Chapter 35
Linnea kept her grip on Fenris long after the bridge and its guardian had disappeared behind them.
His hand around hers was the one solid thing in a country built to take you apart and wear you down.
She didn't know why the bridge had struggled to hold Fenris and was too afraid to ask him.
He didn't ask about hers, and neither did anyone else.
Niflheim was wearing them all down, so they walked in almost silence.
The smell of wood smoke finally knocked Linnea out of her own head. It was a scent that meant food and people, and it was so wrong in this place that her boots slowed in the dirt.
"Do you guys smell that smoke, or am I stroking out?" she asked.
"It's definitely there," Ciara said, lifting her nose to the wind. "I wonder if it's another trap or a trial."
"Only one way to find out," Fenris replied and shared a look with Tor and Arne.
They passed unspoken messages and shifted into a protective formation.
Ciara rolled her eyes at them but didn't mention anything about overbearing alpha holes.
Instead, she rested her hand on the hilt of her dagger, and Layla pulled her bow free.
It made Linnea uneasy that she and Von were the only ones who needed protecting.
They are the brawn, and you guys are the brains, she reminded herself. Von certainly didn't seem to mind. They both had magic, but if this trip had taught Linnea anything it was that she needed to learn more battle spells.
They kept walking, following the smoke, and soon a hall appeared in a gap in the black pines
It was small, as halls went, low timber under a turf roof, a thread of smoke rising from the hole at its peak, and amber light leaking around the edges of an iron-banded door. After days of nothing but gray, the gold of the light was jarring in its brightness.
A wooden sign was hammered into the ground before the entrance, with words burned into it.
YOU MADE IT THIS FAR. WELL DONE, MORTALS. HAVE A NIGHT OFF.
"Okay," Layla said slowly. "So this is exactly how every horror movie I have ever watched begins."
"It's a trap," Ciara said. She had walked into enough of them to be sure. "Obviously Baba Yaga lives here."
"I doubt it. She lives in a house built on chicken legs." Von rested his fist under his chin, staring at the sign. "It's a very polite trap. Most traps don't leave a welcome note. They make it welcoming like ensuring the walls are made of gingerbread."
"It isn't a trap. If my sister wanted us dead in there, she wouldn't have wasted good wood on a sign." Fenris smiled at the burned wood. "The sign is her being kind in the only way she knows how. I'm not going to insult her by sleeping in the dirt out of pride."
Linnea looked past the hall, and the gray light that had not so much as flickered since they walked out of Hel's doors was dimming. It was the first night they had seen, and it was pooling up from the ground between the trees, rising like floodwater.
Shapes moved in it past the tree line, too tall and too thin, drifting between the trunks with nothing under them to call feet.
"Ohhhh, fuck this scary ass place," Layla muttered, staring at the shades.
"Yup! That's me decided," Linnea said, going up to the doors of the hall. "Inside. Right now."
There was a mumble of agreements, and they pulled back one of the heavy wooden doors.
A glowing fire pit ran the length of the hall, a long spine of banked coals.
It was flanked by tables and benches, but the real miracle lay past them.
Through low doorways were small, private rooms, and in each was a proper bed that had a real frame, thick furs, and pillows that looked impossibly soft.
Hel had built a roadside inn at the bottom of the world.
"I still don't trust it," Tor said, even as he swung his pack down off his shoulder.
"You don't trust soft towels either."
"That's because they don't dry you properly," he argued.
Linnea turned a slow circle in the firelight and let her volv? magic unspool, feeling into the hall's corners for anything suspicious lingering in the shadows.
Nothing pushed back. No malice, no hunger, no cold watching presence behind the walls.
"There's nothing here that I can sense that's going to jump out at us. "
Von's magic tickled at her energy as he ran his own version of the same check, eyes half shut. "She's right. It's clean. I haven't been this suspicious of a nice thing since my last good relationship."
They decided on wards anyway because none of them had gotten this far by being stupid.
Linnea and Von went room to room together, and she cut the bind rune into each door frame with the tip of her knife and a thread of will, Algiz for protection, Othala for a safe hearth, the shapes flaring gold before they sank into the wood.
Von layered his own craft over hers, a low hum and a handful of words in a tongue that sounded a little like Sami, and the two magics settled against each other like they had done it a hundred times.
By the time the last ward sealed, the others claimed their rooms and said good night, and the hall had gone quiet behind closed doors.
They were all exhausted from the constant light, the emotional drain of travel, and the trials poking at their tender insides.
Linnea wanted quiet time almost as much as she wanted the cheeseburger in her imagination.
Fenris pushed the door to their room open, and Linnea stepped inside. The ward knit shut at her back with a soft sigh, and for the first time since they had walked out of Hel's hall, they were alone.
The room had a bathing chamber off to one side, a stone bath sunk into the floor, big enough for two, a wide wooden counter, and a bowl beside it. Water had already been pumped into both and was sitting cold.
Linnea crouched at the rim, dipped two fingers into the chill, and grimaced.
"I've had enough to deal with in the past few days. I'm not having a cold bath too," she declared.
"Would you like me to see if there is a way to heat it from underneath? There might be a house spirit that Hel uses to keep the place maintained," Fenris suggested.
"No need. I have something for this." Linnea cracked her knuckles and let the galdr roll off her tongue. "Logr ok eldr, blandisk nú. Vatn verei heitt sem sumarsól."
Water and fire, mix now. May water become hot as the summer sun.
The old words asked and her magic answered her, rising up from the unfathomable well inside her. The spell rippled out into the water, and steam rose off the surface in slow curling whisps. Linnea kept testing the temperature and repeating the words until the water was just right.
"Show-off," Fenris said behind her with a grin.
"You have no idea how much I hate cold water. I use this spell at home when I'm reading in the bath and don't want to get out." She stood and turned to find that Fenris had already taken off his coat and shirt. It suddenly made her hungry for something more than cheeseburgers.
"Strip," Fenris said, unbuckling his belt.
"Who said you're invited to this bath?" Linnea asked, slipping her coat from her shoulders.
Fenris looked her over, slow and hungry. "You need someone to help wash your back."
"Do I?" Linnea burst out laughing when he nodded solemnly. "You want to help me undress too?"
"Yes," he said, hands on the hem of her shirt. "Arms up."
Linnea was giggling because having someone undress her was absurd, but it lightened some of the heaviness that had crept inside her bones all the same.
They got into the water together, and for a little while, it stayed almost innocent.
Almost. She took a cake of lavender and oat soap, worked it to a lather between her palms, and set her hands on his chest, and the fiction that she was washing him lasted exactly as long as it took to slide both soapy hands down his stomach and lower.
"You missed a spot," she said sweetly.
One of Fenris's brows went up. "Did I?"
"Mm. Down here. Filthy." She closed her hand around his cock under the water, already half hard, and stroked from root to crown, her thumb dragging over the head. "Honestly. The state of you."
Fenris's hands gripped the sides of the tub and let out a soft, "Fuck."
Ours, her wolf said. Make him beg.
He let her work him, his breath going ragged against her hair, his hips rolling up into her fist. One big hand closed over her wrist, not to stop her, just to ride the motion of what she was doing to him.
"My turn to wash you," he said roughly. "You're filthy too. I can smell what looking at me does to you."
"That's the swamp."
"That's not the swamp." He took the soap out of her hand.
He dragged a slick palm up her belly to her breast, rolled her nipple between two fingers until her spine curved.
He traced the same slow path back down, under the water, the soap rinsing from his fingers before they slid between her legs.
His finger settled on her clit and circled.
"There. Found the spot that needs the most attention. "
"It's unfair you can find it that fast," Linnea whimpered.
"Now who is filthy?" he whispered and did it again.
Fenris played with her until her hips were chasing his hand, and the water sloshed at the rim of the bath. Linnea fisted his hair and buried a moan against his shoulder as she came with a wave of full-body tremors.
"Fenris..." she moaned, pressing her face into his neck and fighting to catch her breath.
"Hold on," he warned and lifted her clean out of the water. Linnea was boneless as he set her bare and dripping on the wooden counter.
"What…" she began, and without warning, he dropped down on his knees on the stone and pushed her thighs wide.
He looked up at her, his eyes dark. "Stay right there so I can clean you properly this time."
His mouth closed over her, and Linnea's head dropped back against the wall. He licked her slowly, his tongue working her clit while two fingers pushed inside her.