Bridge Burned: A Norse Myths & Legends Fantasy Romance (Bridge of the Gods Book 1)

by Elliana Thered

  Heimdal watched the center of the hall, staring as unrelentingly as the other Aesir. His expression was purely somber, without a trace of the smile I’d glimpsed when I first met him.

  Before my world blew up.

  Now that I had my wits more about me, I felt vaguely guilty that I hadn’t thanked Heimdal for saving me from the fire. In truth, I remained unconvinced that he’d done me any favors. The memory of all I’d lost crowded around me, like ghosts sucking the warmth from my limbs and the air from my lungs.

  “You have traveled far, child.” Odin spoke suddenly, startling me even though I’d been waiting for him to speak. His voice boomed, but it was not unkind.

  I dragged my attention away from Heimdal and stared at Odin through a fog of lingering grief, unsmiling.

  Odin lifted one hand, palm out. “Sadly, not even we can bring back what once was. Alfheim has been destroyed. You are the last of the Alfar.”

  Had his words been a surprise, perhaps a shocked murmur would have rolled through the onlooking gods. As it was, the same chill silence remained. The fog of numbness surrounding me remained, too, as if the quiet judgment of the watching gods were ice that encased me.

  Odin raised his other hand and turned it palm up as well. “This will become your home, now. You will become a child of Asgard.”

  Odin paused and waited expectantly, as if his declaration should have stirred some emotion in me.

  A child of Asgard. What should I feel?

  Gratitude. I should feel gratitude now. I should express it.

  I’d been raised to have manners. But instead of thanking Odin, I risked a glance away from his one-eyed gaze.

  People filled the room. Golden braids. Pink cheeks. Blue eyes, although variations of sky blue and not the indigo of my people. The eyes of my people held midnight and stars and the dancing colors of the aurora within them.

  None of those non-Alfar eyes met mine. They either watched Odin or returned their gaze to him when I looked their way. Only Heimdal didn’t lower his eyes, but neither did he smile.

  I wasn’t one of them. I never would be. I was a lingering ghost of a people who existed no more.

  When I returned my gaze to Odin, his eyes had narrowed and his expression flattened.

  Judging my thoughts from my face. I should at least try to appear gracious.

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but I forced a glimmer of a smile.

  In response, Odin’s mouth tugged up at the corners. He seemed slightly less terrifying, then.

  “To mark the solemnity of this moment, we will gift you with an Asgardian name.” Odin’s voice never held anything less than pure command, but I imagined it had softened around the edges. “In light of your particular gifts, you will be known as ‘Bivrost.’“

  Bivrost. “A glimpse of rainbow.”

  The name was appropriate enough. Lovely, even. Despite that, and despite Odin’s title of Allfather and his obvious attempt to be kind—or at least generous—something new sparked in my chest. This new something was as sharp and fierce as the grief that had claimed me during my first few days in Asgard, but more immediate. Heat flooded my face.

  That is not my true name.

  Hadn’t I lost enough already—now they wanted to take more from me?

  A breath gathered in my lungs. Before I could blurt out my objection, though, the solemn set of Odin’s face triggered my sense of reason.

  He thought he was bestowing an honor. He saw this new name as a gift, not as a taking-away of the old.

  Around the circle of gods, eyes darted and heads turned. Some exchanged glances. Others merely stared at me. All of them waited to see what I would say.

  Papa had sometimes slipped and referred to Alfheim by its name from the older days, the days before our world had joined the Nine Worlds. When called on it, he would only shrug it off.

  We are who we are, whatever they name us.

  That thought brought with it a grounding warmth. I felt suddenly stronger than I had in days.

  So I straightened my back and lowered my chin in as dignified a bow of my head as I could manage.

  “Allfather.” I spoke the honorific as sincerely as I could. These are not my people. They never will be. But they were what I had left. “I am honored.”

  A fresh round of exchanged glances swept the room, accompanied this time by a quiet murmuring. I dared to hope the Aesir sounded approving.

  When I lifted my head, still no one would meet my gaze. Odin’s eyes had again narrowed. His mouth pressed into an odd line. Perhaps I hadn’t said quite the correct thing, after all.

  “Heimdal.” Odin turned one hand and beckoned without looking.

  Off to the side of Odin’s High Seat, Heimdal’s head lifted. His face turned toward Odin. After a second’s hesitation, he strode forward, a lean form in silver and black. The horn that hung from his belt curled against his hip as if made for it.

  Despite the cloud of numbed emotion that wrapped me, my breath caught at the grace of Heimdal’s form and movement. Immediately, I chided myself. My world had just died. Was I no better than Thor?

  “As a ward of Asgard, Bivrost will require a guardian.” Odin lowered both hands and turned his head as Heimdal stepped forward.

  Heimdal glanced toward me. Our eyes met only briefly. No smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. In the days since Alfheim burned, I’d had little room for any rational thought. But I wondered now if Heimdal’s warmth that first hour or so of our meeting had been no more than a fluke—an idle and momentary attraction. Or maybe he’d been less flirting with me than teasing me.

  Whatever kindness Heimdal had shown since, it likely had more to do with me being the only remaining bridge than in any personal interest.

  Heimdal’s shoulders pulled back as he turned toward Odin. He planted his feet and tipped his head to one side.

  “Allfather?” For all his athletic beauty, Heimdal’s voice was quiet, low like the rumble of a sleepy bear. But it was all business. No sunshine touched his words today.

  “Bivrost is the last of the Alfar. She alone holds the power to open the way into and out of Asgard.” Odin paused, as if allowing the importance of his words to sink in.

  The last of my kind. They need me.

  “She requires a guardian, someone to see to her living arrangements and teach her our ways. You carried her from Alfheim.”

  In truth, I had carried Heimdal. I had opened the way. An odd feeling settled over me, tentatively rebellious.

  If Heimdal was thinking what I was thinking, he didn’t say it out loud. He kept his silence as Odin finished speaking.

  “The honor of duty should fall to you. Will you take the task upon yourself?”

  Odin may have placed his words into the pattern of a question, but I doubted anyone in the room heard it as such.

  A guardian. Did they think I couldn’t take care of myself?

  A formality. I don’t know their world yet. They don’t know me.

  Even so, Heimdal turned his head to once again look toward me. This time, his gaze locked with mine and didn’t dart away. Even from a distance, I could see how very blue his eyes were.

  Sapphire blue. A deeper shade of sky, not at all like my own.

  “I will.” No emotion inflected Heimdal, voice or face. He spoke as somberly as an obedient student.

  Odin smiled, an oddly satisfied turning of his mouth. I couldn’t imagine he’d entertained any doubt that Heimdal would agree.

  Or that I would, for that matter. I was struck anew by the realization that my old life was gone. This new one was not mine, and I had little control over it.

  They’re taking me in. Welcoming me. This was not home, but maybe it wouldn’t be terrible. Maybe it would be all right.

  Lurking grief surged anew into my chest. Tears rose behind my eyes.

  Nothing will ever be all right again.

  Odin stood and made a sweeping gesture with his arms. “Welcome, Bivrost. I hope you will come to consider
us family.”

  No murmur swept the room, no voices swelled to welcome me. Heads bowed and nodded in my direction, but still the Aesir did not look directly at me. Did they fear me? Consider me somehow less than they?

  They need me.

  Or maybe they were merely uncomfortable in the presence of my grief. That was, all things considered, an understandable reaction.

  “You must give people the benefit of the doubt. It is our way.”

  Our way. The way of Alfheim’s ruling council, the way of my father. And now, I supposed, it would have to become my way. I was the only one left to carry it forward.

  Only as the hall began to empty did the Aesir speak amongst themselves, murmurs accompanied by the rustling of wool cloaks and tromp of booted feet on the plank floor. The gods who had crowded among the benches began to disperse.

  Odin stood, preparing to step down from his High Seat. Taking her cue from him, Frigg stood as well. Immediately, Baldur stepped forward and offered his mother a hand down the short steps. Then he took her arm and escorted her to join the others who were departing.

  Odin paused long enough to say something to Heimdal that I didn’t hear and to which Heimdal only nodded. Then Odin followed his wife and son from the great hall.

  Heimdal remained motionless a moment longer, still staring toward me from beside the High Seat.

  “Perhaps it won’t be as bad as you think.” The voice came from beside me, pitched low. I turned my head.

  The man beside me had hair the color of shadowed rubies, and his eyes were black. It was as if a piece of darkest night had wandered into this golden realm. Where the other Asgardian faces were ruddy and square-jawed, his features were dusky and sharp.

  Jotun. Alarm crackled beneath my numb resignation. My eyes widened.

  The Jotun’s mouth quirked into a hint of a smile, a bitter-looking thing. He leaned closer.

  “You’re not the only ward of Asgard who is not like the others.” The bitter smile canted up on the other side. The lines around his dark eyes softened into something that resembled sympathy. Or perhaps sadness. “Take heart, little rainbow. You’re not completely alone.”

  “Iris.”

  This voice was not pitched low. It carried firmly, straight at me. I glanced toward the man who accompanied it, broad-shouldered and golden and obviously perfectly at home in Asgard.

  As Heimdal strode toward me, he glanced at the Jotun beside me. A frown creased his handsome face.

  “Should you ever need a sympathetic ear, come looking for Loki.” Loki tilted his head and raised a single eyebrow. “You can find me dodging the blame for everything that ever goes wrong around here.”

  Loki’s smile quirked again, that strange, sad curve of his thin lips. Then he slipped away, darting one quick look in the direction of the approaching Heimdal.

  Loki.

  He was Jotun. I should fear him. And yet, in spite of speaking with him for less than a single minute, I felt an odd kinship with him.

  He’d seemed as lost as I felt.

  6

  * * *

  Present day

  A weathered gray farmhouse crouched a few yards back from the road. Warm yellow light filled the kitchen windows. In the picture window at the center of the house, wan blue light flickered.

  I climbed the steps—old wood, worn and stripped of paint but recently-repaired—and rapped once on the screen door. Metal mesh sagged in the window frame. The storm door beyond stood open, allowing a breeze through its gap.

  “Come in.” Maureen’s voice carried, raised from somewhere deeper inside the house.

  I let myself in. The screen door creaked and latched with a solid click behind me.

  Fragile evening light glowed against cheery yellow walls and blue gingham curtains. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee mingled with the fetid, sterile breath of morphine and impending death.

  “Iris, dear. Coffee?”

  Maureen came into the kitchen from the living room turned sick room. Beyond her, the rasp and rattle of labored breathing outlined the upbeat voices of news anchors. Blue television light flickered against the wall I could see through the doorway.

  Everett Cox lay in the hospital bed shoved flush against that wall.

  He had been a vital man when I first met him, silver hair and ruddy cheeks and eyes alight with life. Disease had suctioned flesh from beneath his skin, leaving wrinkles hanging on a skeletal frame. His white hair lay in sickly, yellowed patches against his skull. His mouth hung slightly open, in an endless, silent moan of despair.

  The same pain that bound Everett to his bed bound his wife there, too. Anguish pulled tight around Maureen’s eyes and haunted her attempt at a smile. Maureen held a half-empty mug in one hand and motioned toward the coffeemaker with the other.

  Any subconscious urge I’d entertained to tell Maureen I’d be leaving town flickered and faded. The woman had enough on her plate. And how could I begin to explain my reasons for fleeing, when Maureen and Everett had been so good to me? Guilt twinged at the back of my neck as I realized that if I abruptly vanished, they’d have to hire someone new to run the rental office. Train that person. Maybe try out a couple of people before they found someone who worked out.

  “No thanks.” I feigned a smile of my own. I held up the folder of reports Maureen had requested before setting them on the chipped, white-painted kitchen table. After a second’s hesitation, I asked, “How are you both doing?”

  To her credit, Maureen’s face revealed no bitterness. “Same deal, different day,” she said, and weary resignation filtered through her words.

  No one who asked that question expected news of improvement. Everett would not get better. The only hope anyone held out for him was that he would slip peacefully from the terrible grip of pain and into death.

  It was a horrible thing to have to wish for.

  Instinctively, I reached for Maureen’s hand. The other woman set her coffee mug aside on the counter and wrapped her arms around me. The embrace was stiff, both of us no doubt aware that allowing too much comfort would break down the strength Maureen required to see her husband along the last, miserable steps of his journey.

  It will be better, I thought but didn’t dare to say. It will be better when he goes on. Helgafjell is a good place, with feasting and warm hearths while the souls wait for the renewal of the worlds. Plenty of room for everyone in that holy mountain. You can join him someday.

  Or so I believed. In truth, I of course couldn’t see that dimension with my own eyes. Frigg, with her fey ways, had claimed to catch glimpses of it.

  Maybe if she’d seen less of other things, I wouldn’t be here.

  As Maureen released me from the embrace, I selfishly wished that I’d taken greater pains to keep Maureen and Everett out of my life. They touched off emotions I’d been trying for years to bury—love and grief and loneliness.

  At the same time, as Maureen picked up her coffee mug and turned to the pot behind her—as much to give herself a moment as to top off her cup, I suspected—I caught myself wishing I could share some bit of personal knowledge that would comfort Maureen.

  Would it really help, though? The gods understand death, but that doesn’t help them welcome it.

  “There’s this story,” I heard myself saying anyhow.

  The word “story” brought Heimdal’s long-absent face sharply into my memory. I shoved it away.

  Maureen turned and regarded me with her weary eyes.

  Wishing now that I hadn’t started, I had no choice but to continue. “The ancient Norse, they believed in gods. And other worlds.”

  Back in the days when the Aesir had deigned to have anything to do with Midgard. Back when this world was considered equal and not a lesser world.

  “They told… a story about something called Ragnarok. The end times.” I paused, working my way around the edges of the full truth.

  Not a story. A prophecy. Something Frigg had foreseen.

  And something the Aesir were det
ermined to prevent, so maybe this attempt at reassuring Maureen was as ill-fated as I was.

  Maureen tipped her head.

  “Which sounds terribly dark,” I hurried on. “And it begins that way, certainly. There’s a war at the beginning of it, between the gods of Asgard and the Jotun—one of the other worlds. It will be a terrible battle.”

  I paused. Wasn’t I supposed to be making Maureen feel better?

  But I was in it now, so I hurried on. “But the important part is that after all the pain and struggle, the worlds are remade. There will be a new beginning. And in the meantime, the souls of the departed wait inside a paradise with brightness and beauty and…”

  I caught the look on Maureen’s face and trailed off.

  Maureen’s smile was faint. “Yes. That’s what I was raised to believe—something like it, at any rate. An end to struggle. A renewal of life.” Maureen paused long enough for a weary sigh. “It’s hard though, when you’re the one in the thick of things, to hold onto that hope.”

  Regret choked me. What a stupid story to tell. It never comforted anyone, not even the gods. Only an Alfar would believe there was any good to be found in the end of the worlds. And I was the only one of those left.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured.

  A pained expression flickered across Maureen’s face. Shaking her head, she clasped my hand. “No, dear. Don’t be. Your intentions are good.”

  I summoned a faint smile. Here I’d thought I could comfort Maureen, and Maureen was comforting me instead.

  Maureen let go of my hand and sipped her coffee. “You’ve studied Norse mythology?”

  My smile turned awkward. “I know a few of the stories.”

  I lived them. And what I didn’t live, I heard directly from the gods.

  A fresh pang of homesickness struck me. A familiar restlessness, bordering on panic, welled up behind it.

  I need to leave. No more attachments. I don’t need any more heartache.

  I summoned another smile and tapped the folder on the kitchen table. “Your reports. If you think of anything else, I can get them first thing in the morning.”