Battlestorm

by Susan Krinard

  “I have a little business to take care of myself,” he said, glancing at Konur. “If you’ll excuse me.” With a slight frown, he gave the other glass to Konur and stalked away.

  When Mist looked for Dainn, he, too, was gone.

  “How many men in this room has Freya slept with?” she asked in an undertone, trying to distract herself from both relief and worry.

  “At least half, I daresay,” Konur said. “That is one of the hallmarks of her social success. How did it go?”

  “I don’t know.” Mist continued to smile benevolently at everyone who passed, using just enough “anti-glamour” to keep anyone from getting too close. “He knows Freya was ill, as we expected. He also guessed that we came to prove that we aren’t vulnerable. But he must think I, or someone else, could be impersonating her. He asked me outright who I am.”

  “Evidently he did not receive the answer he expected.”

  “He didn’t receive an answer at all. You showed up at exactly the right time. Loki was about to reintroduce me to Dainn.”

  Konur must have heard the hardness in her voice. He touched her elbow gently.

  “Maintain your pretense,” he reminded her. “You cannot afford to abandon your concentration.”

  “Did you know that Dainn was here?”

  “I sensed his presence, but did not expect Loki to bring him to Freya.”

  “Maybe that was part of his test. He hopes that Dainn will know who I am if he gets close enough to me.”

  “Then he will doubtless attempt it again.”

  “And I’ll need to be prepared.” Mist hooked Konur’s arm and pulled him to the side of the room. “Can you tell … can you sense if Dainn has—”

  “Gone into darkness?” Konur said. “Lost himself to this beast, or something worse? No.” He took her hand between both of his. “He is deeply ill. Beyond that, I cannot tell.”

  “Then it’s nothing we didn’t know before. I need to stay away from him.”

  “If you hate him,” Konur said, “it should not be difficult to continue playing the game.”

  But I don’t, Mist thought. “We were close,” she said. “We even touched minds. He might see things Loki can’t. And Loki can probably read him like a book.” She smiled vaguely at a woman across the room. “Do whatever you can to make sure he doesn’t come near me.”

  “You will still require guidance and protection, should matters deteriorate.”

  “I seem to have done okay so far,” Mist said. “You’ll have to trust me.”

  Konur gave her a long, assessing look, nodded, and drifted away. Mist assumed Freya’s mantle again, detesting the inevitable circulating she’d have to do, the insipid conversation she’d have to make, the aura of seduction she’d have to maintain.

  And all for nothing, if Dainn gave her away.

  * * *

  Dainn watched her drift from one cluster of guests to another—laughing with her head flung back to expose the creamy length of her throat, tossing her black hair to send loose strands flying about her elegant shoulders, flashing white teeth at a jest. She moved as if a carpet of primroses carried her above the floor, and mortals gave way to her as if they knew precisely what she was.

  But they did not. They had no way of knowing that the woman they adored was an impostor twice over.

  When she had first entered the room, the sheer force of her presence had nearly shattered him. He had felt her glamour as if she had tossed a live grenade into the center of the floor, and the blast had caught him full in the chest.

  And he had known. Known not only that Mist was alive, but that it was she and not Freya standing amongst mortals who hadn’t the means to question what their eyes and senses insisted must be true.

  His heart had told him.

  Dainn leaned his cheek against the cold glass of the window. As he had continued to observe her, he had seen nothing of the Valkyrie in Mist’s movements or what little he could hear of her speech. There was absolute confidence and self-assurance in her every action, with not so much of a trace of the uncertainty and vulnerability that had so often made Mist doubt herself and her own worth.

  Perhaps some of that confidence was her own. He had been convinced that Freya had not found the means to seize her soul. The Lady had fallen, and Mist had completed her work during the protest. That meant Mist had indeed grown stronger … strong enough to take Freya’s place tonight and maintain her mask of glamour with apparent ease.

  If he had still been capable of joy, Dainn would have felt it in that moment of discovery. But Loki had shattered Dainn’s conviction when he’d gone to meet Mist. There was contempt in the lady’s eyes, but no rage. None of Mist’s warrior’s spirit, the fire that shone so brightly when she faced any enemy who could destroy what she loved. Doubt had burst within Dainn like a poisonous spore, eating away at his hope.

  Moment by moment, Dainn’s faith in his own judgment had begun to die. His heart had told him she was here, and alive. A heart which could not be trusted, no more than the beast could be.

  When Mist and Loki parted, Dainn had shaken as if with fever, waiting for Loki to render his judgment. But Loki had simply instructed Dainn to meet him later and gone on about some other business. As if he had learned all he needed to know, and was unsurprised.

  “A drink, sir?” one of the young servers asked, cleaving Dainn’s thought with merciful swiftness. Dainn reached for a glass before he could think and downed the contents. It was only wine, but Dainn had not taken drink for many years, and he felt it burn though his body and begin to drown the poison.

  He returned the empty glass to the tray and grabbed another while the bemused server looked on.

  “Are you all right, sir?” she asked.

  Dainn wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes. Thank you for the refreshment.”

  She backed away, steadying the empty glasses on the tray with one hand, and disappeared into the crowd. Dainn looked for the lady, but she, too, had vanished.

  Shutting out the hum of voices and laughter, Dainn closed his eyes. He turned his senses inward, searching, reaching deep for the thing he hated.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that the beast was returning,” Loki had said.

  And it had returned, there in Danny’s room when Dainn had faced Fenrir. The effects of the herb he had taken on the steppes had not been permanent after all.

  He had sworn to fight its evil, even to his own death, if it attempted to reclaim its power. He would never allow Laufeyson to use the beast against Mist and the allies.

  But it was still under his control. A voice was whispering inside him—the beast and not the beast, something still halfway between elf and monster. It can tell you, the voice assured him. The beast has senses even you do not.

  There would be no guesswork. The torment of doubt would end. And if he learned that Mist was gone …

  We will be one.

  Dainn’s eyes flew open, and he slammed the gate on the thing he had almost loosed. On the promises, and the threats. On the horror of what it offered.

  Stumbling away from the window, Dainn wove through the knots of guests, staggering like a drunkard. Perhaps, he thought, I am drunk.

  He turned in a slow circle, looking for the bar. Loki was there, sharing a drink with a woman Dainn had never seen. A few of the guests seemed to notice Dainn as if for the first time, but he knew himself incapable of speaking sensibly to any of them, not even for the purpose of discovering what they perceived of the woman in the crimson gown.

  Panic caught at him with small, sharp claws. He could leave. He would not get far before Loki fetched him back, though it might take a little while for the Jotunar scattered around Nob Hill to find him.

  As his gaze swung toward the door, he saw her. She had paused in an island of stillness, her head slightly cocked, her eyes alert.

  And Mist was there again.

  Dainn was aware of nothing else as he strode toward her, ignoring the grunts of annoyance a
nd soft cries as he bumped a shoulder or jarred a hand cradling a glass of wine. She turned toward him as he drew near, and in her eyes he saw what he would expect of Freya’s daughter: anger, consternation, confusion.

  But not hatred. Not that.

  Mist.

  “Come no closer,” a man said, stepping between him and the lady. Dainn glanced up, distracted, and froze.

  The man was no man at all, but elf, and obviously a lord of his people. That was clear in his eyes, in his features, and in the easy authority of his bearing.

  And he was also the very elf Dainn had begged to warn Mist about Freya after the battle at the portal. The one who had claimed that the elves who had almost taken Danny captive were not his.

  Dainn had never known if the elf-lord had been telling the truth. But here he was, apparently guarding the lady, staring at Dainn with unmistakable hostility in his eyes.

  “It’s all right,” the lady said, laying a hand on the elf-lord’s arm. “Let me speak to the traitor, since he seems so eager to fling himself into my path.”

  The elf-lord inclined his head and stepped back, still within easy reach. The lady gazed into Dainn’s eyes, her full, brightly painted lips curved in a mocking smile.

  “So,” she said softly, in a voice not even the nearest mortals could hear. “My once-faithful servant. I had not thought we would meet again under circumstances in which I could not destroy you.”

  “Mist,” Dainn whispered.

  “I wonder, Konur, if he has gone blind as well as mad,” she said. “He seems unable to distinguish ebon black hair from common yellow, and grace from gaucherie.”

  “Indeed,” Konur said. “His poor judgment is such that I would gladly rid you of his presence.”

  The lady sighed. “Alas, Loki is too near, and will no doubt defend his prize.” She leaned closer to Dainn. “Tell me, traitor … do you enjoy sharing his bed now as much as you did when you thought it was mine?”

  13

  Mist despised herself for speaking the words, but she knew she’d had no choice.

  No choice, because suddenly she was vulnerable, more vulnerable than she had been when Loki had tried to bait her. Standing so close to Dainn, hearing him speak her name, was so much worse than she’d expected. She was aware of every tiny detail of his appearance and manner, every emotion that flickered across his face. She saw the muscles jump in his cheek, heard his breath catch, felt the agony of denial course through him as if it pumped in her own veins. Her emotions rose in response to his: her heart began to beat too hard and too fast, her skin to flush, her body to remember every touch they had ever shared.

  If the beast was there, she couldn’t see it. It had nearly killed Danny on the steppes, but now …

  Think, she told herself. Konur hadn’t seen any great darkness in Dainn. Freya had been so sure that Loki couldn’t cure him, but what if he had? Was that why Dainn still remained with Loki, though he surely might have escaped many times? Could he feel bound by a debt he couldn’t break?

  Greater than the one he owes the Aesir? Greater than anything he ever felt for—

  She parried the thought before it could cut too deep. Whatever Dainn’s true reason, he hadn’t turned the beast against Loki’s enemies. He’d used no elven magic on Loki’s behalf. What had he done against the allies, against her?

  She desperately wanted to find out, to wrap them both in a circle of silence and finally learn the truth. But his eyes were still asking questions, dangerous ones … looking for proof, even the smallest sign, that his guess had been correct.

  Had Loki sent the elf to test her again, as Konur had suggested he might? Or had Dainn simply seen her and known, as she would have known him in any guise, anywhere?

  It didn’t matter. Stopping him was more important than her fragile hope of reconciliation, of finding some way to forgive him. She couldn’t afford the weakness of pity or compassion or hope. Not even for herself.

  “I see you have no answer,” she said. “Go slinking back to your master, cur, and perhaps you may leave this place alive.”

  Closing her eyes to shut out the sight of his face, Mist gathered her magic, infusing it with all Freya’s arrogance and contempt. She turned it about and pushed outward, slamming Dainn with the “anti-glamour.”

  She heard him gasp, but when she opened her eyes she saw him braced against the magic like a deep-rooted tree holding fast in a savage storm. No one else in the room had been affected; none of the guests noticed the brutal attack.

  But Dainn’s eyes told her what she needed to know.

  “Where is Mist?” he asked, his voice little more than a rasp.

  Playing her role to the hilt, Mist pursed her lips in displeasure at the elf’s continued defiance. “Why does it matter to you?” she asked scornfully. “Surely you know that she despises you even more than I do, and would gladly kill you just as swiftly.”

  Dainn took an uneven step back. “Then she still lives,” he said.

  Mist suppressed a frown of confusion. “Foolhardy Mist may be,” she said, “but you may assure Loki that my daughter is still under my protection.”

  “Protection,” Dainn said, his upper lip curling in a way that made the back of her neck prickle. “But for how much longer, Lady? When will you finish it? Or has she become too strong?”

  The words made no sense to Mist, and she could see that Dainn regretted speaking them. He backed away another few steps, and Konur eased into the gap, placing himself between her and Dainn.

  “Leave the Lady in peace, nidingr,” Konur said, haughty disdain in every line of his body.

  “By all means,” Loki said, coming up behind Dainn, “leave her in peace.” He rested his hand on Dainn’s shoulder, his fingers biting into the black wool of Dainn’s jacket. “She has her business to attend to, and we have ours.”

  Dainn held Mist’s gaze for a long, stubborn moment, refusing to be moved by Loki’s hard grip. Konur stood directly in front of him and stared into his eyes. It seemed that something elvish passed between them—an unspoken message, a warning, a promise.

  And then Dainn was turning to leave, wrenching himself free of Loki’s hold. He strode away, head down, as if he didn’t care where he was going.

  Loki clucked his tongue. “I believe you have hurt his feelings, Lady Sow. Now I shall have to console him.”

  He strolled after Dainn, clearly in no hurry. Mist clenched her fists behind her back, wondering how much he had overheard.

  Why would Dainn ask if Mist is still alive? she wondered. And why had he reacted with such hostility to the idea that Freya was protecting her daughter?

  “What did he mean, Konur?” she murmured when he moved close enough to hear. “What did he expect Freya to finish? Why did he ask if I’d—if Mist had become too strong?”

  “I don’t know,” Konur said, staring the way Dainn and Loki had gone.

  But Dainn had warned her about Freya many times before. It almost sounded as if he’d expected Freya to do something to her.

  Something that might even kill her.

  Mist laughed aloud at her own paranoia, letting the sound rise above the drone of conversation. Now she had peoples’ attention again, and men and women were converging on her, relieving her of the need to dwell on yet another ugly thought.

  “I’ll be all right now,” she said to Konur as a group of local politicians wended their purposeful way toward her. “The mayor’s circle of jerks is coming this way. I’ll see if I can learn anything about the protest from them.”

  “Take care,” Konur said. “Most of the men are Loki’s, as is the mayor. Loki may have sent them to distract and expose you.”

  The elf-lord was gone by the time the mayor’s hangers-on reached her. She was familiar with all their names, reputations, and recent activities, but had never met any of them in person. There wasn’t a single woman among them. Two of the men—one a state senator, the other a member of the mayor’s inner circle—were secretly in Freya’s camp.

&
nbsp; None of them, of course, knew that they were involved in anything more than a mortal struggle for power and control of a single city. The waters of Midgardian politics as a whole had become increasingly treacherous and difficult to navigate—a fact Loki had taken full advantage of—and reactionary ideologies provided sufficient rationale for the most extreme beliefs and behavior on the part of men like the mayor.

  Pretending that they were all on the best of terms, Mist managed to make “appropriate” conversation with the men, parrying suggestive comments with ribald remarks of her own. Most of them were thinking more with their private parts than with their minds. The verbal foreplay came more and more naturally to her, and she could only assume that her use of the glamour had made it easier to slip into Freya’s mind-set.

  That wasn’t something she was proud of. And in spite of her efforts, she couldn’t learn anything new about the protest.

  “Ah, here she is,” a jovial male voice boomed as another man pushed his way in among the others. He was tall, a little portly, and on the fading edge of handsome, with a toothy grin and friendly manner.

  But his eyes were hard, and Mist knew this man wasn’t one Freya could twist around her finger, glamour or no. Mayor Walker was an opportunist who wouldn’t be where he was today without Loki. He’d sacrificed both pride and independence for a shot at real power … at least until he had what he wanted.

  That was how Loki controlled him. First the carrot and then the stick—allow this mortal to believe he was the one with all the bright ideas, and that the people of San Francisco were happy with the changes he’d brought to the city. Then the pointed reminders that without Loki, he’d quickly fall back into obscurity with the next election.

  If there was one.

  “Mayor Walker,” Mist said, casting him a half-lidded glance. “I didn’t know we’d have the pleasure of seeing you tonight.”

  He made a show of looking around as the other men stepped back. “‘We’? I don’t see any of your usual companions. Or did you mean it in the royal sense?”

  “I should never wish to tread on the hem of your cape, Your Honor.”