Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies Book 2)

by A. K. Morgen

  “You don’t have a choice,” I answered, tears flowing down my face.

  “Don’t ask me to put his life before yours.”

  “I don’t have a choice either, Dace.” I laughed through my tears, the sound bitter and twisted, choked with emotion. “Sköll and Hati are out there, and they’re not going to stop coming for us because we want them to. They’re not going to forget about me. Sooner or later, attacking from the shadows won’t be enough. They’re going to come for me themselves.”

  “I’ll be there to stop them when they do.”

  “And what happens if they kill you, Dace?”

  He shrugged. “Better me than you.”

  I sighed, sad for him in ways I couldn’t even begin to describe. He just didn’t get it. If saving my life meant the world ended, I didn’t want to be saved. My life wasn’t worth that price. And Dace would rather risk it than deal with his issues. He would force all of us to pay the price.

  That wasn’t right, and he knew it.

  “I’m sorry, Arionna.” He hung his head, his shoulders drooping beneath the weight of desolate emotion coursing through him.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I whispered.

  Ever since I came home from the hospital, we’d struggled with the same issues. No matter how much time passed, nothing changed. I didn’t think anything would ever change for Dace. He believed he was responsible for the awful things happening in my life so he punished himself. He threatened to make himself responsible for the deaths of our friends, just so he didn’t have to deal with the possibility of losing me. I couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t let him become that person.

  No, I wouldn’t let him become that person.

  My life wasn’t worth letting him become a monster.

  Pain shot through our bond, though, whether it came from him or me, I didn’t know.

  “You’re so sure one of us will die,” he whispered. “Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “And if I’m not?” I wiped tears from my eyes. “Are you really willing to let our friends die just so you don’t have to live without me? Don’t be that person, Dace. Please.”

  His thoughts were unclear to me, his expression shuttered as I waited for his answer.

  “I’ll call it off and send Ronan home,” he finally whispered.

  “That’s not the point, Dace. It’s not enough.”

  “Then what is the point?” He ran a hand through his hair, clutching the long strands in obvious frustration. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to stop tormenting yourself. What happened to me isn’t your fault, and you’ve got to let it go.” I stepped forward to rest my head against his chest. I hated fighting with him. I hated when he shut me out and refused to listen to reason even more. “Please.”

  He stood tense for a long moment before his shoulders slumped. “You dream of Hati every night,” he whispered, cupping the back of my neck. “Every night, you relive what he did to you. Even in your sleep, you cry out for me. And even in your dreams, I can’t get there fast enough to protect you. Every day, I remember sitting there, watching you die. I don’t know how to face that again, Arionna.”

  “You just do, Dace.” I lifted my head to look at him. He appeared so tired, as exhausted as I felt. Tears spilled down my cheeks again. I hated that this was so hard for him. That being with me made this so much harder for him. “You just do.”

  “And if I can’t face it?” he asked. “What―?”

  A high pitched, wordless scream ripped through the air, shattering the intimacy of our heated conversation. Another scream followed immediately behind, and then another. Within seconds, they sounded from all sides, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

  I whipped my head around, trying to locate the problem, but saw nothing except snow and brick. We were too far away from the crowd, blocked by the building shielding our discussion from eager ears.

  Arionna, move!

  I turned back to Dace, blinking in confusion at the urgency of his demand.

  He didn’t bother to explain. He grabbed for me instead. Everything blurred for a moment. When my brain caught up, he held me pressed against the brick wall, his body positioned in front of mine.

  He crouched into a fighting stance, ready to leap on whatever or whoever came our way.

  Fearful shouts still sounded from the crowd behind the building, gaining in intensity.

  I peeked around Dace’s shoulder in time to see a familiar gray and white wolf race by, running full tilt toward the woods on the other side of the campus.

  Buka?

  Snow flew from her paws with each stride. Angry snarls tore from her throat. Her fur stood on end, gray streaks blending with white all along her back.

  I gaped, horrified and stunned at once.

  Why was she out in the open?

  Where was she going?

  I didn’t have time to ask either question before Kalei darted around the building and into sight. Seff and Rafe, two of the other wolves, followed on her heels across the frozen grass and into the parking lot beyond. Students gathered in clumps in the slush there screamed, diving out of the way.

  The pack paid them no attention at all. They dodged flailing, scrambling limbs, and kept running.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled to Dace, terrified one of the wolves would be hurt before they made it into the line of trees across the parking lot. I thought people were too shocked to do anything more than scream though. The wolves kept to the woods, rarely venturing out into the open, and even more rarely venturing into the heart of town. No one expected to see them plowing through a crowd of hundreds.

  “A hunter spotted Fuki,” Dace muttered over his shoulder.

  My heart plummeted. My hands shook. “Is he―?”

  “He’s hiding.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed and prayed Buka made it to her baby before the hunter found him.

  “I didn’t think you were coming back,” Chelle said when Dace helped me climb the bleachers again a few minutes later.

  Gage watched us silently.

  The rest of the students and faculty still milled around, casting nervous glances over their shoulders as if they expected another pack of wolves to come racing across the quad. The dean and a group of faculty members, my dad included, stood on the sidelines of the field in a huddle, likely discussing the situation. My dad and Professor Dodd seemed to do most of the talking.

  I wished I was close enough to hear what they were saying.

  I wished I could listen in on the wolves, too.

  Was Fuki safe? Were the rest of them?

  Anything yet? I asked Dace.

  Not yet.

  I sighed.

  He’ll be okay, love.

  I wrapped my blanket around me, not fighting Dace when he pulled me back against him. I sank into his heat, breathing in the cold air and his scent. Like Buka, Dace smelled of the outdoors: pine needles, freshly mown grass, rain clouds, and a spicier scent I couldn’t place. I’d never smelled anything like it before we met, but it was as familiar to me as he had been the first time I set eyes on him.

  At night, before I went to sleep, I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent. Even when I showered, I still smelled it on me. Long after he left my room for the night, his scent lingered in my hair, on my clothes, on my skin. Sometimes, I thought it was the smell of home. Of Valhalla, that place we’d left so long ago I could no longer even remember it. Of us, when our lives were simple and Ragnarök didn’t loom on the horizon. And of Dace, when he never thought to fear who he was or what we were meant to do.

  Sometimes, before I slept, I wondered if I’d ever get the chance to find out if I was right. If that smell really was home for us. Like the girl I was when Laki burned Iceland alive in a previous life, I couldn’t help but wonder where all this ended for Dace and me. Did we get to go to Valhalla when we were finished?

  I didn’t know.

  I wasn’t very religious. I had always believ
ed in some version of God, but I never considered how He touched my life. I wasn’t sure how to reconcile what I knew to be true now with what the world believed about Him. Once upon a time, God was Odin. Was He the Christians’ God now? Was He the Pagans’ Goddess? Or the Muslims’ Allah? The Hindus’ Shiva? Was He all of those? None of those?

  I wasn’t sure, and, like so much else, I didn’t think it really mattered, either. That faith didn’t mean being right, but being sure, being steadfast. Whichever form God had taken, whether there were a thousand of them, or only one, when this was over, when the Wheel stopped pulling Dace and me out to have this battle, all I wanted was to be with Dace. Whether that was in Valhalla where Odin raised us, or Heaven where God resided, in Nirvana with the enlightened, or in some faraway place built for the two of us alone, that’s where I wanted to be.

  If the world had to end, if we had to fail, I wanted us to be together. And I was more than willing to pray to God in whatever form He might have taken to give us that much. Maybe that was selfish of me. What right did I have to ask for anything? But I was asking anyway. Because I wasn’t sure I would make it through this without a little faith that all of the heartache, all of the sorrow, fear and confusion would be worth it in the end. That everything would be okay for Dace and me someday, even if it didn’t feel like it right now.

  And right now, it really didn’t feel like it.

  An impasse, my dad called it.

  Dace and I were at an impasse, neither able to bend, and neither willing to give up ground. Would that damn us? Save us? Maybe Odin was right in wiping our memories and sending us into each new life blind. Love was powerful. Powerful enough, perhaps, to draw us together no matter how much we forgot about our pasts and our destinies. But love was also destructive.

  It could pollute and destroy as much as it could heal. It could twist people into something they didn’t even recognize. Something they didn’t think they could ever become. No one ever mentioned that part about soul mates though. All those romance novels, all those movies… none of them told the rest of the story. They left out the part where love blinded people to reason and sent them straight to hell with nothing but a fistful of good intentions if they weren’t careful. Or maybe they simply didn’t tell that part well enough.

  Love and fear blinded Dace. Part of me couldn’t help but feel like he would have been better off if I hadn’t been reborn this time. At least that way I wouldn’t be holding him back from doing what we both knew he had to do. If I was never born, losing me wouldn’t haunt him, and he wouldn’t be so willing to damn himself and the rest of the world to save me. Given the choice between not being reborn and watching Dace destroy himself for me, I’d choose the former.

  Don’t think that way. Dace brushed his lips across my temple, inhaled my scent into his lungs. His breath was warm when he exhaled. It shook, too.

  I pressed myself further into him.

  He wrapped his arms more tightly around me.

  But he still felt too far away.

  uka found him,” Dace murmured half an hour later. “He’s safe.”

  “Thank god,” I said, my shoulders slumping forward. Relief washed through me like a warm river, unknotting the hard lump of fear in my chest. Unshed tears stung at my eyes. I felt awful for little Fuki. He was still a baby, not even two years old yet, and he could have died out there, alone and defenseless.

  He should never have been in that position. It killed me to know Dace put him there the moment he asked Buka and Kalei to stand guard over me.

  Dace gave me a sad, haunting smile, then turned back to the quad. I didn’t think he noticed anything happening on the field below us, though. His mind was a million miles away.

  Eventually, everyone stopped looking over their shoulders for the wolves and the Snowlympics games resumed. I tried to settle in to watch, but my head wasn’t in it and neither was my heart. I couldn’t live in the moment when the future seemed so dark. The weight of it hanging over my head felt so oppressive. I couldn’t escape the caged, tight feeling clawing its way through my soul.

  Dace didn’t say much for the rest of the afternoon.

  No one in our little group did.

  When night fell, we gathered our things and headed home. I could barely hold my eyes open. Mental and emotional exhaustion poured through me in waves, overwhelming everything except the urge to sleep. Sköll and Hati didn’t take the bait Dace and Ronan dangled before them, but that didn’t really matter. We drew a line in the proverbial sand out there, and I wasn’t stupid enough to believe the twin wolves wouldn’t punish us for that sooner rather than later.

  I slapped at the door handle, trying to let myself out of Dace’s Jeep when he pulled up in front of the house. My scars ached, and I felt chilled all the way through, the kind of chill that started on the inside and kept growing.

  “Do you want me to carry you in?” Dace asked, reaching around me to open the door.

  He hadn’t said anything the entire drive home. I hadn’t either, for that matter.

  What could we say that we hadn’t already?

  Nothing.

  There was nothing left to say.

  I tried to find the energy to get out of the Jeep on my own but couldn’t.

  “Please,” I said, resting my head against the seat. My eyes fluttered closed without my permission. I forced them open again.

  Dace hopped out, then circled around to the passenger side.

  “Beautiful girl,” he whispered, gently lifting me from the seat.

  My arms curled around his neck, as if of their own accord. Immediate. Natural. I lay my head against his shoulder with a soft sigh. The chill working its way into my bones didn’t let up any.

  Sometime during the afternoon, wind blew the low overhang of clouds away. Thousands and thousands of stars twinkled overhead, seeming to go on forever. I’d never been good at astronomy or picking out the constellations, but my eyes sought out Orion on instinct. I always loved the thought of a hunter standing guard over the world, his bow drawn.

  “Do you know the myth of Orion?” Dace asked, carrying me toward the house.

  I shook my head against his shoulder, the beat of his heart beneath my ear like a song whispering through me. This time, the song seemed darker than usual.

  “Orion was a very brave hunter, stronger than any other mortal,” he said. “One day, he met Merope and fell madly in love with her, but her father, the king, refused to give his consent for a peasant to wed his daughter. In a fit of desperation, Orion attempted to win Merope’s hand through violence. This infuriated her father, who sought his revenge by tricking Orion into drinking too much.”

  My eyes fluttered like butterfly wings, Dace’s voice and the sure, steady rhythm of his heart urging me toward sleep.

  “When Orion passed out, drunk, the king blinded him and cast him out to sea. Orion awoke alone and confused, with nothing more than the sound of the Cyclops’ hammer to guide him. He followed the sound day and night until he reached Vulcan. Vulcan took great pity on the wounded hero and sent him with a guide to meet the Sun God. Like Vulcan, the Sun God took great pity on Orion and restored his sight.”

  Dace shifted me in his arms. The front door creaked, and light spilled across my face. I couldn’t open my eyes, though. I didn’t want to. My favorite sound in the world was Dace whispering to me.

  “Soon after, Orion met Diana, who fell deeply in love with him. But her brother, Apollo, didn’t approve of their union and sought to keep his sister from marrying the mortal. One day, Orion waded far out into the ocean, so far he was nothing more than a black dot on the horizon. Apollo, sensing his chance to be rid of the mortal once and for all, bet Diana she was not huntress enough to hit the black dot. Diana took Apollo’s bet and shot Orion, not knowing she aimed for her lover.”

  Dace stopped talking for a moment and then my dad’s voice came, muted and far off. He and Dace whispered back and forth for a moment before Dace started moving again. The stairs creaked as he car
ried me up them. I hovered on the verge of sleep, nestled in the soft place between wakefulness and slumber.

  “When Orion’s body washed to shore, Diana was devastated. Even though he was mortal, she loved him. Unable to bear seeing him laid to rest, hidden from the world, she took him up and placed him amongst the stars where he would forevermore be remembered.”

  If Dace had to die, I wanted him to rest among the stars, a hero like Orion. I tried to open my mouth to tell him that, to tell him I loved him, but I couldn’t.

  “I love you, Arionna,” Dace whispered to me, laying me on my bed. “Forever.”

  I fought to hold on to him, to keep him with me.

  “Sleep, beautiful.”

  He untangled my arms from around his neck and kissed my curled fists. The stubble on his cheeks scratched against my knuckles before he pulled away again. Before I could miss him, he lifted me gently from the bed, then stripped my coat and boots from my body. When he pulled the covers back, I sank into the bed. He sank with me, drawing me up against his chest.

  I drifted….

  The dream began in the same place it always started, deep in the bowels of the Earth. Rocks shot up into the shadowy cavern, seemingly without end.

  I sought the chain, twisting around and through the largest of those boulders on instinct. As always, my gaze threatened to gloss right over the thin chain, but I knew exactly where to find it now. I searched the length of it, checking for broken links.

  There were none.

  A snarl drew my attention away from Gleipnir.

  My heart hammered.

  I turned, trying to brace myself for the sight of Fenrir. My hands shook when my gaze skipped over the river of foam surrounding his prison and landed on him.

  He fought against his captivity, jerking his head back and forth as if he could shatter the bond with brute force alone. The magical chain groaned and screeched, but it held him securely, refusing to break until the magic woven into it failed. Until Sköll and Hati fulfilled their part of the prophecy.

  Fenrir’s nostrils flared when he caught my scent.