Chapter 25
Liz
When I wake, I’m gripped by the worst pain I’ve ever felt.
A knife is literally slicing my chest open right down the middle, the blade lodged in my breastbone.
I don’t have the air in my lungs to scream, but that’s okay, because Azar’s here, and before I can even try to call for him, he snaps his massive jaws around the tiny human version of his father who’s slicing my body open like he’s trying to gut a carp.
The second Odin and his wicked knife move away, I drag in a ragged and gurgly breath and assess the damage.
I pull unapologetically on Azar’s magic to try and heal the hole that I assume Odin was creating in order to remove the heart stone from my body.
As the gaping wound starts to knit back together, I sit up and gasp.
Odin shifts into his flame dragon form abruptly, shearing an entire wall of our bedroom away from the building and knocking it into the ocean below.
Then he lunges at his son, his teeth snapping and his tail whipping back and forth, smashing the bed I just leapt from, and the nightstand I really, really liked into a million bits.
“I guess you changed your mind about our deal?” I rasp.
Odin’s busy trying to rip Azar’s head off, but I’m not as distracted. I pull my swords out from under the bed and hurl one at him. I miss, but when it thwacks into a part of the wall that yet remains, it gets his attention.
He flings a long line of lava in my direction, and I barely manage to create a red shield in time. “Neener, neener,” I say. “Can’t fight fire with fire, idiot.”
And then I remember all the things I learned in the time I was asleep. So many, many things. While I process the things I learned, Azar suffers. He’s much, much smaller than his father, and his claws and teeth are less deadly, too.
Time to get Odin to leave his son alone so poor Azar can heal.
“Hey, you big bully,” I shout. “I killed Freya. Did anyone tell you that yet? That’s how I got the heart.
You abandoned her here on earth, stuck in a volcano, keeping the vanir contained for the last few thousand years all alone.
If you thought she was nuts when you ditched her, imagine how she felt trapped and abandoned in that volcano. ”
Odin freezes, and he turns toward me very slowly. What did you say?
“You heard me. The only way to get the heart, which you were demanding, and to save your son Hyperion, you know, the charred egg that Thunar fried, the one who was going to doom all the dragons, was to carve the heart from Freya’s chest. She kept telling me I was asking stupid questions, because I didn’t remember her at all, so looking back, I guess she was right.
” I laugh. “But I knew she had to die so Hyperion and Azar and I could live, and I killed her.”
Odin drops Azar.
“But really, if you think about it, it was all your fault for abandoning her, so if we’re placing blame. . .”
He comes for me.
I duck, roll under the remaining chunks of bed, and retrieve my lost sword from the wall, sending drywall chunks careening across the floor.
Then I turn, barely getting my blade tips up before he’s reached me.
I pull on the magic that’s pulsing through the heart where it’s lodged in my chest, and I grab both my hilts, and I call like I’ve never called in my life.
Ama! Jore! Whoever you are, I’ve never needed you like I need you right now.
What are you doing? Azar asks.
Do you love me? I ask. Do you trust me?
Yes to both. He doesn’t waver. He doesn’t question. He doesn’t hesitate. Unlike Freya and Odin, his declaration doesn’t have qualifications or arguments.
Odin opens his jaws and releases a pillar of flame so epic, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it, and I was thrown into a volcano. Azar slams a red bubble around me, and he spins around until he’s standing just behind me.
But even his red magic’s having trouble defending against all his father’s ancient rage. This flame is so hot and so intense that it’s not red, orange, yellow or even blue.
It’s white.
I scream again, this time as loudly as I possibly can. J?RD!! PLEASE!!
A fountain of gold bursts from the rocks outside and spews toward us, flowing, molten gold, and the white heat that’s all around us turns into a bright, warm, yellow light.
The miserable pressure of Odin’s attack finally dissipates.
Azar drops his shield. Odin’s mouth falls open and his eyes widen. The fire he was spewing is just gone.
My child.
Jore’s more beautiful than I can possibly express.
She’s bright and warm and everything good.
She’s so much more than I saw that day in the pillar of gold, and she’s more than I even knew when I was born as Kiaga.
I think sometimes our own capacity impacts our perception of someone else’s greatness.
As we grow, so we are able to better understand the titans around us.
When I was less, I couldn’t comprehend how much more she was.
She’s the goodness and the rightness in the world. The bounty of the harvest. The first rays of a sunrise. The dew on the nose of a newborn calf. The flicker of a butterfly’s wing. She’s the peace in the center of a storm, and the fire in the heart of a boss mare.
She’s all those things and more.
And she came at my call.
I will always come to your call. You’re my first, my most precious, and my most beloved earth child. Kiaga. Gullveig. Elizabeth. You have many names and also only one. She smiles, and I recall the joy it brought me. Mine.
But hers is not a possessive mine. Even Azar can’t object to her use of that word, because it’s clear that she’s shining on me, not making demands of me with it.
Odin’s smaller, somehow, with her near. Azar looks the same to me, but maybe he always will.
All the forces of earth that threaten me are contained in her presence, but it feels temporary, like we’ve hit the pause button that I know can’t last. Clearly the world doesn’t function by the same rules when she’s here, and she can’t walk with me forever anymore.
I am not Kiaga.
She is no longer only my Ama.
You love him. She looks at Azar fondly, but there’s an underlying sorrow, too. He’ll leave you. He’s just like his father.
I shake my head. “He won’t. He’ll never leave me.”
He won’t be able to help himself. It’s who he is. He must be true to his nature. It will hurt you, but I will be here when it does. I will always be here to nurture you in your pain. Her eyes contain the sorrow of a thousand lifetimes. Just as you leapt into pain to spare me.
As Kiaga.
She remembers. Of course. I probably got the memory from her.
“That’s why I called you,” I say. “I’ve learned a lot because you allowed me to see memories from my past lives.”
Jore smiles and I feel. . .guilty. But this is the only way.
“I’ve listened, and I’ve watched, and I’ve worked through this again and again. Freya had the right idea.”
Jore’s eyes widen.
“She wanted to call Veralden Radien, but he never came, no matter how hard she tried. It’s because her plan was never quite good enough.”
He will never come. Staying here, creating children, it weakens creatures like us.
The creations need you. They require ongoing cultivation and care.
He wanted to grow and become more. It was in his nature, but to do that, a sky god must be ever moving, ever conquering.
He was diminished by staying here, and he hated shrinking more than he loved me.
As Odin said.
“But he did love you,” I say simply.
“The heart was created when he and I kissed.” She shrugs. “But as you can see, the heart did not keep him here. It holds no power over him. It’s more a relic for me, to remind me of why I allowed him to bring his children here, into my world, where they harm my children.”
I can’t help thinking of what Freya said to me in the volcano on our first meeting in this lifetime.
I suppose she was right. I would skin an innocent child in a heartbeat, if it was the only way to keep my loved ones safe.
It doesn’t mean I’d like it or myself when I did it.
In fact, just the thought of what I have to do next causes tears to spring to my eyes.
“I love you, you know. In many ways, you’re the perfect mother. You love me entirely, and you care for me always.” I can’t help thinking what my own mother did just a short time past. For me. She did it for me, as an apology, she said.
Jore smiles.
And I stab her with the blades she blessed. “Harming you is the only thing that’s ever going to be enough to bring him back here, and Veralden Radien has much to answer for.”
Jore cries out, and I channel her pain and agony into the heart that’s still lodged in my body.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, but cry for me, Ama. Cry as loud and as long as you can.” I twist the blade as tears roll down my cheeks.
And she cries, oh, she cries. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for leaving my own children to suffer because of my love for him.
Every sob and every whimper cuts at my cold, hard heart. I’m an ungrateful child, an unworthy one. How could I harm my own mother? My perfect, loving, devoted mother?
It’s okay, she whispers, even as she suffers.
I understand why you’re doing it. She smiles through tears.
You alone were smart enough to try, and you love him so very much.
Of course you want to find a way for earth to meet sky.
She brushes her hand against my cheek. I wanted the same thing, you know.
Of course my own darling will want it, too.
But there isn’t a path, little one. You were doomed before you met, just as Veralden Radien and I were never able to find common ground, a place to love, a place to live.
Perhaps I’ve gone mad, just like Freya. Perhaps I’m delusional, doing the same thing as others and expecting a different outcome, but I channel every single sob, every single whimper, and every single groan of Jore’s magical pain into the heart, and then I shout into it myself.