Fury filled his eyes, and he glared at me. “Try harder.” He ground the command through a clenched jaw.

I locked my eyes on his as the æther’s whirlwind rose around us.

My ears popped.

The void sucked me in.

Blackness swallowed me whole.

Chapter 25

Thorin’s heartbeat hammered beneath my ear. His heat enveloped me, and he smelled like the rain that falls in heavy sheets, bringing flood, destruction, and plague—an angry deluge of doom and death. Part of me wanted to linger in my semiconscious state where nebulous detachment shielded me from my own pain and his anger. But I was not the kind of woman who avoided reality.

I had never hidden from truth.

Thorin’s presence sharpened along with my awareness. He held me in his lap, arms folded around me, lips pressed against my temple. He must have sensed my wakefulness because he shifted and raised his head. “Sunshine?”

Sweet and cloying, the flavor of Idun’s apples coated my mouth as if I had drowned in a vat of their juices. I smacked my lips and swallowed. “Why do I feel like I have an apple cider hangover?” My voice was raw and gravelly.

He huffed. “Because you probably do.”

I sat up straighter, meeting his gaze. Unrelenting darkness stained his eyes—the kind of blackness that accompanied his strongest emotions: rage, fear, ferocity, need. I raised an unsteady hand to his cheek. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“You threw yourself over the cliff.” Thorin’s tone was cool, stiff, restrained.

“And took you over the edge with me?”

He grunted. “I said you would, didn’t I?”

“And we landed in Asgard?” I looked around, studying the familiar surroundings, the lush green lawn, verdant orchard dripping with golden fruit, a partially reconstructed home that had belonged to the garden’s former occupant. During his last visit to Asgard, Thorin had erected a lean-to from the old home’s remnants. We sat on the shelter’s floor, and he leaned against the only fully erect wall, cradling me in his lap.

“You’re surprised?”

I glanced at his dark eyes again and resisted the urge to shiver. All was not right between us. Thorin wore a calm, composed mask that hid something volatile and potentially explosive. I was sitting on a powder keg, and his fuse burned fast and hot.

I shifted to get up, but he growled and closed his arms tighter around me.

“Okay.” I settled against him. “Okay, I’m not going anywhere.”

When I relaxed, so did he.

“If I am here,” I said, “then where is the rest of me?”

“My house.”

“How—” I stopped and swallowed. “How bad was it?”

Thorin released me only to cup my face in his hands. He leaned his forehead against mine and dropped his walls. “See for yourself.”

Surrounded by stone warriors, Thorin fights, swinging Mjölnir in a blur. Rubble rises in piles around him, and storms rage in the heavens. A lightning blast demolishes a half dozen golems, and they lie in jagged, smoldering heaps. But for every dozen felled, another dozen takes their place, an endless stream of tireless warriors. Through his millennia-long connection to the Allfather, Thorin senses Baldur fading, despite Nina’s reassurances and faith—a source of power Baldur had been lacking for decades. But even with Nina at his side, the Allfather struggles. Helen’s onslaught is relentless.

Thorin wonders, who wants Baldur more? Nina, or Helen? The answer to that question might decide the conclusion to this battle. Thorin knows he’ll outlast the golems, but how much longer will Baldur hold up? If the wards fail, how long until New Breidablick falls? Solina, her parents, Nina, Grim...

Thorin grits his teeth and leans into battle. He is a machine, locking away emotions, focusing on his duty, singularly determined. His attack develops a rhythm—step, turn, swipe, hit, kick, punch. Over and over, golems fall before him. His thoughts drift away, and he fights the way a bird flies, with instinct and eons of muscle memory. Step, turn, swipe, kick, punch...

He loses track of time and place until the moment Mjölnir swings a full arc through thin, unresisting air. He stumbles, blinks, and his narrow focus expands, taking in the battlefield as a whole.

Baldur’s wards are gone, and the buzz of their energy, like high-voltage electric lines, has fallen silent. The golem army has gone still, frozen in mid-fight poses.

Thorin extends his senses, listening, feeling, searching for a cause…

There!

Across the way, Nina crouches in the midst of the petrified army. Shadows shroud her in darkness.

What has she done?Andhow?

Like popping a taut string, Thorin releases the bond connecting him to the storms. Heavy black clouds disperse like smoke in a breeze, and warm, late-afternoon sunlight drapes Nina’s shoulders. He crosses the space between them, arriving at her side in a blink. The sun’s rays illuminate a crumpled figure at Nina’s feet: a woman in fine clothes drenched in blood. Nina strokes her hair with bloodied hands, staining Helen Locke’s single white stripe with red. Mismatched eyes, one blue, one black, stare unblinking at the sky.

Baldur appears at Nina’s side and kneels. He draws her into his arms as she collapses against him, sobbing. Still, she clutches the knife that struck Helen down, and sticky red residue clings to her fingers. “It’s done,” Nina moans against Baldur’s chest. “For me... for us... I had to.”

“But how did you do it?” Baldur asks, mirroring Thorin’s own questions. “How...”

Nina shakes her head and drops her blade. It clatters to the ground, its rune carvings dark with blood. “Solina gave me the knife—said to protect myself with it. But the only way to protect myself was to—” She chokes on the words. Baldur holds her until she recovers and motions to the battlefield’s perimeter. “Took the long way around. She never saw me coming until it was too late. Even then... She thought I was coming to help her. I told her if I made a display of my loyalty to her, it would break you, make you easier to defeat. It never crossed her mind I was betraying her instead. She took me for granted. Underestimated me. She always has.”

Nina was the ultimate secret weapon—one they hadn’t known they had. The only person who could get through Helen’s defenses, and they’d never thought to use her. Or perhaps Baldur had thought of it but was afraid to ask Nina to choose. Thorin wonders if Solina suspected Nina’s potential. Had she gotten a glimpse of Nina’s thoughts in making the decision to give her that knife?Or was it simply fate at work again—the one power stronger than all the Aesir combined?

“She’s really dead?” Thorin asks. “Truly?”

A muscle in Baldur’s jaw works as he grinds his teeth. His blue eyes flash as he releases Nina and lowers into a crouch beside Helen’s still body. He places his hands over her chest, and a faint glow envelops his fingers. “I will make certain of it.”

At the sight of Baldur inspecting Helen Locke’s body, Thorin’s thoughts shift away from the battle and its unexpected conclusion. He reaches for the connection to Mjölnir’s lanyard.

Solina...

He senses her absence, and his heart shudders. Where the hell is she? What has she done?

Responding to the tug of the hammer’s connection to its leash, Thorin throws himself into the æther. He withdraws moments later at the stony beach beside the Valkyries’ Aerie, and as he studies the scene, his mind forms instant connections.

Embla, prostrate and defeated at the feet of her niece,

Skyla, exultant, a warrior goddess in righteous fury,

Grim, wounded and bleeding,

Siobhan, limp and lifeless at the water’s edge,

Surtalogi, the fire sword, dormant at Grim’s side,