“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.”

Chapter Thirty-three

I woke again in darkness, and the numbers glowing on the alarm clock beside my bed displayed the time: a few minutes after four o’ clock. Guess I’ll have time to sleep when I’m dead… if I’m lucky. The house creaked. Something thumped and rattled. I slid out of bed and opened my door. A light shone from across the living room. I followed the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and found Baldur leaning against a kitchen counter, mindlessly swirling a spoon around his mug.

“Where is he?” I asked and crossed my arms over my chest. Cool morning air seeped through my thin cotton T-shirt, and I shivered. Without taking my eyes from Baldur, I backed into the living room, snatched the afghan draped across the sofa, and wrapped it around my shoulders.

“Already gone. He left about half an hour ago.”

“And we’re just going to sit here, twiddle our thumbs, and wait for him to come back?”

Baldur set his mug on the counter. Shadows haunted his eyes, and deep lines scored his forehead and formed parentheses around his mouth. “What else are we supposed to do?”

“Go after him.”

“That would violate Rolf’s terms.”

“Since when do we let Rolf dictate what we do?”

“He’ll give the sword to Helen if we don’t.”

“And if we don’t go, and if Rolf does something tricky—and you know he’s going to do something tricky—then who’s to blame when Thorin suffers the consequence?”

Baldur set down his coffee and stood up straighter. “And what if something happens to you? I’ll be the one who has to live with the God of Thunder’s wrath. Do you know what that’s like?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said wryly. “I’ve had some experience.”

“For an eternity?”

Okay, got me there. I gave him a crooked smile and shrugged.

Baldur smiled in return. “I don’t know why he calls you Sunshine. Your nickname should be Bulldog.”

“I’d take it as a compliment.”

Baldur snorted, and it turned into a chuckle. “You would. Okay, Solina. If you’ve got an idea, I’ll hear it. Thorin going to Rolf alone and unarmed doesn’t sit well with me either, if you want to know the truth.”

I nodded. “I do have an idea. It’s not much, but something is better than nothing, I guess.”

Baldur made a beckoning gesture, urging me to get to the point.

“You remember what you told me when we were trying to escape from Helen’s warehouse? You said you could create a rune that would make me totally invisible if you had your full strength and time to prepare. Well, you still don’t have much time to prepare, but I figure you have more than you did back then.”

Baldur cocked his head like a curious dog, and some of the worry lines faded around his eyes and mouth. He glanced at the window and the sky beyond it, as if judging the nearness of sunrise. “I have the time.”

“You have enough strength?”

“Guess we’re about to find out.”

“Is it that easy?” I asked. “I wish for invisibility, and you snap your fingers and make it happen?”

“Easy? Have any of your abilities come easily for you, without cost?”

“Of course not.”

Baldur nodded. “It drains your physical energy, and it’s finite, right? Your powers aren’t unlimited.”

“Right. It also means I’ve spent a lot of time running around naked.”

Baldur chuckled. “It’s going to cost you a normal life, too. Even if this all ends, things will never be the way they were.”

“It also cost me a brother. If I hadn’t lost Mani, I have a feeling I would still be as mundane as ever.”

Baldur set down his coffee mug and folded his arms over his chest. He tilted his head and looked at me through his lashes. “Do you know how Odin got the runes in the first place?”

I nodded. I had read the story in my research, although the details were cloudy. “He hanged himself from the world tree and stared into the well at its base until the runes accepted his sacrifice and revealed their shape and power.”

Baldur huffed and rolled his eyes. “Out of the mouths of babes…”

“I summarized,” I said. “I know it was more complicated than that.”

Baldur shrugged. “Not really, Solina. What you said was the important part. The sacrifice. The suffering. That is the cost of runes. I have paid the price, dearly. Over and over.”

“But the Valkyries use the runes, too,” I said. “They inscribe them on their swords. Thorin has them on his bracelets.”

“Odin gifted those runes to the Valkyries, as was his right. But creating runes that can change a person’s essence or give them powers they never had before or defy the forces of the natural world…” Baldur looked away and waved a hand as if dispersing the rest of his thought, but I picked up his meaning.

“Only you, right? Because you’ve paid the cost, in your faultless death, in your time with Helen, in the way you lose Nanna over and over again. That’s the price of being Allfather and of having the abilities you have?”

Baldur swallowed and bobbed his head.

“Does it hurt you when you do something like this? When you make a rune that can defy the natural world?”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Only a little, Solina. I barely notice it anymore.”

After a disturbing and gut-wrenching flight through the æther, Baldur and I crouched at the edge of a random field, in an indiscriminate rural area near Portland. For the first few minutes after my feet touched solid ground, my vision spun and my ears rang. My stomach swirled and heaved, and my heart skittered around my chest like a demented demon. The last time I had traveled via Aesir Express, I was mostly insensible. After that recent and more conscious experience, I decided I preferred oblivion.

A chill breeze stirred the grass, churning up odors of hay, old leaves, and soil. I tugged my parka’s hood over my hair and huddled into the warmth of its fleece lining. Several hundred feet away, in the gloaming light and early-morning fog, stood Magni Aleksander Thorin, Son of Thor and God of Thunder. He had spread his feet wide, his shoulders were squared, and he kept his hands fisted at his side.

A passing stranger might have commented on Thorin’s incongruous presence in the middle of an empty field, but he was otherwise unremarkable—as unremarkable as a six-foot-five man wearing his long hair in braids could be. His faded jeans fit him loosely, allowing room to maneuver, and he wore a dark wool sweater. I easily pictured him in leather, armor, and furs, and that mental image sprouted goosebumps across my arms.