Valkyrie Crowned

by Allyson Lindt

  “It’s early there. I doubt the cake shops are open.” Magnus grabbed her phone and scrolled. “I can find us an outdoor café and bakery, though.”

  “That’ll work.” Brit was still watching Kirby.

  No it wouldn’t. That would suck.

  Or would it? Kirby had ascended in Salt Lake. Regained her memories there. It was also the last mission she or Brit had done in a city. Though it was more than six months ago, the memories lingered near the surface of all the intel and prep-work Kirby did for her visit. It’d be the same for Brit.

  “There’s a place near one of the universities. Opens early. Serves amazing chocolate croissants. At least, I’ve heard. I didn’t get a chance to go.” Brit frowned.

  Magnus held up her phone to share a series of images. “Outdoor patio? Gaming café?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “We’re not sitting outside.” Kirby might be a bundle of stress-teetering-on-destruction, but her training was ingrained in her.

  Magnus pocketed her phone and took another sip of coffee. “Because someone might shoot you? One—you’d survive. Two—if we wanted to shoot you, we wouldn’t take you off campus. And three—Vidar and I aren’t stupid. No one else is going to pay any attention to us. I’ve been hooked up.”

  Kirby knew the trick; Gwydion did something similar. It had its flaws, though. “That kind of soft illusion doesn’t work on everyone. If people are looking for us, they’ll find us.” Besides, Vidar didn’t have that kind of magic, and Magnus didn’t have any kind of magic.

  “They won’t. Are we going or not?” Magnus fiddled with her ring. She did that a lot. TOM training had beaten the obvious tells out of all of them, which meant she’d wanted to draw attention to the jewelry since last night.

  “Chocolate croissants it is.” Kirby wasn’t going to learn anything, sitting around here. If Magnus was taking them out in public, Vidar allowed it for a reason.

  Magnus held out her hands, and Brit and Kirby each took one. The apartment vanished, and an outdoor café took its place.

  The relief that breathed through Kirby was tangible. Each breath came more easily. The tension in her neck loosened.

  They stood in front of what had once been a house but now had a cute neon sign out front with a cartoon girl sitting on a coffee cup.

  No one else was here yet. That was nice. Easier to see people approach. Less of a chance for collateral damage.

  The interior was an odd combination of computers and tables to dine at. More sugary cuteness, straight out of a story.

  Brit ordered them a plate of pastries to share, as well as more coffee.

  “You still want to sit inside?” Magnus asked.

  Kirby did, but more than that, she wanted to see how this safety of Magnus’s worked. “It’s a gorgeous morning, and I could use the fresh air.”

  Brit nodded her agreement.

  They picked a table at the edge of the dining area, and all of them nibbled on sweets for a moment.

  “Where’s Dahlia?” As she asked, Kirby watched closely for any tick from Magnus.

  Magnus’s upper lip twitched. “Gone.” She bit off the word.

  Most Noble teams were well matched. Partners were as close as siblings or lovers, depending on the relationship. Magnus and Dahlia might as well have been sisters. The hurt in Magnus’s voice was the one thing Kirby didn’t question about this exchange.

  Magnus waggled the finger with the full ring. “You’re wondering why I want you to notice this. I’ve been waiting for you to ask, so I can tell you this was a gift from her. Your question works just as well, as a segue.”

  Min was right—it was stressful talking to people as mired in this lifestyle of deception as Kirby was. That included any back and forth she had with herself.

  “Consider yourself asked,” Brit said.

  “She gave it to me as a promise.” Sadness lingered in Magnus’s reply. “That we’d leave TOM together.”

  If Dahlia was gone and Magnus was still here, it didn’t seem like Dahlia was the one to break the promise.

  “You’re just admitting that?” Brit had chocolate on the corner of her upper lip.

  Kirby reached to smudge it away with her thumb before she processed what she was doing. A spark raced between them, and a smile ghosted across Brit’s face.

  “The agreement was to leave Hel’s TOM. Loki’s. He’s certainly a master of deception, but...”

  “He’s a shitty strategist. Yeah. Definitely not a military man.” Kirby’s laugh was a notch too high, as she tried to slide into casual, rather than stare at how Brit looked with the morning sun glinting off her hair and the flush of pink in her cheeks.

  “The agreement was we’d find another god we believed in. One we could fight for. That’s always been Vidar. You get that, don’t you?” Magnus looked at Brit.

  Brit shook her head. “I used to. Turns out gods are assholes the same way people are. They just have more power.”

  “Vidar is different.” Spoken like a true believer. “You’ve seen for yourself he’s not like Hel.”

  No. He was like salted-caramel asshole, instead of butter-pecan asshole. “He stuck us in a room identical to my old one. That was out of the kindness of his heart? There was no manipulation there?”

  “It’s still the biggest room in the dorm, and there are two of you.” Magnus shrugged.

  Good story. With so very many holes.

  “Speaking of campus— What happened? Please tell me the truth.” Pleading bled into Magnus’s voice.

  Brit sipped her coffee slowly. “I worked for Hel directly for a very short while before she was destroyed. I knew that her death would the fate of most people on campus.”

  “We couldn’t let them die.” There was no reason to lie about it, though there were some details Kirby wouldn’t share unless called on it. She hadn’t touched the food or coffee. “So we found a way back onto campus.”

  “You did.” Magnus focused on her. “Every person there knew you were a shoot-on-sight target.”

  “She does a great impersonation of me.” Brit grinned.

  Kirby didn’t adjust her posture or voice at all. “Look, I’m Brit. Howdy, howdy, howdy.”

  Magnus snorted with disbelief and laugher. “Fine. Keep your secrets. You may not believe me when I say this isn’t part of the pitch to keep you here, but I missed you. Both of you.”

  “Same.” Brit sounded sad.

  Magnus looked at Kirby again. “No love?”

  Kirby smiled. “If I had to be tracked down by one of the few remaining Nobles, I’m glad it was you.” It would be wonderful to fall into old friendships, but these weren’t the circumstances for that to happen.

  “I’ll take it.” Magnus grinned. “What’s it like, being immortal?”

  “It’s a pain in the ass.” Though it was better than dying. Kirby suppressed a shudder as memories of so many deaths licked at the edge of her senses.

  Brit nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.”

  “But... I mean... You get special powers, don’t you?” Magnus asked. “One of you is a fucking Valkyrie. That can’t be all bad.”

  “I can breathe fire. Shoot lightning from my fingertips,” Brit said with a straight face.

  Magnus’s eyes grew wide. “Really?” She frowned. “Not really.”

  Brit grabbed a fork and jammed it into the back of her arm, hard enough to shake the table and splash coffee out of the cups. Her entire face screwed up in agony.

  Magnus gasped in horror.

  Blood pooled up from the four holes that appeared in Brit’s skin. She grabbed a napkin and wiped it away, to expose that the wounds were already pink with new skin and closing up. “I heal.” Pain strained her voice. “The same way I did in the cell. That’s it. That’s all I got.”

  Magnus shook her head, and the shock vanished from her face. “But Kirby tried to do something to Vidar. Some sort of attack.”

  “I can do a few things. Any Valkyrie can.” Not the
project their deaths on a target thing, though maybe. Hard to say, since the other Valkyries had stayed dead. “We weren’t created to kill, but I can fight. Like normal, stuff we learned in school fight. The one magical attack I know, the one I tried to use on Vidar, is debilitating to me as well. Oh, I do have wings.”

  Magnus gasped and clapped once. “Can I see?”

  “Not in public.” Though it seemed like no one was paying attention to them. Whatever Magnus used to hide them was good.

  Magnus worked her jaw and traced her thumb over the ring. “When we get back to campus?”

  “All right.” If they made it back to campus. Kirby didn’t intend to return.

  “What else can you do?”

  Kirby would wonder if Magnus’s fascination was fake—a way of extracting information—but Vidar knew what Valkyries were capable of. Kirby wasn’t special in that regard. “I heal. Not just myself, but I can heal others.” Except those encased in another god’s magic, like Brit.

  Inspiration struck. Kirby nudged Brit. “Remember how the mission went down in Salt Lake?”

  “Oh yeah.” Brit’s enthusiasm looked genuine.

  It couldn’t possibly be, if she actually remembered. Brit’s mission had been to kill a potential, and Kirby was there to stop her. Kirby did so by firing a grenade into the room Brit was in with her partner, Mark. The explosion disrupted their mission, drew too much attention, and put the entire city on high alert.

  Kirby was going to try to do the same now, but by alerting the gods, instead of the people around them.

  As long as Brit understood a lot of heads were about to turn in their direction, she didn’t need to know the details.

  “Don’t do that,” Magnus warned.

  Kirby adopted an innocent expression. “Do what?”

  “Seriously?” Magnus was exasperated. “We all had the same training. Don’t do this double-talk bullshit. Don’t fuck with this outing, please?”

  “We’re not. Are we?” Brit looked at Kirby with fake curiosity.

  Kirby shook her head. “Nope.”

  Magnus sighed. “Salt Lake was the last time we saw Brit as Brit, aside from her brief stint with Hel. The two of you never did a mission there together. That explosion made national news as a terrorist threat. Don’t blow us up. I’m the only one who won’t survive something like that.”

  “I won’t blow us up. Cross my heart.” Kirby didn’t trust Magnus, but she wasn’t ready to kill her.

  Magnus’s scowl deepened. “I know you don’t believe me, but I’m trying to win you both over. I genuinely want you to join us. This is a new system. A new structure.”

  “Which literally looks almost identical to the old one,” Brit said.

  Kirby didn’t know if her plan would work, but she wanted Brit to be prepared. She nudged her partner’s foot gently. “No blowing things up. I’m serious,” Kirby said. “The other thing I can do is make a shield. I did it on campus, to keep people alive.”

  “That does seem pretty benign.” Magnus looked hesitant to agree.

  Kirby extended the shield to encase Magnus. “It’s invisible. Flexible. And around you right now.” She picked up the same fork Brit stabbed herself with, and threw it.

  She was fast.

  Magnus wasn’t. She gasped and flinched as the fork bounced off the empty air, less than a millimeter from her shoulder, and clattered to the ground. She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “It comes in handy.” Kirby extended the shield, rather than contracting it, and nudged Brit harder this time. The goal was to push the barrier through whatever Magnus had, keeping them hidden.

  Magnus winced, then cringed. She shook her head a few times, as if trying to get rid of something. “What was that? Why did my ears ring?”

  Because it worked. “Don’t know. Never seen it do that before. It’s like anything magical. It can clash with other magical things.”

  “I don’t hear any explosions.” Magnus was hesitant.

  “I promised you.” A bullet bit into Kirby’s shoulder, and another into the sidewalk next to her. “Shit.”

  The women turned the table toward the source of gunfire and ducked behind it. Kirby extended the shield again, since the PVC wasn’t going to protect them from anything except being seen.

  “—the fuck?” Magnus asked.

  Kirby held up her hands. “That wasn’t me. I promise. We need to go. Now.” And hope whoever was hunting them wasn’t trained as well as they were.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Min

  Frey owned the entire block NEON sat on, including several luxury apartments that no one would suspect existed from looking at the outside of the building. He’d offered rooms to Min and Gwydion for as long as they needed.

  Gwydion had excused himself to start making phone calls.

  Min had other tasks to accomplish.

  After centuries of waiting, Min had perfected the art of searching for Kirby. However, the overnight delay made him twitchy. Every hour that ticked away was another that she was in danger.

  Thanks to decades of investments and working in the industry, Min had countless contacts in technology. He called in several favors to track trends across the globe. Unusual and abrupt weather patterns. Deaths. Plagues. Especially in those locations where gods who’d helped lock away Malsumis were located.

  It helped keep track of Gluskab, and at the same time might reveal where Kirby was. And Starkad and Brit as well.

  Morning approached, and with it his appointment with Lance—a long-standing member of The Followers of Urd. Aya could teleport and was unwilling to sit around and do nothing while that bastard Gluskab hunts me down. So she took Min to Barbados.

  Lance ran a private security firm, and he did a large amount of his training in this facility. From the outside, it was an unassuming hut at the edge of the forest.

  Upon knocking on the front door, the experience changed. A pleasant female voice came over an invisible intercom to ask for their information.

  Min told her they had an appointment with Lance, and they were buzzed in. He knew from a previous visit it wasn’t so straightforward. Cameras and various heat sensors had watched them approach, checked them out, and done facial recognition on them, all before they reached the door.

  This was high tech anyway, but the fact that Lance was a dragon and older than humanity made the setup more intimidating.

  As they stepped inside, instead of a living room they were in a modern reception area. White leather seats, frosted glass tables, and a sleek desk were laid out. The receptionist gave them a polite smile, and gestured to a door to her left. “You’re expected. Head on down.”

  “Is he for real?” Aya muttered as the rode the elevator down. And down. And down.

  “Quite.”

  They reached their destination, ten stories underground. Lance was waiting for them when the elevator doors opened.

  “Glad you called.” Lance’s tone was pleasant, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  Min was used to the forced sincerity, but he hoped life never wore on him the way it had Lance. Not even a thousand years from now. “Thank you for making time for us.”

  “Of course.” Lance gestured down a concrete corridor. “Join me in my office?”

  There was no indicator that they were walking through a massive box built in the water, under the island. Lance’s people trained here. This was nothing like the TOM campus, which was more of a military school setting, meant to prepare students to blend into society while they learned to kill.

  This was an underground bunker with no warmth. The faint plink of gunfire, and the muffled grunts and shouts of hand to hand combat barely reached them through the heavily insulated walls.

  There were only three dragons, as far as anyone knew. Lance and his sisters had taken various forms through history, and in the past had frequently been seen as the villains, as they pushed to keep Urd’s prophecies from being obstructed.

  This
time around, saving lives helped things fall into place, but looking back, Min shouldn’t be surprised that they’d order Kirby’s execution if they felt it was necessary to make the visions happen.

  The realization made Min’s blood run cold.

  “I see you’re dealing with a lot of quakes in your brother’s part of the world.” Lance’s tone was conversational as he glanced at Aya.

  She nodded. “The destruction is horrific.”

  “Hmm. It’s a shame.” His tone was cool. Removed.

  Min didn’t care for the callousness, but he was here for information. He wouldn’t change Lance’s perspective or get what he needed if he lost his temper. The prophecies The Followers of Urd were enforcing now centered on Ragnarök—the destruction and rebuilding of the world.

  Any disaster, even if Urd hadn’t mentioned it, brought things closer to that conclusion.

  Min couldn’t fathom the mindset. He was so tied to life on this world, that the disruption of it caused him physical pain.

  “How’s your Valkyrie?” Lance asked him.

  Cutting straight to the point made things easier. If this was Lance’s way of making Min think they didn’t have Kirby, it was a thin pretense. Min and Lance had discussed Kirby before, because she worked for the organization via Starkad.

  What if FU had used their knowledge of her TOM training to capture her? Min couldn’t tumble down the what-if path. “She’s wonderful. I can’t tell you how grand it is to have her back. Alive.”

  “Is she around, then? I’d love to meet her,” Lance said.

  He’d never made that request before. Never seemed interested. “She’s with Starkad. Most times, I’d rather not know what they’re up to.” Min hoped she really was with Starkad. She’d be safer that way.

  “Ahh, such a delicious contradiction.” Lance almost sounded reverent. “The god of life who loves a harbinger of death.”

  “She’s not.” Aya’s retort held an edge.

  Lance raised an eyebrow. “Oh? If she’s there, so is death. Always, but especially now.”