave of his hand. “It’s not fair that he looks at you that way and you…” he trailed off before sighing. “I’m not blind, Val. I can see that he interests you and I know why that is.”
My eyes went wide. “You do?” I wished that I did.
He nodded. “It’s because we don’t have our memories of each other. You and Tyler… I think you had something before I was in the picture. If there’s an Immortal’s worth of history there, then I doubt I can hold a candle to it.” He flashed me a charming smile, defusing the tension that had locked against my chest. “Doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.” He winked and offered his arm. “Shall we get going?”
Valkyrie Rebellion: Valkyrie Allegiance Book 2 Page 9
