I motioned to Thorin’s injuries, to the oozing burn mark on his chest and ribs. “Are you sure you’ve got it in you?”

Thorin’s nostrils flared, and his eyes narrowed. A growl rumbled in his throat.

“Fine.” I lifted my arms in a way that looked like I was asking for a hug. “God forbid we do anything to bruise your ego.”

Thorin stepped closer, took my hips between his hands, and said, “Hold on tight. It’s a hell of a ride.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and said, “Then it’s a good thing this ain’t my first rodeo.”

Snap crackle pop. We were gone.

Chapter Thirty-six

Thorin said nothing when we arrived at the cabin. I went to the kitchen, hoping Baldur had left coffee in the pot that I could reheat in the microwave. Thorin went to his room, changed into a clean shirt, and returned to the living room. He crouched before the fireplace, stoked the coals, and brought the fire back to life, if for no other reason than to put his attention on something other than me. At least, that’s what I figured. Knowing Thorin, he wasn’t avoiding my glare out of shame or regret. More likely, he was struggling to control his emotions. I, however, remained numb.

Val’s revelations had hurt me, and the wound ran deep, and raw, which explained why I had shut down everything inside me. That kind of injury was threatening to incapacitate me, and I couldn’t afford a breakdown. My brother’s best friend, a man I had taken into my heart as an intimate confidant, had exposed himself for a lying bastard of the grandest design—a manipulator on a scale so massive I barely comprehended it. From the start, I had worried Val might lie and use me to get something he wanted, but I’d never imagined anything like the scheme he’d constructed. How could I have guessed the magnitude of his betrayal?

However… I felt sorry for Val. I knew his pain and understood what it had driven him to do. I understood why.

And Thorin. Oh, the gods, Thorin. Val had undoubtedly wanted me to hate Thorin—hate him enough to leave him—but did I? I searched myself for animosity or disgust or loathing, but I only found numbness, as if Baldur’s invisibility rune had reconstructed itself and taken up residence in my heart.

“You were there?” I stepped closer to Thorin, who lingered in a crouch before the fireplace. “You were one of the ones who did that to him?”

Thorin rose up to full height and turned to face me. I expected to see blackness in his eyes, but it wasn’t there.

“Were you a part of turning Val into the beast?” I asked.

“It was thousands of years ago.” He said it in a tired voice as if he knew it was insufficient but worth a try anyway.

“A million years wouldn’t matter if I was an eternal being who was forced to kill my own brother.”

Thorin raised his chin. His eyes hadn’t gone dark, but he was still a proud man.

I shouldn’t expect remorse from him.

“And what if I was there?”

Unconsciously, my hands balled at my sides. “Then I might put some blame on you for what Val has become.”

“You pity him?”

“No. Not pity. But empathy? Yes. I can put myself in Val’s shoes. I know what it would have done to me if I had woken to find I had killed Mani. If I had picked his flesh from my teeth. I couldn’t have lived with it, and if I had, it would have made me a monster.”

Thorin stepped closer to me and captured my gaze. An earnest light burned in his eyes. “You probably can’t understand how beloved Baldur was to us. He was the epitome of what a god should be, and he made the rest of us feel we were all a little closer to the ideal we had reached for but failed. Baldur was our Christ, but his death didn’t redeem our sins. It only made them lower and uglier. It made us all lower and uglier. Losing him…” Thorin shrugged and shook his head. He swallowed. “We would have burned the world ourselves if it would have stopped our hurting. We wanted Loki to feel our pain, to know the enormity of our loss and what he had cost us. It wasn’t moral, it wasn’t right, but ask me if I would do it again, Solina.”

Thorin knitted his brows. “Ask me what I wouldn’t do to avenge the death of my family. Ask me what horrors I wouldn’t inflict on my enemy, on the one who would destroy someone I loved. Right or wrong is not a question that applies to those circumstances.”

I snorted and deepened my voice in mimicry of a man’s. “It was desperate times—we were desperate men.”

Thorin huffed. “You’re making jokes?”

“I’m trying to cope. Sometimes I do it gracelessly.” I turned away from him and paced the living room. Make him suffer a little. He deserves it. We’re all about the revenge these days, right? “People say revenge is prison and forgiveness is freedom.”

“And have you forgiven Mani’s killer?”

I stopped and turned to face Thorin. “I didn’t have to forgive him. I killed him.”

Thorin’s eyes flashed. “Was I not due the same justice?”

“It’s a bitter cycle. When does it end? How many of us will go down with that ship?”

“When Baldur died, I would have happily gone down with his ship.”

“But you didn’t.”

Thorin shook his head. His posture had softened—perhaps he had caught a whiff of truce in my tone. “I survived, and I moved on. And that, in a way, is also a revenge.”

“Do you think Helen Locke cares if I go on or not? Do you think it hurts her that I continue to live?”

“I think it does, yes.” Thorin closed the remaining distance between us and peered into my face as if searching for something.

I inhaled his scent, lightning and rain. Tentatively, I took his hand, and the connection thawed me a little—touching him was like exposing the cold places inside me to sunlight. Our physical contact brought forth no visions, which maybe meant Thorin was keeping his thoughts fully in the present.

He squeezed my fingers and didn’t quite smile, but the hardness in his face eased. “I think every day your heart continues to beat brings her a great deal of infuriation.”

I sniffed. “Well, good. I think I’ll go on with the heart beating and the air breathing and the getting on with life. I’d do it for no other reason than to be a thorn in her side.”

Thorin chuckled, and his humor dispersed the worst of the acrimony between us. Things hadn’t returned to normal, but I could move on. I could continue.

I retreated to my room and packed up my few measly belongings. Lost in the endless whirlpool of my thoughts, time passed quickly, and Baldur returned before I could wonder about him or worry about his return. His voice carried through my bedroom door as he talked to Thorin. I squared my shoulders, stiffened my spine, and went out to join them.

“Solina,” Baldur said. “We need to plan our next steps. Staying at the cabin any longer is probably not safe.”

I nodded. “I agree. And I know exactly what we need to do next.”

Baldur’s eyebrow arched. “Oh?”

“Kill that damned wolf,” I said. “It all begins and ends with him, and we never should have lost sight of that. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s possible the Aerie has resources we can utilize. Maybe Skyla can convince the Valkyries to join the hunt. This is what they were made for. Skyla has been looking for a cause to unite them. Hunting Skoll—it’s the perfect thing, the answer to their battle lust.”

Baldur bit his lip against a smile. “Battle lust?”

“How long has it been since you’ve given them a purpose? They train and play fight and hold tight to their traditions, but there’s no outlet for their aggression. The Aesir have squandered a powerful resource. We should have exploited them sooner.”

“You think Skyla can lead them to a unified action?” Baldur asked, tactfully ignoring my squandered comment.

“I’m depending on it. We were driven apart by our own stubbornness, by fate and circumstance. It made us easy pickings. But we’re back together… for the most part.”

Val was gone, never to return, and I mourned him. I grieved the man my brother had loved, the man I had considered a dear, if deeply flawed, friend. The Val I’d thought I knew was merely a ghost of someone who had died eons before. I still felt his absence like a missing organ, but I hid my concern for Val in the same dark place I put all my other unhelpful emotions. “With the Valkyries behind us, it might be possible to end this thing. Once and for all.”