by A. K. Morgen
Ronan stood still for a long moment, not saying anything.
I held my breath, praying that he didn’t shut me down now. That he would put aside his animosity for Dace just this once and give me a chance to find help.
Ronan sighed. “I won’t tell him,” he said. “Yet.”
I bowed my head, grateful and ashamed at once. Grateful they lied for me. Ashamed I even needed to ask them to.
Coward, a little voice in the back of my mind whispered.
I didn’t try to dispute it.
he Yukon sped silently through the dark, mountains and trees little more than thick, inky blotches against the backdrop of clear, night sky. Stars twinkled overhead, a thousand little diamonds lighting our way out of Tennessee. None of us spoke much as Ronan pushed the SUV hard, leaving my mom’s house and the girl I was once upon a time far behind. But, now, leaving my girlhood home brought little more than a momentary twinge of sadness.
For two days, we drove in aimless circles, going hundreds of miles out of our way in the hopes that anyone following would fall behind long before we reached our final destination. Late the second night, we found ourselves deep in West Virginia. Fuki curled up on the floorboard at my feet, his soft snores and the distant vibration of the tires over the roadway the only sounds disturbing the quiet. The heater hummed, pumping warmth into the vehicle as Ronan, Chelle, and I huddled in our seats, lost in our own grim thoughts and bone-chilling reality.
I stared out the window, hurting. Even though I’d taken pain medication to dull the migraine beating inside my skull, the ache refused to fade entirely. Instead, the little, blue pill filled my mind with fog, until I felt almost as if the constant throb and uncomfortable roil belonged to someone else. The overpowering sense of fear that came rushing back in at my old house didn’t dissipate beneath the wonder of modern medication. That stayed with me for two endless days, those uncomfortable fingers of self-awareness dancing up and down my spine in steps too complex for even prescription narcotics to interrupt. Each step ended with another widening ripple in the center of my chest.
Stripped of my defenses beneath hours of silence and the heavy fog of drugs, I struggled to convince myself of the desperate argument I presented to Chelle and Ronan. Sköll and Hati were up to no good. They’d known exactly where to find us when we ran. And I convinced Chelle and Ronan to tell no one, to risk their lives because I couldn’t face losing Dace. Even if those flowers weren’t a threat, I’d done a selfish thing.
Without the immediacy of panic and the sharp edge of hysteria hammering through me, guilt set in, playing in time to the throb in my head. One breath in, throb. One breath out, guilt. Over and over, until I fought to keep myself from handing Chelle my phone and telling her to call Dace to confess my sins. Until I almost convinced myself going back now would make things better. Dace would be there waiting for me, and the last few weeks of arguments and frustration would simply cease to exist. Dace would be okay, and I wouldn’t lose him for good.
Even drugged, I knew better than to allow myself to get lost in the false reality beckoning to me as my eyes grew heavier and my breath slowed. I couldn’t go back now. Not yet. I clung to that thought as if it were a lifeline, countering each little whisper of doubt with an obstinate no.
No, I can’t go back.
No, we can’t tell Dace.
No, I’m not wrong.
No, no, and no. To all of it.
My automatic rejection of doubt didn’t make me feel any better.
I was being stupid. Lying. Hiding. Pretending. Putting people at risk for my own selfish reasons. As shadows blurred the landscape around us, leaving nothing but my eyes staring eerily back at me from the window, I felt like the biggest fraud, putting Dace before everyone else when I yelled at him for doing the same thing with me.
Between bouts of guilt and exhaustion, I wracked my brain, obsessing over the flowers I received at my mom’s. I was certain we were missing something, that the flowers contained a clue we had overlooked, but I didn’t know what.
Instinct, Ronan called it. An innate ability to see to the heart of things, borne in Freki eons ago and then passed to me. I’d seen that instinct play out so many times before. When I first met Dace, and again when I realized Geri would never intentionally hurt me. When I met Ronan and sensed something coming for us. Even my initial fear of Ronan was instinct guiding me. He wanted to kill me then, and I picked up on it. I knew intuitively not to trust him the moment I saw him.
Knowing that pushed me no closer to deciphering what instinct attempted to tell me now though. As usual, I stumbled along, one step behind. Unable to listen to the wolf sense guiding me because, like so much else, that was lost beneath layers of pain-dulled thought processes and miles of fear and self-doubt.
How was I supposed to listen when I didn’t even know what to listen for?
Misery spiraled, adding to the throb in my head and the unsettled churn of my stomach. Piled it on until I had to lie down, squeeze my eyes firmly closed, and breathe through my mouth.
In. Stop thinking.
Out. Please don’t throw up in Ronan’s new car.
In. No one will get hurt.
Out. Please don’t move.
In. Please help me understand.
Out. I need your help, Freki.
Eventually, thought fell away and I slept… cold, uncomfortable, and not even remotely close to resting peacefully. Voices whispered in the dark, distorted mouths overlaying images of Fenrir and Hati, of crushed black and white petals, and the pained, accusatory green of Dace’s eyes.
“Should we wake her up?” Chelle whispered.
“No, let her sleep.”
“I’m worried about her, Ronan. She’s had a migraine for two days. That can’t be good for her.” Chelle’s voice was full of distress and worry as it trickled through to me, playing like a voice-over on scenes dark and foreboding.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” Ronan said, his voice flat.
“She almost died two months ago!”
“Then we’ll find her a doctor in Indiana.”
“We need to tell Dace what’s going on. She’s running for the wrong reasons.”
“Why force a showdown when it won’t change anything?”
Chelle, sweet Chelle who rarely even seemed to get angry, cursed loudly.
“Look, she doesn’t want him to know and that’s her choice to make.” Ronan tried to appease her. “In case you forgot, he’s the reason she’s running now. She’s not going to stop until she finds what she’s looking for.”
“What is she looking for?”
“Hope,” Ronan answered.
Chelle’s frustration seemed to waver. She sighed. “It still doesn’t feel right. Dace should know what’s going on in case….”
“In case she’s wrong?” Ronan asked.
I didn’t hear Chelle’s response.
“Sköll and Hati don’t know where we’re going,” Ronan said. “There’s no way they know.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
If he was wrong… someone would die. Ronan or Chelle. Or Dace.
Help me, Freki. Please.
Chelle and Ronan’s voices fell away. So did the distorted mouths moving through my dreams. Fenrir and Hati faded. For a moment, everything went dark. I hovered in that dreamless state, the one I rarely found these days. But, even there, despair pricked at me until I wanted to scream it away.
Freki, I sighed, hovering on the edge of defeat. I need your help. Dace needs your help.
Something… pulled, unseen hands tugging me through the darkness.
Black gave way to dark blue and then to a cloudless sky.
An eagle soared ahead of me, a girl clasped firmly between his claws. His wings were outspread, catching currents of air that lifted him higher and higher. Far below, a stark landscape was barely visible, little more than snatches of violent color blowing quickly by.
The girl struggled in the eagle’s grasp, crying out weakly f
or him to release her.
He paid no attention to her struggles, instead flying on and on.
The world below spun into focus when he dipped his wings. Ice clung to everything, life itself seeming frozen. Rivers and valleys and mountains… each painted with a brush of freezing death.
The young woman screamed as the eagle plummeted toward icy spires far below. The sound ripped through the sky and bounced back from the frozen landscape rushing up to meet them.
Even the faintest echoes of her cries seemed full of terror.
She twisted in the bird’s grip and her lovely face came into focus.
A shock of recognition thrummed through me. I knew her.
Idun.
Her beautiful, blue eyes met mine.
“Help me, Freki,” she cried out.
A strong current of air caught me, flinging me away from the eagle and his victim. I struggled against the wind, fighting to regain my effortless flight through the sky. When I steadied myself and looked up again, the eagle no longer held Idun in his grasp. A snarling black wolf clutched her in his jaws.
The scene spun from dream to memory in the blink of an eye.
I watched the vase slipped from Ronan’s hands, shattering as it crashed to the tiled floor. Jagged shards bounced this way and that, flower petals tearing like wet paper. The golden apple clipped inside the black rose hit the floor, but didn’t dislodge.
The card inside slipped sideways, the scrawled words coming into view.
Idun’s here. Find her.
I awoke with a gasp, Freki’s demand resonating in my soul.
Fuki yipped when my foot clipped his ear as I struggled to sit up.
“Idun,” I mumbled, her name pounding through me.
Chelle turned in her seat to look at me. “What?”
“Idun,” I said again, more clearly this time. My mind raced, sorting through dreams and memories and the confusing fog of restless sleep and powerful painkillers. “She’s here.”
Chelle narrowed her eyes, looking at me as if I wasn’t making sense.
Maybe to her I wasn’t. But I was certain.
Idun needed our help, and we definitely needed her.
“I don’t understand, Ari. What are you saying?” Chelle asked, her eyes narrowed. Doubt etched fine lines into her pale face.
I took a deep breath, trying to slow the flood of words tumbling in a heap from my lips and still the excited, involuntary flutter of my hands. “The flowers. Skáldskaparmál. She’s still here.”
Chelle continued to gape at me.
“What makes you so sure?” Ronan asked.
I sighed, relieved that one of them, at least, knew what the hell I was talking about. I barely knew myself, but I felt the truth of my dream deep in my bones, as if Freki really planted the knowledge inside me. Idun, keeper of the golden apples, secret to the Norse gods’ immortality, still walked the Earth.
“I saw her,” I whispered. “Freki remembers her.”
“And you think she’s here?” Chelle asked.
No, I didn’t think she was here. I knew it. The same way I knew Fenrir waited miles below our feet, and the same way I knew I’d never feel for anyone half of what I felt for Dace and Geri. I just knew.
“So what then?” Chelle looked at me. “This goddess… deity… person, can help us save Dace?”
“I think so.” I shook my head, frustrated Freki hadn’t given me more. And then I felt guilty for being frustrated. She gave me all she could, trapped in her half of our soul as she was. “But I think Sköll and Hati have her.”
Chelle looked at me blankly, unable to follow my disjointed thought process.
“If they’re reborn like we are, they should be fading, too, but they’re not.” I squared my jaw stubbornly, refusing to be swayed or convinced I was crazy. “If they’re using Idun’s magic, it would explain why they’re so much stronger than we are.”
“O-kay.”
Ronan was slower to write me off as drugged and senseless. Maybe because he believed in Freki’s intuition and in mine, or because he remembered our pasts better than any of us. I don’t know why, but he didn’t dismiss the notion out of hand.
“It’s possible, I suppose,” he said.
Relief rushed through me in a warm flood.
“Though I’m not even sure they are reborn.” He met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Do you remember ever killing them?”
I picked through the memories I had access to and shook my head reluctantly. I didn’t remember killing Sköll or Hati. I remembered… Dace and Geri, mostly. “If they don’t die, how have we held them off this long?”
Ronan shrugged. “Idun’s apples grant immortality to gods. Who knows how they affect Jötunn like Fenrir’s offspring? For all we know, the apples take centuries to replenish them.”
I considered the possibility, but didn’t think it worked that way. What were the chances the apples only revived Sköll and Hati exactly when we were reborn? That seemed a little far-fetched, even for magic apples from a goddess. But so did the rest of my life for that matter.
“So, what?” Chelle asked, calling my attention to her. “We go find this goddess and steal her apples? That’s how we defeat Sköll and Hati?” Not even the darkness hid the look of heavy skepticism on her face.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think….” I honestly didn’t know what I thought. But Freki had shown me Idun for a reason. Freki thought the goddess could help Dace. I couldn’t let myself believe otherwise. “I don’t know,” I said again, blowing out a breath.
“Does this change anything?” Ronan asked me.
I wanted to tell him it changed everything, but I couldn’t. “I don’t know.”
“Great,” Chelle sighed. “Any idea where we’re supposed to start looking?”
“No.” I rubbed my temples. We didn’t even know how to find Sköll and Hati. I kind of doubted finding Idun would be any easier. If the twin monster had her, knowing she was out there changed nothing until we found them. But if we could find her… maybe we could win this war. Maybe we could save Dace.
“Have you considered the ramifications?” Ronan asked quietly.
“If she’s still here, then the other gods might be too,” I said, trying not to get my hopes up. According to the Ragnarök prophecies, the gods no longer dwelled here. They remained locked up in Asgard or assorted other realms, waiting for the golden crow, Gullinkambi, to call them to battle. But what if the prophecies were wrong about that? What if some of them still lived on earth, hiding amongst the throngs of people, watching for the stirrings of Jötunn like Sköll and Hati? If that were true, then maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there, help waited for us after all.
can’t do this,” I said hours later, gritting my teeth against waves of nausea.
Ronan sat on the edge of the bed across from me in the small hotel room Chelle and I shared on the outskirts of Charlottesville, demanding I try to reach Freki again. Sweat dripped from my brow, and I felt mentally exhausted from my efforts. My head hurt five times worse than it had in the car, and I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t find the wolf locked away in my soul.
“You aren’t trying.”
I narrowed my gaze on Ronan.
“You keep losing focus.”
“You try focusing through a freaking migraine,” I snapped, shoving my hands deep into the pockets of my hoodie so I didn’t throw something at him. He was as bad as Dace, an overbearing dictator. Worse, he was the one who cautioned me not to try to reach her in the first place. Now he hounded me to reach deeper, push harder.
Ronan held my gaze, unmoved and unblinking.
“She’s doing the best she can,” Chelle said, coming to my defense.
Ronan ignored her, focusing instead on me. “How did you reach her earlier?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled, the last hour of frustration boiling over. “I don’t know how I got through to her in the car. I don’t know how I understood her. I don’t freaking know, okay?”
>
Fuki leapt to his feet, laid his ears back on his head, and snarled at Ronan.
Ronan held his hands up as if signaling his surrender to the protective, little wolf.
I slumped back in the uncomfortable wicker and wood chair, squeezing my eyes closed. Blood pounded in my ears in time to the painful throb in my head. I wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep. I felt drained and physically weaker than I’d been in weeks.
Fuki stopped snarling and nudged my knee. I reached out blindly to pat his head.
Silence reigned in the room for long moments, and then the sink came on in the bathroom.
“What were you thinking about before you went to sleep?” Ronan asked.
“About Freki,” I muttered. “I told you that already.”
“You dreamed her, Arionna,” he said, “and maybe that’s all it was. A dream. Something you wanted to be real.”
I cracked an eye open, shaking my head slowly back and forth. It might have been a dream, but Freki sent it to me. She remembered Idun, and she wanted me to find her. “Freki showed me Idun, Ronan. I know she did.”
The water in the bathroom shut off and Chelle came back into the room. “Here,” she said, handing me a cold washcloth.
I took it gratefully, pressing it to my forehead. Cold water dripped down the side of my face and into my hairline.
“Prove it,” Ronan demanded, watching me with sharp, black eyes. “Reach for Freki again.”
I took a deep breath, refusing to give in to frustration this time. I closed my eyes, focused… and found nothing. No Freki, and no clear path to her. I didn’t even know where to begin reaching out to her, or how to begin. A wall existed between us, exactly like the one between me and Dace, too tall to scale and too thick to burrow through. Freki was on the other side, but she might as well have been in China for all the good knowing that did me. I couldn’t reach her any more than she could unchain herself.
“I can’t,” I whispered, my shoulders slumping.
Ronan said nothing.
“I know Idun’s out there. I know she can help us.” I lifted the cold cloth from my head and looked across at Ronan. I wasn’t sure if I tried to convince him that I wasn’t dreaming or wishing or hoping or whatever he decided happened in the car, or if I tried to convince myself.
