by Eva Chase
Scratching that itch with Loki the other morning definitely hadn’t sated my hunger. I didn’t think it’d even taken the edge off. If anything, part of me wanted to find out what it could be like with each of the others even more now. As if this were even close to the time or place for that.
“Loki should be around here somewhere,” Baldur said. “Possibly two of him as you can see two of me. And there may be another Hod. The more of them we can spot, the better.”
“On it.” I gave him a little salute and pushed myself off the ground with a flap of my wings. They did come in handy at times like this.
Someone in the crowd chucked an axe at the memory-Baldur. It glanced off his skin, and the gods all cheered. I grimaced at them, not that they seemed to be able to see me, and soared over the ring.
Freya’s bright head came into view. She hustled over to Hod where he was circling the crowd. Her expression was already tensed. They all knew what was happening here, or about to happen. All of them except me. Whatever it was, it was clearly going to be awful.
I wheeled, and a shock of pale red hair gleamed between the shadows of the buildings. Loki sauntered out of a side path at the other side of the courtyard. He took in the scene, and his lips pressed flat.
When even he couldn’t find anything amusing in a situation, you knew it was really bad.
“Hod!” I called with a gesture toward the trickster, and then remembered the blind god wouldn’t be able to see my pointing arm. But Thor had heard me too. He hustled around the crowd to join Loki, and the two of them hurried to where the other three had stopped. I dove down, my feet touching the ground just as all five of the gods met up.
“You haven’t found the spot yet?” Loki was saying.
Hod had bristled. “After all this time, with all the activity, it’s hard to mark it exactly.”
“Well, come on then. Obviously I have to do everything around here.”
Loki stalked off around the ring, and the rest of us hurried after him. His gaze twitched from side to side. Then his shoulders tensed, and he sped up to a lope.
I saw why a second later. The sun caught on another head of pale red hair, this one partway through the crowd. The second Loki. I propelled myself off the ground with my wings for a better view.
Not just a second Loki. Another Hod, as youthful as always but with hair falling a little longer around his face, stood next to him. The memory-Loki was guiding him forward with a hand on his elbow. The memory-Hod was clutching a small branch, a few leaves as dark green as his eyes still clinging to it. The tip had been carved to a point.
The real Loki cursed and shoved his way into the crowd, but the other him and the other Hod had just reached the inner edge of the ring. That Loki bent close to Hod’s ear as if to murmur something to him. He drew back the other god’s hand, the one that held the branch, and gave a brisk nod.
My Loki lunged forward, grabbing the other Loki by the arm. The other Hod had already flung the branch forward. It spun through the air. The memory-Baldur turned to face his brother, and the branch struck him right over the heart.
Struck him and stabbed into his chest, blood welling up all around it.
A choked sound broke from my throat. I dove down, but Baldur’s legs were already sagging. The god of light collapsed on the ground. Blood pulsed from the wound to pool on the marble tiles. Slowing as his heart stopped.
I hit the ground so hard I fell to my knees. They smacked the hard stone, but I hardly felt the impact. Baldur’s head lolled. His bright blue eyes were glazed. My stomach heaved.
The crowd around us had gone quiet. A wail cut through the stunned silence. More and more voices joined it, with gasps and sobs, in a vast chorus of mourning.
I’d only dragged in one ragged breath, and the wails cut off as quickly as they’d risen up. I lifted my head. The crowd had disappeared. There was no one left but the real gods and the Baldur from their memories, lying there in that pool of his blood. Looking very, very dead.
He couldn’t really have— I dropped my face into my hands, my heart thudding painfully hard. That sense I’d had that he was hiding something. The conversations about burying unpleasant memories so deep you never had to face them. That comment he’d made, with such a strange note in his voice it’d stuck with me: I wasn’t there for Ragnarok.
Because he’d died before it ever happened.
Died… because Hod had thrown some special branch at him. Because Loki had guided the god of darkness there.
My gaze jerked up. The real Loki, my Loki, was standing in the courtyard where he’d tried to stop his old self. A shadow had dulled his normally brilliant eyes. His jaw worked.
A thump at the edge of the courtyard drew both our attentions. The real Baldur had turned away, his hand braced against the front of one of the halls as if holding his body up. His shoulders shook and tensed and shook again.
I can feel it, he’d said just a few minutes ago. I can feel all of it. What was he feeling now? Was he dying like his counterpart? I pushed myself off the ground.
Hod spun toward Loki, his face even harder than usual.
Loki spread his hands. “I tried,” he said. “I tried to stop it.”
“Not that there would have been anything to stop if you hadn’t done it in the first place,” the dark god spat out.
My legs wobbled. “Would someone please tell me what the hell just happened?” I said. “Is Baldur okay? Why was anyone throwing anything at him? How could that little branch…”
“I’ll be—I’ll be all right,” Baldur forced out, but his voice was weak and ragged. Hod glanced toward him, shifting and then tensing as if he wanted to go to his twin but didn’t at the same time.
Thor stepped toward me. He set a steadying hand on my back. “A long time ago—not that long before Ragnarok—Baldur and his mother, the goddess Frigg, started having dreams about him dying. Frigg was so worried for him she went around the realms asking every object to vow it would never hurt him. But she passed over the mistletoe. She said it seemed too young and meek to hurt anyone.”
The initial scene made a little more sense, knowing that. “So everyone figured they’d test out those vows?” I said. From what I’d seen, it’d worked. Nothing had hurt Baldur in the slightest.
“Like a game,” Loki said in an edged voice. “A stupid, careless game. Let’s pretend to kill the god so recently terrified of dying.”
“Better than actually killing him,” Freya said.
“I didn’t, did I?” the trickster said, whirling around. “I brought the mistletoe. I offered it to Hod. It seems to me he willingly took it. He wanted to join in, and I let him.”
“You knew it might really hurt him,” Hod snapped back. “Who sharpened its end into a spear? You didn’t tell me what I was holding.”
“You didn’t ask. Did you even really want to know?”
An angry flush swept across Hod’s pale face. “You can’t be suggesting I was hoping for that outcome.”
“How should I know?” Loki demanded. “The bitterness was wafting off you like the stink of a skunk. It was a stupid game played by stupid gods trying not to see the world was on the verge of collapsing, and I gave you the means to open their eyes.”
“You killed him,” Hod said. “You killed him with my hand, and for that they killed me too, and you went off merrily free. And we all know how you repaid the rest of Asgard.”
Loki waved a hand at him. “Look at you even now. What matters to you more: having a go at me, or looking after your beloved brother?”
“You…” The word came out strangled. Hod threw himself at the trickster.
“Stop!” I cried out. Thor caught his brother by the shoulder. He glowered at Loki.
Loki looked from the two of them to the shaking Baldur and then to Freya, who was watching the scene with accusing eyes. He turned to me. There was a wildness in his movements, in his face, that I’d never seen before, desperate and vicious. I took a step back.
“It r
eally happened like that, didn’t it?” I said. “You really killed him.” Not a trick. Not a little trouble he could talk his way back out of. Cold, deliberate murder. And he was defending it even now.
My stomach lurched again. Loki’s expression shuttered.
“Fine,” he said. “This is the way it always is, the way it always was. As if you had the slightest idea… Enjoy your high horses in your glass houses.”
He spun on his heel and swept away on his shoes of flight. Hod looked as if he might try to chase him, but he moved instead to his twin. Freya caught Thor’s gaze and shook her head as if to say, What a shame, but what else could we expect?
My gut was still knotted. I swayed back another step, and found myself flipping backward out of the courtyard, into the darkness of Muninn’s mind.
13
Aria
I stumbled straight into a room I guessed was a study. A big oak desk stood at one end, surrounded by bookshelves. At the other, where I was now standing, two old-fashioned maroon armchairs faced each other with a little bow-legged table between them. My sneakers sank into the rich pile of the rug beneath them. A slight smoky smell hung in the air, but this time it was wood smoke, not the chemical ash I’d noticed before. From the fireplace in the corner, I guessed.
Whose memory was this? The furniture looked human-made, not the grand scale I’d seen on Asgard, but it was smaller and cozier than the study in the gods’ Midgard home that seemed to be mostly Hod’s domain. I’d never been in a house other than that one that even had a study.
I turned to try the door and found the wall where there should be one was solid, nothing but yellow-gold rose-print wallpaper. A claustrophobic itch crawled across my shoulders despite the room’s cozy warmth.
A black shape fluttered past me. I jerked around to see a raven land on the top of one of the arm chairs. It cocked its head at me in a much too familiar gesture. Then, with a twitch of its body, the bird transformed into a woman.
Muninn settled into the seat of the chair, the skirt of her loose black dress tucked under her slim palm legs, her dark eyes watching me as intently as when she’d been in raven form. My pulse hiccupped. This whole time, she’d been hiding away from us, casting me off again every time I caught a glimpse—or bringing buildings down on me. What did it mean that she was revealing herself now?
“Valkyrie,” she said in her sweetly hoarse voice. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“Well, for starters, after everything you’ve thrown at me so far, I feel safer on my feet,” I said.
She blinked at me as if she didn’t totally understand what I was referring to. She might have looked like a person right now, and she was definitely as smart and aware as any human being I’d met, but from what I’d seen of her so far, her mind was as much raven as it was human. I wasn’t sure how much concepts like fair play or compassion applied where she was concerned.
“I promise no harm will come to you in this room,” she said. “And that I will not send you out of it until we’re finished speaking.”
The words rang with a magical force that sent an eerie tingling over my skin. I’d spent enough time in the company of gods to believe she was bound to that vow.
As much as all the things Baldur’s mother had begged had been bound to their vow? My stomach clenched all over again, remembering the scene she’d torn me out of. But my body was still mottled with aches and pains, my legs a little wobbly. Sitting, if I had that promise, might not be such a bad thing.
I sank into the other chair, my gaze never leaving the raven woman. She flicked her sleek black hair back from her face with a fluttery gesture and considered me in return.
“Would you like something to eat?” she asked.
Despite all the tension in me and the horror of what I’d just witnessed, a pang shot through me. I licked my lips. “Something I can actually eat?”
“Of course. I’m not that horrible a host.” She motioned to the table, and a silver plate appeared. It held a dinner roll stuffed with cheese and sliced meat, a bunch of grapes, and a raspberry tart.
Saliva sprang into my mouth as the bready scent reached my nose. I managed not to snatch up the sandwich but to grasp it firmly and raise it calmly to my mouth. I braced myself as I bit down—and my teeth sank into real bread, real cheddar, real ham.
In a matter of minutes, I’d gulped the whole thing down, the grapes and the tart too. Who knew when Muninn might decide to take them away? I couldn’t help licking the last crumbs from my fingers, since I couldn’t count on her being this generous again. Somewhere in there a glass of water had appeared on the table too. I grabbed in and drained it.
Muninn sat quietly, watching me, through the meal. When I finished, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, she gave me a small smile.
“Refreshed?” she said.
“Yes.” I hesitated. “Why did you give me that? Why am I here?”
She shrugged. “I simply wanted to talk. You’ve seen a lot since you arrived here. What the gods of Asgard are capable of. How they make their fun. How they settle their grievances. Not quite as pretty a picture as I’d guess they painted you of the place, is it?”
“They hadn’t told me all that much about it,” I said honestly. Had she tossed us into those memories for that reason too? Not just to torment each of us with glimpses of the past, theoretical or actual, but to put on some sort of demonstration? Just like she’d tried to paint Valhalla in the negative light of her memories. My hands clenched in my lap.
“I can’t imagine you’re very impressed either way,” she said. “And there’s so much more I could show you. Ages and ages of petty in-fighting and prejudice, callousness and violence. That’s what the gods are made of, it seems.”
“All of that was a long time ago,” I said. “They haven’t acted anything like that in the time I’ve been with them.”
“Other than just now, when I made them remember their past?” Muninn leaned forward. “They’ve put on a little show for you. For their precious valkyrie and her precious mission to find Odin. They don’t give a damn about you, any more than Loki gave a damn about Baldur’s life, any more than Thor gave a damn about the endless lives he slaughtered, any more than Odin gave a damn whether his warriors were really all that worthy.”
“Is that why you’re putting us through all this? Because you don’t like things they’ve done? It’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black to accuse them of being cruel. How many times could any of us have been killed by the stuff you created in there?”
The raven woman didn’t look fazed by my accusation. “If you had just sat tight, accepted the realm I’d given you, I wouldn’t have needed to do anything at all. But you were trying to break out. Measures require countermeasures.”
I had the feeling I wasn’t going to convince her of my point of view any time soon. “Okay,” I said. “Fine. That still doesn’t answer why I’m here.” Or why she’d shut us in this prison in the first place, not that I expected her to tell me about that.
Her smile came back. “I’m hoping you’ll see reason,” she said. “You’ve made your feelings about the holding cell I’ve created very clear. And it’s true, I have no real dispute with you. You simply happened to be in poor company. So I wanted to make you an offer.”
My body stiffened against the chair’s soft padding. “What kind of offer?” I pressed when she paused.
“Leave them,” she said, her eyes intent on me. “Let them deal with their memories alone. They suffer nothing but what they brought on themselves anyway. What I do isn’t easy on my own. I could use a valkyrie on my side. They don’t deserve your loyalty.”
I caught a laugh. “And you do?”
“I would earn it. I don’t expect something for nothing as they so often do. You’d have your freedom too. You wouldn’t serve me—we’d be allies. Equals.”
“Do you really think after all the times you lied to us, all the danger you’ve put us in, that I could ever trust you?”
&nb
sp; She blinked, more slowly this time. “I can admit that you shouldn’t have taken their punishment with them. You can escape it now. If you choose to return to them… I do what I have to in order to keep the holding cell stable. I can’t promise anything about what you might see from your own mind.”
My thoughts tripped back to Petey in his new home. A shiver ran down my spine. “If you use my brother again—”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Which one? There are so many things I’ve seen in your memories that you might want to avoid.”
I swallowed hard. This was an offer, sure. It was also a threat. Just thinking about all the things from my past she might decide to dredge up if I refused chilled me down to the bone.
I didn’t have to find out what else she’d put me through. I could accept her offer. Leave the gods and goddess behind. See what awaited me outside this room that I had to assume wasn’t Muninn’s real surroundings either. Maybe I’d have better opportunities to get the others free from the outside.
Or was I just thinking that to justify sparing myself?
I shifted in the chair, resisting the urge to draw my knees up in front of me like a child. “How would it work? This alliance? How could I know I could trust you to keep your word?” How are you planning on making sure I keep mine?
Muninn spread her dainty hands. “A simple vow should cover all concerns. On both sides. We’ll both want some security in the deal, I assume.” Her eyes glinted as if she’d read my thoughts as well as my memories.
If I took a vow of loyalty, I’d be stuck with her. And it would probably stop me from doing anything to help the gods she was against. I sucked in my lower lip.
Every part of me balked at the idea of wading back into those memories—both mine and those of the gods. I didn’t know what to think of Loki or Hod after the scene I’d witnessed. What other secrets did Thor and Freya and even Baldur have that I might not have realized yet? They’d all hidden a lot from me, hadn’t they?
But even as my anxiety gnawed at me to cut myself loose, other sorts of memories surfaced. Hod sitting with me on the roof across from Petey’s foster family’s house as I said my good-byes, offering words to steady me, taking me in his arms when I’d reached out to him. Baldur healing the many wounds I’d taken with his normally unshakeable smile. Freya talking through my discomfort with me, sharing her own frustration that she couldn’t do more for her husband. Thor lending me his hammer so I could burn off some of my tension, kissing me just now with such unexpected vulnerability.
