“I was told such things were sacred to your kind, and you don’t give their locations away easily. I’ve never been to your home.”

“Never?”

“For all we’ve been through together, we barely know each other. Well, I barely know you, anyway. Not the personal stuff. But I trust you. You’ve risked your life for me. You’ve killed my enemies.”

“That’s a lot.” Thorin slid his fingertips under my chin and urged me to look up at him. “Trust is what’s most important.”

“I have trusted you with my life almost from the first day I met you, but I’ve never trusted you with much more than that.”

“Oh?” His brows arched in question. “Nothing in your story suggested I’ve been cavalier with your feelings.”

“You’ve never had a chance to.”

Thorin chuckled at my petulance. “Despite everything you’ve told me, everything you’ve been through, you chose to stay here, alone, with me. That tells me all I need to know.”

Thorin let me talk him into taking one of the bedrooms and moving from the confines of the sofa. He tested his weight on the mattress, and the springs groaned in protest.

“Maybe we should go to your store first.” I leaned against the doorjamb. “Going somewhere familiar might jog your memories.”

Thorin leaned over and unlaced his boots. “I have a store?”

I huffed. “What do you remember?”

Thorin kicked off one boot and went to work on the other. “When Baldur first found me up on the mountain, I couldn’t even remember my name, but after he started talking, a lot of old memories came back.” He kicked off the second boot, stood, and peeled off layers, starting with a bulky wool sweater.

“I regret that I don’t remember your brother,” he said, the words muffled by his thermal shirt as he pulled it over his head. “I especially regret not remembering you. But our kind heal quickly. In the morning, I would be surprised if I haven’t mostly recovered.”

Thorin shed layers down to a thin undershirt that hugged every line, every curve, plane and valley. That too came off, leaving him bare chested and me dry throated. It went against the laws of everything good and holy for a man to look that fine. I turned away.

“This place has some sort of bathing accommodations, correct?”

“Y-yup, um, down the hall.” I pointed dumbly, still looking anywhere but at him. “There’s, uh, there’s a-an extra towel or two on the shelf in the bathroom. You can use my soap and stuff.”

The floor creaked as Thorin stepped closer, pausing in the doorway beside me. His scent filled the space between us. I did not inhale and savor it. I swear I didn’t.

“Thank you,” he said, his words low and gruff.

I swallowed. “No problem. Least I could do since you saved my life and all.”

Thorin didn’t move or say anything. I sensed he wanted me to look at him, to see him rooted in place so close to my side… Too close, too warm. I swallowed again, steeled my nerves, and pried my eyes from the ceiling. Once he had my full attention, Thorin let a charming, devilish smile curl at the corner of his lips. “Good night, Miss Mundy.”

“You call me Sunshine.” The words came out raspy.

“Do I?”

I nodded.

Thorin smoothed a loose hair from my cheek and tucked it behind my ear. Every function in my body stuttered to a halt. “Well, good night then, Sunshine.”

Thorin slid past me, and his touch warmed me from head to toe. It lit fires in my cheeks, and champagne bubbles fizzed in my veins. He padded down the hallway into the bathroom, and the moment the door shut behind him, I broke from my daze and fled down the hallway back to the safety of my room.

What’s going on with him? I wondered as I slid under the quilts on my bed. A little amnesia and all his personal constraints disappear?

I turned off the lamp on my bedside table and stared up into the darkness. No problem. I have more than enough inhibitions to cover us both.

Chapter Thirty

Whether I meant it to or not, my hearing tuned in to every creak and groan of the house, every noise Thorin made—the abrupt cessation of running water, the rattle of shower curtain rings sliding across the metal rod, something clattering in the sink. A moment later, the bathroom door creaked open, and heavy footsteps crept down the hallway. His bed squeaked as it accepted his weight. I imagined I could hear his breathing, but it was only the wind.

I lay awake long into the night, holding my breath, listening, picturing Thorin with his hands tucked behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling, trying to remember. When I had roomed with Val, he acted sleepy in the mornings, but he had also wanted to hide his godhood. Maybe, like eating, sleep was optional.

Before that day, I had never caught Thorin sleeping, or even tired for that matter, but the recent trauma must have tested even his stamina.

I had never allowed myself to think too long or too hard about my feelings for Thorin. Recent revelations proved my emotions had grown beyond superficial attraction. But even before my exposure to the dangerous world of immortal gods, I had trouble with relationships, particularly the romantically inclined ones.

Once, when Mani and I had gotten into some petty fight, he told me everyone called me an ice princess—ironic, considering my heritage. The reputation was justified when I looked back on it. I never felt superior to anyone as gossip suggested. Mostly, I was afraid—afraid of rejection, afraid of being hurt, afraid of losing. Until Mani died, my feelings had been unfounded. I never really knew loss or heartbreak, nothing to make me dread forming attachments.

Perhaps I’d been composed with the memories of a life-before. Maybe they were ingrained in my DNA, and maybe those memories struggled to dictate my life. Over the centuries, Sol must have suffered a great number of hurts and lost many loves. Did her fears whisper in my atoms?

I knew one thing for certain: losing Mani was the single most horrible experience of my life. If I cared for Thorin a fraction of how much I had cared for my brother—and I suspected the amount was much more than a fraction—then letting Thorin get past my defenses was a huge risk. Failure was too great a threat, and success posed its own separate hazard.

Any relationship I built with Thorin had a limited shelf life from the start. One way or another I would die—by sickness, old age, or wolf. Thorin was immortal, I was not, and that created a formula for certain disaster.

I would do well to remember that.

I slid into sleep at some point and dreamed of Asgard for the first time since having left Thorin in Idun’s garden. All subsequent attempts to initiate interdimensional travel or arouse precognitive visions had resulted in nothing more than a headache. My insight asserted its own will and ignored my demands for obedience.

I strolled through my orchard, grabbing at apples but never plucking them free. Like a ghost’s, my fingers passed through the fruit, encountering nothing solid. I strolled up and down the rows, not quite lost but unable to find my way out.

I maintained my calm at first, but time passes in a peculiar way in dreams, and I realized I had wandered the orchard for hours without reaching Idun’s house or the wrecked city of Asgard. A cold drop of panic trickled down my spine.

Up and down the rows, ducking through trees and looking for something familiar, I ran faster and faster until I tripped and sprawled face-first on the lush green grass. I rolled over and examined the scene, expecting to find a root to blame for my fall. Instead, I had stumbled over a scroll. To discover such a thing in the middle of an apple orchard seemed perfectly rational, as strange things often do in dreams. I picked up the scroll and unrolled the parchment.

On its aged and deteriorated surface, I recognized the outline of a genealogical chart, one similar to those I had studied at the Aerie’s library when I helped Skyla search for the grimoire. The chart tracked Baldur’s lineage and Nina’s reincarnations and the births of their offspring. If the Valkyries possessed a match to that record in the physical world, then they had stored it somewhere other than the library because I had looked through every scroll in the Aerie’s collection without ever finding one like that.

I traced my finger along notations until I arrived at one marking the birth of the most current children and grandchildren of Baldur and Nanna, aka Nina. Three daughters had been born over two decades. The first, Thea, died as an infant. The second, Embla, was still living. And a third, Kara, died after giving birth to two children: one boy, named Paul, and one girl, named…

Skyla Frigga Rodriguez.

Thorin’s voice ripped me from my dream. Frantic and hoarse, he roared in the language Baldur had used with him—Asgardian, perhaps. A cold sweat broke over me, and my heart climbed into my throat, fluttering like a bird trapped in a chimney. Someone had found us.

I eased out of bed, tiptoed through the darkness, and pressed my ear against my door. Something heavy crashed to the floor as Thorin railed against his attacker. But why go for Thorin instead of me? I eased my door open and peered into the dim living room, where the dying fire provided the only light. After finding nothing alarming there, I ventured out, stepping like a cat, listening hard enough to make my ears hurt.

Thorin went silent. I hurried forward, balancing on the balls of my feet, hoping to sneak to his room in silence. Thorin roared again, and something else crashed. So much for stealth. I dashed the last few feet and pounced into his doorway with my fire crackling, ready to burn, devastate, and consume whichever of my enemies dared breach the sanctity of my little cabin.

Instead, I found Thorin, feral, raging, and naked except for his iron bracelets and torc. I would have felt embarrassed for him if I thought it bothered him… or if he hadn’t looked so completely magnificent. He appeared to have fixated his attention on fighting a ghost or maybe a whole legion of them, the way he swung his weapon. He had reduced his nightstand to kindling, and an old upholstered chair lay on its side, beaten to within an inch of its life.