Chapter Ten
Rey
I stare at the now-empty doorway, a little thrown.
Unsure what to do next, I pull the notebook from the blue bag my father gave me. When in doubt, choose war, I guess.
“It’s just a notebook. It doesn’t bite.” I don’t know why I’m talking to myself as I slowly open the first page.
It’s a drawing of Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, the most powerful weapon in the world. I know almost nothing of the war between the Gods and the Giants, other than what Father has shared, and I have no illusions his version isn’t heavily one-sided.
Long before “Norse” was a word, before men carved Gods into stone, Odin was not just a name.
He was a force. And Mjolnir wasn’t just a symbol stamped on rings and family crests; it was a sentence, a weapon of finality.
It meant justice if you were on Odin’s side and extinction if you weren’t.
The Giants—at least that’s what stories called them—stole it, though not out of greed or chaos, like the myths say.
They used it to destroy the Bifrost, and it changed everything.
The Bifrost was a bridge linking our world to theirs, a shimmering, living connection between realms. Between Midgard, or Earth, and Asgard, the Gods’ stronghold.
The Bifrost was how Odin controlled the flow of power, people, memory, and magic.
But once it broke, everything fractured.
Gods and Giants were trapped on each side, and Odin made sure that those trapped here no longer remembered the war that caused their separation.
Using his power, he put everyone asleep to buy time.
Their memories are locked away, and all because the great, benevolent Odinfather decided he wanted to erase history and rewrite it in blood and gold.
He’s never told me what it meant for those trapped in Asgard. He doesn’t like any question that may have an answer that exposes him as anything but a caring ruler.
Whenever I’ve asked my father about the Bifrost and why anyone would want it divided, he just says it was a mistake, a natural consequence of war, but it’s always felt like he was leaving something out.
The Giants already used Mjolnir to take down the Bifrost. Hiding it is just a giant middle finger to my father.
He can’t go home without it, and he can’t restore his own powers, since they come from Asgard.
The only people who can wield it need to have the blood of Odin or be worthy, and since Odin himself is evil personified now—that leaves, well, me.
Jury’s still out on whether or not I’m worthy, but at least I have the bloodline to steal it back—once I find it.
More importantly, why did the Giants hide an ancient weapon in this specific location, and why is Aric the only one who knows where?
I think back on the runes I’ve been seeing scattered around campus.
Are they working like wards? And if Mjolnir is protected here, meaning my father needed me to get in, are the runes making it impossible for it to call out to my blood?
Something is suppressing it. Or someone.
I jump up from my bed and pace back and forth. Something important is right in front of me, I just know it. I have to walk through it. Step by step. This is what I’ve been trained to do.
The Giants don’t want ultimate power returning to my father. Hiding the hammer means they were part of the war and at least retained their memories long enough to make those plans. They had to have done it after the destruction of the Bifrost. Because they’re all still stuck here.
My heart skips in my chest, and my mind races, selecting and discarding reasons. The Eriksons’ family legacy is this school. If it’s protected by runes, that could mean it’s also protected by a more ancient power.
When I first arrived at Endir, I could smell something ancient smoldering beneath the university, if my imagination wasn’t running wild.
Hell, even the mountains that surround the school feel mythical and unforgiving.
Maybe they’ve hidden Mjolnir in a nearby cave or deep within the forest. Maybe getting close to Aric, gaining his trust, really is the key to discovering it.
I settle back on my bed and leaf through the journal again.
I turn to the page depicting Mjolnir and trace the drawing with my fingertip. Rowen told me stories of how the hammer had runes sketched all along the handle where Thor held it firm in his hand before thrusting it toward the sky.
Was Thurisaz one of them?
Lightning would illuminate the hammer as well as his eyes, turning them a terrifying silver before he’d let out the battle cry of the Berserkers.
His warriors would rally around him as they emerged from the trees, wearing animals they’d sacrificed to the Gods.
The Berserkers were so crazed, they would bite down on their own shields to prove they didn’t need them in the first place.
But that was before everything shattered. Before the Gods fell. Before lives were lost and history was rewritten. Before everything humanity had once known was either erased or twisted into something unrecognizable.
The Gods and Giants—both betrayed and betraying—had become legends warped by time, half-truths, and propaganda.
What if the runes on the hammer match the ones on the note from Laufey?
Is the note a map of how to find Mjolnir?
Of course, that would be too easy, and yet, it would make the most sense.
She might not be my birth mother, but she raised me, and the one thing I know down to my bones is that Laufey would die to protect me.
I take her note and slide it into the dossier, then turn another page on the many lives of Mjolnir. Apparently, before its theft, it was a simple-looking hammer, just metal and wood. But because Mjolnir is a living, breathing artifact, it continued to shift and change from battle to battle.
As Thor destroyed worlds and defeated his enemies, Mjolnir not only took on different shapes and sizes—it took on the knowledge and history of Asgard.
Of every bloodline that had wielded it. Rowen told me once that the hammer was forged to answer to only one bloodline, Odin’s, but if that’s true, then how did a Giant use it to destroy the Bifrost? Half-truths and more half-truths.
I continue flipping through the notebook. The images quickly shift from ancient weapons and realms to my target.
Aric.
The pictures on this page make me pause. He’s young, grass stains on his jeans. In one, he’s playing football.
I don’t know why I fixate on that, other than it’s odd to think of him as a normal little boy. In another, he’s holding up a fish in his hand. It’s so small it probably has no meat on it, but he’s proud.
His smile is wide. Bright. Anyone looking at that picture would think Aric was the happiest boy in the world. There’s absolutely no trace of that boy in the man he is today.
In the next picture, he’s standing with Reeve, who’s wearing his high school graduation cap and gown. Aric’s smile is less bright now, his posture tense. I compare the photo with those taken earlier. He doesn’t even look like the same person.
What happened to change him?
His parents’ deaths, no doubt. The thought makes my stomach sink.
I flip through the next few pages. They show his schedule, information about his hobbies, current favorite books and movies, and so on.
All the usual intel. I’m sure Sigurd Erikson, being the mob boss he is, has a similar file on me—probably thicker.
I pause a moment, my mind wondering what else Aric and his family might know about me.
Nope, don’t need to go there.
Shaking my head, I keep reading. Aric suffers from insomnia. That makes two of us.
I skim a newspaper clipping of the time he was struck with lightning. I remember this. Odin denies any involvement, though it’s not like he’d tell me either way.
I flip the page. An allergy to kiwi?
Hmm. That, I didn’t know.
I flip back to the pictures of Aric, of his dorm room, schematics of the house he shares with his grandfather. There’s a picture of his SUV and another of the gym he works out at.
My chest tightens. The dossier is thick with endless information about Endir and Aric, and even Reeve has a few pages in here. No detail was too small to include. And yet, other than a crude drawing and a couple of scribbled notes, almost nothing about Mjolnir’s potential location is included.
It’s like my father wants me to struggle, then fail spectacularly.
Why would he not include more information about the object I’m meant to find? To steal? I understand it’s not been seen in ages, but Odinfather is as old as time. Older than the hammer, in fact. So why wouldn’t he have shared everything that might help me succeed?
I start frantically flipping through the notebook again, searching my father’s notes. Page after page after page on the Erikson family.
But no sign of Mjolnir being used since the destruction of the Bifrost. Of course, Father already knew that. He prepared this dossier. He threatened everyone I love if I don’t find the hammer.
There’s a need to keep your secrets to yourself for the sake of power—but then there’s intentionally keeping someone in the dark whose life depends on succeeding.
But Mjolnir wasn’t lost. Was it? No one misplaced it. It wasn’t a set of car keys. It was hidden on purpose by someone who could wield it. Someone whose bloodline called to the ancient weapon, was remembered by it. That’s right. Mjolnir could remember…
My hands freeze on the page as the pieces click into place.
Aric does know exactly where it was hidden. But he’s completely forgotten.
What’s done can’t be undone without Mjolnir. Father can’t restore their memories. That’s what Father’s been hiding. That’s why he needs me. I’m not really here just to steal Mjolnir.
I was chosen for this mission for a reason. There’s more to it. Isn’t there always, with Odin?
Bile rises in my throat. My father didn’t send me because he believes I’m capable of anything. He sent me because, like most men who fear what they can’t control, he’d rather a woman be the weapon than the one holding it.
That’s what he saw in me two years ago, long before I ever saw it in myself: a soldier he can send into battle while keeping his hands clean. And this mission is no different.
I never let myself think about that day at the beach. But now, it comes back anyway—the wind, the salt, and the silence between us.
Aric and I weren’t supposed to be alone.
The others had gone back to the house—sick of the sand, tired of the wind. But we stayed. Sitting too far apart to be anything and too close to pretend we weren’t something.
I remember the way the waves crashed behind him. The sharp bite of salt in the air. The fact that he kept glancing at me like I was about to disappear.
“You don’t have to be like him,” I said.
I didn’t say my father’s name. I didn’t have to.
Aric looked away for a long time. Then finally, softly, “Maybe I don’t want to be anything else.”
I think that’s when I touched his hand. Or maybe he touched mine. It doesn’t matter who moved first. What mattered was that it happened.
Just once. Just enough.
His hand was warm. Mine was shaking.
I don’t remember what we said after that. I just remember the silence. The kind that feels heavy with things you’re not ready to want.
We didn’t kiss. We didn’t even hug.
But something passed between us—something that scared us both enough to pretend it never happened.
And then the wind changed.
A gust tore across the shoreline, scattering shells and sand like something had exhaled from the depths. The air dropped ten degrees in a breath.
Behind us, the tide stopped. Froze. A sheet of frost crept out from where Aric sat, then across the wet sand—thin, precise, a vein of ice snaking toward the rocks.
Confusion, and maybe a hint of fear, shone in Aric’s eyes as they briefly flashed white. He yanked his hand back like he’d been burned. Or broken. His hands shook after that. He stared at them, at the frost, like it was a death sentence.
“Go,” he said. His voice wasn’t cruel—but it was cold. Final.
I remember walking away, not turning back, not asking why the sea looked wrong or why my fingers felt numb.
I didn’t know then what we’d triggered.
But I do know swift rejection of the betrothal followed, and while I expected my father to be angry, instead he was almost…pleased, like the whole thing had been a setup and they played right into his hands. He didn’t care how embarrassed I was.
I think about Laufey’s note.
About the frost Aric created from our held hands.
Getting close to him and finding Mjolnir.
He either knows and is hiding it from the world…or he’s going to need a little help to remember.
I almost laugh. Well played, Father. If Aric knows what he is, then I was just sent to the wolves. He would die before telling my father a word.
So Odinfather is banking on my ability to crack him, to gain trust, to inspire loyalty—all the things I barely have within my own family, let alone with my enemy.
I sigh and try not to throw something. This isn’t a quest; it’s a hunt.
And hunters always forget one thing. Sooner or later, the hunted learn to hunt back.