Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2) (29 page)

Thousands of years of peace have blessed me and my kind, but all existence is based on cycles. If the end of this current phase is near, I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure I am a part of the rebirth, just like last time. Solina Mundy will
not
get in my way.

Ah, there she is, fighting through the crowds at baggage claim. She’s a golden-skinned, blond-haired elf. Sol was the predecessor of their kind—the
Ljósálfar—
and this girl has definitely inherited the genes. Hmm, she sees Val now—recognition lights in her eyes… and attraction.

I feel sorry for her already.

Thorin’s first perception of me was interesting, but unhelpful. I pressed forward, or backward, receding through Thorin’s timeline. Flashes of things jumped out at me—history retreating in bursts of colors, thoughts, sounds, smells. So many smells. Rain, of course, gun smoke, wood smoke, spicy pine needles, roasting meat, salt water, forest floors and decaying leaves, decaying bodies, blood, blood, and more blood.

I stopped and slowed my breathing. Like a deep-sea diver halting her descent, I floated, weightless, in a vast ocean of memories, thoughts, words, conversations, emotions. They piled around me, eager like street beggars, demanding attention, crying for consideration. Shoving. Pushing. Suffocating.

All of his thoughts at once—it’s too much pressure.

Which way is up? Which way is out?

Can’t hear….

Can’t think….

Can’t breathe…

Buried beneath a pile of blankets, I hunkered in the corner of the sofa and clutched a steaming mug of coffee. Thorin had stoked the coals in the fireplace and added more wood. Flames roared and crackled across from me, but I still trembled.

Thorin sat a few inches away, a stolid sentinel, his gaze never wavering from my face for more than the few seconds it had taken to make a cup of coffee for me. “I’m guessing you’ve never experienced anything like that before.”

“Huh-uh.” I shook my head.

“I thought—” He paused, swallowed, and started again. “For a minute, you stopped breathing, and you went pale as a corpse, and you were cold. You’ve never been that cold.” And he should know. I had lost count of how many times he had moved my limp and unresponsive body after one trauma or another.
It’s too many times, that’s how many.

“I felt like I was drowning,” I said. “I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t know which way was up, which way to go to get to the surface. Everything went dark, but I heard you calling my name. It was a lifeline. I followed it back.”

Thorin leaned forward, teeth grinding, jaw working. His hand balled into a fist on his knee, white knuckled, imperative. “I don’t want you to do anything like that again. Ever.”

I set my mug on the end table next to me and withheld the dramatic sigh trying to escape my throat. “It’s another tool, like my fire. It may take some time and practice to master, but I need to learn to use it.”

“No, Sunshine. I—”

I raised a hand, stopping him. “You wouldn’t discard your hammer just because you smashed your thumb with it one time, right? I’ll only get better if I practice, but I think I’ll stick to working with people whose memories are a bit shallower. Don’t ask me not to, because I’ll refuse.”

Thorin huffed. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s pointless to argue with you when you’ve made up your mind, isn’t it? Your ability
is
a tool, possibly even a weapon, and maybe you should learn to control it.” He raised a finger, stopping me before I voiced my agreement. “Wait, I’m not done.”

Of course he isn’t.

“But we’ll do it carefully, and we’ll do it together, even if you’re practicing with someone else. Don’t try this again on your own. Not without me.”

I nodded. “Okay. I won’t, unless you’re there to watch. You’ll be the lifeguard. You can pull me out when I get in over my head.”

Thorin exhaled and relaxed his shoulders for the first time since I’d regained consciousness. “After all that, I still have to ask: Did you see anything useful? Any memories of Rolf?”

I sank into my blankets and momentarily put aside his question. The worst of my shivering had eased, but a half-frozen slurry still seeped through my veins. I reached for my fire and brought it up to a low, warm roast.

Thorin sucked in a startled breath. “What are you doing?”

“I’m tired of shivering.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Well, don’t burn down the cabin. Baldur won’t get his deposit back.”

Saying his name must have worked like an incantation because Baldur chose that moment to reappear in the middle of the living room. A cowlick of cinnamon hair stood up on the crown of his head like tail feathers. He looked at me, glanced at Thorin, and asked, “What did I miss?”

Thorin and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Long story,” Thorin said after recovering his composure.

“Did you learn anything useful?”

“Only that it’s dangerous to journey through an eternity of memories,” I said. “Otherwise, no.” I gave Thorin an apologetic smile. “Nothing about Rolf.”

“Maybe you have no memories of him,” Baldur said. “Maybe he means to take his revenge against someone else by hurting you.”

Thorin snorted. “There’s no one left who would care if any hurt was done to me.”

“
I
would be hurt,” Baldur said.

I would be hurt, too
, I didn’t say although it was true.

Thorin gestured to Baldur. “Anyone who wanted to take revenge on you vicariously, through someone else, would just take it out on Nina. Not me.”

“Then it looks like you’ll have to wait to find out what this is about until tomorrow,” I said. “Because we’re not going to figure it out on our own.”

“So, in the meantime, we sit and wait?” Baldur stuck out his bottom lip like a petulant child. “I hate that plan. I could put his name out to my network, see what comes up.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said, “and we probably should have done that a while back. Now, it’s probably too late. We don’t have much time.”

Baldur lowered his gaze and shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “It’s my fault for not taking his potential threat more seriously.”

“Then I’m equally as guilty,” Thorin said. “I underestimated him.”

“It’s too late for playing the blame game.” I shook off my blanket. “Let’s find something better to do with our time than play the Shoulda Coulda game.” After rising to my feet, I turned off my internal radiator, spread my stance wide, and bounced on the balls of my feet. “C’mon, Lord of the Rain Dance.” I rolled my hand in a come-hither gesture. “Let’s see what you got.”

Thorin smirked. “What are you doing?”

“Asking you to dance. What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re asking for a butt kicking.”

I rolled my head, stretching my neck until several vertebrae popped. “Let’s see how you do without your hammer, Holy Thunder.”

Baldur whooped.

Thorin narrowed his eyes at me, but a smile played on his lips. “Holy Thunder?”

“It’ll be your professional wrestling name. Or how ’bout Wonder of Thunder?”

“I like that one,” Baldur said. “It rhymes.”

In a flash too fast to see, Thorin left the couch, tripped me, and dropped me to the floor.

I wheezed until my breathing found its pace again. No harm done. Thorin had been gentle in his assault, and I
had
sort of asked for it. “Rolf moves fast like you do.” I rolled over to my knees and pushed myself onto my feet.

Thorin paced a circle around me, a stalking tiger. “You want me to slow down, Sunshine? Make myself a better match for you?”

“This isn’t about fighting me.” I sought my fire again. Subtle flames filled my palm, but I held them low, at my side. Thorin continued his orbit, seemingly unaware I had armed myself. “This is about you fighting another immortal—someone a lot more like you than I am.”

“How do you know he’s immortal?” Thorin asked.

“Call it an educated guess.”

“You said you fought him before. How did you overcome him?”

“Smoke and mirrors.”

Thorin came to a stop in front of me. “What does that mean?”

I lunged and threw a regular punch at Thorin’s jaw. When he leaned away from it, I brought up my fireball and swung for his chin, but my handful of flames burned only the empty space where Thorin had stood an instant before.
Good thing that’s not my only magic trick.
When Thorin reappeared behind me, I was already turning for him.

He struck out, an open-handed blow at my ribs. He pulled his punches for me, in consideration of my fragile, human body—I had learned that while fighting him at the Aerie. Instead of dodging or blocking the hit, I stepped into it. Softened or not, his strike drove the breath from my lungs and weakened my knees. But the maneuver had served its purpose, and the shock on Thorin’s face temporarily dulled my discomfort.

Taking advantage of his stunned state, I rammed a fiery uppercut into his jaw. His head snapped back. I kicked his knee, and he crumpled into a kneeling position.
I am a generous god. I require only that you kneel. Mwa ha ha!

Thorin recovered and stumbled back, rubbing his jaw and staring at me as if I had sprouted a second head.

“And that, good sir, is the fine art of misdirection,” I said, still breathless from the effects of his punch. “That’s how I fought Rolf.”

“You took a punch?” he asked, incredulous.

“No. I surprise-attacked him with pepper spray. The point is, improvisation is key. If you can’t win by skill or might, do the unexpected.”

“Who taught you that?”

“A police officer in San Diego.” When Thorin opened his mouth to ask about Tre, I cut him off and said, “Not relevant. Point is…” I stopped and grinned. “I got past your defenses.”

“In more ways than one,” Thorin grumbled. “But I get your point. You’ve seen that sword in action when Grim used it against you. I’ll prepare for this fight as best I can. I won’t let him take me by surprise again.”

After I threw on some clothes and another layer of insulation—a parka and snow boots—Thorin, Baldur, and I moved outside. Thorin set aside his bracelets and torc before he jogged the porch steps leading down to the front yard, and the snow came to his knees. It didn’t deter him. Without saying a thing, Baldur joined him, and the two men sparred.

Baldur and Thorin moved in a fluid style, like ocean waves battling wind. And the snow, kicking up in puffs and clouds as they skipped, lunged, kicked, and punched, created a mystical haze, insinuating magic and heightening their otherworldliness. Mostly, they moved too quickly to comprehend, but in the still moments, they epitomized the archetypes of balance, poise, and lethality. I had never seen anything quite so beautiful or so deadly.

No wonder mankind worshipped them, once upon a time.

Chapter Thirty-two

T
he afternoon wore on, and Baldur and Thorin tired of their fighting. After promising to come back before dawn, Baldur returned to New Breidablik to tend to Nina, leaving Thorin and me alone together for another night.

“Is it my fault?” I sat next to Thorin on the sofa and nibbled on a grilled-cheese sandwich and a pile of apple slices—late lunch or early supper, depending on interpretation.

The sunlight had dimmed in the living-room window, and in another hour or two, night would fall upon us again.
Only a few hours left before this cataclysmic event. Only a few more hours until Thorin fights for his life, not that we haven’t all been fighting for our lives, one way or another, ever since Mani died.

“Is what your fault?” Thorin asked and swiped an apple slice from my plate and popped it into his mouth.

Look, he
does
eat. Will wonders never cease?
“This confrontation with Rolf. If I had listened to you in Corvallis and not confronted Grim on my own, chased him down at his house… Maybe none of this would be happening.”

Thorin shrugged. “Maybe, if you had waited for me, Grim wouldn’t have been able to abduct you. Maybe we could have taken the sword from him together. But speculation is pointless. It is what it is, and we’ll deal with it. Besides, I get the feeling this was all rather inevitable. If you hadn’t noticed, our kind are enthralled to fate. We might be gods, but even we must bow before the command of providence. There’s no getting around it.”

“So, you’re saying this fight with Rolf is a consequence of fate?”

Thorin rose from the sofa and paced before the fireplace. “I’ve been thinking about it, over and over. Going back to the start, to when you first encountered Rolf in San Diego, you said you felt like he let you go on purpose, and you wondered why.”

“Yes.”
Where’s he going with this?

“It’s like he wanted to scare you into coming out of hiding. Like he wanted you to come back to me.”

“Why? It’s not like he knew I would find the sword.”

“Maybe he did know.”

“How?”

Thorin gestured to me. “‘How’ asks the woman who dreams about the future.”

I gaped at him. “You think he had a premonition?”

“Whatever the reason, I propose that this was the result he wanted all along.”

“How could anyone orchestrate all that we’ve been through?”

Thorin shook his head. “Not orchestrate, Sunshine. Just push and nudge when necessary, wait and watch when it’s not.”

“All to get the sword and challenge you to a duel? Why wait all this time? Why not just stab you in the back?”

“There’s no honor in that.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Honor in revenge?”

“What is revenge but courage to call in our honor’s debts?”

“Your words?”

“No, but only because I couldn’t say it any better myself. Perhaps Rolf’s been seeking an opportunity for a long time.” Thorin turned and crouched before the fireplace. He picked up the poker and stirred the embers. The logs popped and crackled, and the fire revived. “Maybe Helen’s plan provided an opportunity that never existed before. I have a feeling Rolf’s secrets aren’t the only ones that will be coming to light in the days ahead. Before all is said and done, many more skeletons will be coming out of many more closets.”

“I don’t have any skeletons in my closet.”

Thorin bit his lip and turned away.

“Ah, but you do.” I set my empty plate on the lamp table and tucked my sock feet up beneath me. “Of course you do. You’re thousands of years old. You don’t live that long without having some regrets, right?”

“More than you could imagine. And if it’s my time to pay for them, maybe I’ll have to.”

The desire to ask about his skeletons swelled in my tongue until I thought I’d choke on it. I bit my lip instead and swallowed my questions.
I know him well enough. He’ll tell me if I need to know. Trust in that and respect his privacy in the meantime
.

So, rather than questions, I offered reassurance. “It won’t be your time. You’ll beat Rolf. No question.”

Only when I said it did I comprehend my absolute lack of doubt and total confidence in Thorin’s success. I wanted Rolf and Thorin to finish the fight, sooner than later, to end the annoyance of waiting. I wanted the sword in our hands, under our control, and anticipation had generated butterflies in my stomach, but that feeling was nothing more than Christmas Eve jitters, the excitement of inevitable reward. No fear tainted the undercurrents of my anxiousness.

Thorin stopped pacing before me and canted his head in a curious way. “You’re so confident?”

I eased off the couch, stood up before him, and met his stare. “You’re the God of Thunder; the son of Thor, the strongest of the Aesir; immortal; impervious. When you’re at my side, there is no doubt, no fear of failure. My belief in our enemies’ defeat is certain. My faith in you is absolute.”

Outside, the thunder rumbled, sudden and unexpected. The cabin shuddered, rocked by the percussion of sound waves. Thorin stepped closer. “Say it again.”

“Say what?” I backed away from him. The thunder rumbled again, softer.

“Your faith in me. Say it again.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you know? Belief makes us stronger.”

Fire burned in my cheeks, and I looked away. “Words mean nothing. Faith, if it hath no works, is dead.” I had memorized that one in Sunday school as a child.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” Thorin quoted in reply—Proverbs, if I had to guess. “Say it, Solina.
Please
.”

No, not this. Anything but his big brown eyes, staring into mine, all but begging.
“Please” really was a magic word—it conquered my resistance.

I squared my shoulders, raised my chin, took a deep breath, and said, “I, Solina Mundy, Daughter of Sol and sun goddess incarnate, have absolute faith in you, Magni Aleksander, Son of Thor and God of Thunder.” I leaned forward and jabbed a finger in his chest. “But I’ll choke if you make me say it again.”

Thorin threw back his head and laughed, and the thunder laughed too, rattling windowpanes. He stood too close, and too much electricity hummed in the air—the literal kind and the metaphorical. If he touched me, I would be a goner. I moved away from him, putting the sofa between us.

“Where are you going, Sunshine?” Thorin asked, still grinning at me. A soft, ephemeral glow exuded from his skin, emphasizing his beauty.

Give a guy a compliment and it goes straight to his… um… divine essence
.

“I can’t stand this waiting around. I know I’m never going to be able to sleep. I saw some snowshoes in the closet in my room. How about we take a walk, or is that too mundane for a supernatural being who can blip through space?”

Thorin chuckled again. “No, not mundane. It’ll make for a good distraction. Let’s go.”

I was wrong. On top of a night of inadequate sleep and a near-death experience, the two-hour trek in freezing temperatures through knee-deep snow was, in fact, enough to exhaust me. Warm and drowsy before the fireplace, a half-drunk glass of wine in hand, I passed out remarkably soon, but I awoke to Thorin lifting me, carrying me to my room.

“No,” I protested. “You don’t have to—”

“Quiet. You’ve had enough sleeping on that couch.”

“What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

“How much longer?”

“I’ll leave soon. I’d like to get there before sunup so I have some time to study the terrain.”

My heart sank. Even though I’d professed my faith in him a few hours before, the idea of letting Thorin go fight Rolf on his own did not sit well with me.

“When’s Baldur coming back?” I asked.

Thorin eased me onto the bed and drew up the covers. “He said dawn.”

“I don’t like it.”

Thorin grunted. “Neither do I.”

Thorin leaned down, and his fingers swept around my neck. A familiar weight settled on my sternum.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He took off his bracelets and torc and placed them on the nightstand next to my bed. “Can’t bring it with me. You’ll have to hold onto it for a while. But I’ll be back before you know it.”

I stroked a finger over Mjölnir’s warm surface. “Promise me?”

“Promise you what?”

“Promise you’ll come back.”

“I’ll swear to come back if you make a promise to me in return.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t try to come after me. Don’t interfere with this fight. It’s not just the sword at stake. It’s for your own safety, too. Promise you’ll stay away.”

Could he see me roll my eyes in the dark? “Even if I wanted to, how could I? It’s not like I can just blip through space like you and Baldur.”

“If you want something badly enough, Sunshine, you’ll find a way.”

True, that.
I had never been an outright liar, but I could be…
evasive
when necessary. “If you know me as well as you say you do, then you know that isn’t a promise I want to make or keep.”

“Sunshine,” Thorin said, his voice low and foreboding.

“I promise to stay out of your way.” Whether Thorin could see it or not, I put three fingers to my brow in a Boy Scout salute. “I promise that, when you leave, I won’t go with you.”

But nobody said anything about going later. Any attempt to subvert Thorin’s orders depended on the vulnerability of Baldur’s sympathy. Manipulative? Yes. Did I care if it meant ensuring Rolf’s defeat and securing our possession of the sword? Not so much.

“There’s a lot of wiggle room in that promise,” Thorin said.

“Take it or leave it. It’s the only one I’m going to give.”

Thorin groaned. “I ought to tie you up and put you back in that ice cave.”

“You could. But you won’t because if you did something like that, then there is one promise I would make you, and I would keep it.”

“What’s that?”

“When I got free, and I
would
get free, you wouldn’t find me again, and we’d spend the rest of my days playing the most epic game of hide-and-seek that ever existed.”

Thorin huffed. “You’ve threatened me with that before.”

“It isn’t a threat.” I jimmied my covers higher, snuggling them around my neck. Then I rolled over, giving Thorin my back—a dismissal, if he translated my body language correctly. “Like I said, it’s a promise.”