Chapter 29
Fenris put another log on the fire, and Hel looked into the flames instead of meeting his gaze.
"Have you seen Jormungandr yet?" she asked.
"Not since before the binding." Fenris stirred the fire with the poker before sitting back in his chair. "You?"
"Not for a thousand years, or near enough," she replied and began to unravel her braided crown.
"He stayed a serpent the last time. He said he was done with becoming human.
He doesn't like them and doesn't want to wear their face anymore.
He spoke to me from the water and wouldn't come out.
My own brother, talking to me out of the dark of the sea like a stranger, all teeth and old grief. "
Fenris didn't like the sound of that, but their brother had always been the most troubled. "Where is he now?"
"No idea except for somewhere in the sea. He goes where he likes," she replied with a shrug. "We are scattered, the three of us. One in the ground, one in the sea, one keeping the door of the dead. Father did this when he bound himself in the middle of us, like the eye of a storm."
"I promise we won't be scattered much longer," Fenris said, meaning it. He hoped to get through to his brother one day, but until then, he had to focus on Loki.
Outside the warm walls, the wind moved over the dead country, and for a moment Fenris swore he could hear something underneath it, like a low pull of magic draining out of a vast basin somewhere far below them.
"You feel that?" he asked uneasily.
"It gets a little louder every day." She finished on her last braid, and with her hair loose, she looked younger and more tired.
"The Devouring Dark. We thought it would come for the Nine Realms in order, one world before the next, the way a fire eats a row of houses.
I'm not so sure anymore. It's already here, Fenris.
Not eating. Reaching. I can feel it at the roots of my realm, the way you see a rot in a tree before the leaves know to fall.
It has put a tendril into Midgard, and a tendril into Niflheim and gods know where else, like a vine that doesn't bother eating the wall one stone at a time when it can wrap the whole thing and squeeze until there is nothing left. "
"Fuck, Hel. Why didn't you say something earlier?" he asked, his senses reaching for the sound again, but it was gone.
"There was no point worrying you when you're already here doing what's required of you to stop it from getting those vines around us," Hel pointed out, pragmatic as ever.
"Dark, hungry magic like that doesn't happen on its own," he said with a shake of his head. "A fire is stupid because it scorches and destroys. If it's like a vine, that means it grows toward something. There's a hand on it or a hunger guiding it."
"Exactly, and that is what frightens me most." Hel met his eyes.
"Not the dark but the intent behind it. If anyone in all the Nine can stand in the middle of a thing that big and follow the crooked path to its heart, it's the same maddening creature who found his way through every twisting dilemma he could find on the whole of Yggrasil.
We need Father. Truly need him, not only because I miss his face.
He will be able to see what is steering it where none of the rest of us can. "
"We will get him out." Fenris set his empty cup on the hearth. "Tell me how to walk your trials, sister, and I'll be at his door by tomorrow's end."
The darkness in Hel rose, and the sister drew back from her eyes. For a breath, she was the powerful goddess who made a whole realm bow before her.
"I can't help you with the trials. No matter how much I want to.
" She held up a hand before he could speak.
"The rules are the rules, and I didn't write them.
They bind me as hard as Gleipnir bound you.
If I tip the scale for my own brother, the trials won't work, and the doors leading to Loki won't open. "
"I would not ask you to cheat, Hel," Fenris argued.
"I know you are worried, and you asked me out of love for our father, so that's why I'll tell you the one thing I'm allowed to.
" She leaned in, and her voice dropped low.
"The trials are not built as a fight, Fenris.
They will lie, trick, and tell the truth all at once because they are built to reach inside you, yank out your fears, and reveal your weaknesses any way that they can.
They are a forge designed to refine you and fight the darkness and fear inside you by purging it.
That goes for all of your friends and your mate too.
For good or ill, they will carry what happens here with them forever.
If they can't pass this, they won't be able to handle the darkness that is coming. "
Fenris thought of Linnea, of the wall she had built around her wolf with her own hands, and of the truth he was carrying.
"Listen to your smart little sister, and don't waste this last night being a fool when it comes to the woman you love.
Tell her any way that you can because you don't know what will happen tomorrow, and I don't want you to live with regrets.
" Hel leaned over and took his scarred face in both her tattooed hands.
"I have missed you so much, you great, stubborn wolf.
Do you know how quiet it is, ruling the dead with both your brothers and your father gone? "
"I have an idea," he said, the cold dark of his prison still too present in his mind. "I've been quiet too."
"Then go and be loud." She kissed his brow, a blessing and an order at once, and leaned back in her chair. "Time for bed. I have souls to deal with in the morning, and you have a road to walk that's going to take everything you have to stay alive and not go mad."
"Good night, little sister. I have missed you." Fenris rose and was at the door when her voice caught him.
"Fenris?"
He turned. "Yeah?"
"Remember what I said and go to Linnea." Hel stood by the small keepsakes of everyone who had left an offering to her, and her smile was gentle.
"Not to tell her everything. You aren't ready, and neither is she.
Just go to her. The wolf is right about this, even if the wolf is right about nothing else.
You have spent a thousand years deciding you don't deserve to be loved by anything that knows what you are.
You are wrong, brother. You always were.
Go and let her make the decision for herself. "
"Hel? I love you," he said and was rewarded with a bright grin.
"Someone has to," she replied.
Fenris walked out into the halls of éljúenir, toward Linnea’s room.
He couldn't control tomorrow, the results of the trials, or the devouring darkness that was coming for them.
Offering himself to his little singer might make or break him, but there was only one path he wanted to follow in all of the Nine Realms.
Mate, the wolf whispered.
"Mate," Fenris agreed.
It didn't matter, in the end, if Linnea loved him or hated him because his feet would always lead him back to her. She was his fate, his wyrd, and his future. Not even Ragnarok could change that, so he would give his battered heart to her and let her do what she will with the pieces.