Chapter 28
Hel's private chamber at the back of éljúenir was comfortable and close compared to the cavernous hall they had eaten in.
A fire burned low in a round stone hearth, and the walls were hung with paintings she had done as well as a few that Fenris recognized as his father's work.
A long shelf ran the length of one wall, crowded with small carved things: a wooden horse worn smooth, a child's shoe, a string of blue beads, a clay cup with a crack mended in gold.
They were small tokens, each one gifted to her by the dead.
His sister kept the dead's offerings the way other women kept jewelry.
Havi and Freya might have had halls of mighty heroes, but Fenris doubted they were as loved as the dead in Niflheim.
"Sit before you fall down," Hel said with a gentle nudge toward a chair. "You walked the Norns' road and the dark stair in a blur of time. Even gods have limits, and you have barely been awake for five minutes."
Fenris sat in the chair closest to the fire and let the tension that had kept him on alert since they had left Alruna finally go.
Hel pulled a black bottle off the shelf, unstoppered it, and poured two measures of something dark and thick into a pair of horn mugs. She put one in his hand and dropped into the chair across from him with her boots up on the hearthstones.
"What is it?" he asked, suspiciously. His sister had inherited her sense of humor from Loki, and the Norns only knew what she brewed to keep herself amused.
"Nothing that will kill you. I promise. You're annoyingly hard to kill, so I don't bother trying." She tapped her cup against his. "Skál, big brother. Welcome back."
Fenris drank, and the liquid went from herbaceous bitter to sweet before burning down his throat and chest. He wheezed. "That's…an experience. What did you make it out of? Corpse juice?"
"That is a two-hundred-year old specialty brew made from plants that grow wild here, and tended to by souls for a century, you ungrateful wolf. Drink again, and I promise it will be different."
"Good different or bad different?"
Hel grinned at him over the rim of her cup. The firelight ran along the runes tattooed across her hands. "See for yourself."
Fenris gave in to her teasing and had another mouthful. This time the brew tasted of long summers, the wheat turning golden, and the sweet smoke of midsummer fires.
"Is this…infused with memories?"
"Could be. Fun, isn't it?" Hel replied, taking another mouthful. "Now I want to know about the volva who climbed up your back like a frightened cat. I was good at dinner not to ask outright, so if you don't spit it out now, I'm going to be hurt, and I'll get dramatic about it."
Tell her, his wolf said, the first time it had stirred since entering the hall. She is pack. She will know what to do because you are being a coward.
I have feelings, you know.
Too many thoughts, not feelings.
Fenris traced the rim of his cup with a scarred finger and watched the fire dance. "Her name is Linnea."
"I know that, thank you. I want details, so don't be broody." Hel took off her boots and wriggled her socked feet in front of the fire. "Start from the beginning, Fen. I have nowhere to be. The dead are extremely patient."
Fenris gave in and told her the stripped-down version of the cult that had wanted to wake him too early and had needed the blood of a grown wolf who had never shifted, so they had taken Linnea and bled her at the foot of his slab.
Hel listened with a small smile when he got to the part about the lullaby that had come down into his dreaming when nothing else could reach him, and about waking up to the smell of cloudberries and honey and hot magic.
"My wolf says she is my mate, Hel," he said and drained his cup. "I don't know what to do."
The teasing had dropped clean off Hel's face, and what was left was the patience that weighed souls and wasn't in the habit of being surprised.
"The girl who can't shift at all is the mate of the Great Wolf," she said slowly.
"Not that her shifting matters to me, but yes. My wolf got one good smell of her and declared it on the spot," Fenris replied. He held out his empty cup to her, and Hel filled it from her dark bottle.
"The Norns have a sense of humor after all." A grin tugged at her mouth. "I do like Linnea already, and the fact that she has you so moonstruck makes it even better. Does she know?"
"No, I haven't told her."
"Fenris, you can't be serious," Hel said, making him flinch.
"It's complicated, little sister. She has been hurt deeply in the past, as have I, and you know that as soon as I claim her, she will be a target for my enemies in the future.
Loving a god is hard, but being bound to one is choosing to never be safe again," Fenris argued.
"It wouldn't matter if I wanted to tell her because Havi and Freya and fucking Ragnarok forced us on a quest. It's bad enough that Linnea is here with me, where I don't feel like I can keep her safe.
I'll not put a target on her back by making her mine in front of everything that wants to stop us. And she..."
He stopped his rambling and ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the short ends.
Say it, the wolf told him. You think it loud enough every night.
"She had a father who beat her bloody for not shifting and called her a mistake to her face.
She has a wolf locked behind a wall she built herself, because that was the only way to keep it safe from him.
She thinks she was never worth choosing, Hel," his voice came out rougher than he meant it to.
"If I tell her what she is to me, and she rejects me because she doesn't want it or thinks she doesn't deserve happiness, it will destroy me. "
Hel reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. "So that is the actual reason for your silence, under the noble bullshit about targets and quests. You're afraid she will look at you the way Sunniva did."
Fenris had told Hel about Sunniva's fear and horror of him the last time he saw his sister before the binding. He had told her because she was the one person he could be vulnerable in front of. His sister never forgot anything.
"Sunniva loved a man," he said after a few deep breaths.
"She didn't love that I was a monster god.
I let her go, and I went into the ground because that hurt less than watching her flinch every time I came into a room.
She called me a monster to my face and turned her back on me.
That was before the whole world thought I was the great evil that would bring about Ragnarok. "
Hel made a rude noise. "You? The great beast who gulps poor Uncle Havi down in one bite while the stars wink out? As if anyone could pay you to put that man in your mouth. Who knows where he's been?"
Fenris couldn't hold back a laugh just thinking about it, and the joke lifted some of the heaviness in him. His little sister could always make him laugh.
"Now, I see you've decided, in your infinite wisdom, that the kindest thing you can do for Linnea is decide on her behalf that she will leave you, before she has been given the chance to do anything at all."
Hel set her cup down on the hearthstone and leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
"Brother, I love you. You're the bravest creature I know and have endured a terrible hardship, but that's no excuse to be this much of a fool when it comes to Linnea."
Fenris drank his horribly good liquor. "Do you have any advice, or are you going to just kick me in the balls while I'm down?"
"I'm going to do both, just because I love you," Hel said and tugged on his ear.
"Listen to me. The longer you sit on this, the harder it will be when it comes out.
Truth like this doesn't stay buried, not in our family, and certainly not on a road built to dig up the darkest parts of yourself.
She won't be hurt that you are her mate.
She will be hurt that you knew, and you never told her.
She will see that as you rejecting her if it's not handled correctly.
You aren't protecting her, Fen. You're protecting yourself. "
Fenris knew it, but hearing from his sister's mouth didn't make it any easier to do something about it.
"The timing is too shit," he said gruffly. "We aren't exactly on a road that is conducive to romance."
"That depends on your definition of romance," Hel said.
She waved her hands at the chamber, the underworld, the whole grim country outside.
"I think walking a woman into the land of the dead and biting anything that comes near her is deeply romantic.
Far better than flowers. Flowers die. I should know. They all end up here."
Fenris chuckled. "Your sense of romance is bleak, little sister."
"My sense of everything is bleak. It's part of my charm.
" She filled both of their cups again. "Drink.
We have other things to be sad about, and I refuse to spend our whole reunion on your pathetic love life.
Seriously, it makes me wish our father were already back with us just to teach you a few tricks.
You don't have a drop of charm in you. No wonder Linnea hasn't jumped your bones yet. "
"Thank you, little sister. I appreciate that," Fenris replied and managed a smile. "Loki probably would tell me to stop being such a little bitch about it."
"He would, and he'd be right too. It has been far too quiet without you both around," Hel said with a hopeful smile. "You're finally here, and I'll be glad to have Father awake to liven things up again. I've missed him being annoying and setting things on fire that I have to put out."
"He's going to set everything on fire," Fenris replied, making her laugh. "We'll finally get him out, and he will be free for one afternoon before he shakes up something and gets us all into trouble. Right before he gets us all out again, looking insufferably proud of himself when he does it."
"Gods, I have missed him so much," Hel said, and her eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with the drink. "Do you think he will cope in the new world? It's so fast now. So loud and bright."
"He will love it. It was made for him." Fenris thought of the lights of Oslo, the crush of eclectic people from all over the world, the screens, the food.
"It's full of all kinds of mischief for him to get into, and he won't be alone to navigate it.
Linnea's family is packed with gods and immortals already, and they will get him caught up in the century soon enough. "
"Careful, he will hate being managed," Hel warned him.
"He will pretend to hate it, but I'm sure he will appreciate the help if he wants it." Fenris smiled into his cup. "I can't wait to take him to Von's club. The shaman will make certain our father has the time of his life, and Loki will probably repay him by flirting him into an early grave."
Hel cackled. "Oh, those two should never be allowed in the same room. Von is a darling, and Dad will go out of his way to try and corrupt him."
"I wouldn't worry about that. Von flirts like it is a sport with a score only he can see," Fenris agreed.
"If Father takes that as a challenge, they will turn it into a game of strip flyting before the night is out, trading filthier and filthier insults until one of them either bursts into tears or proposes marriage. "
Hel roared with laughter, loud enough to wake all the dead in éljúenir. "And probably in that order too. Do you think we should warn Von and the others what to expect with Loki?"
They both stared at each other before saying, "No," at the same time and exploding into laughter again.