Chapter 25 #2
Veralden Radien, you stupid, ugly, greedy, selfish coward, come back here and help your abandoned lover, Jore, or she will forever curse your ridiculous name.
Nothing happens.
I skinned the baby for nothing. I really am the monster everyone believes me to be.
But I wait. Hope’s tenacious, right up until it isn’t.
After I give up, that’s when my silent tears turn into terrible sobs.
And finally, once it’s clear the terrible bastard isn’t coming, I remove the sword and watch as Jore slumps to the ground that’s now tacky with her rich, dark, magical blood.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I really thought—”
And then there’s a bright flash.
Followed by a loud crash.
And the same creature I saw before, a massive, sinuous, pulsating tower of light shaped like the worst beast of a monster steps into the ruined front yard of our Northern Territory home.
You called me? How dare you? He scowls, but when he sees Jore, he gasps and drops down close to the ground, his serpentine dragon-face closing the space between them.
I hate that he wears Azar’s face.
I hate that he came so late, after I had already hurt her so very badly.
What did your horrible child do? Veralden Radien gathers up Jore’s broken body and he channels magic into it, but every drop he gives simply dissipates through the hole I carved in her chest, like pouring Kool-Aid on sand.
The sky can’t heal the earth. Jore laughs, and more magic spills out of her as she does. There’s only one thing I can do, now. She smiles, and light floods what’s left of my front porch, after Odin’s attack.
No, Veralden says. I’m back. We’ll find another way together. Wait with me.
My own most beloved harmed me, she whispers, to bring me one more glimpse of you. I can’t be angry at her or at this moment we finally have together. Jore presses her beautiful, shining lips to Veralden’s, and then she closes her eyes, and explodes.
Her magic scatters in a million directions, and then begins to coalesce slowly, methodically. . .on me, sticking to me like Fluff Dog’s fur clings to black pants.
No. Veralden Radien stands. No, I won’t allow all of her magic to attach to you, even if it was her wish. You destroyed her.
“I did,” I admit. “I did it to draw you back here, because you made a mess, and you left her to clean it up. But just as you couldn’t heal her wounds, she couldn’t fix your broken children, and they’re destroying hers.”
I’m not like her. I couldn’t stay. It’s not who I am.
I shake my head. “You could have.” I glare. “You didn’t want to.” In that moment, I feel it. Thanks to the magic surrounding me, attaching to me, the light that’s flooding every cell of my body, repairing the damage, smoothing the rough places, and making me more, I feel it.
A tiny flutter.
Magic and light and life of its own.
A life that Azar and I created. . .together.
“You could have stayed, and you could have been devoted to doing whatever it took to love her. Because love is change. Love isn’t a thing you feel.
It’s not a desire. It’s a bond, and it takes what you are and it makes it better.
” As I say the words, the remains of Jore’s magic attach themselves to me, changing me, improving me, just as I said love does.
“Love always makes us better, or it isn’t really love. ”
Veralden Radien sneers. I loved her, and now, thanks to you, she’s gone.
I laugh. “No, thanks to you she’s gone.”
He blinks.
Then he looks around.
Odin, no longer frozen, is watching us, eyes wide. Next to him are other blessed I don’t know, probably Thunar and Azar’s siblings. They’re all flame blessed.
Beside Azar is Hyperion, and clinging to his side is Coral. Asteria and Jade, Sammy and Gordon, they’re all watching. And notably, several people aren’t here.
My mother.
Poor, sweet Rufus.
Stupid, awful Thunar.
“We only get one chance to do things right,” I say. “And you messed yours up.” I look around. “Fix it, or else.”
Or else what? Veralden Radien steps closer. You made the wrong decision. Jore was never stronger than me. I spared her when I visited earth because I loved her, and I despise you for killing her. What could you possibly hope to gain from bringing me here and enraging me?
“You didn’t love her right away,” I say. “In fact, you tried to kill her at first, and I stepped in front of her, saving her life, and giving you time to see her beauty, her grace, and her quiet strength.”
His eyes widen. That was you? That crude, pathetic earth child? Then how are you still here? I destroyed you.
“Love persists. And it’s never pathetic,” I say. “It’s never weak, even when it might seem that way. I loved her then, even in that lifetime, in that form, powerless as I was.”
He scoffs.
“Her love for me brought me back,” I say. “And that’s why I’m here, when you were not. That’s why I have a power you will never understand, never be able to have for yourself. Because I have loved, I am stronger than you.”
Veralden Radien’s nostrils flare. His eyes widen, and fury creeps into his expression. Not the fury of losing a toy, not the irritation that he was summoned.
Fury that he is less than, when all he cares about is being more.
She’s right. Azar moves beside me. Liz isn’t weak, even though you believe you can kill her, even though you believe you can end her easily and have tried and failed in the past.
Move aside, Veralden says. Even though you’re one of mine, I will destroy you. Coming here, answering Jore’s call, has brought me nothing but grief. Loving her was my life’s single mistake.
“No,” I say. “Leaving her, forgoing the chance to become something more was your mistake. But don’t worry. We’ll fix it for you.”
Fix it? How? He laughs. You think to detain me here? You want me to, what? Repair the enmity between the sky vanir and the sky aesir? I created it. He smiles, and it’s terrifying. I am the struggle in life, and I always have been. Struggle makes strength and strength is all that matters.
“You didn’t know or understand Jore at all,” I say.
“You saw something pretty, but you don’t know what love is, and you’ve never been touched by it.
You don’t even know how to sacrifice, which is why you’ll never be anything but a desperate, pitiful yearning, a hole that can never be filled, a desperate desire that will never be sated.
You’re the saddest, most pathetic creature I have ever seen, in every single one of my lifetimes. ”
You’ve been begging me to kill you since I arrived, and I held off, for Jore, but now, I’ll kill you and take what remains of her magic with me. And then I’ll never look back here, not at you, not at my abandoned and ultimately doomed children, and not at Jore’s pathetic whelps.
You won’t kill her. Azar steps in front of me. He’s small—smaller than his father Odin, much smaller than Veralden Radien.
I fear that I’ve made a mistake in that moment, looking at them side by side.
My big, terrible mistake will cost me everything. It will cost all of us everything. Jore’s gone, and now Azar. . . Veralden Radien’s more than I expected, and there’s less good in him than I hoped.
This is the last time I’ll tell you to step aside. Veralden’s glaring at Azar. Or I’ll end you, too.
Azar shakes his head. You can’t end me, because Liz and I are more powerful than you.
Now that I’ve met you, I’m surprised. I’m impressed by the strength, grace, and beauty of Jore, that she could take something as flawed and as ugly as you and make something like us.
Someone as strong as Hyperion. Someone as bold as Odin.
Someone as brave as Gordon, and as elegant as Asteria.
Someone as kind as Rufus, and as loyal as Euphrasia.
We are more than you. You can’t destroy us.
We’ve already surpassed you. We don’t need you to fix the enmity between us and the vanir.
We’re already more powerful than you—we can fix this so-called balance you cursed us with ourselves.
If I thought I’d made him angry before, Azar has shown me how to truly enrage his creator. Veralden Radien trembles with power, with fury, and with intent to destroy.
I rush toward Azar, wrapping my arms around his leg. If we’re going to die, I say, shift so that you can hug me while we do it.
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell me it’s a weaker form, he just does it.
Veralden laughs. This? His laughter grows and g r o w s until it’s all I can hear.
And then it stops, and he strikes, all of his magic, and all of his power, and all of his life force transforming back into his truest state, a comet of light, energy, and rage, and then he plows forward, hitting Azar right in the center of his body.
Like a nail gun striking soft, green wood, like a raptor punching through a cloud, Veralden hits Azar and burns him with a force much greater than fire.
Pure energy.
Azar’s pain pulses through the bond like a lightning strike. It hits me like a Mack truck. There’s nothing but pain. Azar is gone. The world melts away.
But Azar doesn’t let go.
He refuses to disappear. He clings to me, he clings to his love for me like an ant clinging to a twig in a torrential downpour.
When I think Veralden has destroyed him, Azar shifts.
He becomes Azar.
And Veralden twists, regroups and strikes again.
Pain unlike any before explodes down the bond. And yet, Azar refuses to relent. He shifts, he writhes, and he trembles, but he holds on.
And then, when it’s too much, when I’m ready to disappear from the reflected pain, Azar shifts again. Now he’s Axel.
With a horrifying shout, with a deafening squeal, Veralden Radien coils back, gathers up all his energy, and he whips it into a frenzy. He screams again and this time, instead of striking, he assaults Axel with every ounce of his strength.
He pours all his rage, all his power, all his light, and all his destruction into my beloved, and Axel takes it all. He bows backward, he screams silently, and he endures.
And then, when the bright power, when the shining assault is too much, Axel shifts.
Into something I’ve never seen.
His head is the same.
His eyes are unchanged, but his body is blue and sinuous. He’s an ice vanir, just like Freya. And then, before Veralden can regroup, he shifts again, this time into a moon vanir. And then again, into a storm, then a strike, and then a water vanir.
Veralden recoils slowly, and he draws himself up.
This time, when he launches for Azar—whatever Azar has become—Azar doesn’t tremble. He doesn’t shrink and endure. In all the shifting, in all the enduring, Azar has grown. He’s become something else.
I realize then that he’s cast off his mask.
Freya was right that Azar was destined to take Veralden Radien’s magic and make it something more. Azar was the child of her creator, the sky lord, but he was also the product of two enemies who nevertheless managed to love, imperfectly though it was.
He was saved by a dear friend and an earth child bonded.
He was raised by that same friend, and then he became something more by choosing at every turn to do the light and bright thing. He chose to follow Jore’s path, not his father’s, and in doing so he was diminished.
And he grew.
Here on earth, Azar’s real power, Azar’s real strength was buoyed up by his goodness, and by the love he shares with me. A brilliant golden light arcs between Azar and me, and our bond begins to illuminate like the sparklers we buy at Fourth of July, only much, much larger.
When Veralden strikes this time, his magic and Azar’s combine and explode outward, then contract back in.
This time, when the magic reforms, it’s not in the shape of Veralden. It’s not Azar or Axel either. It’s a tremendously large beast of no color I can pinpoint. Holographic silver? Dark grey with rainbow glints? As soon as I try to describe it, it changes again.
“Veralden?” I stumble back, my hands bumping Hyperion’s leg. “Is—what happened?”
But the bond pulses, and as the enormous, staggeringly beautiful head lowers to be on level with mine, I realize the eyes—the eyes I know. It’s Azar, not Veralden Radien.
“How?”
He knew how to destroy, but creating is harder, and you taught me how.
Now I know how to make something valuable that didn’t exist before.
I know that connections bolster our strength.
Thanks to you, I learned to believe in something unbelievable.
You taught me to form something new, something different, something that has never before been and to accept that as a gift.
“Sky and earth,” Coral whispers. “He’s both.”
As Azar turns to face her, I realize she’s right. Underneath the rainbow sparkle, the dark holographic silvers and blacks, he’s the deep, burnished gold of earth. He’s Axel and Azar, and he’s all of them.
Freya’s words come to me, then. “But my son’s not two people—he hasn’t lived two lives. He’s one person with two masks.”
We’re finally seeing Azar without his mask.
He’s spectacular.
“I love you,” I say.
The great beast that is my love, my darling, shifts then, and he’s a man, only he’s different. He’s a little bigger, and he’s a little shinier—his skin’s a luminescing golden tone, and tiny bits of light keep shedding away from him. “I love you more.”
I smile. “I think that’s not quite right.” I drop my hands to my belly. “Because you may be sparklier, and more powerful, and all of that, and you may have just saved us from the big, selfish Veralden Radien, but I’m the only one here growing another person.”
Axel’s eyes widen. “You—what?”
“Think you’ll be able to stick around for it? Or do you feel any urges pulling you to fly away to another planet and start massacring people to steal their magical energy?”
Axel may look different, but his laughter’s the same. “I will never leave you.”
“Even if I drain your power and plague you constantly with irritating small demands?”
He drops one strangely glowing hand to my cheek. “Even then.”
“Great,” I say. “Because I have the strangest urge to eat very rare meat and a big old pile of edamame. Is that something you think you can handle?”
He mouths the word edamame.
In that moment, I can’t help wondering whether, if I had believed in Freya, whether we might have called Veralden Radien with Azar’s egg and spared ourselves a lot of misery.
But there’s no real way to know how that would have gone.
Our story is ours, and when Axel bends over to kiss me, I stop worrying about how else it might have played out. It’s enough that we’re here, we’re together, and Odin, the big bully, is far too scared to dictate to us ever again.
Of course, an hour later, when the phone rings, we’re still obligated to deal with the vanir’s new attack, this time in Seattle.