Gunnar nodded, his expression awed.
Jerrik grasped my hand and pulled me to him. “I wasn’t quite done with you yet,” he said in his familiar wry tone, and kissed me again, so thoroughly I tingled right through to the tips of my fingers.
When he stepped back, I looked around at all of them. Excitement and nervousness jittered through me. It was still going to be a difficult, dangerous task, making it to the gates. But I was ready.
“What are we waiting for?” I said. “Let’s storm that fortress.”
10
The heat from the magma moat wafted over my feathers as I wheeled over the fortress wall. I just needed to be close enough to catch a taste of Surt’s memories. To conjure a sight that would draw him and his guards out and away from the gates so my lovers could slip in.
Plenty of wisps drifted from within the fortress walls. The blazing giant wasn’t the only one inside. I tasted blood, smelled fear. Lashes of whips, the press of searing blades. The wrench of a pike through some hapless soul’s gut, the wielder both horrified and relieved to be the one delivering rather than receiving the blow.
Finally, I caught a glimpse that felt familiar. The shining halls of Asgard cast in shadows and lashed by flames. The sweep of a sword tinged with fire before it slammed into Freyr’s gut. A hollow laugh as the god collapsed.
I focused on the burnt iron flavor of that recollection, reaching for more from the same source. Images flitted past me: the thundering charge of giants, the final rush of flames. Then, earlier, Surt’s voice ringing out as he called thousands of his fellow giants to storm Asgard, pride glowing through him at the sight of them all marching to his call.
Hmm. I might be able to make use of that.
The dragon was sleeping on the fortress roof again. I took care not to circle close enough to disturb it. I swooped back over the wall and landed on the jagged heap of stones my three companions where taking shelter behind, just a few paces from the moat.
“Did you get what you need?” Gunnar murmured.
I nodded with a bob of my raven head. I didn’t want to risk shifting back into human form to talk with them properly. They trusted I’d get this job done. And I needed to do it quick, before any of Surt’s minions caught a whiff of my Asgardian nature.
Hopping around on the stone, I fixed my gaze on the rocky plain beyond the moat in front of the wall’s looming door. As my body clenched with effort, one and then another and then another figure shimmered into being: an army of giants nearly as vast as the one Surt had summoned all that time ago.
Except this army had a god leading the charge. Freyr, god of prosperity in all its forms, raised his shining golden head and pointed a sword toward the fortress. His light tenor, conjured from both my own memories and Surt’s, pealed out across the plain.
“Oh, giant! I have come to pay back to you the blow you dealt to me. Even your people are eager to see you fall now.”
The dragon stirred on the rooftop. Movement darted along the fortress walls. Guards, I assumed, running to inform their master what was happening. Below me, Jerrik’s jaw had gone slack, staring at my creation. Svend chuckled roughly under his breath.
“That’s some power, my lovely feathered one.”
I ruffled my wings. I didn’t need their compliments—I needed them ready to run. Jerrik caught my eye and tipped his head. The three of them waited, muscles tensed.
Surt couldn’t resist this draw. I’d suspected he’d have to confirm with his own eyes that the reports were true. The great door yawned open into a bridge across the moat.
A giant who really was gigantic in form and presence strode into the doorway, flanked by a troop of figures of varying heights and shapes—his army drawn from the outcasts banished to this realm. Surt’s beard whipped in a gust of wind, gray as steel now. His narrowed eyes were equally hard. He held the immense sword I remembered from all those centuries ago, a gleam of flame already dancing along its length.
“You dare challenge me on my own ground?” he bellowed. “Brethren, you can’t really be helping this pale shade of a god.”
The rows of giants I’d summoned stayed still and silent. I cocked my head, and Freyr smirked.
Surt bristled. “You’ll regret your arrogance.”
He waved his arm, and a horde of creatures swept forward at his call. The dragon swooped down from the rooftop with a roar. Black spidery creatures as tall as my human shoulders scrambled down the stone walls, pincers gleaming sharp. Vast lizards ten times the size of the salamanders that had leapt at me in the tunnels came squirming out of the moat. Even under my feathers, my skin started to crawl.
What I’d done might not be enough. And if this mob caught hold of us…
The dragon’s flames rippled over my creations. The other beasts hurtled into their midst. I let the figures stir with the flickers of memory still lingering in the air, raising fists, swinging hammers and spears. But dozens burst into dust, shaking too hard for my concentration to hold them. Only Freyr stood steady, completely unwavering. He was the key.
Surt frowned at the sight before him. He gestured to his guards and marched forward, sword held at the ready. “What mischief are you making here?” he snapped. “If you want to fight, fight. I won’t stand for being taunted with illusions.”
Their boots clanged over the bridge—and off it. As they strode across the plain to meet the supposed Freyr, I let out a faint caw to the three men below me. This was our chance.
I pushed off, and the guys leapt from behind the heap of rocks at the same time. We raced on wings and feet along the edge of the moat to the bridge. Surt was still yelling at Freyr, but I couldn’t hear the words over the wind hissing past me. As long as my Freyr held long enough, kept him distracted long enough…
I dove through the doorway into the fortress’s courtyard. Jerrik, Gunnar, and Svend dashed after me. “Inside,” Svend said, waving to the looming building. “I think the gates are inside.”
He wrenched open the nearest door in that mountainous structure—and someone shouted from a window. Damn. I cawed at my lovers to hurry and flew into the fortress with all the speed my wings could give me.
We threw ourselves down a hall and spilled out into a domed room where the air reverberated with a faint hum. The power I could sense radiated from the far end. Another door, locked, stood between us and our goal.
Gunnar gritted his teeth and took a run at it. It shook with the slam of his shoulder. Svend held up his hand, and they charged together. The lock snapped. We burst through.
The room on the other side was long and narrow with a ceiling far above our heads. Patches of darkness shimmered against the smooth stone of the far wall. I could taste them now—the gates. Alfheim lay right in front of us, Asgard to the left of it, Midgard farther to the right.
I shifted into human form in a blink, the change coming over me as naturally as breathing now. “That one leads to Midgard,” I said, pointing. “The second one—”
The door slammed open behind us. One of those spidery creatures tackled me to the ground. My still-healing shoulder smacked the ground so hard I couldn’t bite back a groan.
No, no, no. More of them fell on the men, pinning each of my lovers to the ground.
Guards circled us, weapons drawn. I thrashed against the beast’s hold, but I couldn’t move my limbs more than an inch beneath its arched legs. Spittle dribbled down its pincers. My chest clenched.
This was it. I’d failed. My lovers were going to die because of that failure.
The ground trembled with Surt’s heavy footsteps. He emerged through the doorway, his gaze so fierce his eyes seemed to hold the same fire as his sword. The sword he was still clutching. He pointed it at Gunnar, the nearest of the guys.
“What in Hel’s name is the meaning of this treacherous magic? You’ll answer me now or die.”
“It was me!” I burst out in a voice little more than a squawk. “My magic. My plan. You want answers, you deal with me.”
; I was probably only sparing the others pain for a moment. But the blazing giant swiveled toward me. He took in my wiry form with a look of obvious disbelief.
“You?” Then his lips curled into a grimace. “You’re of Asgard.”
He raised his sword, and in a blink I saw he didn’t care about answers now. He’d slay me first, and then my lovers, rather than let us speak.
But I also saw, roiling around him like a storm cloud, a memory I hadn’t gleaned before from that greater distance.
A face I knew nearly as well as my own feathers glowered at a different Surt, longer ago, when that beard was still brown and that face less grizzled. You like your flames so well, Odin boomed, I know just the place for you to find a new home. You served your purpose, blazing one.
A wallop of hot air and a splitting pain down Surt’s spine as the Allfather had hurled the giant down into Muspelheim. A stab of vengeful fury all through the giant’s chest.
In that instant, that remembered fury lit an angry flame in my own heart. This was all Odin’s fault. The torment Surt had inflicted on this horrid realm’s survivors. The wounds and battering I’d taken since I’d arrived here. This moment, right now, when I might lose my life and my men theirs for a desire so simple as to find a proper home.
What did the Allfather care, if it all served his purpose? I’d been loyal to him for so long, never lived for myself until this past day, and this was the wretched gift he’d given me in return.
People can be anything when they’re happy, he’d said. It’s when they’re frightened or in pain that their deepest essence rises to the surface. So right he’d been.
And my deepest essence did not belong to him.
Surt’s arms tensed to deliver the fatal blow.
“You don’t want to do that,” I spat out. “I can give you Odin.”
The giant paused. He stared at me with his smoldering eyes. “What are you talking about? Speak fast, or you’ll lose my patience.”
The words tumbled out of me as swiftly as I could gather them. “He’s the one you really want, isn’t he? You played the role he needed you for, and he repaid you by banishing you to this stinking realm. You can pay him back in kind. I can help you. Don’t you know me, Surt? Don’t you know how I called forth the people of your memories? Should I put my black feathers back on?”
Surt’s jaw twitched, his eyes widening just slightly. “The raven of memory.”
“He thinks I still serve him,” I said. “You let us go through into Midgard, and I’ll deliver the Allfather to you.”
“And why should I trust your word?” the giant said, but longing threaded through his voice. He wanted to trust me. He wanted to believe his greatest desire could come true.
“I can vow it to you,” I said. “Like all the things of the realms vowed to Frigg they wouldn’t hurt her son Baldur, except the mistletoe. You’ve heard that tale by now, haven’t you? A vow of Asgard can’t be broken.”
Surt shifted his weight from one foot to the other, studying me. He lowered his sword. “Why would you do this, raven?” he asked.
“I value my life more than his,” I said. “We both gave him more than he deserved, didn’t we?”
Something in my tone must have completely convinced him. He jerked his chin at the spider-thing, and it clambered off of me. I stood up, rubbing my pinched wrists.
“All right then,” Surt said. “Let’s hear your vow.”
I looked him straight in the eyes. There was no conjuring around this, no pretending it. He would feel whether I spoke the words true. All the conviction I had in me collected in my throat.
“If you let me and my three companions pass through the gate of our choosing, I, Muninn, raven of memory, will see that you take the Allfather as your prisoner to do with as you please. I swear it by all the realms and by my soul.”
My voice echoed off the high ceiling. The blazing giant grinned. He swept his sword arm toward the other creatures, and they eased off my lovers. The guards stepped back to the wall.
“Go then, Muninn, raven of memory,” Surt said, his voice as scorching as the magma in his moat. “I look forward to our next meeting.”
I glanced at the gate to Asgard, but only for a second. The guys were getting to their feet. I crossed the stone floor to them in a few brisk strides, wrapping my arm around Jerrik’s waist, Svend’s elbow, leaning my head toward Gunnar’s chest. They surrounded me with warmth and the bright mortal smell of them.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Svend murmured.
“I did,” I said. “Now let’s go.”
Jerrik’s embrace tightened. “This is good-bye, then?”
I blinked at him. Hadn’t he realized yet?
“I’m coming with you,” I said. “I’m coming to Midgard.” I paused. A lump swelled in my throat. “I know you might tire of me, or of each other, or I of you, but… not yet. And I want to have what we have for as long as it’s going to last.” I could make new memories of that place, ones with laughter and sighs instead of shouts and clattering, ones of peace and pleasure.
“Muninn,” Gunnar said in a rasp, and they were all hugging me to them at once. I closed my eyes. Right then, I could believe that mortality meant nothing. That what we’d shared in the last day was only the beginning of a long, long happiness.
I tugged them with me toward the gate to the realm of humans. With hands clasped, we leapt into the dark together.
11
I held my breath as I led my lovers toward the home I’d built. The property with its little brick cottage lay off in a quiet part of the countryside no one much passed by, but that suited us fine. I just wasn’t sure what they’d make of the refinements I’d brought to life.
Jerrik noticed first. He stopped in his tracks on the packed dirt path through the meadows, staring at the stretch of trees beyond the cottage’s sloped roof. “That patch of forest wasn’t there before,” he said. “It looks… It looks like the woods near my childhood home.”
“Where you had many happy memories,” I said quietly.
He glanced at me, and understanding lit in his eyes. Without another word, he tipped up my chin to offer me a kiss.
Gunnar exclaimed next, at the burgling stream a small wooden bridge led us over. “I used to walk along a stream just like this, back in Jotunheim…” A smile crossed his face. He squeezed my hand with a buoyant laugh.
When we reached the cottage, Svend hesitated, his hand lingering over the stone bench set up out front. “Where I used to sit with my little sister and tell her stories,” he said. He swallowed audibly. His eyes shimmered as he looked at me. “Muninn, you’re a wonder.”
I found myself grinning back at all of them. “No, all of you are. I could only build what you’ve given me.”
Their breaths caught as we stepped inside. I’d incorporated every detail from every fond memory I’d gleaned over the last few days, arranging them in what looked to me to be some semblance of cohesion. Gunnar took it all in and swept me around before wrapping me in his arms.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Almost as beautiful as you.”
A few additions I’d constructed for practical reasons more than sentiment. My favorite of those was a broad cushioned couch more than big enough for the four of us to sprawl comfortably on, which filled one end of the living room. We settled there, me nestled between the three men who would have made any space feel like home to me now.
Of course it was Jerrik who broke the joy of the moment. “How long do we have?” he said, brushing his fingers over my hair as I rested my head on his lap. “Until you have to bring Odin back to Muspelheim?”
Gunnar stirred by my feet. “Are you really going to fulfill that vow?”
“I have to,” I said. “I’m bound by it. But… I didn’t give him any timeline. I never said I’d deliver Odin soon. So I expect it’ll take me a good long while.”
Svend smiled slyly. “Perhaps forever.”
“Perhaps,” I said, but I didn’t really
believe it. A sharp ache still pierced my chest when I thought of the god I’d served for so long. Of the horrors he’d subjected me to without any apparent care. Of the brutality he’d abandoned so many in the nine realms to.
I snuggled a little closer to my lovers, but my jaw had set. I wasn’t going to sacrifice one second of the happiness I’d found with these three, not as long as I had them. But after that…
“Perhaps it’s time the Allfather found out what it’s like to fall.”
The End
How does Muninn take her vengeance? Find out in the first book in the Their Dark Valkyrie series, Claimed by Gods:
http://smarturl.it/TheirDarkValkyrie
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About the Author
Eva Chase lives in Canada with her family. She loves stories both swoony and supernatural, and strong women and the men who appreciate them. Along with the Their Dark Valkyrie series, she is the author of the Witch’s Consorts series, the Dragon Shifter’s Mates series, the Demons of Fame Romance series, the Legends Reborn trilogy, and the Alpha Project Psychic Romance series.
Read More from Eva Chase:
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Charms of Attraction
Julia Clarke
Charms of Attraction
Controlling the mind is easy, but what about the heart?
Katerina Marea has the ability to control minds. With a simple touch and a brief glance, she can have anyone, and anything, she wants—except love. One night is all any man gets, and that’s only if he’s lucky.
But an unexpected reunion with the handsome Declan Ashworth makes Katerina crave normalcy and question all her rules. Then there’s FBI Special Agent Adrian Stone and his partner, Criminal Consultant Elias St. James. If they’re not pressing her for answers, they’re pushing her to let them in.
Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection Page 56
