Chapter 6 Maze
MAZE
Grief twisted in my gut as I stepped over the threshold of Jessica’s apartment.
My sister’s scent lingered faintly in the air, woven throughout the spacious studio along with magic residue from the ward on the door.
Two weeks had passed since she’d gone missing, but her presence was still there.
A trace of her perfume, the salt-sweet tang of Valkyrie magic, and the smallest hint of her favorite coffee grounds still clung to the air.
My throat tightened. Jess’d been here right before she’d been taken. Maybe even on the same day.
I ran my fingers along the wall as I pushed forward, steadying myself as the ache of grief pressed deep. Please let this place tell me what her last hours before she was taken looked like. Let me anchor the pieces.
The studio was neat. Then again, she had few belongings here, and Jess had always been a clean freak.
There was one king-size bed against the far wall to my left, a small kitchen area was on the opposite wall with a small dining table, and a single sofa sat in the center of the room. A few feet from the bed was a bathroom.
Talon followed me in, his presence making the space feel smaller than it was. He scanned the apartment with a warrior’s precision, but his eyes found mine when I stopped near the bed.
“Only one bed,” I said flatly, trying to keep my voice clinical. My hip still tingled from his touch, and damn if I didn’t want his hand back on me. Along with his other hand and mouth. “I’ll take it.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “We’re mates, Maze. We can sleep in the same bed.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks before I could stop it. Ridiculous. Two centuries of waiting, and I was acting like a green recruit dodging a sparring partner’s gaze. Of course, Talon would want more than distance. He’d told me as much—he wanted all of me, not just the duty of mating.
Still, my walls rose on instinct. I didn’t know how to be the woman he needed me to be. Lowering my mental shields, I sighed. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Talon closed the space between us and drew me into his arms before I could step back. His warmth hit me like sunlight through dark clouds after weeks of storms. His wolf was close enough to the surface I could feel his growl under Talon’s skin.
“Neither do I, but we’ll figure it out.” He paused and stared into my eyes for a long moment. “Are you scared because Balder betrayed your mother?”
My chest constricted, but I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My mother trusted Balder. Hell, I trusted the bastard. Then he betrayed us all and stole from the Prime. Our clan.
He tipped my chin, so I had to look into his amber eyes. “Freya said they weren’t fated mates. The Prime trusted Balder, maybe even loved him, but it was never meant to last. Not the way fate intended.”
I understood what he was saying. With a soulbond in place, betrayal was impossible.
We would feel each other’s emotions, hear each other’s thoughts, be tied so deeply that one’s pain was the other’s.
That was why Freya and my mother had gone to the Norns—weavers of fate—to cast the soulbond spell.
A connection forged in destiny, not convenience.
I stepped closer, slipped my arms around his waist, then rested my head against his chest. He folded me into his embrace instantly. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, tender in a way that broke me more than battle scars ever could.
“I want this between us,” I whispered. “But it will take time for me to trust it.”
“I know,” he said, his voice fierce and certain. “And I’ll prove this is real to you every day. Always.”
The vow lingered in the air long after I pulled away.
Once the tension eased, Talon offered to get dinner.
I stayed behind, rifling through Jessica’s belongings, each item cutting sharper than the last. A hairbrush was left on the counter.
A jacket tossed over a chair. A pair of shoes sat neatly by the door, waiting for feet that would never come home.
My chest tightened again as my vision blurred. Taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, I pushed away my grief. Just for a little while more. I’ll take the time to break down and mourn my sister later. Right now, I need to retrace her steps.
I forced myself to keep moving, to do so. To be more than the grief clawing at my throat. That was when I found a journal tucked inside the nightstand. Beneath it was a thin ledger bound in plain leather. It looked ordinary, but the moment I touched it, my Valkyrie senses prickled. Hidden wards.
After breaking the ward around the ledger, I sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through pages filled with coded coordinates. Jessica had already started decoding, but she hadn’t gotten far. She’d been onto something, and it had cost her everything.
As soon as Talon walked into the apartment with takeout, the apartment filled with the rich, spiced scent of food. My stomach growled as I met him at the table. He set the bags down and glanced at me. “Find anything?”
I placed the journal and ledger in front of him. “She hid these in the nightstand. The ledger’s coded. Jessica barely scratched the surface.”
Talon studied it, brows drawn. “Quil could help Winter decode it.”
“Agreed.” I took pictures of the pages and sent them to Winter. Then I collapsed into the chair opposite Talon.
We ate in silence at first, but after a few minutes, Talon broke it. “Tell me about Valen Protection Agency.”
I hesitated, then explained. “VPA is still new. We started it about a year ago when we discovered witches being abducted. At first, we worked under the radar, but then Chandra and Winter suggested that we form an official business, which would allow us to protect magic, track down Balder, and offer security and investigation services. Then we bought the building VPA is currently in and moved to Pepper Glenn.”
His expression softened, but it was his grin that caught me off guard. For the first time in too long, I smiled back. It felt strange but real.
Talon leaned back in his chair, gaze steady. “Then why did you stay away so long?”
I stared at the journal, at my sister’s neat handwriting that would never fill another page. “Because we hit a dead end in our search for Balder. Until Jessica.” My voice cracked, but I pushed through it. “Her death gave us the lead we needed.”
He didn’t press, though his wolf simmered in his gaze.
Instead, he reached across the table, brushing his fingers against mine.
I opened my hand and intertwined my fingers with his.
“We’ll find out where the hell he is hiding and take him out.
Might not be as fast as we’d like, but we will win this fight. ”
“We have to.” I watched him lift our hands to his mouth before he kissed my fingers. “We can start with eliminating his eitrborn.”
“I’m on board with that.”
After cleaning up after our lunch, Talon and I sat on the sofa with Jessica’s laptop, going through it. Checking her email and storage drive to see what else she discovered. It had no more information than what she’d already sent to Winter before she disappeared.
A little while later, Talon set his phone down. He’d been scrolling in silence for the last ten minutes, expression unreadable. When he finally looked at me, there was a spark there I hadn’t seen in centuries.
“Feel like going out?”
I blinked. Was he serious? “We’re on a mission.”
The corner of his mouth curved, slow and dangerous. “We can play and work at the same time. There’s a bar down the block owned by witches. It’s a good place to ask questions about Balder and his pets.”
I snorted at “his pets.”
The idea of walking into a witch-owned establishment while Jessica’s death was still freshly made my chest tighten. But Talon wasn’t wrong. Information lived in places like that, between whispered deals and drinks poured too strong.
I sighed, pushing my chair back. “Okay. But if this is just an excuse to drink, I’ll make you regret it.”
His smirk widened. “Promise?”
The bar was dimly lit, and the air was heavy with enchantments. The bartender, a witch, leaned against the counter, wiping down glasses. His eyes caught mine, with a faint flicker of recognition there.
“What’ll it be?” he asked as Talon and I slid onto the bar stools in front of him.
I ordered a whiskey sour, while Talon ordered a beer. Then, I pulled a picture of Jessica up on my phone and showed it to the bartender. “Have you seen her around? It would have been about two weeks.”
The witch frowned, thinking. “Yeah, I saw her once or twice. Sat in the back. Didn’t talk much.”
My throat closed, but I forced myself to stay still, to let Talon carry the questions. “What about shifters?”
The bartender shook his head. “Until you walked in just now, I thought the rumors about shifters were just a myth.”
Something about the way he said it prickled against my skin, but Talon only nodded, as if satisfied. I knew better. Talon would have picked up on my subtle reaction and the uneasiness rolling off the bartender.
This kind of thing was Candra’s specialty because her magic could tell if someone was telling the truth. Our mother called it the truth sense.
We finished our drinks in silence, but Talon’s gaze kept sliding back to me. When he took my hand and tugged me toward the small dance floor, I didn’t resist.
The music was slow and sultry. Talon drew me close, placing my arms on his shoulders before wrapping his around my waist. Heat coiled low in my stomach.
It was familiar. I remembered how Talon always made my body heat and tingle at the same time.
Even before we were picked to be the first mated pair between the shifters and Valkyries.
Thinking about that time made me wonder if the Norns had set this in motion before Freya and the Prime turned the goddess’s guards into shifters.
“You’re tense,” he murmured. His breath brushed my ear, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Because you’re impossible.”
He only chuckled, the sound rough. His lips brushed my temple first, then lower, grazing the line of my cheek. When I turned toward him, his mouth caught mine.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was hot, consuming, his wolf's spirit surging against me until my knees went weak. After a moment, I let myself drown in it, in him, in the truth I’d been running from for centuries.
Our tongues tangled together as Talon tightened his hold on me, fusing our bodies closer. Every part of me ached for his touch. I barely remembered that we were in a public place.
When we finally broke apart, both of us were breathing hard. His forehead rested against mine, his voice a whisper meant for me alone. “I’ve waited way too long for that.”
I slid my hands down his chest, then snaked them around his waist and hugged him tight. Being in his arms was like coming home. “Me too. I’m sorry I made you wait.”
Talon released me and took my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
I laughed as he tugged me off the dance floor and out of the bar. We walked hand in hand toward the apartment. Studying his profile, I wanted to kiss him again and so much more. I wanted things I never allowed myself because I could barely stand the thought of anyone touching me except for Talon.
About a block from the bar, two men stepped out from an alleyway, blocking our path. Glaring at them, I opened my senses. Corrupted magic and dark energy rolled off them.
Eitrborn. Balder’s pets. How nice.
I wasn’t sure why it surprised me that these monsters looked just as human as Talon and I did.
The one in front of me had blond hair that was pulled back into a low ponytail.
He had a scar above his right eye. The other eitrborn’s head was shaved, and he had piercings in his brows and bottom lip.
Both their eyes were dark brown, the color so dark the irises almost blended with their pupils.
And they wore black cargo pants and black shirts.
They charged toward us, and we shot forward, meeting them in the middle. Talon slammed his fist into Baldy’s chest with bone-cracking force. At the same time, I kicked out, slamming my foot into Blondy’s knee. He screamed and fell to the ground.
Before he could recover, I manifested my blade in my hand on instinct, silver gleam catching the streetlight as I slashed across the creature’s chest. Black blood spilled from the wound, hissing where it hit the pavement.
Note to self: Don’t touch the black blood.
Blondy snarled and locked gazes with me.
I smirked as I closed the gap between us and stabbed him in the heart.
The light in his eyes dimmed, and his body slumped.
I pulled my blade from his chest and blasted him with fire magic.
The flames lasted only a few seconds, but they did their job of turning the corrupted shifter into dust.
I twirled around to see Talon do the same to Baldy. Then a portal opened inside the alley and a third eitrborn stepped out. Talon was on him instantly. He struck with a punch to the chest while putting a healthy dose of magic into the hit. The beast slammed into the wall. I threw a fireball at him.
Silence fell around us, and we waited for more of the monsters to show. My chest heaved, and the blade in my hand dripped with black blood. Talon’s amber eyes met mine, glowing faintly in the shadows.
The heat between us hadn’t cooled. If anything, the fight had stoked it higher, burning away the walls I’d tried to keep up.
I made my blade dematerialize and glanced down the alley, sending out my magical feelers to see if any more of Balder’s pets lurked nearby.
Balder was watching. I could feel it in my bones.
And the game had only just begun.