“What are you saying?” My voice went dry and raspy as Thorin’s closeness filled my senses. My heartbeat changed from a frantic gallop to an anticipatory lope. My body was so quick to betray my convictions.
Thorin brought his lips mere millimeters from mine and then stopped. His scent was thunderstorms and burnt sky. He cupped my face in his hands and rubbed a thumb over my lower lip. His touch was lightning, and it brought forth images of boiling clouds the color of bruises and winds like artillery, tearing into an army of shadows bearing claws and teeth. Thorin growled, cursing in a language I did not recognize. If I’d had to guess, it probably translated to something along the lines of “damn it to hell.” Then he shook his head, and in a rough and broken voice he said, “I’m not like him. I won’t make his mistakes.”
Thorin dropped his hands and pulled away. He exhaled a heavy breath, and then he was gone, leaving me cold and bereft. Damn his black heart to hell—or whatever place of eternal suffering existed in his theology. I sank to the floor and covered my face.
That was how Skyla found me. She lowered herself to the floor and put her arm around my shoulders. “I couldn’t help overhearing the loud parts, but toward the end it got real quiet. You want to tell me what happened?”
I repeated the story, including the look in Thorin’s eyes and the sensation of his touch.
“Ah, so that’s why you’re glowing.”
“What?” I pulled my hands away, and, yes, Skyla was right. A soft, candlelit glow radiated from my skin. “Well, that’s just great.”
Skyla sighed. “I am so glad not to be in your shoes right now.” She patted my head when I sobbed again. “Was it really so bad as all that?”
“No,” I said. “It was incredible.”
Skyla blew a breath out between her teeth so that it whistled quietly. “That makes it a lot more complicated.”
I sniffed and tried to get ahold of myself.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
I wiped my face as best I could and pushed up from the floor. Skyla stood beside me. “I’m going to say my goodbyes. It’s a long way to New York, and we better get going.”
Chapter Thirty-five
When Thorin left me, he left for good, apparently heading straight out the door and getting into a car with Val and one of the Valkyries, who drove them to Mendocino, the closest town, and dropped them off.
“If they were going to do some crazy magical transportation,” Skyla said, “why did they need to go to Mendocino first?”
I shrugged at Skyla and considered what I needed to do next. I had nothing to pack, as my Valkyrie kidnappers had given me no opportunity to gather the few items I had bought in Vegas before chucking me in their car. But, because of Thorin’s talent for predicting a person’s needs, I now possessed an envelope stuffed with cash. He’d left it on my pillow sometime after breakfast but before our encounter in Val’s room. The money sounded more exciting than it was; I was losing my independence to Thorin, dollar by dollar, and now, touch by touch.
“Maybe Mendocino has magical train stations like in Harry Potter or a wardrobe like the Narnia books,” I said. “I don’t want to think too much about why those two do the things they do.”
“Good point.” Skyla closed the hard cover over the truck bed and locked it in place. There was no time for stealth or surreptitiousness, only time for running, and I had to take Thorin’s word that the truck was untraceable. Skyla and I returned to the house to collect Inyoni and Kalani and make our goodbyes to Tori. She never asked where we were going, and I had to trust Inyoni and Kalani not to tell her once we got there.
Tori hugged each of us in turn, ending with me. “Good luck, Solina. Take care, and don’t forget what you’ve learned in your short time here. When things are safer, I’ve asked Inyoni and Kalani to bring you back to us so you can continue your training. We are committed to ensuring your well-being.”
“I hope we come back sooner rather than later,” I said. “I truly hope my bad dream winds up being nothing more than that.”
I hugged several other women I’d known as sparring partners and teachers. They all wore grim expressions and stood alert and aware, as if expecting an attack at any moment. Skyla and Inyoni climbed into the truck cab’s front seats, and Kalani and I climbed up into the back seat.
We didn’t anticipate an attack on the road. My dream had shown the battle occurring on the grounds of the Aerie only, but still Inyoni and Kalani kept a watchful eye. They rotated sleep shifts so that one of them was always awake during our journey, and all four of us took turns behind the wheel, driving through the nights without stopping for anything except food, gas, and the occasional restroom break.
Skyla, the two Valkyries, and I rolled into the gravel drive of a rustic fishing cabin in the late afternoon on a Friday near the end of September. The trees surrounding the lake showed the beginnings of fall colors. Nature had thrown out the welcome mat for us.
The term rustic brought to mind something charming and simple: a log cabin floored in pine planks and light fixtures constructed of deer antlers. This place had none of that. The walls were cinderblock. If I counted the bathroom, then the cottage provided two rooms and a loft for extra sleeping space. The building offered little insulation from cold weather, though a small wood-burning stove sat in one corner. The roof showed no obvious signs of wear. It kept out the bugs and maybe the rain, too, but that had yet to be tested.
Skyla climbed a ladder into the loft and unrolled her sleeping bag and a foam mattress. We had stopped at a Wal-Mart outside of Rochester to pick up fuel, gear, and groceries. I followed her to the loft and rolled out my sleeping bag beside hers. Inyoni and Kalani eyed the dusty futon in the living room/dining room/everything else room. Their disdain was obvious, but there was nothing else for them unless they wanted to sleep in the truck.
“It has running water,” Skyla said, “so we’ve got a toilet, but there’s no electricity except to run the water pump, so we don’t have a water heater. And we have to cook on gas and light it with kerosene.”
Someone suggested we walk to the lake, but it never happened because the Valkyries preferred to take naps instead. The Tacoma had plenty of cab space, but sleeping in a car never equaled the quality of bed sleep. Through a jaw-popping yawn, Kalani said something about establishing a watch schedule. I volunteered to take the first shift because I’d driven the least and napped the most. No one argued.
I made a huge sandwich from the supplies in our cooler and ate it while I prowled around outside. A small yard reached from the cabin to the water. Acres of forest surrounded the little house on the north side of the property and bordered the driveway. Skyla said the neighbors’ places were no more than a quarter mile away on either side of us, but they liked their privacy. I walked the long gravel drive to where it ended on an unmarked state road in need of repaving. No cars rolled by even after a minute or two of watching, so I turned on my heel and strolled back down the driveway.
Someone had built a fire pit near the bank of the lake, and a small dock protruded into the water. I kicked my shoes off in the grass yard and padded out onto the dock, finishing my last bite of sandwich as I went. The chill in the air made the water feel warm on my bare toes when I dipped them in, so I rolled up the cuffs of my borrowed jeans, sat on the end of the dock, and plopped my feet into the lake.
No men, no gods, no wolves. I lounged against the wooden planks of the pier and stared into the blue sky, reveling in the peace and quiet that was only interrupted by the occasional bass boat in the distance, zooming across the water. I inhaled a deep breath and let it out in a huge sigh. A fly buzzed. A bird sang. A fish jumped up and landed with a splash. Skyla was right. This was way better than the city.
Chapter Thirty-six
I made several more rounds around the perimeter of the property while the others slept, checking for signs of intruders, but after each round, I wound up on the dock again, toes back in the water. This place reminded me of home, of Lake Norman, just a few minutes from my house. The few times my family had ever taken vacations, we usually wound up there. I had a feeling if my parents ever retired, my dad could happily spend the rest of his days camped out on a dock, responsible for nothing more than the supervision of a couple of fishing poles.
I had promised Thorin I would call my parents, but now was not the time for dragging out cell phones. Their signals were too easy to track. What was I going to tell Mom and Dad anyway? What could I say that they would ever believe?
The sun had almost set when Skyla stumbled down to the dock, still groggy and sleep drunk. She squatted beside me. “I feel a hundred times better after that nap. Now if only I could get a shower.”
I moved as if I was going to shove her in the lake. “You can have a bath right here.”
Skyla made the girliest sound I’d ever heard from her and wiggled out of my grasp. “Not funny.”
“I thought it was very funny,” I said. “Who knew you could scream like that?”
“I didn’t scream.”
“No, it was more of a prissy-girl shriek.”
“Don’t you have something better to do? Go fix us some dinner or something.”
“Do we get more of those really great reconstituted meals like on our kayaking trip?”
“Yes, unless you managed to catch some fish with your bare toes.”
I pulled my feet from the water and checked my toes. “Nope, no fish.”
“Then it’s spaghetti Bolognese.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“I bet your taste buds disagree.”
Inside the cabin, Kalani and Inyoni had lit all the kerosene lamps and dug out a couple of old board games. They set up Monopoly while I put water on to boil for our dinner. Skyla made salads, and then we ate, played Monopoly, drank wine that Kalani pulled out from her grocery bags, and talked about a side of the Valkyries I hadn’t learned about during my stay in the Aerie.
“So, the Valkyries were Odin’s battle maids,” I said. “What exactly does that mean? I can tell y’all are some tough cookies, but did you actually fight for him?”
