“You sure know how to get stranded in style.” I jogged the steps up to the porch. “Hello, Embla.”
The older woman nodded in greeting.
Skyla embraced me, and I hugged her hard enough to squeeze a grunt from her. “Be careful, or it’ll make you soft.”
She cuffed my shoulder. “You take that back.”
I sniffed the air near her hair. “Lavender and... rosemary?”
She scowled. “I tried, but it won’t wash off.”
“You smell like a girl.”
“You trying to pick a fight, Mundy? What are you doing here, anyway? I thought the deal was you were going to get your parents and hang out at New Breidablick while Boss Man snagged his brother from Val.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, and I looked away. “Yeah, well, plans changed.”
She stood still and silent for several heartbeats. “What happened?”
Thorin cleared his throat and stepped up beside me. He glanced at Embla before he turned and stared off at nothing. “Val’s dead. That’s all that matters for now.”
Skyla flinched and stifled whatever she was about to say. “Okay. Well, that’s one less thing to worry about.”
When I said nothing, she hugged me again.
I let her rub my back until Thorin shuffled his feet in an obvious gesture of impatience. “Let’s get out of the cold. I’m sure Solina could use something to eat.”
“Hmm, now that you mention it...” I pulled away from Skyla and patted my stomach. The morning’s helping of eggs and toast had disappeared, and my recent bouts of sickness had left me empty and hollow.
“Take her in and feed her,” Embla said. “I’ll do a check around the perimeter.”
Skyla turned on her heel and led Thorin and me inside toward the kitchen. “There’s sandwich stuff in the fridge. I think there’s probably a leftover pizza in there too.”
She rambled off a list of snacking options as I shrugged off my heavy parka. Several other Valkyries lounged in the living room, watching TV, eating, flipping through the contents of their phones. Siobhan looked up and waved as we passed by. The other two women mostly ignored us.
“I’m going to head outside.” Thorin paused in the kitchen doorway. “Get a look around. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“We’ve kept a round-the-clock patrol, Boss Man.” Skyla narrowed her eyes at him. “We haven’t let our guard down.”
“I’m not saying you have. I want to get a look for myself.”
She waved him off. “Knock yourself out.”
Thorin disappeared. I tossed my coat over a kitchen chair and opened the refrigerator. A very welcome pizza box sat on a middle shelf. I pulled it out, popped open the lid, and studied the contents: pepperoni, sausage, mushroom. Then I rifled through the cabinets until I found a big skillet. After setting it on the stove and turning a flame on low beneath it, I slid in two pizza slices to warm.
“Stovetop?” Skyla said, glancing at my pizza. “Who does it like that? Just nuke it.”
“Microwaving makes the crust chewy. Warm it in the skillet, and the crust stays crisp without overcooking the toppings.”
She shrugged. “Guess you would know.”
“It is my job. Or it was...”
“Why are you here?” she asked, apropos of nothing. I gasped and inhaled a bit of phlegm. Skyla pounded my back until I cleared my airway. “Didn’t mean to upset you. I just didn’t expect you to show up on the front porch, out of the blue.”
I focused on pizza and shoved one slice into a different position. Then I shoved it back. “Skoll’s on Amchitka,” I said, almost a whisper.
“And how do you know this?”
“The ravens told me.”
“And why did they tell you—Oh. Val.”
I shifted my pizza around the pan again, mostly to keep from looking at Skyla. “Yes, Val.”
“So, you...”
“Yeah. I did.”
“Aw, shit,” Skyla muttered and said nothing more, but her questions, her request for the rest of the story, hung in the air between us.
“It was a trap for Thorin. I had to save him. It was the only way.”
“You don’t have to justify it to me. You know how I felt about Val. But I know how you felt about him, too. I know it wasn’t what you wanted.”
“I didn’t have much choice.” I recounted the story in a dry and quick summary—the facts and nothing more.
Skyla followed me to the kitchen table after I plucked my pizza from the pan and dropped the slices on a paper plate she had handed me. “Do you think Val’s plan would have worked? Do you think Thorin would have turned?”
