Chapter 22
Linnea's writing hand had started cramping somewhere around the river of swords, but she shook it out and did her best to keep up until Fenris had finished. She flexed her fingers under the table and looked down at the pages she had filled with the wanderer's path through the realm of the dead.
Tor stood in the kitchen archway with a beer he had forgotten to drink. Ciara leaned a hip against him. On the far couch, Layla had gone boneless against Arne, her pen slack between two fingers, and for once she wasn't chewing it.
Fenris closed the little book over one thumb to keep his place, his eyes distant. The lamplight caught the silver scar at his throat. Linnea made herself look back at her notebook.
Von, on the other hand, was lit up like a tree at Yule. He came up off the chaise and crossed to Layla's couch with one palm already out.
"Give me your copy, sweetheart. Quickly, before it slides out of my head."
Layla handed over the spiral pad. "What are you thinking? Don't leave us in suspense because I have no idea what I just wrote."
Von clicked the pen, dropped into a crouch at the low table, and flipped back through the pages until he found what he wanted.
"The wanderer is Havi," he said, jotting down a note above Layla's writing.
Linnea's pen stilled. "Are you sure?"
"I've spent my whole life reading this god's footprints.
This is exactly the kind of fuckery he gets up to.
" Von was already underlining something else.
"The Norns bound his tongue. Fine. They stopped him from saying it plainly to anyone who mattered.
They didn't stop him from wandering up to a half-mad priest on the cold ass end of nowhere, telling him a story sideways, and making him hide it where only the right people would ever dig it out.
A priest who got himself excommunicated within a year for being a heretic, so no one ever took him seriously.
Havi always lays breadcrumbs, and he's had thousands of years to do it. "
"That sounds like my uncle," Fenris said with a gruff laugh. "He told me once that the best lie is a true thing told to the wrong listener. I laughed and told him that my father was rubbing off on him."
Linnea laughed and quickly tried to smother it. Fenris grinned back at her. Heat pooled in her stomach, warming her up in places she had been cold all day. It was terribly unfair that he could do that just with a grin.
"Okay, this is starting to make sense," Von said, writing more notes.
"Glad it is to someone," Arne commented. "You need to talk us through it because I'm still confused."
"Hel offers our wanderer a treasure, but she riddles it.
The way you riddle something that's dangerous or ephemeral.
" Von shifted on his heels and sat back on the floor.
"The Finnish Kalevala does the same thing with the Sampo.
It never states what it actually is, except that it was forged with random things like swan's feathers, milk, barley, and black wool, but it provides endless wealth to whoever possesses it. "
Everyone looked a bit lost, but they seemed to reach a silent agreement to let Von keep talking without asking follow-up questions. He knew what he was on about, and that was what mattered.
"The mare that bore the swift one." Von wrote a single word beside it in small, sharp capitals and kept moving down the page.
"The salmon's tail that escaped the net.
The falcon's wing that crossed Jotunheim.
The mother that births monsters and the father that loves them.
The brother bound by oath to the brother who wears the cloak of crows. "
The pen stopped tapping. Linnea leaned over to read what he had set in the margin beside each line. The same word, five times, in Von's obsessive scrawl.
Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki.
"The mare," Layla said slowly, moving off Arne's chest to lean forward to read Von's notes over his shoulder. "Loki turned himself into a mare and birthed Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse. The swift one."
"The salmon is when he tried to bolt, and they caught him in his own net," Von added. "The falcon cloak he borrowed from Freya. Loki is both mother and father of monsters." His eyes flicked to Fenris and winked. "We have one of them sitting in the room being very un-monsterlike."
"I have my moments," Fenris said and winked back, making Von giggle.
Linnea's eye twitched. "Focus now, flirt later."
Von's brows shot up at her tone before his smile turned sugary sweet. "There is always time—"
"The brother who wears the cloak of crows is Havi, Loki's blood-brother, right, Von?" Arne interrupted, trying to pull the conversation back on track.
"Of course it is, and the treasure hidden in the heart of Niflheim is Loki." Von tossed his pen down and started to stretch out his shoulders. "Hel has him, and it sounds like she's thrown up some fierce challenges in order to protect him."
Linnea's wolf came up out of the quiet with a threatening growl. Our mate's blood is caged. We have to go. We open every door until he's free from his chains.
Linnea swallowed, her mouth too dry. She hadn't been the only one who had been enslaved by Varg. Her wolf might not have been so chatty back then, but it remembered the damn chains, and it really fucking hated it.
We will try. Don't worry, she tried to soothe it. The wolf wasn't interested in being placated, and there was nothing Linnea could do about it.
She had a mouthful of water and looked back down at the last lines she had written.
If ever you should meet a wolf with one eye like winter and a girl who can sing the dead to sleep, send them down the path I could not finish.
"This is us," she said to Fenris. He leaned closer to her to see what she was pointing at.
"Without a doubt, little volv?. Havi all but wrote our names, which means whatever part of the vision he saw, or that Loki shared, they saw us together," Fenris replied, his eyes pinning her. "Destiny has braided our wyrds together."
Linnea's heart pounded too hard, his words searing into her mind.
They might not be mates in the wolf sense, but there was no denying they were bound in their own way.
Inside her, her wolf stopped snarling, and its tail started wagging a little.
Fenris was still looking at her, and she opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"Right. I guess it looks like we are going to go to Niflheim." Tor drained the rest of his beer. "Nobody is walking into the land of the dead at this hour on no sleep. We go down with our wits about us."
"Layla is going to need at least a day to pack because she hates camping," Ciara said, and pointed a finger at her cousin. "One pack, Lay Lay. That's all."
"Please, I'm not that bad. I was perfectly fine when we went to rescue Arne," Layla argued. Tor and Ciara both started laughing. "You can both shut up."
"Ignore them. You can take whatever you like," Arne said, kissing Layla's cheek. "If it gets too much, I'll carry it for you."
Layla started kissing his face all over. "You are the best mate in the entire world."
"Ewww," Linnea complained, tossing her pen at them. It hit Arne in the chest, and they both ignored it.
"To reach the World Tree, I would have to tear my own road to it, and that much of my magic would be a beacon," Fenris said, and everyone turned back to him. "We will need to be prepared for what that attracts."
"You don't have to tear anything," Arne assured him.
"My mother can open a portal straight onto the dark paths of Yggdrasil.
Quiet, clean, no god-sized hole ripped in the world to announce us.
Layla and I will go ahead to Alfheimstod this morning.
I need to talk to Alruna anyway because she will be pissed if we disappear on her again.
You can meet us there once you've all had a sleep. "
"Sleep is a good idea." Von gathered the little book up off the table where Fenris had left it and hugged it to his chest like an infant, informing it under his breath that it was worth every penny and hour of frustration it had given him.
"I'm going to need to pack too. What is the weather going to be like? "
"Cold. Though Niflheim can be unpredictable," Fenris replied.
"Layers. Got it," Von said and patted him on the head. "You did very well."
"He's not a dog," Linnea growled in warning.
Von only patted her on the head too.
The family broke apart, taking empty cups and dishes into the kitchen and arguing about whether or not the trials would be the same as what they had read about.
Linnea stayed on the couch a moment longer, flicking through the pages of the wanderer's story. Fenris remained beside her, a silent and solid presence.
Ours, her wolf said, certain now. We were always going with them.
It would seem so, Linnea replied, her fingers brushing over the words about her and Fenris.
The wanderer in the story had been wise enough to turn back at the last door. They wouldn't get that luxury. Whatever he had refused to give up to find Loki, whatever was so horrible that he wouldn't tell the monk, was waiting at the bottom of the dark, and it would want payment.