My eyes widened, and I hissed in surprise.
“You’ve got it,” Loki said, in a voice that sounded almost like a sigh.
“You— you can’t,” I stammered.
“Apparently, I can,” Loki replied. “If it works on me, it will work on Fenris. I can pull the magic out of him, leave the wolf, and take my son.”
“But, it hurt!” I cried.
Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Lots of things hurt.”
I staggered back, shaking my head. What Loki had just described with such brutally casual language seemed horribly wrong in some deep, fundamental way.
“You can’t just tear him apart,” I said. “That wolf shape is a part of Fenris.”
“Oh, really?” Loki raised an eyebrow. “What would you suggest?”
“Untie him!” I cried. “We can’t break Gleipnir , that’s obvious. It gets stronger the harder you pull. But we can let him loose! Thor was bending down to untie it when Óðinn stopped him.”
My voice cut out, strangled by the anger and frustration rising inside my throat.
Loki sighed and leaned back on the couch. I was struck once again by how very pale he looked. Thrym had called him half dead last night; I wondered how true that still was.
“Yes. Great plan,” Loki said. “Untie him and run. And then, when one of Óðinn’s ravens decides to pay a visit to Lake Amsvartnir to check on how the monster Fenris is doing? What will they see?”
I ran my tongue over my suddenly dry lips.
“They’ll see bare rock,” Loki finished, “and the empty coils of the dwarves’ unbreakable fetter. And then they’ll fly right back to Asgard to tell Óðinn that the monster he fears, the very monster who is prophesied to murder him, has escaped.”
“I— It was just—” I began.
“And, tell me, whom do you think Óðinn would suspect?” Loki continued. “Whom would he torture first in his search for answers?”
Shit.
“You,” I admitted.
“Quickly followed by you, Sol, if he can find you. And that’s assuming Óðinn won’t decide to take a detour and torture my wife and sons on his way.”
“I...Your wife? Really?”
Loki shrugged. “My oath-brother is not especially sentimental. And he’s irrationally afraid of Fenris.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Thrym waved his hand at one of the carved chairs, and I sank into it with a sigh. I felt deflated. All this time, I’d been bent on rescuing my husband. I hadn’t stopped to consider what would come next.
Stars, I felt like such an idiot.
Thrym pressed a glass into my hand. I raised it to my lips and drank almost half of it before I realized it was wine.
“Are you sure Fenris could survive such a thing?” Thrym said, his voice low.
Loki exhaled slowly. His eyes were fixed on the floor, as if he could discern the answer to that question in the intricate black and white patterns of the little tiles.
“No,” Loki finally said.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Despite the constant heat of this Realm, I felt cold.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Loki admitted. “It’ll be his choice. Fenris can choose if it’s a risk he’s willing to take. If his magic is something he’s willing to lose.”
Images tumbled through my memories. Fenris, laughing in the dappled light of the Ironwood. Throwing a snowball at me. Calling me Sol the Fearsome.
Fenris the wolf, snarling at the darkness. Screaming in pain as the hissing strands of Gleipnir cut into his body, burning hair and flesh.
My chest ached as if my heart had caught fire, as if Loki’s ever-burning flame raged inside me, and I wasn’t even certain what I should say. We had to free him. Should I plead for Loki to wait, to think of something else? Or should we leave now, immediately, before Fenris had to wait another day in bonds?
“Sol?”
Thrym’s hand closed over my shoulder. I opened my eyes. The room wavered behind a film of tears. Inside me, the twins began to stir. Another memory surfaced, almost as though the twins had kicked it into life. Fenris sitting beside me on our bed in Asgard, telling me of his childhood in Angrboða’s castle. Of the dungeons, and how Loki had appeared in them, announcing his paternity. How Fenris had attacked him in return, transforming into the wolf for the first time. Fenris’s voice echoed through my mind as sweet and clear as if he were sitting next to me again.
“It felt so good,” Fenris had said. “Like I’d finally found what I was meant to do, or who I was meant to be.”
A chill crept across my skin, sinking deep into my bones.
“Fenris loves the wolf,” I said.
Thrym and Loki turned to me, waiting. I swallowed hard.
“It’s how he escaped his mother’s castle,” I tried to explain. “It’s a part of him. He... he may not choose to lose it.”
I wiped my hand across my eyes, trying to clear my vision. I didn’t want to cry all the time, stars damn it! I didn’t want to be Fenris’s hysterical, pregnant wife, screaming on the sidelines while others did the real work.
“We’ve got to find another way,” I said, finally.
Loki sighed deeply and closed his eyes. The firelight danced across his face, showing strange shadows around his lips. “If you have another way, daughter, trust me, I’d love to hear it.”
My shoulders sank. I turned the puzzle over and over in my mind, replaying my nightmarish memories from Lake Amsvartnir. The dark, icy waters. The scent of blood and smoke. The blinding flash of Gleipnir as it tightened around my husband’s body, growing stronger as he writhed and fought.
“Fenris is more than the wolf,” Loki said. His voice was low and gentle, almost as if he were speaking in a dream. “But Óðinn only wants the wolf. If we pull Fenris from the monster, Óðinn won’t even notice. He won’t know to look for my son. For you. Or for the child you carry.”
Shit. I balled my hands into fists in my lap as the twins kicked inside me.
“He might not choose to—” I began.
“No, he might not,” Loki answered, softly. “Still, shouldn’t we at least give him the choice?”
I ground my teeth together and forced myself to think clearly. Loki was right, damn him. I hadn’t had a plan beyond returning to the dark shores of Lake Amsvartnir, untying Gleipnir, and running with my husband.
But now that rescue fantasy seemed hopelessly naive, even dangerous, like a child attempting to hide by covering her eyes. Of course Óðinn would send his ravens to watch over the lake. Even if they only came once every hundred years, someone would eventually notice my husband’s absence.
And Óðinn feared Fenris enough to chain him, again and again, until he was truly, horrifically imprisoned. If Fenris were freed, Óðinn would stop at nothing to track him down. I pressed my palms against my eyes while Loki’s words echoed in my mind. Who would Óðinn turn to if the island on Lake Amsvartnir was empty, if the gleaming bands of Gleipnir lay in silent loops on the hard stone, and Fenris was gone?
I remembered the little cottage in Asgard where Sigyn had served us bread while she smiled at her husband. And I thought of the two brothers on the beach, Loki’s sons Vali and Nari. Loki had said Óðinn might stop to torture his wife and his sons in his search for Fenris. As much as I didn’t want to believe the man all the myths called the Lie-smith, I couldn’t stop the cold band tightening around my chest.
Loki was risking them, too. If anything went wrong, if Fenris’s wolf form slipped the bonds of Gleipnir or died in the attempt, Óðinn would surely seek out his oath-brother first. And then his oath-brother’s family. Freyja had tried to warn me, I realized numbly. I dropped my hands from my eyes, which already felt swollen and raw from the tears I’d refused to let fall, and wrapped them around the curve of my stomach. One of the twins kicked at my palm.
“You carry the child of the man Óðinn just imprisoned,” Freyja had told me. “Óðinn can’t risk your child growing up to seek vengeance.”
Óðinn would have killed me. Not despite my pregnancy, but because of my pregnancy. He feared Fenris so much that he would have ended the lives of our children before they even began.
Of course he wouldn’t hesitate to torture Loki’s wife, or Loki’s sons, if he felt as though they might know what had happened to Fenris. I glanced up at Loki. He’d closed his eyes, and the strange shadows across his lips now looked like deliberate, red slashes against his pale skin. He was risking all this for Fenris? It didn’t make sense; he hardly knew Fenris. Stars, Fenris had tried to kill him!
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
Loki didn’t respond. I cleared my throat to ask again, and Thrym’s hand closed on my shoulder.
“We should go,” Thrym whispered. “Someone needs to remind my staff that, miracles notwithstanding, we all still need to eat.”
I let Thrym lead me from the room. He stopped before the wooden doors to pull on a purple-lined toga, and I glanced back at Loki. His chin had sunk to his chest; his eyes were still closed. His hair had begun to drift and swirl around his head like flame, and the lines of his face seemed sharper somehow when he was asleep. I shuddered despite myself; no wonder Thrym’s servants built an altar to him. He looked like a being to be feared and appeased. Not trusted to rescue the father of your children.
Thrym took my arm and pulled me through the doors. Together, we walked through the tiled corridors of his vast domus as though it were an ordinary morning, and we hadn’t just been visited by the god Thrym’s servants all worshipped.
THE MONSTER FREED: CHAPTER TWELVE
“Sol? Sol, please!”
I woke to the flicker of lamplight across the patterned ceiling of my sleeping chamber. My heart thudded heavily against my breast, and I gasped for breath in the darkness. I’d been dreaming about dark water and cold stone, about some merciless, invisible figure who followed me down a rocky path, growing ever closer no matter how quickly I ran.
“Sol?”
A hand closed around my arm. I jumped.
“I’m sorry!” Liburnia cried. “Thrym said it’s important!”
Panic surged through me, chasing away the vestiges of my nightmare. I struggled to pull myself up around the swollen bulk of my belly. The twins had grown enormous in the last month, and I felt about as graceful as an overripe pumpkin. Liburnia put the lamp in the wall and took my hand, helping me to my feet.
“The dreams again?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” I replied. “What does Thrym want?”
She set the lamp in the wall and shook her head. “I don’t know. He only said it’s important.”
Liburnia bent to adjust the folds of my dress. My chest tightened as though a cold fist had closed around my ribcage. It had been nearly two months since Loki lit the ever-burning fire in our caves. Thrym had managed to dispel most of the religious fervor by saying the Lares of this domus meant the blessing for us and us alone, and that to spread the story of its existence would diminish the god’s favor.
That hadn’t worked, of course, but it had at least kept the religious pilgrimages clandestine. Thrym muttered something about the staff losing interest eventually, but he hadn’t sounded especially convincing. He’d cheered up significantly when he told me it would soon be my problem.
“Or, you and your husband’s problem,” he’d corrected.
We’d both fallen silent then. Loki hadn’t shared his plans, and we’d been given no potential time frame. Perhaps the rescue was underway, and I was to play no role. Or perhaps Loki had been captured in the attempt, and the hounds of Óðinn were even now closing in on Thrym’s domus.
Either way, my husband had been chained now for over forty days. If he could starve within the merciless bonds of Gleipnir, then he was already dead.
My breath hitched. Liburnia wrapped her arms around my shoulders.
“Oh, Sol!” she cried. “Stay strong!”
I returned her hug as gracefully as I could manage. She’d asked me about my absent husband so many times that I finally made up a story about Fenris being trapped far away, in a barbarian stronghold. I told her I was waiting for him to be rescued, and she’d clenched her hands to her chest as though her own heart was breaking. Since then, she’d almost drowned me in her well-intentioned support.
I hadn’t had servants growing up, or even friends. Liburnia’s constant companionship felt strange to me and, at times, I wondered if I’d ever get used to it. But then the dark tides of loneliness, fear, and grief rose within me, choking me from the inside, and I wondered how I would have survived these months without her cheerful voice and endless prater to distract me from my own tumultuous thoughts.
Liburnia took my hand in hers and pulled me down the corridor. It was still dark; the lantern in her hand cast wildly swinging shadows among the columns, and I shivered. It was only too easy to imagine those hulking, dark shadows were men, or monsters, waiting to grab me.
When Liburnia and I reached Thrym’s chambers, we found his great, wooden door ajar. Liburnia paused in the darkness outside, gesturing me in. I clasped her hand for a moment before turning toward the low flicker of firelight inside Thrym’s private rooms.
I wasn’t exactly surprised to see Loki standing beside the fire, but my chest tightened all the same, and my heart began to hammer at my breastbone as if I were about to run a race. Loki turned to me with the pale eyes that were so heartbreakingly similar to Fenris’s.
“Last chance,” he said.
“What?” I stammered. That was so far from what I’d expected him to say that I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“If you come with me, I can’t promise your safety,” Loki said. His voice was a low, even rasp in the gloomy light.
As if in response to his words, the twins kicked inside me. I pressed my palms to my stomach, trying to reassure them.
“If you fail, I won’t be safe anywhere,” I replied. “And you must need me, or you wouldn’t have woken me.”
Loki’s mouth twisted until it was almost like a grin. “You know, I’ll bet most people don’t see past your pretty face.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Fenris does.”
A door creaked behind Loki, and Thrym slipped into the room from the opposite entrance.
“Everything’s ready,” he whispered. “Come back when you can.”
Loki crossed the small room to stand before Thrym, and the two men embraced. They kissed each other with a gentle tenderness that made me feel I was witnessing something deeply intimate. Heat rushed to my cheeks. I turned away, as if the flickering coals on the hearth consumed all my attention.
A moment later, Loki cleared his throat, and I looked up.
“We don’t have time to waste,” Loki said. “Angrboða is already there, shielding the island.”
That casual mention of Fenris’s mother made me feel cold. Had Loki actually done what she’d demanded?
“When we arrive, I’ll talk to Fenris,” Loki continued. “If he consents, and only if he consents, I’ll pull out his magic. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, and I’m damned sure it’s going to be incredibly unpleasant. That’s where you come in, Sol.” He paused, and his strange grin vanished. “I want you to go into dreams.”
“I—What?”
“Dreams,” Loki repeated. “The pain is probably going to knock him out. You’ll be waiting for him. But dreams are tricky, so you’ll need to stay focused. Concentrate on Fenris, on what you love about him, what you miss the most. Don’t think about the wolf.”
The dark vision of Fenris’s massive wolf form rushed forward in my memories, engulfing my mind. I swallowed hard and tried to push it away.
“Don’t think about the wolf,” I repeated. “Got it.”
“Keep him with you,” Loki said. His lip curled again in the merest hint of a smile. “Show him that he’s got a reason to come back.”
One of the twins kicked the inside of my ribcage so hard I felt my heart flutter in response. “Okay,” I sa
id, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “But, how am I going to get into his dreams?”
Loki grimaced. “I made a deal.”
THE MONSTER FREED: CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Loki took my hand, and the warm contours of Thrym’s private chambers dissolved before me. Cold sliced through my dress; my teeth clattered together in response. The ground rocked beneath my feet, and Loki’s hand tightened around my arm. My vision cleared slowly, revealing a thin, blue band against a dark, undulating horizon. The air carried the cold, thick scent of fresh water.
“Sit,” Loki said. “Before you lose your footing.”
I stretched out my hands, found a curving, wooden surface, and lowered myself onto it. A small flame surged in the darkness as Loki lit a lamp. Its warm, golden light grew, slowly revealing that Loki and I were sitting in the hull of a little shell-like boat surrounded by darkness. I shivered as the aching cold of the place sank into me.
“Is this Lake Amsvartnir?” I whispered.
“The far side of it, yes,” Loki answered. “I didn’t dare come out anywhere close to the island.”
I frowned at the little boat. A pale sail hung lifelessly from its small mast, and there were no oars.
“H-How—” I began, but my teeth were chattering so violently I could hardly get the words out.
“You’ve been away from Jötunheimr for some time, haven’t you?”
I nodded, and a smile softened his features.
“There’s a fur behind you. Ice bear.”
I reached behind me and felt the soft brush of fur. Loki frowned at the sail as I pulled the fur over my shoulders and around my knees.
“We should reach the island by midmorning,” he said, “assuming dawn brings a breeze. It usually does.”
He fell silent. Already, I noticed, the sky above us was growing lighter. I could see the top of the mast now, a solid, reassuring line against the fading darkness of the night.
“You said you made a deal to put me in Fenris’s dream?” I asked, hesitantly.
The Complete Fenris Series Page 58
