Chapter 13 Liz
Liz
Azar doesn’t even understand why I’m upset. I thought the small ones couldn’t bond yet. I thought that was the reason you didn’t want them bonding blessed, but look! They did, and they bonded powerful ones that we like. Right?
“I didn’t want them bonding blessed because they’re too small to be at risk like that. I can’t have them riding the dragons into wars, Azar.” I shake my head and resume pacing, gripping and releasing the swords in my hands rhythmically like it might somehow ease my anger and frustration.
You’re mad at Gordon? Azar still seems confused. He tells me Sammy bonded him.
Jade bonded me as well, Asteria says.
“I know that!” I stop pacing and flex my hands around the hilts of the swords as tightly as possible. “I just—I need to kill something right now.”
For some reason, that makes Coral laugh.
I am so not a good motherly figure.
We’re about to slaughter some animals we prepared for the blessed who bonded tonight, Asteria says. Maybe you could help—
“You think I want to slaughter defenseless animals?” I scream at the top of my lungs, throwing my head back and letting all my frustration, my rage, and my helplessness out.
Azar joins me, bellowing his loudest up into the sky.
That feels nice, Azar says. Do you feel better too?
Every blessed and human in the entire area turns to look at us in alarm. I should probably be embarrassed, but I’m not. I can’t kill someone, but it occurs to me that I can fly. Flying will be less distressing to the others, but maybe it’ll help.
I turn toward Coral. “If you bond a dragon tonight, I will kill you.” I spin around and face Rufus. “And if you bond her, I will cut your scales off, one swath at a time, until you’re writhing in agony. And if you regrow them, I’ll just start over.”
Rufus just stares at me.
I sheathe my swords, and round on Coral again. “No. Bonding. Not any dragon, not any time, not anything at all. Got it?”
She drops her hands on her hips. “It’s hardly fair since the other two both bonded one, but whatever. We all heard you.” As I launch into the sky, I hear her mutter, “Drama queen.”
That actually makes me smile, but the desire fades quickly, replaced again with a helpless rage.
It’s my fault.
My siblings are now inextricably connected to this mess.
Mother, if she were here, would be absolutely disgusted.
Sure, Sammy and Jade did it themselves, and sure, Gordon and Asteria are the best of the blessed.
But I let it happen. If I’d kept them at home—I know better than anyone how you can get swept up in the excitement of it.
I’ve watched several rounds of this now—humans getting their life’s dream, and dragons finding the joy of bonding with a human who wants to be their partner.
I should’ve kept them back at the hotel Selfoss. I could have just stayed there too.
Part of the reason I didn’t is that Gordon and Rufus would have insisted on staying with them, forgoing their chance to bond a human. Now Rufus, who totally should have found someone, still hasn’t, and Gordon bonded Sammy!
Ugh.
I’m sorry.
With the wind in my face and the sound of my wings, I wasn’t even paying attention to where I was going or who might be close.
Azar followed me, which he really shouldn’t have done.
I turn and glare over my shoulder. “You need to go back,” I shout.
“There weren’t many humans left. If you’re not careful, my little sister will be your only option. ”
I don’t think I can handle Coral. His smirk is so familiar. She’d flay me alive.
“I pity the dragon who bonds her,” I say. “She’s a hurricane in a bottle.”
Asteria’s sorry too, he says.
And for some reason, that pisses me off.
“Why didn’t she tell me herself? Are you her messenger boy, now?
” I pump my wings faster, irrationally angry.
Why would stupid Freya give me wings that aren’t even fast enough for me to escape from the one person I want to ditch?
They’re useless, like everything that I manage to get or do or be.
Are you angry? Or are you feeling sorry for yourself?
I extend my right wing, filling it with air, and pivot around to face him. “Can you hear what I’m thinking?” It feels. . .invasive and also, I find that I’m hopeful. How could he hear what I’m thinking if we’re not bonded? Could some part of our bond still remain?
Of course not, he says. But your sister Coral told me that for humans, anger is usually something called a masking emotion. It covers for something else.
I’m going to kill her. “Sorry to disappoint. Right now, I’m just angry. I’m not covering anything else up.” I spin back around, getting better at the flying thing, and start away from him again as fast as I can move, the frost-flecked wind accosting my face brutally.
I hate Iceland.
Where are you going? He sounds genuinely curious.
“Nowhere,” I say. “Just. . .away.”
Away from me?
“Well, it’s been an utter failure if that was my plan, hasn’t it?”
He laughs.
“But seriously, I have wings and swords, and all the blessed know who I am. I’m fine out here. You don’t need to follow me around.”
I wanted to follow you.
That hits me like an arrow to the heart, and I drop from the sky, plummeting downward.
The frigid air and the tiny snow flurries pull greedily at my face and hair, and the temperatures freeze the tears escaping onto my cheeks.
I hit the ground hard, snow flying in every direction.
Without my wings, I’d skid and fall flat on my face, but tilting them allows me to stabilize what was an irresponsibly stupid landing.
Of course, stupid Azar follows me right down.
Have we finally arrived? Was this where you were headed? He looks around as he lands. Because there’s nothing here.
He’s right. More than anything else, Iceland’s good at long, desolate stretches of nothing. I’m right in the middle of one, which is where I wanted to go.
Just not with him.
Or rather, all I’ve wanted since Freya spat me out was to come somewhere with him alone—but not like this.
Not with him asking me stupid questions he’d know the answers to if only he’d rebonded me.
Not with him following me only because he’s worried his pet human has malfunctioned.
I don’t want him following to make sure I don’t slice someone up because I’m unstable.
Or to keep me alive so they can chuck me back into that volcano.
He’s close to me for all the reasons I don’t want.
And when he says things like, that he wanted to follow me, and I wish he meant it the way I wanted him to mean it, but I know he doesn’t, well. I just spiral down without wanting to, feeling crazier and crazier. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “You really don’t need to be here.”
We need you.
I’m really sick of hearing about the stupid volcano and their precious heart. “You know what?” I spin around to face him. “I had a dream about where the heart came from.”
His eyes widen.
“I—we’ve been so busy I didn’t tell you yet.
” That sounds lame, even to me. “I wasn’t sure whether it was really a dream about the heart or just my own wishful thinking.
” Why did I bring this up? Now I sound even crazier than I felt, and he’s looking at me expectantly.
“In the dream, I think I was Gullveig. It was a long time ago, and I was telling the story of where the heart came from to three kids.” I shake my head. “Never mind.”
Azar sits like a golden retriever. I swear, it almost makes me laugh. I want to hear the rest.
“I—it’s not much of a story.” I recount how the goddess of the earth and the god of the sky met, and loved, and kissed, and how their kiss created the heartstone.
What is a kiss, exactly?
I’m reminded of him asking me before—and our practicing. My cheeks flush, and I hope he doesn’t notice. “It’s something people do when they love each other.”
She had barely met this sky god and she already loved him?
It does feel silly. “That’s just how the story went,” I say.
And this made the heartstone? That’s what we need? A stone?
“Apparently Freya had it,” I say. “She and Odin were marrying, and I thought their union would keep humans like me and the children in the dream safe. They were part of a group called the aesir, and their enemies were the vanir.” I watch his face carefully to see whether he reacts.
He doesn’t.
“None of that means anything to you?” I suppose I was hoping he’d either remember what the old woman had told us or maybe something his father had shared.
He shrugs. Not really. We have many blessed named Freja, Freya, Frey, Frejar, and so on. You appear to believe this dream Freya is the same as the one in the volcano, and that both of them are my mother.
“I do.” I nod. “I’m surprised you don’t.”
It’s possible, but I don’t think we know enough yet. What did the heartstone look like?
I sigh. “I woke up before I saw it.”
He frowns, like he’s thinking about it.
“I know, it was pretty useless as dreams go. That’s the other reason I didn’t say anything about it right away.”
If you really are dreaming as Gullveig, you could learn something important. Please tell me in the future what you dream as soon as you dream it.
“I will.”
Tomorrow we have another long day, and after speaking with Hyperion, I should tell you—we would need to somehow come back with a lot of humans or. . .
“Or he’ll take the other blessed to find them forcibly.”
I can’t blame him.
“Can you really not survive more than a week?” I ask. “Will you start dying?”
It’s unclear. Three blessed died today, without any signs that they were even low energy or struggling. I think it may be more than a simple consumption of energy. I think something that changed in that volcano made my people need the bond between earth child and sky child.
“That’s what they said in the dream,” I say. “Humans were earth children—the blessed were sky children. Their bond made it possible for the sky children to survive on earth.”