“Let me stay.”
I was inhaling a breath to answer when the door burst open and Thorin blew into the room. His gaze fell on us, and the air pressure dropped, my ears popped, and thunder rumbled in the distance. But in the next instant, Thorin recovered and swallowed his emotions so fast I doubted having seen them in the first place. I brushed condensation from my skin and told myself I’d imagined the thunder.
“What do you want?” Val asked.
Thorin looked at me. “Baldur wants you, Solina.”
Val growled and tore himself away, stalking toward Thorin, hands clenched at his sides. “Tell him to go back to his cave. He can’t ignore us for eons and then show up here and start making demands. And since when have you been anyone’s errand boy?”
“My family has always been the Allfather’s right hand, his fist. His might and strength in battle and his support and counsel in peace.” Disdain and cool superiority radiated from Thorin as he spoke. “Nothing has changed. We all swore to serve him.”
Might and strength, indeed. But where does Val fit in this hierarchy? Somewhere lower, I supposed—in a position that had generated a lot of animosity over the years between these two.
“Not me,” Val said. “Not ever.”
“I was there, Val. You vowed, and none of us have forgotten.”
Val and Thorin stepped closer to each other, close enough to take a swing, should one of them decide to make his point with a fist instead of words. Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, but I slipped between the two men and pushed against their chests as if I expected to have any physical effect on them. I might as well have tried to push apart the pillars at Stonehenge. “Guys, let’s calm down for a second. This is my decision. I go where I want, when I want.” I looked at Thorin. “Unless you have some reason to convince me otherwise, I am not interested in going anywhere with you and Baldur tonight. Whatever we decide to do next, it can wait until the morning.”
Thorin dropped his gaze from Val to me, showing the blackness that lingered there. “Your love affair with Val has given you a narrow vision. What do you think your brother would say?”
Without a second’s hesitation, I balled my fist and smashed it into Thorin’s ribs. If he flinched, I didn’t see it, and in return I gained a set of bruised knuckles. I grimaced and shook my hand, attempting to shake away the pain. A glint of humor lit Thorin’s eye. I would have slapped him if I thought it would do any good, but my hand was already sore enough, and Thorin didn’t need another reason to laugh at me. Instead, I spun on my heel and marched toward the bedroom. “Go to hell,” I said. “That’s what Mani would say.”
I slammed the door behind me and turned the lock, though I doubted the flimsy wood could keep out the two demigods on the other side if they decided they wanted in. I pressed my ear against the door and listened for what might happen next, in case I needed to try to make an escape through the window.
“I think you won’t be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year,” Val said, his tone bitter and cold. “Your diplomacy skills suck.”
If Thorin replied, I didn’t hear him. After a few moments of silence, chairs scraped across the floor, heavy footsteps came and went, doors opened and closed, and the TV came on in the living room. Someone had decided to stay and keep me company. I wondered who, but I wasn’t going to open the door to find out.
If it was Val, he would try to seduce his way into my bed, and that man was a smooth talker. Cleared of my previous dose of lust, I remembered I didn’t trust Val, or any of them, and a little physical pleasure was no compensation for a broken heart. I am not a person to keep the two separate.
If Thorin waited on the other side of the door, however, then it was best to stay away for both our sakes and for the security of the apartment and the store beneath. If I had to see him again before the morning, I might send us all up in a ball of flame.
Chapter Twenty-three
I took a deep breath and tried to push down the gloat swelling in my chest when I peeked out of my door in the morning to find Val, Thorin, and Baldur had all spent the night in the apartment. I had put my foot down and bent three ancient heroes to my will. Thorin even condescended to make a pot of coffee. Suck on that, Wonder Woman.
From his seat on the couch in the living room, Val watched me ease out of my room and head into the kitchen, following the smell of fresh java. At the kitchen table, Baldur sat holding his head in his hands, his mood not much improved from the previous evening. Thorin sat beside him, silently watching me as I moved around the kitchen, getting a mug, finding the creamer. The physical separation between the three, Val by himself and Thorin and Baldur in here together, evidenced a division in the ranks.
Baldur looked up when I pulled out a seat across from his. “Good morning, Sol.”
“Solina,” I said. “I was born twenty-five years ago. My mother and father live in the foothills of North Carolina. It’s a nice place. You should visit sometime. I have pictures of me with them the day I was born, in a hospital, from mortal parents. No magic, no hocus-pocus. If that is true, then how can I be an ancient goddess?” It’s not that I didn’t accept the things Baldur said—there was too much supporting evidence to deny it. But I didn’t understand the fundamentals of it. The physiology. How could I be Sol and not know anything about her at the same time?
“Sol’s spirit lay dormant for a very long time until it manifested in you. You are her in many ways.”
“I bleed, I age, and I will die someday. Hopefully later rather than sooner. I am a baker by trade and a sister seeking justice for her brother. Up until this week, I have been, with some exceptions, an extremely normal girl.” Thorin snorted and rocked back in his chair. I tried not to care whether the snort meant something derogatory. “Am I not the same Solina I was a week ago?”
“You are mortal in a sense,” Baldur agreed. “You are right that you will age and pass away. But the god in you will continue on, waiting for the moment of rebirth.”
“How do you know this?”
Baldur shrugged. “I see it all around you. It’s in your essence. Besides, it has happened that way before.”
I gave him a hard stare, and he frowned. “I haven’t had nearly enough caffeine for this conversation,” I said, getting to my feet.
I stalked into the living room and plopped onto the sofa next to Val. Deep undertones of Thorin and Baldur’s voices carried into the living room, but I couldn’t make out their discussion, nor did I want to. Val was engrossed in a news show on TV, but he scooted over to put his arm around me and motioned to my coffee cup. Apparently none of what went down last night had fazed him. “Where’s mine?”
“In the kitchen.”
Val stuck out his bottom lip and made sad puppy eyes at me, pleading for me to fetch one for him.
“I’m not going back in there until people start making sense.”
Val laughed. “So, I guess you’ll be taking your meals out here from now on.”
“It’s not that I don’t accept it. It’s just that I have twenty-some years of hardwiring to overcome. I have always taken for granted it’s man on his earth, God in his heaven, sun in the blue sky, moon in the black. Now I have to scrub all that and allow that gods walk the earth and immortality exists, here, on this plane.”
“You’re handling it exceptionally well,” Val said.
“The hardest thing of all to accept is that I have a place in it. I am part of this strangeness, and I never knew. I still feel like the old me.”
“Even though you can flick your own Bic?” Val smiled, and I leaned into him, letting his body heat envelop me. He smelled male and a little stale, but not so much as to turn me away.
“Sunshine,” Thorin barked. I jumped, and Val responded by tightening his arm around me.
“What?” I said in an equally harsh tone.
“Pack up. We’re going on another road trip.”
