41. Davyn
Forty-One
Davyn
For the last seven months, the only thing that kept me from killing Finn was Azzie’s insistence I not do so.
I’d been waiting for his betrayal though, and hoping I could stop him before he hurt her.
I failed. Despite the fact that he hadn’t cut her directly, he brought her—us—in here, and that meant he was the reason she’d been hurt. Seeing him standing over her and shouting in the clearing, combined with Tania’s words, had loosened the leash I used to bind my bear.
Now Azzie was standing in front of me, as defiant and strong as ever, and not injured in any way.
“It’s about fucking time,” Finn muttered.
I should kill him anyway, and make sure this wasn’t worse next time. I lunged toward the god. ”We can leave you here.”
“Stop.” Azzie moved between us, despite the lack of conviction in her voice.
I snarled at her, and she stared back, unfazed.
“I’ve killed people for standing in my way in battle.” My words didn’t hold any real threat. Not for her.
The way she raised her brows said she knew as much. “This isn’t battle.”
“But it is.” I wasn’t threatening her, however I needed her to understand the severity of keeping Finn in our company.
One corner of her mouth tugged up, and she jabbed a finger in my chest. “Are you real?”
Odd question. “Are you?” I grabbed her wrist, but kept my grip loose.
Behind her, Finn rolled his eyes. “Just fuck already.”
Whatever the two of them had been through must be an interesting story. Before I could ask, Azzie draped her arms around my neck and pressed her body close. “Finn’s right.” Words that should never come from Azzie’s mouth. Especially now. “Let’s fuck. Here. Now.”
I was used to her teasing at this point, but this wasn’t the same. There was no seduction or flirting here. She was too blunt. Was she really her?
I pressed a hand to her throat and pressed her until her back met a nearby tree. If this was truly Azzie, I’d know and she wouldn’t be hurt. If this was some sort of illusion, if Tania lied about me not being subjected to a test, I wouldn’t hesitate to snap this doppelg?nger’s neck.
Regardless of the hesitation that lingered in my veins, hating the idea of hurting anything that looked like her. “Who the fuck are you?”
Her smile slid toward seriousness. “I watched Finn kill you.”
What ?
“That wasn’t really Davyn.” Finn’s annoyance was tangible. “This may not be either, though it’s a much better copy.”
I tightened my grip on the woman’s throat, putting enough pressure on the artery next to her windpipe to cause discomfort.
In a blink her hand was on my wrist. She tugged once—not a struggle, but a test of my strength—and she twisted out of my grasp. It was a move I’d seen Azzie do dozens of times and I had yet to figure out how. She could free herself from that grasp every time.
She was behind me, aiming a kick at the back of my knee. I dodged, and swung in anticipation of her moving.
She didn’t move.
I pulled my punch short, stopping before I landed a fist that would break something. If this was an Imitation Azzie, it wasn’t the same kind of implausibly flawless that the one Ulf made was. However, that meant I’d never seen these moves from the real Azzie.
“You made me promise something when we started traveling together,” I said.
She nodded. “I did.”
Finn let out a long, frustrated groan that reminded me of a toddler throwing a tantrum. I’d love the power of a god at this moment, to curse him to silence.
“What was it?” I asked Azzie.
She cocked her head to the side, her gaze never leaving me. “I made you promise that only good girls get orgasms, and I’m not a good girl unless I win.”
This was more her brand of teasing, and I didn’t blame her for countering my test with one of her own. I raised an eyebrow. “No.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“What was it really?”
Her expression flickered, and for the first time since I arrived, I saw fear flash through her eyes, but it was gone again in an instant. “It was the kind of promise that means this is an inappropriate place to get physical.”
I didn’t blame her for not speaking the promise out loud. “It’s not.” I had to trust this was Azzie. Wearing the necklace I’d given her for her birthday, the one cufflink from Finn in her sneakers, and Loki’s axe.
The last one concerned me.
“What did you see?” Azzie asked.
Not Finn slitting anyone’s throat. I wanted to say you first , but my story would be shorter. “Tania. She told me reality would test my biggest fear more than any vision she could give me. What did you see?”
Finn’s frustration gelled into anger. “We can swap stories after we get out. Where’s Zeke?”
Based on Azzie’s words, nothing he said could be trusted regardless, so his story didn’t matter. I did want to know what an illusion of me had been doing to get me killed, though.
“Why do you assume I know?” Azzie spun on him.
He pursed his lips. “You brought us to Davyn.”
“No. We walked through nothing and into a fucking battle with your dead girlfriend. Davyn showed up after.”
“Her name is Sadhbh.” Finn spoke through clenched teeth.
The woman whose visions were more valuable than Kirby’s life, in Finn’s eyes. He let a Valkyrie die in the past, because a lover asked him to, and he was willing to let the embodiment of glory and mercy die now, for his most recent obsessions.
He wasn’t currently a threat beyond what he’d already done, though I could see him becoming one, and he appeared to have answers. “What do you mean she brought you to me? Are there fae gates here, Azzie? Do you have your daggers?”
If she did, she wouldn’t be wielding the ax. Why was she wielding the ax?
“No and no,” she shook her head. “But?—”
“This direction?” Finn talked over her, and pointed to an empty spot in the air next to him. “Over here?” He pointed in another direction, and took a step that way.
I flung out an arm and smacked him in the chest to stop him. “Shut it, Jotun.”
“What?” Azzie furrowed her brow and looked around her. “I can’t hear you.” Her voice was soft.
“ Where’s. The. Door? ” Finn’s question echoed off the trees.
He was pushing his luck.
Azzie put a hand on my arm before I could shut him up. “As long as he’s not attacking us, ignore him. Do you hear that?”
I heard the absence of nature, despite us being in a forest. I heard the hum of magic. Their breathing. Finn’s quiet huffs. I doubted any of those things were what Azzie meant. “No.”
“What are you?—?”
I silenced Finn with a glare. “We can finish that fight now if you’d like,” I said.
He clenched his jaw.
“Zeke?” Azzie shouted.
The forest vanished, replaced with a long hallway. Zeke stood in front of one of three visible doors, and the ends of the corridor vanished into shadows.
“Hey, A. Are you real?” Zeke asked.
Did we have to do this again?
“Hey, Zee,” Azzie said. “I’m real. We’re real.”
Before I could ask why we weren’t playing twenty-questions—not that I was complaining—Finn stepped past us, and gripped the back of Zeke’s neck as he dipped his mouth toward Zeke’s.
Zeke pressed a palm to Finn’s chest and pushed him back before they could kiss. “Why are we all in here?”
“Tania told me we all paid the fee, so we’re all participants in the trial.” I suspected my story was the shortest, and I was itching to leave or to fight something—or both.
“Why would she do that?” Zeke was still staring at Finn. “Despite having an agreement that this was for Azzie. I can’t imagine she’d survive long if she did this to all of her clients.”
Tania’s infuriating words slipped into my thoughts. There were agreements in place before Azrael reached out. “Unless she has a different client who made the request before us.” My gaze landed on Finn.
He looked all around himself, as if searching for someone else, then at me again. “You think I asked her to lock me in a nightmare of my own worst fears with the man I love and the two people who want him dead?”
Love ?
“Love?” Confusion bled into Zeke’s expression. He stared at Finn, mouth open, and not looking anything like he wanted to say I love you too .
“That is what you said…” Azzie’s voice was softer. She gave a hard shake of her head. “Finn set me up, to either die in here or be trapped.”
“ No .” Finn’s hard refusal didn’t erase my desire to pound him. “I just want you out of our lives, not dead. I didn’t do anything to get us all stuck in here. In fact, now that we have everyone, Azzie can take us out of here.”
“Why would she—?” Zeke shook his head. “What did I miss?”
I had similar questions. Why did Finn believe Azzie could heal herself? How did we move from the forest to the middle of a hallway? What had I written off in the past about Azzie that was more?
Azzie dragged in a deep breath through her nostrils, and scrubbed her face. “I woke up in a room with Loki. That didn’t last long. Then I was in the apartment Davyn and I had before we got here, and it was like we never came here.”
“Which was why she stopped to fuck him?—”
“And then Finn burst in and killed him.” Azzie talked over Finn.
Wait. She said that before. There was no possible way Finn had beaten me. “Like fuck he did.”
“I killed a fake Davyn. While Azzie was fucking him.”
Loki? Me and Azzie? This was a lot to process.
She wasn’t done, though. “We couldn’t get out of the apartment, despite the fact that Finn said he walked right in. He has a lot of opinions about what I should be able to do, by the way. Then we were in, I don’t know, a sitting room? I heard— He continued to be an ass. We found a woman he called Sadhbh, and he fawned over her, while I fought off Berserkers in the middle of some battle in the forest and she said he’d promised not to bring me here.”
“I had to.” Finn bit off the words.
“Then he said that. He also said something about Lugh being wrong about me, the test, and implied he knows more than he’s letting on,” Azzie said. “Oh, and he threatened to torture me.”
“ If Zeke dies so you can ascend.” Finn’s voice grew louder with every word. “I just relived the death of someone who meant the world to me. I won’t lose him too.”
To be fair, I’d rip Finn apart in a heartbeat if he was responsible for me losing Azzie, and given this information, she was the only reason I wasn’t doing so now. However, I wouldn’t resort to sneaking around or lying or consorting with gods. I’d just do it. “I have an easy solution. Azzie, release each other from the blood oath, and let me kill Finn. Then we can leave.”
It would make sense to take out Zeke as well, but the only threat he presented was that Azzie trusted him, and she’d learn otherwise.
“No killing . Right?” Zeke stared at Azzie.
Her shrug was non-committal.
“This is a test .” Zeke slammed the side of his fist against the nearest wall. “Regardless of why we’re here, passing is the way out.”
“The test isn’t trusting each other.” Azzie rested her hand on the hip where her invisible scabbard hid. The sword didn’t appear though. Instead, an impression of an ax flickered into view and then out again. “It’s a bit late to promise no killing given that Finn didn’t hesitate to slit Davyn’s throat.”
Finn let out a long growl. “Because I knew. It. Wasn’t. Real. I don’t see anyone talking about the fact that Azzie mentioned Loki. He wasn’t here unless Davyn told him where we were.”
“I would never —” My rage surged in, and I lunged at Finn. Azzie couldn’t stop me this time.
“Why would you assume anything she saw was real?” Zeke’s question made me pull up short. “Why was it clear she was with a fake Davyn you could kill, but that a Loki only Azzie talked to was actually there?”
Finn opened his mouth, then frowned.
Watching him talk his way out of this might be a fun torture, before I killed him.
Azzie raised her eyebrows. “Why would I see people I haven’t met before?”
“I did,” Zeke said. “Not at first. I was in the attic of my old house, reliving snippets of my past, but I was only an observer. When I made it down here, the images changed. I saw people and places I’ve never seen before, and none of them were interactive until…” He pursed his lips.
“Until what?” Azzie asked.
Zeke leveled a gaze at Finn. “If she talked to a real Loki, if I saw other events that were real, then was it real when I saw you talking to Lugh in a bar about a siren’s test? When I watched him hand you our birthday gift, and tell you Azzie and I both had to use it for it to work?”
“That wasn’t?—”
“Careful.” I cut Finn off. “What you say next determines if he ever considers you redeemable.” I might not be the quickest at picking up on subtleties and nuance, but Finn admitted he loved Zeke, who was honest to a fault.
I didn’t worry about Azzie trusting Zeke because Zeke wouldn’t betray her—that stopped being a concern after knowing him for only a few weeks—but Finn was proof that Zeke wouldn’t always put his faith in the right people.
“That was almost certainly Loki who Azzie talked to, because he rarely loses sight of her.” There was a heavy sneer in Finn’s tone. “He does a good job of making everyone believe otherwise, but he’s known she was in Shamrock Lakes for almost as long as I have.”
Because Finn told him. I clenched a fist, but held back from using it until we had the full story. Not because that would save Finn from me, but I wanted to hear as much as he was willing to spill.
“Loki wants you to suffer before you die, Azzie,” Finn said. “And Lugh wants you for his own reasons. I keep them both at bay, and I’d rather not see you die, as long as you get the fuck out of our lives eventually. I’m the only reason you’re safe.”
Azzie scoffed, and I pushed out a low growl.
“Yes, I set this up, but I didn’t trap myself in here. Lugh must’ve done that.”
“Imagine that—one of your friends lied to you. That must suck.” Sarcasm dripped from Zeke’s taunt.
Pain flashed across Finn’s face, before the twisted distortion of anger replaced it. “Because Azzie is far more powerful than she recognizes, and”—he focused a hard gaze on her—“if you pull your head out of your ass and admit that before someone puts a leash on you, you’ll destroy Zeke. I won’t let that happen.”
“I won’t.” Azzie shook her head.
Zeke huffed in disbelief. “That’s what you think of me?”
I’d heard enough. “Azzie, release Zeke from the blood oath. Release yourself. Let me kill Finn.” The promise of blood and justice called to me.
Zeke clenched his jaw. “No.”
Azzie looked between Zeke and me, at Finn, then back at me. “No.”
“Sever the blood oath.” I didn’t understand why she was refusing.
Instead, she crouched and reached for her sneaker. “Watch Finn, would you?”
As if I would take my eyes off him.
Zeke mimicked Azzie’s actions, both of them removing the cufflinks from their shoes, and they stood at the same time.
Azzie let the accessory rest in her palm, her head cocked to one side, as if listening to something only she could hear.
What were they up to?
If I couldn’t kill Finn, I was going to restrain him. I grabbed one of his wrists, yanked it behind his back, and caught the other in the same hand.
“ Watch it. ”
I ignored his protest, and tightened my grip, while I used my other hand to undo and yank off my belt.
“How do we know he won’t just teleport away?” Zeke asked.
Azzie held out her hand, and he put his cufflink next to hers in her palm. “He can’t…” She trailed off with a frown. “Fuck.”
“I won’t,” Finn’s hard insistence came at the same time as my, “He won’t.”
“You told me you couldn’t.” Azzie finished the quiet statement with a scoff.
Finn rolled his eyes. “You watched me fucking do it. When I killed?—”
I yanked hard on his arms, and he grunted, bringing his taunt to an abrupt end. He wouldn’t leave Zeke—that was the only reason he was still here. How did I know that?
I wouldn’t leave Azzie. True, he wasn’t me, but there was a reason he was traveling with her rather than leaving her to let the test devour her. I moved to bind his wrists.
“Wait.” Azzie grabbed the end of the belt with the holes in the leather, but she didn’t take it from me. She hooked one cufflink through a hole, and then the other.
“Those are for protection.” Finn’s tone was mocking. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Zeke nodded at Azzie. “One’s a protection for her . Specifically.”
“And the other binds the wearer, reinforcing the spell,” Azzie said.
I’d missed so much about what she could do. “How do you know that?”
“I just know.” Hesitation laced Azzie’s reply.
“It told me,” Zeke added.
We had a lot to talk about when we got out of here. I jerked the belt tightly enough around Finn’s wrists to dig into the flesh. “How do we get out of here?”
Finn let out a long groan. “It’s a test. We’re all in here, but it’s for your precious potential. It’s built for Azzie to get us out, which is why she needs to be looking for an exit.”
“Can we gag him?” Why hadn’t I noticed before now that Azzie was already coming into her power?
Because if she was more than mortal, she was in more danger than ever.
Zeke stepped in front of Finn. “How long?” Zeke’s question, his entire posture, was somber.
“I fell for you the night I met you. I found out who you were, who she was, a few days later,” Finn said.
Zeke shook his head. “You don’t love me. You don’t know me.”
“I know you better than she does.” Finn’s refusal to say Azzie’s name, the sneer every time he said she made me dig my fingers into his forearm.
Zeke stepped away from Finn, closer to Azzie. “Do you sense an exit, Azzie?”
A soft glow shone around her, throwing long shadows up dimly lit walls. She looked like an angel.
“Here.” She pointed at a door with an X carved into it.
Zeke glanced at me. “If Finn does anything stupid, do what you need to do.” He sounded resigned. Hurt.
My bear growled his approval, and clawed closer to the surface. Letting the beast peek out, to keep an eye on Finn, was better than pondering these revelations about Azzie. Better than admitting that she glowed when she lost herself in a fight. That she healed better than a pair of enchanted blades should allow. That her ability to sense fae doors and use them pushed the limits of plausibility.
I could ponder how much I’d ignored in favor of pretending destiny could be held at bay—wonder what she could truly do that only Finn knew—or I could unleash enough of my beast to keep the threat of Finn contained until we were free of this place.
Azzie twisted the knob with a lackluster effort and dropped her hand when it didn’t turn. “Like Zeke said. Locked.”
She knows , my bear growled in my thoughts.
She did. If that was the door she picked, she was right. I stepped up next to her, twisted the knob as far as it would go without resistance—a centimeter perhaps—then twisted harder.
The groan of brass responded. I pulled the knob toward me, and by extension, the edge of the door, and slammed my shoulder into the solid wood.
Creaking, splintering sounds filled the air. The destruction felt good. Delicious.
I yanked the knob and slammed into the structure again. Again and again. With each slam, I felt more of the structure give way. Stubborn illusion. I will break you .
Any creature who could play around in people’s minds should be avoided at all costs. Next time Azzie wanted to work with such a being, I was reminding her of this.
I gave one more push with my shoulder.
Instead of splintering on its frame, the door swung open, and I stumbled through at the abrupt loss of resistance.
“Azzie, I need you on recon.” Kirby’s command caught me off-guard.
The air smelled of ash and chaos and blood. My bear roared inside my skull, demanding to join a fray I hadn’t identified yet.
The hallway was gone, and we were in a room that ran at least one-hundred meters in each direction. The lighting was dim, and the windows that weren’t covered in grime or boards were broken.
An empty warehouse?
Not completely empty. Aside from Azzie, me, Zeke, and Finn, Kirby and Starkad were here. Another Berserker. Arnlaug? Along with a handful of women wearing armor like the ornate chain and scale Kirby was in, all of them with their wings extended.
Other Valkyries? That was impossible. They were all dead.
Here they were though—as fierce and strong as any Valkyrie I’d ever met.
“ Davyn ,” Kirby barked my name. “Why are you still here? Is there a problem?”
“I don’t take orders from you, Valkyrie.” My response was a growl. How dare this battle maiden command me ?
In response, Starkad growled and stepped forward. This wasn’t the man I ran into yesterday. This Starkad had one arm that was black and twisted, and he was as much wolf as human, but didn’t seem to be lacking control.
He could fight with me, or against me. I looked forward to it either way.
Kirby rested a hand on his arm, but he didn’t back down. The Valkyrie’s behind her looked between her and me, then at Azzie, wearing expressions of confusion.
“If Azzie has concerns we should listen.” One of the other Valkyrie’s spoke—a redhead with deep auburn wings who made me think of a web. Not that she looked spider-like, but she gave the impression of being connected to everyone.
I didn’t understand this hierarchy. “If I have concerns, you’ll listen. What’s going on?” My voice was gravel. As much threat as words.
Kirby frowned and cocked her head while she studied me.
The brunette next to her rolled her eyes and turned to Zeke. “Is he kidding right now? Did you piss him off?”
“Frequently without even trying,” Zeke said. “Do I know you?”
The brunette laughed.
“If this is an inside joke, I don’t get it and it needs to wait.” That was another of the Valkyries, this one with ebony skin and a series of braids pulled into a knot at the back of her head.
I growled my dissatisfaction, and put myself between Azzie and Starkad. “Do not dismiss?—”
“ Down .” Zeke shouted and ducked as blinding white flames filled the room, and bits of building rained down on us.