by Eva Chase
I slowed as I turned to face him, but I took one step back and another. A different sort of tension had wound around my gut. While I’d wanted to find one of the gods, I wasn’t sure I was ready to face this one. Loki looked a lot calmer than the last time I’d seen him, but the image of his vicious expression, the cutting edge to his words, lingered way too clearly. How could we fight together if I couldn’t trust him not to stab me in the back?
“From what I remember, you were the one who ran off on us,” I said.
He grimaced. “Somehow I doubt I’d have made the situation any better if I’d stayed. I thought I was ready, even if she dredged that up, but… Ari, it wasn’t the way it looked.”
“You didn’t set up Hod to murder his own brother?”
“I—” He cut himself off with a rough sigh. “It’s complicated. I’m just asking you not to judge from that one moment when the entire picture is so much larger.”
“Complicated,” I repeated. “I can’t really think of any complications that would make doing that okay. You know, Hod said the same thing, and I was starting to think he was just excusing away hating you for no good reason. But seeing that, I’m surprised he can even stand to be around you.”
Loki winced. He held out his hand to me. “Pixie…”
The cajoling note in his voice wrenched at me, too hard. I wasn’t here for him to sweet talk me into sympathy. I didn’t trust myself not to be swayed when I shouldn’t be. He was too damned slick.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t call me nicknames, don’t act like I’m on your side here. If you want to help find a way to break this place down, great. Let’s stick to that. I want to get out of here, not talk about ways to justify murder.”
I spun around. Loki hurried after me.
And the vision of my childhood neighborhood split apart with a thunderclap.
I spun faster, my ears ringing, as darkness closed in around me. My pulse thumped. I waited for the dark to spill me out into some new memory… but it didn’t.
My sense of my body stilled, and then started to fade. I was floating there in the black and the cold. What the fuck kind of torture was this?
I flipped around, as much as I still could move with my skin and the muscles beneath it going numb. A thread of sensation ran through my chest. One of my gods, one of the other gods who’d helped form me as a valkyrie, was somewhere close. Not Loki this time, I didn’t think.
A pang of relief reverberated through me. I snatched out toward that impression, latching on and dragging myself toward it with all the strength I had in my body. The cold bit right down to my bones, and a gasp escaped me. I flung myself faster.
My hand closed around an elbow. Firm but cold skin. My fingers skidded up it over a well-muscled arm. I tugged myself closer, and a scent like a fresh spring breeze washed over me.
Baldur. What the hell was this place he’d gotten himself into? I still couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything but the awful endless dark, but I held on. I tipped my head into the nook of his shoulder, and he shifted toward me as if he’d only just noticed I was there. His arm slid around my waist. Cold. Way too cold.
I hooked my own arm around him, pressing myself against him all the way along his body. Trying to share whatever heat I still had left in my body with him. Could he literally freeze to death in this place? Everything I’d seen suggested Muninn would be pleased if her torture ended up killing us. Less hassle for her then.
“Aria,” Baldur murmured, breaking through the dull silence around us. His lips brushed my forehead as he spoke. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“And you should be?” I said. I could feel his heart thumping in his chest now. Warmth started to flow beneath his skin where it touched mine. It had to be his memory. How could we break out of it?
I hugged him closer. “I am here. I’m right here with you. I don’t know how you got this memory, but it’s different now. You’re not alone.”
“I died,” he said raggedly, as if the words had torn through something on the way out. “This is where you go when you die.”
A realm of cold and darkness and nothing else. Oh, God. It was horrible enough for me, and I didn’t thrive on light the way Baldur did. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about where he’d been during Ragnarok.
What did you say to someone who’d died and lingered there so long and now was having to relive that torture all over again? What could possibly convince him this hadn’t been the torment it felt like? Anything I could have said caught in my throat. I opened my mouth, closed it again, and forced myself to go on.
“You survived it once. You’ll survive it again. Like me. Shit happens, and we just keep going. And this time, you’ve got me for company. It’s already warmer like that, right? All you need to do is bring the light.”
He stirred against me, the flex of his muscles sending a much more enjoyable shiver through me. “I tried, but I lose it. It slips away from me.”
“All right.” I bowed my head back against his chest. “Then I’ll just stay here in the dark with you until we make it through.” And hope that would be enough.
His hand closed against my back. His head dipped down over mine, and this time when his lips brushed against my hair, the gesture felt purposeful. It felt like a kiss. My heart skipped. “Baldur…”
He sucked in a breath. I opened my eyes to a faint glow emanating from his form. He was visible now against the dark, hazing the black like one of those translucent jellyfish soaring through the depths of the ocean. Of course, I wouldn’t have wanted a jellyfish to hold me like this.
Something I’d said must have gotten through. We were getting somewhere. The chilly darkness still clutched us tightly, but it was no longer complete.
“There you go,” I said, looking up at him with a smile. “You found the light.”
“You found me,” he said, smiling back, but his expression was more tense, more present, than I was used to. The dreaminess had fallen away. “Thank you.”
“I’m not sure I really did all that much,” I said. “It’s not exactly a painful trial to give you a hug.”
He chuckled. His fingers stroked over my hair and down my back, drawing a trail of warmth through me. “That’s not— I’m glad you’ve been with us, you know. I don’t think I ever said that to you, even though I’ve been thinking it. You have a light you bring to our lives that we’ve needed.”
I didn’t feel all that brilliant, but if the god of light said it, I guessed he should know what he was talking about. And— “Hod said something like that too.”
“Did he?” The soft smile came back. His eyes, even brighter than the rest of him, searched mine. “You feel close to him. And Loki too.”
“Well, I did, anyway.” That flippancy seemed out of place in the moment. I didn’t know what he was looking for in me. Something he needed, to break the rest of the way through this illusion? Honesty had seemed to work best before. “I like all of you. I want all of you.” A flush spread up my neck saying it that openly, but it was true. “Is that a problem?”
For a second, he didn’t seem to know what to say. He cupped my face, lowering his so his nose grazed mine. “Aria… I’ve kept my distance from the rest of the world for so long. I don’t know how to be what you need. But I wish I could be it. So much.”
Longing rang through his words. It called up a matching desire in me. Fuck Muninn. Fuck her stupid prison. Let her see how little I cared about her and her machinations. Maybe I could be the one to shatter this place. This man in front of me—he mattered. And she’d tried to break him all over again.
“You’re always thinking about that, aren’t you?” I said softly. “What other people need. How you can make things easier for them. Keeping us all in harmony. Maybe you should think about what you need, what you want, for a change.”
“What I want,” he murmured. He tipped up my chin, and his mouth found mine.
If Loki brought fire to his kiss, Baldur brought the summer sun. Gentle heat
radiated through me, stirring up a hotter desire low in my belly. I kissed him back with all the longing I had in me, pouring that heat back into him. No chill Muninn sent could cut through this.
Baldur’s breath stuttered as his mouth shifted against mine, tipping to find a deeper angle. My hands slid down to explore the panes of his muscular chest through his shirt. His fingers teased into my hair, their touch sending quivers of delight through my nerves. I kissed him harder. Drowning in the brightness of him was the most amazing thing I could imagine in that moment.
“Aria.” My name came out like a sigh. His mouth traveled away from mine, charting a heated course along my jaw and down the side of my neck. One hand dropped to my waist and started to ease its way up, closer and closer to the curves of my breasts.
I arched into him with a whimper. The darkness was falling back all around us as his glow expanded. A little more, and we might be free, at least of this one place, completely. But even as the movement of his lips left me burning with need, a different sort of chill shot through my nerves.
We were going fast. This was getting dangerous. How far did I want this to go? I wanted him—oh, fuck, yes, I did—but the shadows of memories Muninn had brought far too close to the surface nagged at the edges of my mind.
I must have tensed a little, because Baldur paused. He drew back just a few inches, watching my expression. Hunger still shone in his bright blue eyes, but he said, “You know you don’t have to—”
The darkness flung itself at us, battering our embrace. In a blink, it tore Baldur from my arms.
16
Aria
A fierce resolve rang through me. I was not letting Muninn dictate all the terms here. I’d figured her out, at least in part. We’d warmed her darkness. I could fight back.
Focusing all my energy on Baldur, I threw myself back toward him. My hand caught his ankle. We flipped through the air together and landed in a heap next to each other on cool marble tiles. The impact sent a splinter of pain through my already raw knees. The fabric of my jeans ripped, baring the scraped skin.
I rolled over. We were back in the Asgard I knew, on the main path that led between the halls, the courtyard with its fountain gleaming in the distance. Gleaming under moonlight. Muninn had brought night down over us, a dark stillness that barely unnerved me after the pitch black we’d just tumbled out of.
And she hadn’t gotten her way completely. Baldur was sitting up next to me, his white-blond hair swaying as he shook his head. I’d managed to keep us together, whichever of us she’d meant to send here. I didn’t see anything threatening yet, but at this point I knew better than to trust that impression.
Baldur turned to me, and his bright blue eyes widened. It was the first time he’d been able to see me properly since I’d first caught hold of him in that vast nothingness.
“You’re hurt,” he said. “Let me—”
Rather than keep talking, he simply scooted closer, setting his hand on the side of my knee. Even though the raw skin there was still stinging, his touch sent a flare of heat up my inner thigh.
“I can’t do anything about the tear in your jeans,” he said, the rough note in his voice suggesting he wasn’t totally unaffected either.
“I’ll take whatever you can offer,” I said, and almost bit my tongue.
Baldur gave me a slow smile that looked unexpectedly wicked for a moment, but it vanished as soon as he turned back to the task at hand. With a brush of his fingers, the scrapes on my knees sealed. He took my arm, grimacing at the sight of the bruises there.
“I’ve been building a collection,” I said.
He gave a short soft laugh. “It certainly looks like it. I can mend them at least partly.”
His hand slid up my arm, more warmth flooding me with it, and not just the healing kind. I resisted the urge to nibble at my lip—the lips he’d been kissing just a few minutes ago. When he’d finished with both, his gaze came back to my face.
“Is there anywhere else?”
Fuck me, was there anywhere else I wanted him to touch? Yes and no. How about everywhere?
The thought sent another nervous jitter through me. My fingers curled against the marble tiles. Before I could figure out how I was going to answer, a muffled groan reached my ears. My head jerked around.
“There’s someone else here.”
We scrambled up. The city had fallen silent again, but I set off in the direction the sound had come from. Who was Muninn tormenting here—and what if they’d already been badly hurt? Baldur hurried along beside me, his steps only slowing as we ducked down a narrower passage between two closely spaced halls.
“This is…”
We both came to a halt at the end of the passage. It was the way to the secondary courtyard where we’d last found ourselves in Asgard. The courtyard where Loki had guided Hod to throw the mistletoe spear and kill Baldur in their shared memories.
The moon was low enough that only a little of its light touched the courtyard. Enough to see Baldur’s corpse lying there as it had in the daylight scene. Hod was crouched next to the body, his head bowed. Dark bits scattered the marble tiles beside him. It took me a second to realize they were the snapped pieces of the mistletoe branch.
Baldur had stiffened. As I glanced over at him, he squared his shoulders. With careful steps, he crossed the courtyard to his twin.
“Brother,” he said gently. “What are you doing here?”
Hod lifted his head a few inches. His gaze flicked from Baldur to me where I was coming up behind the other god. I thought his posture tensed even more than it already was. He looked to his twin again.
“The raven put me here—what do you think? Where better?”
Baldur sat down beside him, close enough that if he’d extended his leg completely he could have nudged his own corpse with his foot. “I don’t see anything holding you here.”
“Oh, I tried to leave. Trust me. That didn’t go so well.”
The strain in his voice made my heart ache. I wavered, standing a few feet away, not sure this was my moment to intrude on. It wasn’t as if I had anywhere else to go, though. Maybe I’d see a chance to weaken Muninn’s prison more.
“Are you all right?” Hod added, his gaze still on his twin. “I can’t imagine, going through all that again… I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I also know it still haunts you, the first time.”
Baldur’s face fell. “I’ve tried to set it behind me, to not let what I felt then affect anyone else now. I’m sorry if I—”
“Oh, by the Allfather, I’m not saying that you did anything wrong. Just… We’ve been together since the womb, Baldur. I know when something’s off. And it’s been off from the first moment we found our way back to Asgard.” His mouth tightened. “You live like there’s ten layers of gauze between you and the rest of the world—like if you soften every possible blow in advance, nothing ever has to hurt. No one who’s really all right has to put that much effort into staying that way.”
Baldur wet his lips and looked at his hands resting on his knees.
“Finding the truth in the memories,” I said quietly. “Changing the way you all remember what happened… It’s wearing away at the prison. It’s helping us get out.”
I knew what Hod meant about the layers of protection the light god seemed to have swathed around him. That dreaminess I’d noticed from the first moment I’d seen him, that he carried almost like a suit of armor. But right then, as he inhaled shakily, something in the way he held himself changed. His spine straightened; his jaw firmed. As if he’d willfully sloughed off a few of those layers of armor.
He’d heard me, and he was coming through to fight in his own way.
“You’re right,” Baldur said. “It was… Death broke me. It broke me and then broke the pieces it’d made of me all over again, and somehow they came back together when we woke up in that field in the aftermath, but I’ve never felt as if they quite fit the way they’re meant to anymore. I suppose I’ve spent a
long time trying to avoid acknowledging just how wrong I came back out, hoping it might turn right if I just kept up a good face for long enough.”
“I’m sorry,” Hod said hoarsely. “By the nine realms, I’m sorry.”
Baldur clasped his shoulder. “I never—”
The corpse shuddered. Baldur’s voice cut off with a hitch. The form of his previous self, tunic stiff with dried blood, heaved itself onto its knees. Blood flecked the dead god’s lips and teeth too. The corpse’s eyes were clouded over, an icier blue than Baldur’s real ones had ever been, but they focused on Hod. Words rattled from its throat. “Do you think sorry is enough, brother?”
Oh, God, what horror had the raven come up with now? The actual brothers threw themselves to their feet, stumbling backward to where I stood. Hod stared blindly toward the corpse, his muscles rigid from head to toe. The thing heaved onto its feet and swayed. A putrid sour smell like decaying meat rolled off it, making me choke.
“Draug,” Baldur murmured, his expression tight.
“What?” I said, taking another step back when the corpse lurched toward us.
“Something like your idea of zombies,” Hod said with a rasp. “The dead come back to life. Bloated and rotting and looking to pass on that death.”
His hand balled into a fist, but I knew just looking at him that he’d never hit that thing, no matter that it obviously wasn’t his brother in any way now. The real Baldur had never risen from the dead like that, clearly. Muninn was mixing memories again, merging that death with monsters the gods had dealt with.
The creature raised its arm. It was clutching the mistletoe spear, reformed, the pointed end stained dark red and aimed at Hod. “You struck me down, you stole my life and my light, and you want to say you’re sorry?” the draug warbled.
Hod flinched. Baldur gripped his forearm. “That’s not me,” the light god said. “Those aren’t my thoughts. I—” His jaw clenched. “Maybe I hide that from myself too. Maybe I’ve been angry at you. Maybe some part of me didn’t want to talk to you because then you might have been freed from the pain too. But that wasn’t fair of me. I’m the god of justice, and I know you didn’t deserve that. I know you never would have meant to hurt me.”
