I know what it is to feel as if you’ve lost a mate. I’ve been there with Adriel. Those memories still haunt me.
I close my eyes, leaning my head against the window, allowing their voices to wash over me. I’m weary, every inch of my body sore and aching. It’s been a long day.
When you’re immortal, you would think the passage of a single day would feel inconsequential, but most of the time, they drag on. Days like today are brutal.
Eitr was overrun with Forsaken and varulv. Rissa and Tori burned every one of them out of existence. But we have more questions than answers now.
And I’m more convinced than ever that Abigail is keeping secrets—dangerous secrets. When we get back to the safehouse, I intend to pry them out of her. I don’t care about protecting the sanctity of the future anymore. I care about protecting her.
Tori confirmed that they’ve been tampering with her visions for months, intentionally sending her false flags to confuse what she sees. It’s what we’ve feared. But I have a feeling she’s always known.
Is this what she’s been hiding? Is she afraid we’d turn from her if we knew?
I intend to get those answers.
But I can wait to pry my answers from her until after Adriel and I are able to wrap our arms around her again and reassure ourselves that she’s safe. I already ache to feel her in them. I ache to breathe her in, to feel her lips against mine. To listen to her moan as Adriel kisses her.
I want nothing more than the two of them in my arms and in my bed where they belong. I’m not a selfish Fae. I’m just one desperate to hold his mates and remind himself that they’re safe.
A sharp zing of emotion sears down our bond—fear so potent I can almost taste its bitter edge on my tongue. My eyes fly open as my mind grasps for the thread to trace it back, but it’s gone before I can.
Faen. She’s masked the bond again, hiding it from us. Until last night, I didn’t even know that she knew it existed. Hiding it from her was, perhaps, the only thing Adriel and I have agreed on in millennia. But with her visions, we didn’t want her to know that we felt her pain. She’s fierce but soft-hearted, and she already has a crushing weight on her shoulders. She should not have to worry about us, too.
I press my hand to my chest, rubbing as worry slashes at me. I feel Adriel’s gaze on me and glance in his direction.
"You felt it too, didn't you?" he asks, worry carving lines around his mouth.
I don’t need to ask to know what he means. He shares the same bond with Abigail that I do. He felt it just as clearly as I did.
“Ja,” I murmur quietly. “I felt it.”
Fear flickers in his eye, his scar standing out starkly against his pale skin as the lines of worry around his mouth deepen. My heart aches at the sight. Adriel fears nothing, but he fears for Abigail.
And who can blame him? If anyone understands the torment that awaits her if the Forsaken get their hands on her, he does. He spent years in Jotunheim, tortured almost to death, only to be brought back so they could begin again.
And it’s my fault.
Without thinking, I reach out to comfort him, touching his hand. "We'll make her talk," I say. “Together.”
Doubt flickers in his gaze as he stares at me. I can almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he tries to work out for himself if this is some trick instead of the olive branch I intend it to be. He trusts me so little.
Eventually, he nods before slipping his hand from beneath mine and turning his face away. He retreats back into stony silence—the same silence he wears like a cloak.
Guilt pricks at me, sharp and insistent. Gods. How did I let things become so twisted between us? How did we drift so far from what we once were?
Fighting with him is slowly killing me. It’s been killing me for millennia. I went from thinking he died on the battlefield to learning that he was one of the warriors the Jötunn took hostage. I desperately wanted to go after him. But before we even had the city empty, Álfheimr and the Fae fell. The warriors oathbound to Valhalla were all who remained.
No one believed the Jötunn had any reason to keep the hostages alive any longer. With our world in ruin and our people all but gone, there was nothing left for them to gain by keeping them alive.
And our numbers were too few—a race of millions, now cut to less than one thousand. I made the call not to send a rescue party. Risking the warriors we had left to recover bodies was a suicide mission I couldn’t ask them to undertake, not when Valhalla and Asgard were still at risk.
I didn’t know he was still alive, but I should have. And it fucking haunts me that I didn’t. Every single day, I live with the knowledge that I left him there to die. He spent seven years in captivity, being tortured over and over again because I made the call not to send anyone.
Every time I look at him, I see the reminder of what I caused—the scars he bears because I left him there. And the physical scars aren’t even the worst of it. He came back broken, a shell of the Fae he was before the war.
How am I supposed to forgive myself when he still wakes screaming at night? When he can’t forgive me?
All I want is to fix it. I desperately want him and Abigail in my arms where they belong, but I don’t deserve either of them. How can I ever? He is the best of the Fae, and she’s the brightest Valkyrie the realms have ever known. And I’m the Gods-damned bastard who left him to suffer.
I don’t trust myself with either of them.
But somehow, some way, we have to heal the rift between us. I can’t keep hurting them—and I am hurting them. I see the sadness in Abigail’s eyes when Adriel and I fight. I see the grief in his when he forces himself to keep his distance from her, afraid of hurting me. He wants to let himself love her fully, but he holds himself back because of me—because even though he hates me—he still tries to protect me.
It’s not fair to either of them. My soul is theirs. For 2500 years, half of it has been Adriel’s. And now, half of it belongs to Abigail, too. I don’t know why the Norns chose me when I deserve neither of them, but my soul is theirs.
I’ll do whatever I must to ensure their happiness. If I have to sacrifice my own so that Adriel finds the peace he deserves, so be it.
A sharp blade of terror lances through my soul half a second before Adriel’s choked cry rips through the van. "No!"
I whip my head in his direction.
And I see what he’s already seen. Flames billow from the safehouse where we left Abigail, black smoke pumping into the air. Every inch of the building is a blazing inferno.
The same surge of terror that ripped through him rips through me.
"Gods," I breathe, my voice shaking with fear. "Oh, Gods."
Warriors race around out front, carrying the injured to safety. But everywhere I look, there are bodies. Too many bodies.
