by Eva Chase
We really were trapped in here, as utterly as we could be.
I gritted my teeth against my nerves. My gaze slid down, skimming across the town. Before my eyes, the buildings, the courtyard, the square closer to the orchard—they all wavered. Just for an instant, as if something darker had rippled through them.
My body froze except for the sweep of my wings keeping me aloft.
“Did you see that?” I said.
Loki tipped his head to one side. “See what?”
“Asgard.” I motioned to the city. “For a second, it was like something flickered past the illusion. Maybe the place we really are?”
Loki considered the ground below. His eyes narrowed. “I’ve got the sharpest eyesight of all of us, and nothing like that has caught my attention.” His gaze came back to me. “You don’t have solid memories of the city to make the illusion completely real to you. Just like you didn’t with Odin. You may be our key to finding our way through this prison, pixie.”
Wonderful. Five divine beings around me, and I was the one who held the key. “No pressure or anything, right?”
He chuckled and held out his hand. “I think we can at least say the sky is not our escape route. Let’s rejoin the others.”
Freya darted down with us as we descended. Thor, Hod, and Baldur were waiting in the courtyard near the fountain. The goddess flew straight to join them, but Loki brought us down to earth at the edge of the marble-tiled space.
My feet hit the ground, and I willed my wings back into my body. I might take a weird sort of comfort in them now, but what I’d said to Thor about conserving energy applied to all of us.
“Ari,” Loki said, and I turned. “Do you remember why I called you a pixie when we first met?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Because I’m small and I’ve got wings?”
He grinned. “Well, there’s that, and there’s also that pixies have more fight in every bit of their little bodies than any other being I’ve ever met. You don’t want to tangle with a pixie. And you’ve already proven that no one should want to tangle with you.”
He brushed his lithe fingers over my hair, sending a pleasurable shiver through me despite the tension balled in my stomach. When his head dipped, mine tilted automatically to meet his kiss. In the moment when his lips found mine, his fiery heat coursing over me, my nerves rang with all the power my new body contained, the power he and the other gods had given me. I didn’t care that they might be watching. If anything happened between me and any of the others—and I’d already shared a kiss with Hod—it wasn’t going to be under the pretense that they were my one and only.
Loki didn’t linger in the kiss. He pulled back with a smaller smile that felt more private, more personal somehow. Then he swiveled toward the others with a graceful sweep of his arm. “No blasting out, no blasting off, but I think we may have the kernel of our answer. If we simply—”
I caught a flash of darkness at the corner of my vision. My head snapped around.
With a chorus of snarls, a pack of enormous monstrous wolves lunged across the courtyard’s marble tiles toward us.
4
Aria
The nearest wolfish creature slammed into me before I had time to react, shoving me away from Loki and pinning me to the ground with a gnash of teeth and a scraping of claws. The smack of my spine against the hard tiles shocked a cry from my throat. Pain seared across my chest with the slash of its claws.
I lashed out with all my god-given strength, ramming a knee into the beast’s gut, whacking my forearm as hard as I could into its throat. Spittle dribbled onto me as its jaws lunged closer. I punched it in the muzzle. A sputter of the lightning I’d been able to intermittently summon sparked from my hand.
The monster flinched, relaxing its hold just long enough for me to heave it off me and scramble away. Blood dribbled down my shirt from where its claws had raked across my collarbone. The burn of that wound faded away behind the rush of adrenalin and the thudding of my pulse.
Wargs. That was what the gods called these over-sized, overly vicious wolves that held an almost human intelligence in their yellow eyes. I’d tangled with three of them in an abandoned factory yard a week ago, a battle that had ended with my first real kill and left me shaken. It might be my memory Muninn had stolen the creatures from.
Stolen them and multiplied them. As I urged my wings to release from my back and yanked my switchblade from my jeans pocket, I counted ten wargs facing off against me and my godly companions. Freya was swinging her sword at one’s snapping jaws, Hod tangling another with thick strands of shadow. Baldur blasted one back with a surge of light he propelled from his hands. Loki flung a ball of fire into the face of another while Thor barged into the pack’s midst with a roar, his hammer cracking ribs here, a skull there.
When Mjolnir bashed the one warg’s skull, the creature didn’t simply fall. It crumbled into dust like so many things in this fake Asgard.
I lifted off the ground with a sweep of my wings, just in time to escape the snap of the warg that had already tackled me once. It growled and tried to leap after me. The dust of the one Thor had killed didn’t rise again like the rubble of the fireplace or the splinters of Valhalla’s table. I guessed the raven woman didn’t have enough power to keep illusions that acted like living, moving beings going forever.
The warg sprang at me again, its glinting claws swiping just below my feet. If it’d been a real living being, I would have felt the stirring of its life energy inside its body. I’d have been able to open up the shadows inside my valkyrie body and claim that life like valkyries once did as they decided the winners and losers on a battlefield. But the monster beneath me radiated nothing but hollowness. Just a construct, like Loki had said. A puppet, with Muninn pulling the strings somewhere hidden.
A puppet that had left me battered and bleeding. I gritted my teeth and dove. It wasn’t really alive, so I didn’t need to feel the slightest twinge of conscience over slaughtering it.
The warg twisted around, but I was too fast. I stabbed my blade straight down into the top of its head. A choked whine broke from its mouth, and then it was disintegrating like its companion.
I whipped my knife hand up and whirled around. Another warg was barreling toward me. I dodged, not quite fast enough to escape its maw. Its teeth sank into the edge of my wing and tore. That pain seared sharp through my nerves. I gasped as I wrenched my wing free.
I aimed a kick at the monster, slamming my heel into its cheek. The monster reeled to the side, right into the fiery slash of Loki’s dagger. He wrenched the curved blade deeper into the creature’s chest, and it crumpled into another heap of dust.
The trickster wiped his hands with a grimace and raised his head. The polished tiles of the courtyard were strewn with more piles of dust. Freya was just lifting her sword from the warg she must have taken down, sweat-damp tendrils of hair clinging to the sides of her smooth face. Thor walloped the last of the pack with his hammer, sending the beast skidding into the base of the fountain, where it crumbled too.
We stood there in the stillness, no sound but the rasp of our breaths, waiting to see if the battle was really over. Thor glanced at me and made a strangled sound. He strode over, his gaze fixed on the gashes across my collarbone.
“The raven is going to pay for that,” he growled.
Now that the rush from the fight was fading, the throbbing of the wounds prickled deeper. I clenched my jaw against the pain. Baldur came up beside Thor, and I stepped toward him, knowing what he was offering without him needing to say a word. He’d healed my wounds enough times in the last couple weeks. It was basically becoming a hobby for him.
The god of light gave me a soft smile and laid his hand over the wounds. His power washed over me with a flood of warmth and an itchy tingling where the skin was knitting back together. When he lowered his arm, nothing remained of the cuts except dark pink lines like scars, but even those would fade in a few days. Unfortunately, I’d had to learn that
from experience.
The neckline of my tank top was ripped, and the white fabric streaked with blood. Not much I could do about that without a convenient wardrobe on hand. I wet my lips. Construct or not, that thing could have killed me if I’d reacted any slower, if it’d caught my stomach instead of my chest. It looked like the raven woman wasn’t content to just let me starve to death.
The wargs had attacked us right after I’d told Loki I’d seen her illusion waver. Right after he’d reminded me that I could be a real threat. My fingers tightened around the handle of my switchblade.
My older brother Francis had given me that weapon when I was just a kid, to protect myself against the monsters in our life back then—the ones in human form. Back then, I’d failed to protect myself with it. I’d failed to protect him when maybe I could have saved his life.
I wasn’t going to fail the gods who’d given me a new life. I sure as hell wasn’t going to fail Petey. I’d promised to be there for him, whether he remembered that promise or not. If the raven thought she was going to break me, she had another thing coming.
“Muninn!” I shouted, swiveling to take in the city beyond the courtyard. “Stealing from my head now? What else did you see? What exactly have I done to deserve the way you’re trying to beat us down here, huh? I’ve never hurt anyone except people already trying to hurt me. What’s your excuse, you asshole?”
“Ari,” Baldur said softly, but I ignored him. This wasn’t the right time for peace-making.
We needed to tear her down. Was there any way to weaken her concentration? If I could shake her, that might shake the whole illusion around us. Open up a way for us to escape.
I pictured the woman I’d met when she’d approached Loki and me offering her help. Slim with big dark eyes and mussed but glossy black hair. The little bird-ish quirks she kept even in human form, in the cock of her head and the slight hoarseness to her voice. What would rattle her? She hadn’t cared about Thor calling her a coward. But she’d once been the Allfather’s constant companion while he oversaw all of Asgard—the real thing. She’d flown through every realm, gathering memories from all over.
“Is this all you do now?” I called out, turning again. “Rule over a little jail for six people? No time to stretch your wings, to pay attention to anything else. Who put you up to this—the dark elves? Why did you let them stick you with such a shitty job?”
Loki sounded as if he’d smothered a chuckle. And a dark flicker caught my eye near the hall opposite Valhalla. A movement like the flap of a wing.
My pulse stuttered with a sudden certainty. She was here. She was right in here with us, lurking behind her constructs. She probably had to be to keep them going—close enough to steal the memories she needed from our heads.
I jogged up the path to the hall, scanning the stone walls, the thatched roof, the solid oak door. “You know I’m right. I bet you can see that too. I don’t know what happened between you and Odin, why you’re doing this, but you know it has nothing to do with me. This is just cruelty. Are you a monster like those wargs you sent at us, Muninn? Are you—”
Another flash of dark feathers shimmered against the pale stones. I threw myself toward it. My hand closed around nothing but air. Then, with a creaking groan, the entire front wall of the building tipped toward me.
I stumbled backward with a yelp, throwing up my arms. The wings I hadn’t retracted yet arced over me too. They might have been the only thing that saved me.
The stones pummeled me, and I fell to my hands and knees. The feathered appendages protruding from my back took the worst of the battering. An ache spread through them, but my more fragile head and ribs just pressed against the ground, unbashed.
“Ari!” someone shouted. There was a grunt and a thud as Thor must have started clearing the rubble. I tested my wings against the stones that had buried them and winced.
One of those stones was heaved off me, and I managed to shove another to the side. My wings retracted with a pained tremor. I kicked at the rocks on my legs.
An arm wrapped around my shoulders, helping to tug me free from the rest of the rubble. Hod’s arm. I crawled out into the press of his embrace, the salty and faintly smoky smell of him surrounding me.
“I’m okay,” I mumbled against his shirt.
He let out a shaky laugh. “Half of a damned building just fell on you, valkyrie, and that’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?” He pulled back, his blind gaze managing to settle on mine as if he were looking back at me, his fingers tracing down the sides of my face. My breath hitched when his thumb brushed a scrape on my cheek. His jaw clenched. “You are hurt.”
“I’ve been worse,” I said. “Next time she’ll have to try throwing the whole building at me.” When his expression didn’t shift, I added, “You want to kiss it better?”
“Ari,” he muttered, but the glimmer that lit in his eyes and the sudden flush of heat between us suggested that yeah, maybe he did. And I would have been perfectly okay with that. But he straightened up instead, helping me to my feet with him. The others had gathered around us. I suspected Hod wasn’t quite the exhibitionist Loki liked to be.
The trickster gave us an amused look, but there was a serious note in his jaunty voice. “What was that about, pixie? Did you see something else we couldn’t? Because whatever happened there, the raven obviously wasn’t pleased with you.”
“I saw her,” I said, brushing grit from my arms. My legs felt a bit wobbly, but my valkyrie strength was already steadying me despite the various bruises forming on my limbs. “She’s here with us. Listening to everything we say.” I raised my chin. “Which means she can get to us, but it should also mean we can get to her.”
5
Hod
I stepped away from the rubble of the collapsed hall—one that in the real Asgard had been Bragi’s, if my mental map of the city hadn’t failed me—and almost tripped over a chunk of stone. I’d rushed toward the crash and Ari’s cry so quickly I hadn’t taken the time to chart out the lay of the land with the senses I did have at my disposal. Now it was a maze of uncertain obstructions. It was a miracle I’d managed to make it to her without falling on my face in the first place.
Ari’s hand caught mine, though I’d already found my balance. I couldn’t say I minded the warmth of her fingers curling around mine, but at the same time the reason she’d reached for me sent a wash of shame through me.
We were the gods here. We should be shielding her, not the other way around.
I should at least manage to stay on my feet without her help.
I squeezed her hand, letting myself revel for a few moments in the gentle strength of her grip, and let go. Not without a pang of loss, even though she was still right beside me.
There was something developing between us, something we hadn’t had much chance to talk about what with the battle with the dark elves and now this. I wasn’t sure I’d want to tell her just how much I hoped it could be just yet. She’d been happy for a little time with me, when we’d sat together and kissed as she’d steeled herself to leave her brother behind. She deserved to be happy. I never wanted anything I felt to turn into another burden for her.
“Hmm,” Loki was saying. I stiffened automatically at the mischief in his tone. You never knew what schemes the trickster was going to come up with when he started sounding like that. His clothes rustled as he swung around. “I think I’d like to take a look at the site of our missing bridge.”
“What, you think you’re going to summon it now?” I said, testing my feet against the ground. Another hunk of stone lay to my left. Pebbles scattered under the sole of my right shoe. “Even if this isn’t the real Asgard, I doubt Muninn is going to let you play Allfather.” As much as Loki would probably enjoy lording that role over all of us.
“I may have a plan,” he said in his sly way. Not telling us what that plan was, of course. That would spoil his bizarre version of fun. “Come on. We’ll all want to be ready if it works.”
Feet rasped against the ground as the others moved to follow him. My body balked. “Ari saw the raven here. Don’t you think we should investigate that sighting first?”
“I’m not sure you’re the best person to be making decisions based on sight, dear nephew,” Loki called what sounded like over his shoulder.
My teeth gritted. Before I could snap out another retort, Ari leaned closer to me, a warmth and a whiff of her sweetly sharp scent. “Let’s just see what he’s got in mind,” she said. “I doubt Muninn stuck around here after she tossed that wall on me anyway. I know you and Loki don’t really get along, but from the stories I keep hearing, it sounds like he is pretty good at figuring his way out of sticky situations.”
“He is, when it suits him,” I muttered, but I started to move. After a couple steps, I stubbed my toe on another errant stone and winced.
“Do you want me to—” Ari started.
“No,” I said quickly, before she could offer to act as guide. I’d lived in Asgard for centuries upon centuries, even if it’d been a while since I’d been back there. I wasn’t going to be led around this facsimile of my home like an invalid.
I summoned a swath of shadow to me, forming it into a narrow chilly length in my hands. Like a cane. Still not ideal, still not how I wanted our valkyrie seeing me—this reminder of what I lacked—but at least it would let me avoid any further obstacles Muninn threw in our path without assistance.
The others’ footsteps had already moved away from us. I swept the cane of shadows over the ground as I strode after them, stepping around the rubble it caught on. The breeze was washing away the dust of the collapse, leaving only the crisp meadow-like smell that was far too much like my real home.
