“He’s doing a lot better, don’t you think?” After pouring a cup of coffee, I went to the refrigerator to look for creamer. “Miraculous, almost.”

Baldur rubbed his neck and flexed his shoulders as if he felt tension in those muscles. Immortal Norse gods didn’t have to eat or sleep, but they apparently suffered stress pains. How did that make sense?

“I was telling Thorin about what I found when I went back to the glacier to look for him,” Baldur said. “Whatever happened after I took Solina and Skyla away, it destroyed most of the evidence. It was obviously a big fight. Lots of fallen rocks—the cave is just a depression in the ground, now. Lots of melted ice refrozen into unnatural configurations.”

“It was the sword,” Thorin said. “There was a cave-in during the fight.”

Baldur’s auburn eyebrows arched. “Five minutes ago, you couldn’t recall anything. Where did the sudden epiphany come from?”

“From Rolf Lockhart.” Thorin told Baldur about the rest, about Rolf’s demands, and about how neither of us knew Rolf’s true identity or what wrong he sought to avenge by fighting Thorin.

“What do you think?” Baldur asked. “Will you do what he wants?”

“I don’t think he left us any choice.”

“Do you trust him to meet you alone? Fight fairly?”

“Hell no,” Thorin said. “Rolf only said I had to come alone and unarmed. He never said anything about the same rules applying to him.”

“Let us come with you,” I said. “We’ll stay far enough away that he never has to know we’re there. If we’re close by and you need us, Baldur can have us at your side in an instant.”

“No.” Thorin shook his head. “I can’t risk giving Rolf reason to take the sword to Helen. Whatever his vendetta against me, it’s not worth Helen getting her hands on Surtalogi.”

“So, you’ll fight him without Mjölnir?”

Thorin nodded. “If I have to.”

“But you still have the lightning,” I said. “The storms. That isn’t dependent on weaponry or, um, accessories, right?”

“It’s rune craft,” Baldur said. “Originally created by Odin and passed through the blood of Thor’s offspring. Magni’s way with thunder and lightning is as inseparable from him as his blond hair and brown eyes. You could say it’s in his DNA, I guess.”

I imagined a scientist decoding Thorin’s genes and finding tiny runic symbols engraved in his chromosomes. “And there’s no removing it from him, right? No tricks that Rolf might have for stealing Thorin’s power?”

Thorin shook his head. “Only the Allfather has that ability, right?”

Baldur pursed his lips. “After this many eons? I don’t think even I could take away your thunder.”

“How long since you’ve had a knock-down-drag-out with an immortal?” I asked.

Thorin arched a single eyebrow. “Are you implying I might be rusty?”

“I wouldn’t dare. I was just… curious.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sunshine. Fighting is ingrained in my DNA, too.”

“So it’s settled? You’re going to accept Rolf’s challenge.”

Thorin glanced down at his phone. “I’ll call him now and tell him.”

Rolf answered Thorin’s call right away, and Thorin grumbled answers and questions at him until they’d settled on the details. Negotiations concluded, Thorin ended the call and stuffed the phone in his pocket. “Tomorrow at dawn,” he said, not meeting my gaze. Instead, he stared out the living-room window, his eyes distant and unfocused.

“Where?” Baldur asked.

“He gave me GPS coordinates. Said it was in an open area outside Portland.”

“Portland?” I asked. “Why there?”

Rather than answer, Thorin turned his attention back to me and crossed the space between us. He grasped my arm, between shoulder and biceps, urgent but not intimidating. “I know you would tell me if you had seen anything. But I still have to ask.”

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “The fire, the apple orchard, that’s all come to light. There aren’t any more mysteries.”

“What about…” Thorin stopped and cleared his throat. He lowered his voice. “What about when you touch me?”

“I don’t think it works like that. The things I see when I touch people, they’re memories and thoughts, not predictions.”

“Maybe, if you were to try, you could see something in my past that I’ve forgotten.”

“I don’t know, Thorin,” I said, reluctant to delve into the dark places deep inside him. Never mind that a being as old as him had accumulated several millennia of memories. Talk about a search for a needle in the most epic haystack. “Besides not knowing if I can even do anything like that, I might find things you’d rather I didn’t see. It’s not like you to willingly give away personal information.”

Quietly, so only I could hear, Thorin said, “I trust you, Sunshine.”

My breath caught and hung in my lungs like a kite string trapped in a tree limb. “Are you sure?”

As Thorin stared into me with the warmest look I had ever seen in his eyes, he nodded, took my hand, and held it between his own, close to his heart. The beat of that mighty and timeless muscle thumped under my hand—so human, and yet so not.

Baldur cleared his throat and stood up from the kitchen table. “I’m, uh, I’m going to get some air. I’ll be back after a while.” And, pop, he was gone.

“Okay.” I returned my attention to Thorin. “I’ll give it a try.”

“It’s all I ask.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath. “I guess… I mean, I don’t know how to do this, but I guess it would be best if you can clear your thoughts. Don’t concentrate on anything and just zone out if you can.”

Thorin mumbled something affirmative, and his warm breath rushed over my face. He had kept his walls up so long, he had probably forgotten how to let them down, and I saw nothing, at first. But slowly, slowly, I sank through a gray fog and dropped into the light of a recent memory. I saw myself from his point of view, the day we’d first met, when he picked me up from the airport in Anchorage.

Maybe it’s all coincidence, and I sincerely hope it is. This isn’t the first time the past has reincarnated. Some players from the original game have reappeared from time to time only to experience a violent death in a way that suggests history is prone to revisit some of its more… thrilling moments.

But this girl, coming here after the brutality committed on her brother—she’s either stupid, brave, ill-fated, or some of everything. I should have sent her flight back home before it crossed the first time line, saved us all a mountain of trouble. Now Val and I are burdened with watching over her, surreptitiously keeping her safe until I find out if her brother’s murder is happenstance or omen.

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.