My dad glanced at Nina before looking back at me. “What are you going to do, Solina?”
I cracked my knuckles and rolled my shoulders. “I’m going to fight.”
As if to underscore my words, thunder boomed loud enough to rattle the house. I rose to my feet. My dad shifted as if to stand, but I waved at him, urging him to remain in his seat. “Stay here, please. I already know the things you’d say to try to convince me not to. Please don’t. I won’t stay. I have to help them.”
Thorin’s thunder exploded again. I turned and jogged up the basement stairs before my parents could protest. Outside the first-floor windows, the sky had gone twilight purple from the thickening storm clouds. Diluted light glowed in the windows, casting dark shadows over the interior. A streak of lightning tore apart the sky. Bright, phosphorescent light flared over the landscape as brief as a heartbeat before fading away. Specks of color floated in my field of vision. I blinked them away as I hurried outside.
Thorin’s voice rose above the clamor of his storm, and he spoke in his ancient tongue. I followed his voice and found him beside Baldur in the broad expanse of land spreading out before New Breidablick’s front door. Baldur’s estate sprawled over several thousand acres, and he had told me before that the closest neighbor, a beef rancher, lived miles and miles away on the other side of a distant ridge. A protracted battle would eventually draw attention from mortal authorities, but perhaps Helen thought our battle wouldn’t last that long. Most likely, she didn’t care. In her mind, this was the beginning of the end.
“Where’s Helen?” I stepped to Thorin’s side. He pointed to a distant mountain range, but the fading light camouflaged everything beneath a cover of shadows. “I don’t see anything.”
“You will soon enough,” he said. “Baldur’s wards act like an invisible brick wall. You throw something against them long enough, they’ll eventually crumble.”
“How far out are they?”
“Just over a mile.” Baldur gritted his teeth. “It’s the extent of my reach. If I tried to push the wards any farther, they’d be too weak to be useful.” He stood firm, legs braced wide, eyes focused on some faraway point. But an unusual pallor had crept into his skin, robbing him of his ruddy complexion and leaving him pale and waxen.
“Is Baldur doing okay?” I lowered my voice out of consideration for Baldur’s concentration.
“Helen has been here for over an hour.” Thorin studied the Allfather with an appraising gaze. “She’s been throwing her soldiers at the wards like cannonballs. We underestimated the size of her army. I’m afraid Baldur will give out before her golems do.”
Hairs rose along the back of my neck. At first, I mistook it as a reaction to the static electricity surrounding Thorin or a primal response to fear, but no. My sixth sense had picked up on the presence of someone new behind me.
“Brother, Allfather... Solina.”
I spun on my heel and gasped. Fire pooled in my palms. “Grim,” I snarled, baring my teeth. My stomach churned, and stinging, ice-cold revulsion chilled my blood.
Grim raised his hands and stepped back. He lowered his eyes and waited for me to decide whether to attack him or not. Thorin’s heavy hand settled on my shoulder. Holding me back or lending support? Hard to tell.
“I’m not going to burn him.” I’d had more than enough of killing people with my fire. For a certain wolf, however, I’d make an exception. “But I know better than to face him empty-handed.”
A deep flush stained Grim’s cheeks. “You have no reason to believe me, Solina. But I swear to you—I mean you no harm. I owe you a life debt.”
My fire retreated, and I stepped closer, fists balled at my sides. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’ll do everything within his power to protect you,” Thorin said. “Even if it means giving his own life to do it.”
“Ha! That only happens in Hollywood, like Morgan Freeman in that Robin Hood movie.”
“You don’t have to believe him, Sunshine. It’s our way. He’s not lying.”
Dumbfounded, I stared at Grim. He looked up, and our gazes locked. I grumbled an ineffable sound of disgust and backed away, putting Thorin and Baldur between Grim and me. “Give me one reason to doubt you, Grim, and I’ll burn you to ash. You don’t have a fire sword to protect you anymore.”
Thorin’s brother said nothing but bowed his neck. I snorted and turned away. How do I keep an eye on him and fight Helen and her army at the same time?
As if reading my thoughts, Thorin said, “I’m watching him, too, Solina. But I believe he’ll do what he says.”
“I believe it, too,” I said, my tone thick with derision, “so long as Helen continues to be a bigger threat. What happens when he gets tired of fighting her and decides it’s just easier to kill me first, the way he originally planned?”
“He won’t.” His eyes, dark and intent, bored into me. “I won’t let him.”
“Why is he still here? I thought he was going to leave when he felt better.”
“I asked him to stay,” Baldur said without turning his attention away from whatever distant spot he’d been staring at. “We need all the help we can get.”
I harrumphed but swallowed my protests. As much as I hated it, Baldur had a point. Grim was invested in Helen’s defeat as much as the rest of us. If he kept his berserker battle rage pointed in her direction, he could be useful. And I’d try not to set him on fire.
“Where are the Valkyries?” I asked between rumbles of thunder and lightning strikes. Concussions of sound and light bombarded a distant ridgeline where, I assumed, Helen’s army approached.
“Still hours out.” Thorin gritted his teeth.
I rolled my shoulders and popped my knuckles. “That’s too bad, because this may be over long before then.”
Chapter 23
Back and forth, Thorin shifted his weight, his feet, his shoulders. He toyed with his hammer, tossing it from fist to fist. I stood beside him and stared, searching distant ridges that stood out against the bruised sky like raw, broken bones, but nothing struck me as unusual.
“How does Helen transport a battalion of stone soldiers into the middle of Lake Tahoe without drawing notice from mortal authorities?” I asked. “The National Guard should already be here with tanks and helicopters.”
“Out here, in the mountains,” Baldur said, “those creatures are naturally camouflaged, blending in with the landscape.”
Thorin twirled Mjölnir’s handle through his fingers like a baton, the same trick he’d shown my parents last time we were here. If I touched him right now, wonder if I’d get an electric shock? “If Helen unloaded her trucks somewhere nearby and sent the golems in small groups on foot through the mountains, it’s possible they could go a long way without being noticed, especially if they move at night.”
“And she’s had days to get them into position,” I said. “While we were wasting our time at Amchitka—why do you think I didn’t see this part of her plan when I was in the Norns’ well?”
“She probably didn’t decide to do this until she learned that we were on our way to Amchitka,” Thorin said. “I think this was a last-minute decision on her part. It’s the only way to outwit your premonitions.”
“It still took some advance planning.”
