Gungir, Odin’s spear, half buried in sand,

Skoll, the wolf, burned, charred, decimated... ash and bone,

Solina, glazed in blood, flesh torn to ribbons and shreds... light fading from her eyes.

Thorin roars. His conscious thoughts retreat, and he is action, fury, and fear.

He is her savior…

If he’s not already too late.

I drew away and blinked until my vision returned to the present, if being a detached soul in Asgard qualified as “the present.” I met Thorin’s gaze again. “I told Nina to be Helen of Troy and inspire Baldur. I didn’t know if she could be a Trojan Horse, too, but I had hoped.”

“So when you gave her that knife...?”

I wagged one shoulder in a feeble shrug. “Tempting fate.”

“Well, it worked.”

“What happened next, after you found me? You took me back to your house?”

Thorin nodded. “Left your body there with Baldur. He’s working healing runes as we speak.”

“What about Skyla and Grim? Are they okay?”

He nodded again. “Skyla hasn’t left your side. Grim’s wound has been problematic, and Baldur’s working on patching him up.”

“Embla?”

He paused, and his nostrils flared. “Under lock and key until we can decide what’s to be done with her. Baldur is keeping her at New Breidablick for the time being.”

The conundrum of Embla wasn’t one any of us would solve easily, and so long as she was safely locked away, I had more pressing concerns to address. “You still haven’t explained why everything tastes like apples.”

“You remember what you told me when I found you here when Grim had you? You said you ate the apples and felt like they were giving your strength back.” Thorin shifted, rearranging me in his lap. “I came here as soon as I left your body with Baldur, and I found you in a heap out there in the yard.” He jerked his chin, indicating some vague location beyond the wall at his back. “Lifeless, unresponsive, getting colder by the second.”

“So you fed me apples—or the juice from them.” I glanced down at my chest and stomach, concealed beneath the white gown that always covered me in Asgard. After poking and prodding my flawless skin, I opened my hands and examined my smooth palms and unblemished knuckles. Diaphanous flames flared from my fingertips, only for an instant, and disappeared. “Guess they did the trick.”

He sneered. “Did the trick.” Thunder rumbled in his chest like a far-off storm, and I tensed, sensing the coming tempest. “Like some kind of magician pulling a rabbit from a damned hat.”

I braced myself for his potential anger. Earlier, I’d said I would welcome his wrath so long as it meant we had both survived. I’ll welcome it, but I won’t apologize for causing it. I did what I had to. Either he’ll accept that, or he won’t, but I won’t say I’m sorry.

“You’re not fooling me.”

“What are you talking about?” Thorin’s voice sounded like a grizzly warning away a hunter.

“Don’t think I don’t know that I’m sitting on top of a volcano. You’re so close to blowing up at me, I can feel it like an earthquake. I know...” I exhaled and paused to gather my thoughts. “I know you’re mad.”

Thorin made a strangled noise in his throat. “Mad? Mad?”

“I felt it,” I said before he could launch into a tirade. “When I saw your memory, I felt what you felt. Your fear... it was cold.” Reflexively, I shivered, remembering the iciness of his terror. “Colder than Grim’s ice cave. I felt your anger, too, and it was hot. Almost as hot as my flames. You were fire and ice at the same time, and it was—” My breath hitched. My voice broke. “It was horrible.”

Thorin coughed, and it sounded like a roar. He clasped me tighter, and his words were raw and strained. “There was a moment when I was certain you were already dead, that I had come too late. That I had lost everything. Again.”

I balled my hands into the fabric of his shirt. “I didn’t do that to you on purpose. You know who I am. You know the things I was willing to do. It’s not my fault you fell in love with me, you stupid idiot.”

His eyebrows arched high, and he blinked like a startled owl. I shoved against him, and he loosened his hold. I had to get away, clear my head, and put some space between us to allow us room to process our feelings. Is it over? Has the nightmare finally ended? The wolf is dead. Helen is dead. Embla, the betrayer, is dead.

After slipping free from Thorin’s grasp, I strode out to my garden. The sky shone a blue so pure and sharp it stung my eyes. The sun burned hot and welcoming, and in its light, my golden apples shone like miniature stars.

Sensing Thorin’s approach, I turned to face him. “I keep trying to think of the words, but they don’t seem to exist. I can’t say I’m sorry, Thorin. I won’t. I know you told me not to fling myself over any cliffs, but that wasn’t what I was doing. You have to believe me.”

“I know,” he said, low and gruff. At his sides, his hands flexed, forming fists. A muscle worked in his jaw. “If I hadn’t been willing to accept that you had your own fate to pursue, your own will to exert, I would have put you in that cage we’ve always talked about. You needed freedom, and as much as it pained me, I wanted you to have it. This”—he made a sweeping motion to encompass my whole figure and insinuate the nearly mortal wounds that necessitated my current dual existence—“is the consequence. It may take me a little time to accept it and find my peace.”

He stepped closer, approaching me like a fox stalking a hare. “From the first day you walked into my life, my greatest fear was finding you’d been devoured by that damned wolf. When I found you at the Aerie on that beach...” He drew a clawed hand down his neck. He raked his fingers across his chest and stomach, mimicking the wolf’s attack on me and the injuries I’d suffered.

Thorin’s expression darkened, and reading his thoughts required no magical touches. His pain shone clearly in his eyes, in the lines on his face, in the stiffness of his back and shoulders, and especially in the physical distance he kept between us. He stood a few feet away, but it felt like miles.

In my nightmares, night after night, I had watched Hati devour my brother. I had experienced firsthand the shock, terror, and helplessness Thorin felt when he found me bleeding out on the beach at the Aerie. I had suffered those exact same feelings for Mani. But I had survived. Thorin would too.

I allowed a thin smile. “You still want to punish me a little, though, don’t you?”

He closed his eyes and exhaled, but the tension in his shoulders did not ease. “I want to shake you until your teeth clack. I want to bring down the thunder and lightning and rage at you.” His eyes popped open, and they smoldered. A grin played on his lips, and his voice reverberated like a purring tiger. “But I also want to drag you down in this grass and have you, possess you... own you. I held you, lifeless, in my hands, Solina. Now I want to feel you come alive beneath my fingertips.”

No questioning what he meant. A different kind of fire flared inside me, one not necessarily under my control. Thorin closed the distance between us but kept his hands at his sides. “I respect your autonomy. You deserve that from me. Rather than my anger, I owe you my respect, my awe, and my gratitude. Your fierceness has likely saved us all.”

Undone by his confession, I sagged. He caught me before I slumped to the ground, and I welcomed his touch, his comfort, his grace. “It is over, isn’t it? It’s really done?”

“I’m almost afraid to hope.” He touched his lips to the curve of my jaw, below my ear. “But yes, I think we’ve won.”

I turned, bringing my mouth closer to his. “These apples, do you think they could answer the question of my mortality?”

His thumb stroked my jawline, and I sank further into him. “I think it’s very possible. It would explain a lot about how you’ve managed to survive so many things that should have killed you.”

“Does the fact I’ve eaten them mean I’m immortal now?” A mixed blessing, immortality. I wanted forever with Thorin, but I also wanted to reunite with Mani again someday. Perhaps, as long as I retained the lessons Gróa had taught me—the ways of the völva—I could have my cake and eat it too. Such a thing seemed like too much to hope for, but it was a promising kind of day. We had defeated our enemy. We had won.

“I think it means your timeline is less limited than it was before.” Thorin leaned lower and plucked a kiss from my lips. “More than that is hard to know. Your presence in Asgard is unprecedented.” He snorted. “Everything about you is unprecedented.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment.” I closed my eyes and leaned into him. He shifted, taking my weight, and eased me to the ground, laying me like a treasure upon a blanket of grass. There was possession in the way he kissed me, slowly, deeply, as if he meant to claim me. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, there is ownership in love. For once, I didn’t mind being owned—not if Thorin was the one to whom I was bound.

His lips trailed down my neck, and I buried my hands in his hair. I breathed him in, and he smelled like rain, the kind that came with wind gusts and thunder, turning the heat and humidity of a Southern summer into steam and mist.

His hands explored my skin, and I pressed against him, begging for more. I burned for his touch.

Is it my fire? Or is it desire?

I didn’t know.