Chapter 17
Von's townhouse sat on a quiet street in Frogner, three stories of respectable red brick with a green copper roof and a heavy oak door carved with a protection bind rune.
Arne pulled the SUV up to the curb, and the six of them spilled out onto the pavement in a tangle of coats and boots and Ciara complaining that Tor had stepped on the back of her shoe.
Linnea looked up at the house and tried to reconcile its posh and proper appearance with the man who owned it.
Fenris was standing close enough at her shoulder that the sleeve of his jacket was brushing her elbow.
This is fine, she told herself, shoving her hands into her pockets so she wouldn't touch him.
We aren't fine. We are horny, her wolf corrected.
Be quiet. We have work to do.
Doing the work. Standing very close to him. Excellent multitasking.
Layla reached up and used the bronze knocker, which was a snake biting its own tail. The door swung open immediately, as if Von had been waiting on the other side with his ear pressed to the wood.
"Welcome, darlings, to my humble abode of arcana and mystery." Von threw one arm wide and bowed at the waist. "Touch nothing in case it bites."
"My guy, we need to get you a top hat if you're going to carry on like that," Layla said, smooching his cheek.
Von's long blond hair was loose down his back, and he was wearing dark jeans and a black K-Pop Demon Hunter T-shirt.
Fenris tilted his head and looked at the T-shirt for a long moment. "What is a K-pop?"
Von's mouth fell open, and Tor's hand quickly covered it. "No, Von, we don't have time. End of the world is coming."
Layla made a delighted sound at the back of her throat. Linnea pressed both hands over her mouth and tried not to laugh as Von dragged Tor's hand away.
"Oh, my sweet ancient summer child," Von breathed. He clapped his hand to his chest like Fenris had struck him there. "We are going to fix this. We need to do a movie night. You will all be there. Except for Tor. You aren't invited because clearly your taste in movies sucks."
"Oh, no! How will I survive not watching another movie with singing princesses?" Tor said, just making it worse for himself.
"They are demon hunters, you uncultured wolf. They kill demons with singing and the power of childhood trauma. It is everything!"
"So? I killed plenty of things with my childhood trauma too," Tor replied.
"Gah! Why do I even bother with you? Inside, everyone, before I have to start the education on the doorstep."
Von turned and swept down the hall. Linnea caught Fenris's sleeve before he could follow.
"It's a kind of music," she told him quietly. "From Korea. Don't let Von kidnap you for a five-hour cinematic crash course before noon."
Fenris only smiled. "If I can handle my father, I can certainly handle the shaman."
"I'm right here, and no one can handle me," Von called from down the hall. "I have wolf-grade ears in this house. They are spelled for it."
"Of course they are," Linnea said with a shake of her head.
The townhouse wasn't so much decorated as it was a full-on dragon's hoard. Linnea had been to Von's apartment above the old Ritual before it had burned down, but this was where his true collection lived.
The hallway was long and dim, the walls covered with tapestries that were old enough that Linnea was too scared to touch them.
She caught glimpses into other rooms stacked with iron-bound chests pushed against the walls, the kind monks had once used to ship reliquaries between abbeys, except these had modern keypad locks bolted across their seams.
Glass display cases lined the walls of every room, each holding relics and runestones. A pile of books taller than Linnea sat in one corner. A single book in a climate-controlled case sat on a pedestal at the center of the room with a humidity gauge built into the lid.
"Holy shit, Von," Linnea breathed.
"I know," he sang back without slowing down. "Myth nerd heaven. You may sob if you wish."
"I don't think I want to know the price tag on half of what's in there," Ciara said behind her.
"Best not to. Discussing numbers is a vulgar practice, and I make a point of never being gauche," Von replied.
A wide staircase curled up to a second floor where Linnea could just make out the edge of a painting in a frame so big it was hung on its own wall. The god in it was facing away from the viewer, looking out at a black sea, and the brushwork looked like nothing she had ever seen in any textbook.
Fenris had gone quiet behind her. She glanced back. His eyes moved over everything, as they had on the drive from Otta, taking it in and filing it away.
"You didn't steal all of this?" he asked Von.
"Of course not," Von replied in a tone that suggested he had only stolen some of it.
The kitchen at the back of the house was a bright room with a wall of windows opening onto a tiny walled garden where snow lay in thin drifts.
There was a long oak table that looked like it had been salvaged from a mead hall and dressed up with eight modern chairs.
A coffee pot sat steaming at the head of the table with two plates of pastries.
"You even got my raspberry danishes," Linnea said, charmed despite herself.
"I remember the important things." Von pulled the chair out at the head of the table with a flourish and turned to Fenris. "Head of the table for the god of the house."
Fenris sat, and Von dropped into the chair opposite him. He folded his long hands on the table. "Now that I'm as sober as an unfulfilled nun, I need to know everything you do about the Norns and where you think your father would be."
This was the sharp, highly intelligent side of Von that he showed only to people he was close to.
Linnea took the chair on Fenris's right, and when his hand moved to settle on her knee, she didn't move it.
She liked that he wanted to touch her, and it grounded her when everything about their situation was slightly surreal.
"The Norns saw it first," Fenris began while Von poured him coffee.
"My father followed them when he was visiting Asgard.
It hit Havi next before Freya, at her loom.
They each saw the same thing, in slightly different ways, on the same night.
A great devouring darkness was coming for the Nine Worlds.
It would eat the sun, eat the moon, eat the stars, and last of all, eat the breath out of every living thing on Midgard.
It's what your stories call Ragnarok, and its time is coming. "
"But we don't know when, only soon?" Von guessed, and Fenris nodded.
"Havi went mad for a whole winter as he tried to unravel it, searching for a solution," Fenris went on.
"He spent every waking hour looking for a path through, but he couldn't find one.
Freya searched for a solution when the All-Father couldn't before they went to the Norns.
They all saw thousands of futures and watched the dark eat them all. "
Layla made a small sound. "Loki was the one who found the answer?"
Fenris's mouth twitched once, faintly. "Yes. My father has always been better at standing in the middle of a problem and following a crooked path through it. They went and asked for his help, just like they always did when they got stuck in a situation. He came back to them in a week with a plan."
"What was the plan?" Linnea asked when no one else did.
"In a word? Sacrifices," he said, folding his hands around his mug to warm them.
"A willing sacrifice, from every god whose part the plan touched.
None of it could work if any one of them gave the price under coercion.
Loki and the Norns were strict on that. If everyone knew they wouldn't play the part they had to. "
"My cousin Baldur was the best weapon they had.
He's the god of light and of the sun. When he was alive, he was strong, but if he died and was resurrected, he would be even stronger.
The plan needed him to choose to become a dying-and-rising god, so when the darkness came at its peak, he could be raised against it.
He had to die and agreed to it, whatever the stories say. "
Von held up a hand. "Wait, I need something." He disappeared from the kitchen for a moment before returning with a battered leather journal. He flipped through to a blank page and jotted down some quick dot points. "Okay, so Baldur agreed to be killed by the mistletoe."
"And his mother, Frigg, couldn't be told," Fenris continued when Von waved him on.
"If she had known, the plan would have failed.
Her grief was real, and she tore Asgard apart over it.
She demanded my father's blood because the mistletoe arrow was his idea, and Havi had to take her demand and act on it.
Frigg eventually walked into Niflheim looking for her son, and she didn't come out again. "
"Gods," Layla whispered. "It must have been so hard for Havi and Freya not to tell her. Loki was imprisoned as punishment?"
"Yes. He was taken by Havi and Freya and locked up somewhere where he couldn't be found or released.
He was the second sacrifice, and I was the third," Fenris replied, before having a sip of his coffee.
Linnea wanted to put her hand over his, but he didn't look upset, only grim.
"The story that spread was that I was a monster the gods feared, and they tricked me into Gleipnir to bind me.
I went into it willingly. Havi worked the magic, and Tyr came forward, offering his hand as the blood seal that would make it hold.
He put his hand in my mouth, knowing I would have to bite it off when the binding closed.
He's one of the bravest people I have ever known. "
"And where does Vidar fit into this?" Layla asked.
"I'm not sure. Why?" Fenris replied, his head tilting.
"He was at the party the other day for Uncle Cosimo's mating."
Von made a choking sound. "What are you talking about Lay Lay?"
"Vidar, the dragon knight, he is like the real Vidar. As soon as I told them about Linnea's note, Taranis told him to go home to Havi because his exile is over or whatever. I wasn't sure if he was a part of this prophecy or not."
"Is everyone a god now? What the hell? Why didn't Vidar say something?" Von spluttered in outrage.
"I don't know. Maybe he wanted to just be himself and not Havi's son. Taranis knew, but I don't know if the other knights did," Arne replied, his golden eyes lost in thought. "Perhaps he left Asgard for another reason and not this idea of Loki's."
"In the myths, he is meant to become the new king of Asgard after Ragnarok." Von quickly scribbled something down. "We will leave him as a follow-up question for now."
"It could have been a part of the plan I wasn't meant to know," Fenris admitted. "As I said before, only Loki knows how everything fits together."
Von tapped his pen on his notebook page. "All of our human stories are clearly bullshit too, which doesn't make any of this easier."
No one was eating. Ciara had set her cup down, and Tor's eyes had gone the same flat winter gray they always did when he was preparing to fight something.
"Those rumors and stories started because of the Norns.
" Fenris leaned back in his chair, his eyes focused somewhere else.
"They wove the version of the story that every skald sang and did it so cleanly that even most of the gods believed it.
Each of the gods who paid was given only the piece of the plan they needed in order to play it.
My father was the only one who held the whole thing together because he was the architect.
He went into the ground, and has been there ever since, waiting. "
"Waiting for you?" Linnea guessed.
Fenris nodded. "If Havi and Freya are to be believed, then yes. I was to wake when it was time to find Loki and bring him home."
Von finished writing and tapped the page. "This is a lot to take in all at once."
"And there's more," Arne said quietly, and every head swiveled toward him. "I talked to my mother last night, after we got back from Ritual. I called her and asked about why she had been sneaking off with Havi."
"And it's not to shag him?" Von guessed, brows rising.
"No. Apparently, my father was a part of this plan of Loki's too," Arne replied in a frustrated growl.
"The rune mark Havi put on his brow when I was small was a binding spell.
It made my father play the villain, side with Morrigan, and make war on Havi.
He had to agree to it willingly for it to work, and he did, but he didn't know how long he would have to wear it, or what it would cost the people he loved.
The mark has been removed, and Havi himself took my mother to Breidablik to show her and to apologize.
My father has been in Baldur's hall this entire time and not in a prison. "
"Vili," Fenris said, with a soft smile. "He was always kind to me, and I don't know him as anyone else. I'm sorry that you never got to see that side of him."
"Me too. From the sounds of things, he and my mother have been…
working things out. We elves only find our mates once, and it almost killed Alruna to be apart from him," Arne said and cleared his throat.
"It's up to her whether or not she wants to forgive him for his bullshit. I'm staying out of it."
"Always a wise move when it comes to anyone else’s relationships," Von said after a long moment. "So Loki is alive but hidden. If you're destined to find him, then there must be a way to figure this out."
Fenris nodded. "Yes, but I have no idea where to start looking."
"And the dark is coming." Von chewed on the end of his pen, lost in thought. "Baldur is the weapon, and Loki is the only one who can pull the trigger because Loki is the only one who knows how. Tricky mess."
Fenris's eyes warmed, and a smile played about his mouth. "That…is definitely the best description of my father."