“Or do you prefer Val?” I asked. “You are Vali Lokison, right?” My voice came out calm and controlled despite the blizzard freezing my bones and the desert burning in my throat. My vision narrowed until it encompassed only him, and my blood thrummed against my ears until I thought my head might explode. Keep it together, girl. Keep it together.
A flicker of surprise crossed his face before he forced his features into a cool, neutral expression. His violet eyes glanced behind me, and a nasty grin split his lips. “You little birdbrain twits. I knew this day would come, but the two of you putting all your faith in her...” He gestured in my direction. “That’s something I would have never guessed.”
The ravens, perched on a rock ledge behind me, kept their silence as well as their feathers—the better to make a hasty escape if things went bad.
He raised his eyes to mine, and his cold smile thawed a little. “There’s a small part of me that regrets this, Solina. I don’t guess that matters to you, but it’s true. I really did care for your brother. Might have loved him, in another place and time where I was still capable of such a thing.” He shrugged as if to say, Not that it matters, now.
I gagged but recovered after a brief coughing fit. “How can you say you cared about Mani when you knew Helen was going to kill him, and you did nothing to stop it?”
He pressed his palm against his chest and bared his teeth. “I loved my brother, and I did nothing to stop his death.” He pulled his fingers through his long black hair. “I killed Narfi myself. What does the death of anyone else mean in comparison?”
The little bit of compassion I still harbored for Val surged through me. My whole body slumped, and nothing appealed to me more than melting to the floor in a puddle of despair. My heart ached for all the lost brothers and the broken siblings left behind to mourn them, but I had cried enough for all of them. I stiffened my shoulders and straightened my spine. I raised my chin and peered down my nose. “I’m not going to let you do this.”
He sniffed and thinned his lips into a sardonic grin. One black eyebrow flickered. “I can see how much you believe that. You think you’ll do what you must to stop me, but belief is only the potential for action. Potential and reality aren’t the same thing.”
“I’ve killed before.”
“Hati was a stranger to you and a beast.” He rubbed his face as if washing it—washing the Rolf away. When he lowered his hands, a familiar face smiled back at me. Blue eyes instead of violet. Auburn hair instead of black. “You’ll have to give yourself over to Sol to do it—to kill me. You’ll have to let yourself go and lose control again. Can you do that? And can you kill someone you were in love with only a few weeks ago?”
“I never loved you. Not like that.”
Val snorted. “You cared for me.”
“As much as you cared for my brother, I suppose.” Not complete honesty—I had more than cared for Val, but analyzing the truth of the feelings I once harbored for him would have cost me too much in a time when I needed to avoid vulnerabilities.
His thin smile fell. “Touché.”
“Please.” I stepped toward him, hand outstretched. Val had once said people believed lies because they were easy, and I had told him I refused to accept anything but truth. It would have been easier to believe Val was once the man he pretended to be, but none of that had been real. Don’t forget that. “Please don’t do this. Don’t make me do this. It’s not too late. There’s still redemption for you if you want it.”
His face crumpled into a mask of agony and rage. “Who’s going to give it to me? You? You just accused me of letting your brother die. You weren’t wrong about that. ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ The only trouble is, I’m not a good man. There’s nothing to redeem.”
His expression softened as his anger drifted away. Val’s mood was like a summer storm, quick to thunder and rage but equally quick to dissipate. “If there’s anyone who can empathize with me, it’s you, Solina.” He crossed to the cage, crouched, and pushed a finger between the slim bars, poking at the figure inside. Grim moaned and pulled away. “Put yourself in my shoes. Would you surrender your quest? Would you forgive?”
“Or destroy myself for vengeance like you?” I asked. “Mortality puts a limit on my suffering. I have to let it go at some point if I’m going to get any happiness out of the short time I’m given to live. But if I was immortal, if the hurt could go on forever...” Well, then I could see where it would be hard to let it go. “You never found a reason to live? To move on?”
Val huffed and gave a sad smile. “Maybe if Mani and you had come along a few millennia ago... But, no, it’s endless. It’s eternal suffering. It’s hell.”
“Will revenge on Thorin and Grim end that for you?”
“That answer requires rational thinking. I’ve been beyond rationality for a long time.”
“If this has been your lifelong motivation, what will you do with yourself when it’s done?”
Val chuckled. “Damned if I know. Maybe I’ll ask Hela to kill me. Feed me to her snake or something.”
I inhaled, preparing to ask about the truth of that possibility, but the crunch of rocks beneath a heavy footstep silenced me. The smell of storms and lightning filled the room, and a weighty groan exhaled behind me. Electricity, one searing pulse, shot through every nerve in my body.
“Sunshine.” Thorin said my nickname as though it were a curse. “Why am I not surprised?”
I kept my attention focused on Val. If he opened his mouth to speak, to put his will into the runes infecting Thorin, I would have to act fast. “My vision was wrong. Well, not wrong, just incomplete. Your brother isn’t the wolf.”
“Huh. I can see that.” Thorin moved behind me, close enough for his body heat to warm me, for his breath to tickle my cheek and ear—close enough for me to see, in the periphery of my vision, Mjölnir raised and ready in his fist. “But if it wasn’t Grim you saw, I have to presume it was someone else. I’m guessing it was me. I am the wolf. This was the endgame all along.”
“He simply has to speak the runes.” I focused my darkest stare on Val. “But I won’t give him that chance.”
Val licked his lips and opened his mouth. I cut him off before he could speak. “No!” I raised a handful of fire overhead. “You don’t get to say another word. I told you I wouldn’t let you do this. Open your mouth again, and I’ll show you where you can stuff your potential.”
He snapped his mouth shut and narrowed his eyes at me. His nostrils flared. A muscle worked in his jaw. Not for a second did I think we had reached an impasse. This was a duel, a showdown between three gunslingers at high noon with their hands poised over pistol grips. Who was the fastest in town? Me and my fire? Thorin and his hammer? Val and his mouth?
“Last chance, Val,” I said. “It’s two against one. You could give this up. I promise to let you go if you turn right now and walk away.”
Val sneered but held his tongue.
“No,” Thorin said. “He doesn’t get to walk away. This ends now.”
He drew back the hammer, but before he released it, Val’s voice ripped from his throat like a lion’s roar. “Hagalaz!”
Thorin grunted and stumbled, and the concussion of Mjölnir hitting the floor shook the cavern. In response to his distress, my fire exploded from within me, coating me in heat and flame. He fell to his knees and clawed at his chest as if trying to free something trapped beneath his sternum, but he maintained his human shape.
It must be more than one rune. Val’s not finished yet.
“Please!” I begged. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything. Anything.”
“Give me my brother back.”
I’d demanded the same thing from Nate, knowing it was impossible. I had nothing Val wanted. We both knew it, but panic made me ask like a magician saying the magic words to reveal something that hadn’t been there before. But real magic didn’t work that way, and no matter how badly I wished otherwise, Val’s brother was no rabbit in a hat.
“Take away my guilt.” Bitterness ravaged his voice.
