Chapter Thirty
I released the high, unbridled squeal of delight known only by children.
A seaside mountain shimmered with a sunless glow.
I was slapped by cold, overcome by salt and pine and wilderness as I giggled in delight at our surroundings.
The edge of the world fell off into darkness, but I knew we were safe. She’d taken us to álfheimr.
“Ella! We—”
But she was not standing, smiling, dancing, celebrating.
A ruby circle spread from her center. Her fingers flew to the weapon, clutching at it uselessly as she looked up at me.
The blood drained from my face as I stared at my friend and ally, the goddess of treasure and desire on her knees.
Shock replaced the giddiness I’d felt only moments prior.
Her head was tilted down, a curtain of golden curls concealing her features as she looked at her center.
Her hands went to her core and stayed on the bloodied, embedded object.
When she looked up at me, a scarlet smudge stood out at the corner of her lips.
I rushed to her, falling to my knees as I panicked. I needed a healer. I needed Caliban. I needed Silas. But we weren’t on the neutral playing field of mortal grounds. I didn’t know if they could so much as come to álfheimr, let alone help.
“Marlow…” My name came out garbled on her lips. The crimson stain spread as blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Her fingers tightened around the katana as if to pull it out.
“Hold on,” I cried. I scrambled for the broach that remained firmly embedded between my waistband and my skin.
I mumbled incoherently as I brought the object to my mouth and begged Fauna to listen to come, to help.
I didn’t know if she could hear me, if it would work, if I was so much as speaking English as I cried against the metal object.
“Please,” Ella said quietly.
“I’m doing everything I can.” I tried to reassure her, tears spilling freely as I panicked.
The s?lje plopped to the mossy earth as I tried to stop the bleeding with my hands.
She tugged on it, and I shushed her uselessly.
“Don’t pull it out,” I commanded, though I wasn’t sure what convinced me to say so.
I’d heard it said in movies enough to know an object might be preventing a victim from bleeding out.
But those movies knew nothing of god-killers.
“Please,” she pressed on, “don’t waste this.” She slumped from her knees onto the ground. My tears spilled freely as I scooped her into my lap, trying and failing for any comforting thoughts, sounds, or motions.
“Please,” she repeated, “make this count for something.”
“No, no, no” came my helpless prayer. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine.”
But the sword had been thrown by a god. And nothing I could say or do would change that.
“Marlow.” Her soft fingers found my cheek. The smell of rust mingled with her sweet, natural perfume. She smiled weakly as she said, “How lucky am I to have found something worth dying for.”
I said her name through the pained strangulation of barbed wire.
And then I heard my name again. This time, the sound came from a familiar voice over my shoulder. I clutched Ella more tightly as I looked to see the flash of copper and white.
My heart squeezed, hope surging as Fauna descended. She was here. She could fix it. She could make this right.
“Help me,” I begged.
Fauna wordlessly moved my hands out of the way as she began to search the blade, her face arranged with intensity and focus. She didn’t so much as look at me while she worked. She looked between the weapon and the ruby blood on Ella’s lips just as the goddess’s eyes fluttered shut.
“It’s a god-killer,” I tried to say. I wasn’t sure how much was comprehensible as I trembled. My body shook with guilt and sorrow. “You have to help her, Fauna. You have to—”
And then I heard my name for the third time in álfheimr.
“Marlow Thorson!” Estrid boomed.
It was with the vitriol and vibrations of the earth that the words bellowed across the mossy ground, shaking the very stones as a valkyrie stood mere feet away. Her face was bloodless. Her finger was extended in accusation. Her leathers moved with her as she slowly lowered her hand to her sword.
Kirby was nowhere to be found. Wherever they’d gone after they’d jumped, Estrid had left the human behind before following the bond that led her to her partner.
Hands stained red with Ella’s blood, Fauna got to her feet and moved between us.
“Estrid, this isn’t Marlow’s fault,” Fauna said with the low, hushed urgency of a lion tamer speaking to its rabid charge.
“This is only Marlow’s fault,” Estrid said acidly. Flames crackled behind her eyes as she shot a bloodthirsty look at me. Her voice dropped an octave as she asked, “Is she dead?”
Fauna planted her feet firmly between us. The silence was deafening as she squared her shoulders, lifting her chin.
“Is she dead!” Estrid screamed, words quivering with emotion.
Tears continued to flow as I struggled to see the women through the haze of salt. I was shattered, pleading with her to see reason from the bottom of my ocean of sorrow. The words came out over the pain of jagged glass as I said, “I’m so sorry, Estrid. I tried—”
“I’m owed retribution” came Estrid’s icy calm as she unsheathed her sword. She spoke to Fauna, not me.
“No.” Fauna’s fingers flexed into fists.
The fear in Fauna’s voice barely registered. I didn’t see the threat for what it was as she paced, circling me.
Estrid wiped at a tear, sniffing deeply. “She can’t get away with this.”
“I can’t let you hurt her,” Fauna said, voice so quiet it was scarcely more than a whisper.
Fauna rose to her full height, but she looked like a child compared to the Valkyrie. One was a hardened warrior; the other a waifish, freckled fae, trembling as she rooted herself between us.
Ella’s body went fully limp in my lap as she released whatever pieces of her spirit had remained. Estrid flinched as if receiving a physical blow. Her lips pulled back from her teeth as she lifted her sword. “Step aside, Fauna.”
“No.”
Estrid hissed through her teeth. “Fauna, step aside, or I will take you out, too.”
I heard Fauna swallow before she said, “You’re going to have to jump, Marlow. Get out of here.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” came Estrid’s growl the moment before she swung.
I panicked as Estrid’s hand came down. She was armed. Fauna was not.
I barely understood the flood of earthy color that intercepted Estrid’s blade.
The world exploded into motion as I scrambled out of the way.
The greens and browns of nature mixed with metallic silver and flashes of hair and flesh as everything lurched into action.
Noise crashed in on me from all sides. Estrid’s forward motion should have cut through us both, but the very ground exploded as a wall of earth shot skyward.
Fauna kept her hands lifted, teeth clenched, jaw set as she grunted, “You have to go!”
Rocks cracked as she moved, whipping grass and soil toward the valkyrie.
Estrid’s answering cry was not one of terror but fury.
The tip of her sword glistened as she cut through the earth, slashing for Fauna.
Fauna bounded from her place with the lithe footing of a deer at the last possible moment, forcing Estrid to stumble.
Fauna’s sharpened teeth remained bared as she cried out and the world responded, tree roots shooting up from the soil like snakes as she thrust them at the valkyrie.
Shock seeped through my pores. I struggled to make sense of the movement, the sounds, how the very earth transformed as if it were little more than water. Estrid was going to kill me. A valkyrie was going to fucking kill me, and she was going to take Fauna out in the process.
I couldn’t stay on my feet as the earth shifted beneath them. Fresh, cold dirt and the iron of blood filled my nose, their tang at the back of my throat as I tried to run. My vision was a blur of dirt and grass and blood and metal. My lungs refused to fill all the way as I struggled.
Estrid spun to cut down the roots as Fauna screamed at me to leave.
“You brought us into this!” Estrid cried as her weapon crunched against wood. “You brought her to our door. You are every bit as guilty, Fauna. We never should have trusted you!”
My senses swam, drowning in blood and rust and overturned soil. I had to focus. I had to shut them out, but everything turned on its head. Stone and metal collided with Fauna’s high, angry reply.
“You were not coerced! You knew the risks! You believed in her. I still believe in her.”
She was a flash of vines, of trees, of energy.
The Valkyrie was lightning, metal, and grit.
I wouldn’t be worth believing in if I couldn’t pull it together. Their frenzy, my tears, the panic made it impossible for me to put one thought in front of the other. I had to leave the realm. I had no idea how to jump on my own. And even if I could, I’d need…
My hand flew to my waistband for the briefest of seconds before I remembered with horrifying clarity how it had fallen when I’d begged Fauna to come.
I’d dropped the s?lje. The broach was somewhere in the upturned earth.
I scrambled on my hands and knees as I dug for the tool while their battle raged on.
My head shot up in panic as Estrid swiped, getting within a hair’s breadth of Fauna’s throat as she bent backward.
Her answering swing was that of a boulder as the earth remained hers to command.
She rolled away from the cutting blow, stained green and brown with grass and dirt as she got to her feet and ran.
Estrid huffed as she looked between Fauna and me, but she didn’t take the bait. Rather than follow Fauna, she sprinted for me.
“Why should she pay the price for knowing you?” Estrid demanded. Her furious cry came out between rabid drags of air. Tiny droplets of spit scattered to the wind as she thundered toward me.
A wall of trees rolled in like fog, springing up from nothingness to create a barrier between the valkyrie and her revenge.
I tore my attention from Estrid. I had one task, and I couldn’t fail.
Fauna wouldn’t be safe until I had the s?lje.
I continued shoveling through clods for it, brushing Ella’s still-warm body as I searched for the object.
I dug through hot, sticky red mud as I floundered through the space around Ella for the broach.
Between the screams of battle, I began to pray.
I asked Caliban, Azrames, Silas, anyone to come.
I promised I’d never fail them again. I’d do whatever they needed me to do.
I’d be the perfect champion. I’d do anything they asked of me if they protected Fauna.
I lifted my forearm to shield my eyes from the spray of moss and dirt as an enormous trunk burst from the ground like a sea serpent.
“You can’t win this, Fauna,” Estrid frothed as she dove once more.
“I don’t have to win it,” Fauna panted through her movements as she jumped from foot to foot, bounding over the cracks in the earth as it split to create an enormous chasm between me and the valkyrie.
She landed on my side of the ravine, fists clenched as she shouted, “I just have to keep you away from Marlow.”
Estrid took several steps backward. It became clear she was going to jump the rift.
“Marlow,” Fauna begged, looking at me with wide, pleading doe eyes. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat. Her thin arms trembled. She gulped for air in a way I’d never seen.
“I can’t find the broach,” I practically sobbed as I continued tunneling through the battlefield. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my fingers around the tool and drag Fauna to safety. I could do it. I could save us both.
“Please,” Fauna pleaded with me. “Live, Marlow. Live!”
“Fauna,” I croaked. I wanted her to run.
I wanted her to get free. I felt so helpless.
Everything became too loud. The sea itself cried out, crashing and breaking in tandem with their battle.
The mountains shook. The universe cracked as they fought, insults and curses and promises for vengeance hurled as Estrid cleared the valley.
Fauna threw tree after root after rock after her, but each movement cost her greatly.
My hand touched something hard and cold. I gasped as my fingers wrapped around the round, metallic object. The sound was just loud enough to distract Fauna. She tripped, stumbling backward in the fraction of a second it took for Estrid to adjust her grip.
Estrid flipped her sword for the killing blow.
Fauna barely evaded Estrid’s blade as the valkyrie plunged her weapon downward.
I clambered through the muck to my feet as a flash of white cut through the war. I scarcely registered the arctic fox as it darted between the warriors, kicking off at the valley’s edge and shooting toward me with arrow-like precision.
Fauna saw it, too. She turned to look at the animal as the silver arc of metal came down from her blind spot. I cried out in warning, throat knotted, heart pierced as the valkyrie moved too fast for Fauna to avoid.
Her copper cloud of hair snagged on the fox, obscuring her vision as the animal crashed into me.
The moment he made contact, the creature became a man, wrapping me in strong arms. We fell through álfheimr’s crust and into nothingness as Estrid’s blade embedded itself in Fauna’s throat with a wet, sickening crunch.