Chapter Twenty-six

For the first time in what felt like ages, I woke up warm and cozy, but thirst had turned my throat and eyes into sandpaper. Skyla appeared at my bedside, waiting with a mug of hot chicken broth and a glass of water.

“Sip this slow.” She passed me the mug.

I sucked down the broth and gave it back to her for a refill.

She chuckled and shook her head. “I said slow.”

“Try telling that to my stomach,” I said.

Skyla obliged my request for seconds and returned a few moments later with another cup of soup.

“Where are we?” I asked after scanning my surroundings—log walls, chintz curtains, hand-stitched quilts.

“A rental cabin near Rainier. We set this up as sort of a base camp, but we didn’t intend to stay here this long. Baldur was too weak to make the jump all the way back to New Breidablik with passengers.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. “Baldur made me leave you. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to.”

“We’re all together now. He came back for me.”

“Are you okay? The fighting was so horrible.”

“I’ve got a bruised rib, some sore knuckles, but otherwise, I’m fine.”

“What happened? Is Tori…?” My mouth went dry, and I couldn’t finish the question.

Lines of strain appeared around Skyla’s mouth and eyes. “Tori wasn’t going to stop. She was intent on killing you and on getting me out of her way so I couldn’t interfere. She was a fanatic—dedicated to her beliefs.”

“You were a soldier. And a Valkyrie.” Sensing Skyla’s discomfort, I changed the subject to something less disturbing.

“Tell me everything.” I fell back against the pillows. Getting out of bed felt like a Sisyphean task. “Where is Thorin?”

Skyla sighed and slumped beside me. “You’ve been out of commission for a day. We woke you to force you to drink a few times. You stumbled to the bathroom once.”

“Ah. I thought it was just part of some weird dream.”

Skyla chuckled. “You did talk about apples a lot.”

My apple orchard had grown exponentially. I’d spent a lot of time in that dreamy place while my body recovered from hypothermia and dehydration. Not once in that place did a wolf try to eat me or a maniacal god try to kill me. My subconscious was being decent enough to let me dream of good things for a change.

Skyla’s gaze dropped, and her chin dipped. “Don’t know about Thorin, though. He hasn’t shown up yet.”

I sat back up, and my mouth fell open. “Hasn’t Baldur been back to look for him?”

“No, he’s wounded as well. Plus, he’s been nursing the two of us, and he has Nina to worry about. They found her in a pretty bad situation. She’s kind of a mess.”

I sat up straighter, energized by curiosity. “Nina? So he did find her. How?”

“Long story.”

“Like we have anything else to do.”

“Maybe you should come into the living room. Baldur probably would want to tell his part. It’s not like I was there for it.”

“What about Val? Has he not made contact either?”

Skyla patted my shoulder and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Solina. The last I saw, Grim had broken him almost literally in half and thrown him in the lake. I don’t know if they’re able to recover from those kinds of things.”

My heart swelled into my throat. I turned away and covered my eyes. A big, cold fist squeezed my heart, and the air in my lungs turned to ice.

Skyla rubbed my back while I struggled against tears and fought back the urge to scream and maybe throw something, tear apart a pillow or punch a wall—impotent gestures that might momentarily ease my internal pain but would otherwise solve nothing. I needed a plan, an action, something more productive. But what?

“Maybe Val survived it,” Skyla said, “but we saw no signs of him after Grim disappeared with you and Tori. Just as it is with Thorin, it’s a case of wait and see. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”

Skyla scooted off the bed and stretched. She hadn’t cut her hair in a while, so the halo of curls around her face had grown into something wilder and unruly. A huge T-shirt and sweats—probably something belonging to Baldur—swallowed her compact frame. I wore similar attire.

She noticed me giving her the once-over and made a sour face. “This living like a vagabond is getting old.”

“Tell me about it.” I scooted to the edge of the bed, wondering when I had traded my body for that of a ninety-year-old suffering arthritis in every joint. Skyla heaved me up onto my feet, groaning at her own injuries as she did. We supported each other as we wibble-wobbled into the living room.

An unfamiliar woman looked up from her book as we entered. She wore her hair in a wild mane of tight black ringlets that trailed over her broad shoulders. She sat in an overstuffed chair across from a crackling fireplace and stared at me with big brown eyes. I sank into another overstuffed chair, and Skyla plopped down on a huge ottoman next to me, folding her legs criss-cross applesauce.

“Nina,” Skyla said, “I don’t think you and Solina have been formally introduced. Solina Mundy, meet Nina Norgaard.”

Nina nodded at me but kept her face impassive. Closer inspection revealed she was older than me—maybe by as many as ten or fifteen years. She also had a few weeks-old bruises and abrasions. From a distance, her dark skin camouflaged the damage, and she looked as ageless and pristine as the subject of a hallowed painting. “Everyone’s talked about you a lot,” Nina said. She looked me over before turning back to her book. “Not sure what all the fuss is about.”

I ignored her cutting remark and smiled and tried to sound friendly. “Everyone’s talked about you, too. I can’t wait to hear your story.”

Baldur, maybe having heard the chatter of multiple females, entered the room and greeted me with an enthusiastic hug. “So glad to see you on the mend.”

“Feels good to be on the mend,” I said. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me.”

“No thanks are necessary. Just doing what I should have been doing all along.”

“What about Thorin? Skyla says you’ve had no word from him?”

Baldur lowered his eyes and frowned. “I can’t say for sure what happened to him.”

“Can’t you go look for him?”

Baldur’s gaze shifted to Nina. His face showed all his feelings, love but also apprehension. “I don’t want to leave her,” he whispered. “She’s not stable.”

“So we sit here and wait for Thorin to show up?”

Mjölnir’s chain still hung around my neck, and it would draw him to me… if he was capable of tracking it. The “if” was what worried me.

“Yes. We will rest and continue to heal. You’ll have to trust Magni to take care of himself.”