“I want to hear about this fire,” Val said.
“Do you know more about how you do it?” Skyla asked.
I shook my head. “I thought I felt something different this time, but I don’t know what it was. It still seems to have a lot to do with my emotions. I have to be pretty freaked out for it to work.”
“So what now?” Skyla asked.
“We laid our traps,” Thorin said. “Now we wait to see who takes the bait.”
“I don’t want anyone to take the bait,” I said. “I want to live to see another day or two… or several thousand of them, actually.”
Skyla patted my shoulder. “They’ll have to get through some tough barriers first. I got your back, girlfriend.”
A crash of thunder boomed overhead. We all looked up at the sky. Dark clouds gathered along the horizon. Night was on its way, but the storm would likely arrive before the darkness. “Let’s get inside,” Thorin said.
Val put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll help you carry your things. Where are your bags?”
I waved him off. “I got them. It wasn’t much more than an overnight bag anyway.”
“What about your shoulder?”
I gave him a crooked smile. “That’s an interesting story as well.”
Inside the apartment over Thorin’s store, I filled a teapot with water and got out mugs. Skyla and Thorin went into the living room, but Val stayed at my side, attentive, intent, and all but breathing down my neck.
I reached around him and opened the cabinet where Thorin stored the tea boxes. “What is it? Why are you hovering?”
“You’re really all right?” Val asked. I tugged down my shirt collar and raised an eyebrow. Val shook his head. “It’s miraculous.”
“Something like that.”
“I always thought there was something special about you.”
I turned to the fridge and opened it to search for some kind of dairy product appropriate for the tea. “You did?” I came away, carrying a jug of skim milk and a carton of half-and-half.
“Your spirit exudes light, Solina. I’d have to be dead not to sense it.”
“Did you know who I was the first time you met me? I mean, in relation to what has been happening.”
Val grimaced and gnawed his lower lip. “There aren’t that many twin brothers and sisters running around out there named after the sun and the moon.”
“Maybe our parents had an affinity for Norse mythology and a strange sense of humor.”
Val shrugged. “Maybe, but it turns out my suspicions were correct.”
I turned away from him and inhaled a deep breath. I gathered my calm and swallowed my anger. Was there anything genuine about our relationship, or was it purely the result of Val’s plotting? What did it gain him to get close to me and my brother? What purpose did it serve? I had resisted opening up to him, letting him in, for this very reason—not wanting to risk getting hurt. But Val was insidious, and he crept into my affections anyway. His duplicity stung. No, it was worse than that, but I refused to give the feeling a name or let it take root. Push it down. Tuck it away. These kinds of emotions won’t help right now, and I need his cooperation. I can use his own game against him. “How?” I said, my voice dry and raspy. “How do you know about this? Who are you, really?”
“Vali Odinson Wotan.”
“Odinson? Like, literally?”
Val shrugged again.
“And Thorin?”
“Thorin what?” said the man himself, standing in the kitchen doorway.
“You’ve got to quit doing that,” I huffed. “Appearing out of thin air.”
“I assure you I simply walked across the room.”
“You move like a ghost.” The tea kettle whistled. I pulled it off the stove and split the water between four mugs. “I saw you in that vision, Thorin. You had the hammer. You were going to battle. Tell me what that was.”
“Battle?” Skyla said, stepping to Thorin’s side.
I passed out tea, and while everyone doctored it to their preference, I rehashed the vision I’d seen when Thorin touched me in the Westmark Hotel’s driveway. “You still haven’t told me what á braut héthan means.”
“With our swords wielded,” Val said. “We head to battle, going so quickly that our horses are still unsaddled, but we go with our swords wielded. Or something like that. You get the point.”
“That sounds familiar,” Skyla said. “I’ve read it somewhere before.”
“It’s Darra Tharlioth, the Song of the Valkyrie,” Val said.
“So why did I have a vision about it if it’s only some story?”
“It’s not some story,” Skyla said. “Where do you think the author got his stuff? My guess is he got it from the source. If this is real, and I’ve seen more evidence for than against at this point, then according to my research, we are standing in the presence of the survivors of Ragnarok. Vali, a somewhat minor son of Odin, and Magni, eldest son of Thor and Odin’s first grandson. Am I right?”
Neither Val nor Thorin would return our gazes.
