“When I saw Mani, he was in some other place, some other plane of existence, like Asgard, but not. He had a name for it, but I don’t remember—”
“Helgafjell?” Thorin asked. “It means ‘holy mountain.’ It’s a sacred place for families to commune in the afterlife. They live out their days much as they did in life. He’s in a good place, Solina.”
“That’s what he said, too, and I believe him. I know my brother is not the be-all and end-all. My existence isn’t as consumed with Mani as it sometimes seems. I want my own life with my own hopes and dreams, but I’d like to think, after a life well lived, I could be with my loved ones again. Immortality would deny me that.”
We turned a corner, and he shined his flashlight around, but the fog had reduced visibility and camouflaged any discernible landscape. If Helen Locke’s entire stone army had surrounded the house, we’d never know until it was too late. I cleared my throat and blinked against the sudden burning in my eyes. “Would an eternity with you be enough to make up for the things I’d have to sacrifice to get it?”
He clicked off the flashlight. Darkness enveloped us. His voice was flat when he said, “I can’t answer that. It’s something you have to decide for yourself.”
I took the flashlight from him, turned it on, and started forward in short, careful steps. The beam of light struggled against the fog to map the uneven, muddy terrain. “Sometimes, I feel I barely know you. How can I want eternity with someone I barely know? But other times, I feel I’ve known you forever, and in those moments, I can’t imagine ever being without you.”
“As Sol, you have known me forever,” Thorin said from behind me. “You can’t separate yourself from her, and the more you use your fire, the more indistinguishable you and Sol become.”
“Did the two of you ever... before?”
“I haven’t seen a physical manifestation of her in thousands of years. In Asgard, she and I had our own families. She had a husband. I had a wife.”
We turned another corner and sidled along the rear of the house, stepping out to make our way around the glassed-in porch where I had sparred with Skyla earlier. The house was dark, the porch’s glass now opaque. No Valkyries, no golems, no wolves. “I feel stupid asking these questions.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“You know more about me than I know about myself.”
His heavy hand fell on my shoulder, and he spun me around to face him. “I know your past but nothing of your future. I fully intend to remedy that.” He tucked me to his side, throwing his arm around my shoulders, and we finished patrolling the outside of the cabin.
Back on the porch, still in his embrace, something inside me unclenched, and exhaustion rolled over me. I sagged on my feet. “I could sleep now. I could go to bed and be okay, I think.”
He chuckled. “Does my company bore you that much?”
I feigned passing out and fell against him, limp as a wet noodle. He caught me as I inhaled a loud and elaborate snore. He laughed and scooped me off my feet. I yelped, but he ignored my feeble protests. “When this is all over, I’m taking you to my bed, and I don’t plan on letting you go for a while.”
My face burned, and my heart leapt into my throat. Even if I could have formed a coherent sentence, what could I have said?
Thorin set me on my feet and stepped away. “But I guess you’ll have to make do with another night of Skyla. She does snore, makes enough racket to scare away the bears on backpacking trips.”
“She’s never kept me awake,” I said as he lowered me to my feet.
“Huh.” He rubbed his jaw. “Maybe she does it just to annoy me.”
I crossed the porch, opened the front door, and stepped over the threshold. Siobhan had passed out on the living room couch, and blue television light flickered over her face. “Good night, Thorin.”
“Sweet dreams, Sunshine.”
I pushed the door behind me, almost closing it, but stopped and spun on my heel. As if reading my mind, he closed the distance between us. He pulled me in and met my lips with his own.
My former uncertainty faded. The whole world drained away. Tomorrow, my doubts would return, but for one night, the memory of Thorin’s touch would keep the nightmares at bay.
Chapter 20
I sat at the kitchen table, smearing cream cheese on a bagel while Skyla poured coffee at the counter. “How can you eat like that so early in the morning?” She wore a scowl as she studied my breakfast. Beside the bagel lay a banana and a hardboiled egg: wolf-fighting fuel.
I shoved the bagel in my mouth and bit off a huge quarter. Through bulging cheeks, I said, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Everyone knows that.”
Skyla set a mug of coffee on the table before turning away to pour another for herself. “I could see a granola bar, sure, but what you have there is a personal breakfast buffet, and it’s barely”—she glanced at the time on the microwave—“six o’clock in the morning.”
“Are you saying that you, a former Marine, don’t know the importance of starting a day of hard work on a full stomach?”
“I know if I eat too much and go out for a ten-mile hump in full gear, I’ll more than likely throw up halfway through.”
“I don’t plan on doing a ten-mile hump in full gear anytime soon.”
Her eyebrow angled up. “How do you know what to expect about today? Have another vision?”
“Nope.” I popped in another hunk of bagel and chewed. “I slept blissfully dream free for a change.”
“Told you thunder was the best medicine.”
I choked. Skyla pounded my back until my airway cleared. “We just talked,” I croaked.
“You smelled like him when you came to bed.”
“How do you know? You were sound asleep.”
She shrugged. “I woke up.” Her gaze flickered up and focused somewhere behind me. Her lip curled into a knowing smile. “’Morning, Boss Man.”
My chest muscles clenched, and my breath froze. I inhaled and forced myself to relax. Last night, after my fire had flared and nearly seared him, I had left Thorin standing sentry on the front porch alone. My physiology equated passion with fire, and my flames had blazed out of control. With concentration and effort, I could maintain normalcy, but Thorin’s touches had left me the opposite of focused and controlled.
Maybe I just need more practice.
