He leaned forward and braced his forearms on his knees. “Try your best.”

“We’ve found the golems,” I said. “And we’ve found Thorin’s brother.” I repeated my visionary experience again, editing to give Baldur only the most necessary details.

The Allfather leaned back in his chair, rubbed both hands over his face, and stared up at the ceiling. “Now you’ve put your life in my hands.”

“It’s not the first time, and you’ve always protected me.”

“Despite your stubbornness.”

I cracked a smile. “Despite that, yes.”

“So, I’ll take you to your parents, we’ll convince them to come to New Breidablick, and you’ll stay there with them—and me—until Thorin returns.”

“Until Thorin returns, or Skyla completes her mission, or both. I won’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Baldur smirked. “Unnecessary is subjective. You seem to find ways of making that work in your favor.”

“I am who I am.” I threw my open hands out at my sides and shrugged as if to say, too late to change me now. “Before we leave, it might be a good idea to figure out how we’re going to get my parents from North Carolina to New Breidablick. I don’t think you want to piggyback all three of us in one day.”

Crossing the country back and forth three times, carrying passengers on each trip, would certainly burn through his batteries. Baldur knew how to fight—I had seen him spar with Thorin and hold his own—but rune-making was his strongest asset, as long as he maintained his energy stores. I could do a lot with my fire, but protecting two humans and one guileless god would challenge me on my best days. Today was not one of my best days. The journey to the Norn’s well had drained me, and my fuel gauge pointed toward empty.

“Magni’s jet is available, I believe.”

“It is?”

Baldur nodded. “He cleared the reservation list and rescinded all outstanding contracts.”

“When did he do that?”

He shrugged. “He mentioned it when we were last at New Breidablick. He said if we were going to meddle in human affairs, we might need a reliable way to transport them.”

“Won’t the Valkyries need it?”

Baldur shook his head again. “The Valkyries were never his primary concern.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered. If the Aesir had made the Valkyries more of a priority long ago, some of our recent problems might have been avoided. But hindsight was twenty-twenty, right? “Well, send the jet to Charlotte, I guess. It’s the closest airport to my house.”

Baldur took out his phone, called a number in his contact list, and made arrangements for Thorin’s jet to meet us. When he ended the call, he said, “It was in Atlanta, fortunately. Should be in Charlotte in an hour or so.” He leaned forward, stood, and held out his hand to me. “To North Carolina?”

I took my own deep breath as my stomach swirled. Another cross-country journey via interdimensional means. Hooray. The thought of facing my parents again after so much time, after they certainly believed I was dead, might have played some part in my discomfort as well. The prospect of a family reunion should have made me happy, but first, we had to get through the hard stuff, and I had already been through an obstacle course of hard stuff that nearly defeated me. Nothing appealed to me more than sitting down and catching my breath, but my moment of weakness might lead to someone else’s suffering. I could rest when we all returned to New Breidablick. Yeah, rest and worry about Thorin and Skyla.

I eased my hand into Baldur’s. He folded me into a gentle hug and spoke a single magical word.

Once again, we flew.

Chapter 15

“Do it quick like ripping off a Band-Aid” had become the new motto for my life. It applied to numerous situations: telling Thorin the bad news about his brother and announcing my not-dead status to my parents by appearing like Captain Kirk beamed down from the Enterprise in the middle of their kitchen just before closing time.

The bakery smelled of cinnamon, cloves, mint and all things Christmas-y. Homesickness washed over me, sudden and fierce. I covered my sob with an excessively cheery, “Surprise!”

Somewhat unsurprisingly, my mother turned from her work table, gasped, and fainted, dropping to the floor still clutching a pastry bag of violet icing. Dad reacted better, managing to keep his feet, although he did temporarily lose his ability to form a coherent sentence.

“Uh,” he said. “Wha…?” He repeated that theme with several variations before finally putting his thoughts together. “Solina? What are you doing here?”

A lunatic giggle rose in my chest, a subconscious reaction to the absurdity. I choked it down. “Hey, Daddy. Long time no see.”

From her place on the floor, my mother muttered something indeterminate. Dad and I rushed to her side and helped her sit up. She blinked at me like an owl. Then she patted my face as if to assure herself of my reality. She shook her head, and her eyes rolled, but she recovered and maintained consciousness.

“I’ve got a lot to tell you guys,” I said, still kneeling before my stunned parents. “Some of it’s going to be very hard for you to believe.”

“Harder to believe than you showing up out of the middle of nowhere?” Dad asked. “We thought you were dead.”

“I know. And for a time, that was the best for all of us. But things have changed.”

My father arched an eyebrow. “Understatement of the century, Solina.”

I rose and backed away until I stood at Baldur’s side again. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word. He simply waited for the world to adjust to his presence. How many times had he made himself known to humans in all of his existence? What thoughts were running through his otherworldly head at that moment?

“What I have to tell you won’t be easy for either of us,” I said. “Not for me to explain or for you to accept.”

Mom said something incoherent, and Dad helped her stand. She leaned on her worktable beside the wedding cake she had been covering in purple roses before my sudden appearance sidelined her efforts. Several bedraggled strands of salt-and-pepper hair straggled from her chef’s toque. She breathed in and out deeply, and color returned to her cheeks in a flood. She went from ghostly pale to irate red in the passing of a few heartbeats.

“How dare you,” she said, her voice low and rough. She straightened and stomped her foot. “How dare you.”

“Mom, I—”

“Showing up out of the blue like this, like nothing happened, like you haven’t been presumed dead for weeks.” She stepped around the edge of her worktable, her hazel eyes never leaving mine, her voice cold and bitter. “How dare you put your family through that kind of pain, after what happened to your brother. Never in my life has anyone been so cruel, so thoughtless, so inconsiderate. My own daughter. My own flesh and bloo—”

“Mom!” I shouted, cutting through her rant. Not that she wasn’t right. Not that she lacked justification for the cold glint in her eyes. Not that the tears in my throat didn’t burn or the shame on my shoulders sit as heavily as a full-grown elephant. All of these things were real, but none of them mattered at that moment. I raised my hand, snapped my fingers, and a flame lit at my fingertips. I raised my other hand, and a fireball filled my palm.

My mother froze mid-step, and her mouth fell open. A rusted-hinge noise squeaked from my father’s throat, and he gaped at me.

“The fairytales are real,” I said. “So are the nightmares. You can hate me all you want, but you have to listen to me first. Your lives depend on it.”

Dad’s mouth snapped shut. He swallowed. “This isn’t happening. It can’t be.”

I raised my chin and peered down my nose at them, equally indignant for having to justify myself and ashamed for misleading them all this time. “Can you honestly tell me you never once thought there was something different about Mani and me?”

“Different how?” my mother asked. “Did we know you could... could...” She flailed her hands toward my blazing fingers.

“Before he left for Alaska, Mani sensed something was going on. Tell me you never saw shadows dance when he walked by. You didn’t notice how a space he had recently occupied felt colder than the rest of the room.”

My mom blinked and shook her head. “I-I...”

“You never gave credit to my dreams, the ones where I sometimes saw things before they happened.”

“We thought it was coincidence.”