“You can see me?”
My ears popped, and Baldur appeared, visible, at my side. “That invisibility rune couldn’t stand up against your fire and Surtalogi’s flames,” he said. “Not unless I made it a permanent part of your essence, and we didn’t have time for that. Thought it’d be better to go with something temporary. I should have warned you.”
“Doesn’t matter anymore.” I kept my gaze on Rolf. “It’s over now. Rolf is defeated.”
Another soundless laugh rocked Rolf’s shoulders.
“What’s so funny?” Thorin asked.
Rolf made a choking noise. Thorin released his grip enough to allow Rolf to speak, but he kept Mjölnir raised in a conspicuous threat. “See how she looks at you, God of Thunder. How she’d risk herself for you? If only she knew your true character. And the Allfather, so quick to give his support to the unworthy. It’s a shame.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You want to know who I really am?” Rolf’s gaze shifted to Thorin. “I told you that you would have to earn it. And, oh, how you have.”
“Go on then,” I said. “Cut the dramatics and tell us.”
“Are you sure, Solina?” Rolf looked back at me. “Once said, it can never be taken back. It’s like opening Pandora’s Box. You can’t close it again, but you’ll wish you could.”
“Say it,” Thorin snarled. “But if you won’t, I’ll kill you and live with the disappointment of not knowing. I’ve gotten good at living with disappointment.”
Rolf grinned again. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And with that, the face of the man whom I’d known as Rolf Lockhart melted away to reveal another, one even more familiar.
Everything ground to a halt, my breathing, my heartbeat—the entire world stopped spinning and fell off its axis. I couldn’t have said a thing if the fate of every life on earth depended on it. Not that I needed to say anything.
Baldur said it for us all. “Val? Is it really you?”
Chapter Thirty-five
“Val?” I said. His familiar blue gaze turned on me and cleared me of any doubt. Bile crawled up my throat. I coughed, trying to choke it back down. “How could you? How could it be you? Grim broke you in half.”
Val twisted his lips into a wry smile. “There’s more to me than meets the eye. Obviously.”
“It’s been you all along, hasn’t it?” Thorin said. “I suspected, but I didn’t want to. You are my cousin. How could you betray us?”
Val erupted with a cold, cruel laugh. It turned into a cough. He hacked, turned his head, and spat. His cold eyes turned back to Thorin, and he said, “I killed your cousin the day of the final battle in Asgard and took his place.”
“If you are not Vali Odinson, who the hell else would you be?”
“I am Vali, but I am no son of Odin.”
Thorin hesitated, the gears turning in his head. “Loki,” he said. “Loki had a son.”
“Loki had many sons,” Val said. “Most did not survive.”
My brain plugged back in and whirred to life, making connections, drawing conclusions. Loki was the trickster god of schemes, pranks, and deceptions—it explained Val’s immense aptitude for deceit. It also meant he had some very problematic family relations.
“Helen is your aunt?” I asked. “Are you here to do her bidding, or was it your plan all along?”
Val’s face sharpened into a look of hatred so severe I felt it in my bones. “I don’t give a damn about Helen’s ridiculous schemes. This has nothing to do with her.”
“Then what is it? What do you want?”
“Revenge.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Why not? It’s a language you speak so well. Someone takes your other half away from you, mercilessly murdering an innocent brother, and you’ll do anything to make them pay. That’s something you appreciate, right?”
My brow furrowed as I contemplated his words, and a recent memory bubbled up from the darker depths of my brain. “That was your brother I saw in your memory? The one the wolf was killing? But it wasn’t Hodr because you’re not Vali, son of Odin.”
Val moved his head in a slight nod. “Now, Solina,” he rasped. “Ask me who the wolf was.”
Val’s words were the current in an exposed wire that made my whole body buzz, muscles lock up, teeth grind together. Don’t want to ask. Think I already know, but wish I didn’t. Wish I may, wish I might… “No,” I whispered, shaking my head.
“Rolf.” A Nordic contraction meaning “notorious wolf.”
“No,” I repeated.
Time stopped while I processed. Then it all fell into place. I had read that legend. I did know that history. The rest of the story, the missing piece, was the ending to the tale Grim had told me in his office about the purpose behind Val’s existence. If Vali had been the head on one side of the coin representing Odin’s vengeance, then Loki was tails. As punishment for the trick Loki had played on Hodr—the blind god who had unknowingly killed Baldur because Loki set him up to do it—the Aesir bound and tortured Loki, burning him with acidic snake venom that dripped on him for eons. But that wasn’t the worst part. Not by far.
“The Aesir turned me into that wolf,” Val said. “Odin and his kin forced me to change into a rabid, mindless beast. They set me on my brother. His name was Narfi, and he was my twin. Just like Mani was your twin. I ripped Narfi’s guts out, Solina. I had no idea what I was doing until it was over. The Aesir used my brother’s entrails to bind my father so they could torture him.”
Val hacked again and spat out another gob of saliva. “I woke to find my brother dead, his blood on my tongue, his flesh between my teeth.”
I gasped and put my hand over my mouth. My stomach heaved—so did my heart. I turned aside and retched. Overdramatic? Not after the visions I had seen. Not after I had lost a beloved twin brother to a nearly identical modus operandi. The gods’ ancient game of revenge never ended. Back and forth swung the finger of blame, taking out innocent lives, ruining families, and devastating guiltless individuals, all to satisfy some enormous primordial arrogance.
I wiped my mouth, burning and bitter with stomach acid, and glared at Thorin, but he refused to look at me. “Is it true?” I asked.
