Waking the Gods: Their Dark Valkyrie #4 Read online

  Not that long ago, the dark elves had been helping Surt, but for understandable reasons. Nidavellir, their home of underground caves, had started to fall apart after centuries of the gods’ unthinking neglect. Surt had promised them a place in one of the realms that was still stable if they helped him claim those realms. Hod had managed to regain their trust by going to help restore their home, but it was a tentative truce so far.

  “If we’re asking the dirt-eaters for help, perhaps you could put in a request for some of their creative weaponry as well,” Loki said with a grin.

  I perked up. I hadn’t thought of that. The dark elves had constructed most of the gods’ greatest weapons, from Thor’s hammer to Odin’s spear.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Hod said. “They aren’t all that happy with us, remember. Just a few weeks ago, they were trying to kill us.”

  “A grave misunderstanding now rectified. But I take your point.”

  “In the meantime, the rest of us could set out more messages in places the other gods seem likely to visit,” Thor suggested. “That did work to bring Tyr back to us.”

  Only Tyr, after days of searching. I nibbled at my lower lip. “How long do you think we have before Surt starts his attack on Midgard?”

  “He’ll wait until he’s confident in his defenses around Asgard,” Freya said. “That might not take more than a day or two, though. After that… We can hope that he’ll enjoy his victory for some time before attempting to extend it, but I don’t think we’d be wise to count on a delay. And there’s no way of telling where or how he’ll even begin his assault on this realm.”

  “If he arrives in Midgard via that flaming bridge of his, I should sense that magic.” Loki wiggled his fingers. “It makes my own turn prickly.”

  At a fluttering sound outside, all our mouths snapped shut, our gazes jerking to the doorway. A second later, a raven swooped inside. It banked over our heads and dropped to the ground just inside the barn, shifting into the form of a skinny knobby-limbed woman at the same time.

  Muninn crossed her arms over her chest and peered at us with her dark eyes. From her stance, she was considering whether she’d need to bolt back out that door.

  None of us had exactly been on friendly terms with the raven woman until even more recently than our dark elf alliance. Once Odin’s servant as the guardian of memory, she’d let out however many centuries of pent-up rage by agreeing to help Surt capture the Allfather and then tormenting us with awful moments from our personal histories in a prison she’d created.

  She’d given us a tip to help us destroy Surt’s fortress. Suddenly I couldn’t help wondering how much she’d known about his decision to move most of his army to a different realm. Had she still been playing both sides?

  “I found you as quickly as I could,” she said, with a bird-like cock of her head. “By the time I realized you were leaving Asgard, Bifrost was already retracting.”

  “How did you end up here, then?” Thor said. His tone was even enough, but his hand had dropped to his hammer where it rested at his side.

  “I flew straight to Yggdrasil, before Surt had time to notice.” Muninn shuddered. “He would not be pleased to see me.”

  My valkyrie senses were designed to read emotion and motivations—to help me decide who lived and died on a battlefield, if I’d been a proper valkyrie with the old guard. Picking up impressions from divine beings was always a trickier business than with mortals, but her horror felt genuine to me. I relaxed against the wall.

  “What did you see before you left?” Freya asked.

  “Little you wouldn’t have, I’d imagine,” the raven woman said. “I was only a few minutes behind you. Lots of burning, lots of smoke. Surt shouting about how wonderful he is.” She cut her gaze toward Odin. “In case I didn’t make it clear enough before, I never liked him. Our agreement was a matter of necessity.”

  Odin dipped his head in acknowledgment. I knew the two of them must have talked more than I’d been a witness to. He didn’t look especially troubled, but then, it was hard to tell with the Allfather. You might say he had kind of odd reactions to things. Or you could just say he was batshit crazy.

  “We were just talking about looking for the other gods who left Asgard,” I said. “I was thinking you might have seen them in the time you spent here. It sounded like you’ve done a lot more roaming around than these guys did when they visited.”

  Muninn paused. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You were thinking I could take you to them, you mean.”

  “You’re under no obligation to help us,” Odin said.

  Thor let out a guffaw. “I’d say she is. If it wasn’t for her helping Surt, the giant might never have raised enough of an army to challenge Asgard in the first place.”

  Muninn’s shoulders twitched in a motion that brought to mind ruffled feathers. “I had my reasons. And I serve no one now.” She eased back a step toward the doorway.

  “Ah, let’s not bicker,” Loki said. “We’ve got plenty of draugr skulls to bash without turning on our own, don’t we?”

  “And she is our own,” Baldur put in quietly. “She’s of Asgard, even if she was turned against us for a time.”

  I caught the raven woman’s eye. “Don’t go. Everyone’s just… riled up, after what happened up there.”

  Muninn’s jaw worked. She didn’t move forward again, but she stayed where she was, at least.

  “The other gods,” she said. “I may have an idea or two.”

  4

  Aria

  A gust of snow stung my face as I glided down to land on an icy ledge next to Muninn and Freya. I dug my feet deeper into the fur-lined boots Loki had procured for me and tugged the coat he’d doctored to allow room for my wings even more tightly around me. My valkyrie strength protected me from the cold some, but not completely. And the chill was waking up all the aches that hadn’t quite healed after yesterday’s encounter with Surt.

  I wasn’t going to mention that to anyone, though. The gods had fussed enough about me joining in on this undertaking. As if I wanted to sit around cooped up in some dusty barn while a mad giant planned to destroy this entire world. My heightened senses might help us spot the goddess we were searching for if she tried to take off on us. I had agreed to getting a night’s rest first, and that should be enough for them.

  Muninn and Freya seemed impervious to the weather in both their forms. There on the ledge, they transformed from raven and falcon so that we could talk with each other, Muninn wearing her usual loose black dress and Freya in an elegant blouse and slacks with her feathered cloak still slung over her shoulders. I tucked my wings closer to my body, the wind tickling over their silver-white feathers.

  “You two should stay here while I fly closer to the usual spots on my own,” Muninn said. “She might slip away if she sees a whole brigade approaching before we know exactly where we’re going.” The corner of her mouth curved up. “The gods are not always as observant as they like to think. They rarely noticed me coasting by.”

  “Come for us as soon as you’ve found her,” Freya said, tossing back her golden waves. She set her hand on the hilt of her sword and scanned the snowy mountainside as if she expected Surt might appear even here.

  Muninn leapt up into her raven form and flapped deeper into the valley we were perched on the edge of. She’d said she’d seen Skadi, the goddess of the hunt and of winter, in this range enough times to think she’d made a home here. A hunter sounded like a decent ally to have on our side.

  “How easy do you think it’ll be to convince Skadi to come back with us?” I asked.

  Freya shrugged. “Skadi was always something of a loner, but she was loyal to Asgard. She won’t want to see it or this realm fall to Surt.”

  “Do you think she’s more likely to listen to you than the others? I have to think…” Suddenly I wondered if I should be bringing up this subject at all. But I’d already started, so I barreled onward. “You must want to keep searching for your daughter.”

  She’d mentioned her regrets over her falling out with the younger goddess, whom I’d gathered she hadn’t seen in at least a couple centuries, after we’d started searching for all the other former inhabitants of Asgard a week ago.

  “I wouldn’t be sure where else to try with Hnoss,” Freya said. “And I know Skadi better than any of the louts we’re with. She was married to my father for some time—and she did truly care for him. They just wanted lives that were too different from what suited the other.”

  A hint of melancholy had crossed her face. How much because she was thinking of Odin, who was constantly wandering off without her on his rambling journeys, and how much for the daughter she hadn’t seen in hundreds of years—partly because Hnoss had disliked her new stepfather?

  I wasn’t any stranger to fucked-up family dynamics. I knew what it was like to hate the new guy your mother had brought around, to know he was up to no good. Of course, at least Odin had thought he was doing the right thing, even if he’d encouraged his realm toward destruction and forced Loki to play the villain for that purpose. My mother’s boyfriends—the one of them in particular—

  I shoved that thought aside. I wasn’t letting Trevor affect me anymore. I’d risen above everything he’d done to me, all the pain he’d caused and the ways he’d torn us apart. My mom didn’t give a shit what had happened to me—that fact she’d made abundantly clear. There was a lot more hope for Freya and her daughter. Freya cared.

  The icy chill was starting to penetrate my boots. I shuffled my feet to encourage the blood flow through them, and a sharp twinge ran through my hip. No, this body was definitely not in fully working order yet.

  “Are you all right?” Freya asked, her blue eyes as keen as in her falcon form.
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  “Just a little cold,” I lied.

  It didn’t matter if I wasn’t totally recovered from my wounds. I had to do whatever I could to help finish this war with Surt, not just to support the gods I’d started to consider family but to protect the one part of my original family I still cared about.

  My little brother Petey was off with the foster family we’d arranged for him. I’d thought he’d be safe there from everyone who’d threatened him. If Surt claimed Midgard too—or if he found out I had a brother he could use to hurt me—I didn’t want to think through what would happen to that sweet kid. He didn’t deserve any of this.

  Petey deserved better from me. Hod had wiped his memories so he couldn’t accidentally slip up and give away anything about our real mother. If the agency found out who he was and where he’d come from, they’d have to send him back. Back to her and her latest lover who’d left fingerprints on his neck.

  A black shape soared back toward us, stark against the white snow. Muninn dropped to join us. She was smiling when she shifted into a woman.

  “She’s here,” she said. “There’s a cabin just over that slope. I think Skadi’s been living there. She’s farther down the valley, hunting hares. I don’t think we can completely surprise her, but if we arrive quickly enough, she’ll see it’s you and hopefully stay to chat.”

  Freya nodded and drew her cloak over her head. In an instant, she was a golden falcon, darting up toward the sky.

  Before Muninn could transform too, I grasped her arm. I hadn’t had much chance to talk to her alone until now.

  “Before,” I said, “when you were working with Surt… Did you ever tell him about my brother?” I knew she was aware of Petey’s existence. She’d used him to torment me in that prison of memories she’d trapped us in.

  The raven woman shook her head. “I never had any reason to. You’ve seen how Surt is. With an ‘ally’ like that, you’re best off keeping everything you can close to your chest in case you need it later.”

  I guessed that comment was a little comforting, other than the implication that she probably would have told him if she’d thought it would get her out of a jam.

  “Did you hear any of the dark elves mention it to him?” I asked. They’d threatened Petey to try to get me to back down too, although Hod had wiped their minds of all memory of my brother as well as he could after. I didn’t know how many specifics of their plans they might have shared with Surt.

  Muninn’s gaze held mine with a gleam that looked almost curious. “To the best of my knowledge, Surt has no information about your brother. He didn’t even think much about you until you broke out of my prison. Even if one of the dirt-eaters did say something, they couldn’t know where your brother is, could they?”

  “No.” She only did because of the memories she’d peeked at in my head and Hod’s. I let out my breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. I just needed to know.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” she said, with a strange note in her voice, as if she were a little surprised by that gladness.

  Freya’s falcon wheeled in the air overhead, letting out a faint cry of impatience. I waved to her and sprang off the ledge with a flap of my wings.

  My knees throbbed for a moment from the jump, but my newest appendages had escaped the worst of Surt’s blows. It was a relief to glide through the air with the wind buffeting them, the rest of my body barely needing to move. Freya swept up toward the top of the slope Muninn had indicated, and I pushed myself faster, speeding after her. The raven streaked into view alongside me.

  We whipped up over the slope and plunged down the other side. A log cabin, the roof blanketed with snow like everything else around here, stood about a mile down the mountainside. My sharpened valkyrie eyesight picked up a smattering of footsteps between the door and a heap of chopped firewood leaning against the cabin’s side. A hint of pine smoke reached my nose from a fire that must have been put out no more than a few hours ago.

  More footprints headed off to a small shed a few feet away on the other side. From there, long slivers of tracks sliced through the snow, heading downward. Skadi was on skis, I realized after staring for a moment.

  Freya was hurtling down the slope. I caught a gust of wind that propelled me after her. A few seconds later, I spotted a figure with a trim jacket and a white wool hat pulled over her dark brown hair. She was braced on her skis, her arms lifted to pull back a bowstring, the arrow aimed at something I couldn’t make out amid the trees across from her.

  She let the arrow fly. Freya emerged from her cloak, keeping it unfurled behind her. “Skadi!” she called in her bright but firm voice.

  The other goddess’s head snapped around, her bow slipping in her hands. I hung back as Freya moved to greet Skadi. Muninn swooped around and flew back toward the cabin. I wondered if she planned to reveal herself to the goddess of the hunt at all.

  “Freya,” Skadi said, shielding her eyes from the sun as she stared. She shook her head in disbelief. Her smile was tight. “It’s been a long time. What are you doing all the way out here?”

  “It has been,” Freya said, smoothly but quickly. “And I know you’ve wanted your peace from the politics of Asgard. I wouldn’t have disturbed that peace if it weren’t an incredibly urgent situation.” She sucked in a breath. “Surt has returned. He’s taken Asgard—the entire realm.”

  Skadi’s eyebrows shot up, and her eyes flashed. “We can’t have that.”

  “Exactly,” Freya said, her own smile relieved.

  “Come back to my cabin where we can sit properly, and you can tell me the whole thing while I pack,” Skadi said. Her gaze slid to me. She looked me up and down where I was still hovering in the air. A thread of disdain came into her voice. “What did you bring a valkyrie for?”

  Freya hesitated. “We didn’t think it wise for any of us to travel alone,” she said, which I guessed was the answer she thought Skadi would most easily accept.

  “As if you need the protection of one of Odin’s warrior dolls. Well, come on.”

  My mouth refused to stay shut. “I’m not a doll,” I said. “And I have very good hearing, by the way.”

  Skadi rolled her eyes at me. “You’re created for the gods’ purposes, and you’ll break much easier than any of us. Sounds like a doll to me. Just try to keep up, all right.”

  I bit my tongue against several barbed comments I’d have liked to make in return. Freya gave me a pleading glance and then turned back to Skadi. “Aria has proven herself well. I don’t think you’ve any reason to worry that she’ll slow us down.”

  Of course I’d be able to keep up with them. I had my wings, and Skadi was skiing uphill.

  But then, it turned out I’d underestimated the goddess’s strength. Skadi whipped up the mountainside with shoves of her powerful thighs, each push carrying her at least a tenth of a mile. I managed to keep pace, but by the time we reached her cabin, the tendons in my wings were starting to throb too.

  Skadi shed her skis and stalked into the cabin, leaving Freya to hold the door for me. Muninn stayed perched on the roof.

  Inside the single-room home, the pine smoke smell was sharper, but the goddess of the hunt didn’t bother lighting the logs again, as much as I’d have enjoyed a little relief from the constant chill. She opened up a chest at the foot of her simple wood-frame bed.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Just the important parts.”

  “Well,” Freya said, sinking into the room’s single chair, “it seems Surt was planning this invasion for a rather long time. As in, as far as he’s concerned, he’s wrapping up unfinished business from Ragnarok.”

  She summed up the events of the last several decades faster than I’d have been able to: How she and the five gods who’d remained in Asgard had come down to Midgard for one of their regular visits, and not long after Odin had set off on his own usual wanderings. How he hadn’t returned for tens of years, longer than ever before, until they’d started to worry about him. How the other four gods had summoned me, and how I’d ended up managing to lead them to Odin in Surt’s grasp, from which we’d freed him.