“One of our ravens,” I said, turning my attention back to Arni still perched on the mantelpiece. “They’ve been in our family for centuries. Come, winged friend. Tell me where my father is.”
He shook out his feathers, but didn’t obey the invitation. Odd. Both he and his sister loved to sit on me when they visited.
“Loki is gone. He left me with a message to you,” the raven said. “He was very angry that you allowed the girl to look for him. He didn’t wish to be found.”
“This is an emergency,” I said, frowning as Arni shifted. He looked disheveled, as if he hadn’t preened his feathers for a few days. “Odin has Saga and Grim locked up in Valhalla. Tell me where he is—we need to speak with him.”
“He will allow your company for a short visit, but only yours. Your companions cannot follow. If they do, he will not be pleased,” Arni said, his feathers rising once again before finally he took flight, landing on my shoulder with a small bump.
He was lighter than normal, I noted, my confusion turning to concern.
“Are you ill, old friend?” I asked, cooing softly at the bird as I reached into my pockets for some of the leftover scraps of what we’d bought on the train. “Here, have a bit of food.”
“What do you mean, we can’t follow?” Modi broke in. “What trickery does the traitor have up his sleeve that he will only see his son?”
“Loki doesn’t trust them,” Arni crowed between alien clicks and rolls of his tongue. “Don’t bring them, or you will surely regret it. Swear an oath that you will seek him out on your own, and I will tell you the location.”
“This is silly,” I protested, frowning when he turned his beak away from the offered food. “I can’t leave the omega behind. He of all people would understand that. He’s gone to great lengths to get her to us, after all. Tell me where he is.”
“An oath is the only way you will find him,” Arni insisted.
“Bjarni, it’s okay.” Annabel's voice was still so weak just the thought of leaving her behind had every primitive instinct in my gut roaring. “I… I need to rest anyway, and this is too important. Modi can protect me while you go speak with your father.”
Modi can protect me.
Her words did little to calm the already grated emotions throbbing in my blood, but she was right—Modi could protect her. And this was too important. If I didn’t speak with my father, everything was lost.
“I swear on my blood, I will seek Loki on my own,” I said. “How long will it take to reach him?”
Arni clenched his talons deeper into my shoulder. “Two days,” he said in another rasping, stolen voice—a mimicry of someone far more human. “I will lead you there.”
“Two days?” I nearly refused. I looked back over my shoulder at Annabel, fear clawing at my gut.
“I’ll be okay.” Unsteadily she walked to my side and placed her hand on my chest. “Go. Bring him back.”
There wasn’t much we shared, her and I. But the urgency of our task was one such thing. I had to go. I was the only one who could. There was some small measure of comfort in that.
Cupping her cheek in one hand, I bent down and pressed my mouth to hers.
She inhaled softly the moment before our lips connected, but didn’t resist the kiss. It was soft and sweet, and it filled me with the strength I needed to do what I had to.
“I’ll go,” I said, pulling back from her with a deep breath. “And when I come back, I’ll make sure you’ve got all the power you need to continue.”
Fifteen
Modi
Letting the Jotunn go off on his own went against every instinct I had. He might be a bumbling fool, but he was still the spawn of the betrayer. One never knew what the two of them would cook up on their own.
I glared at the omega slouched on the edge of the bed in the dismal apartment I’d been left to babysit her in. She was the reason Loki had seen us coming. A more experienced sorceress…
A more experienced sorceress would still not have been able to out-trick the God of Mischief.
My shoulders slumped and I rubbed at my skull, trying to ease the irritation prickling my skin. I loathed to admit it, but the human had been a surprising asset. From the strength of her magic to how she had handled Heimdall, I doubted even Trud could have done better. Or, if I was honest, half as well.
“Eat,” I growled at her, irrational anger that she had proven me wrong bubbling in my veins.
She flinched at my harsh tone, the uneaten food I had broken into one of the closed shops on the street below to get her falling from her hand to the bed sheet. Her eyes widened with fear for a split-second before she managed to school her expression into an irritated scowl.
“God, why are you such a dick?”
Instant regret had me grimacing at the sinking feeling in my gut when realization finally clicked into place. Despite the front she put up, I scared her. Of course I did. I had been harsh with her after she broke through my inner barriers, and now here she was, alone and vulnerable with me, her powerful magic burned to ashes and no way of defending herself, should she need to.
It was a curious sensation. For the first time, I looked at her and felt pity rather than irritation. She was just a human girl swept up in a world she had no way of understanding, separated from the two alphas who had claimed her.
I crossed the floor and sat on the bed next to her, picking up the food and returning it to her. “You need to eat. It won’t replenish your magic, but it will help your body recuperate from the strain.”
My softer tone made her look up at me, gaze guarded as if she expected me to snap at her again. “I’m not hungry.”
I opened my mouth to tell her tough, she was eating anyway, but the shine in her brown eyes had me frowning. Impulsively I reached out to touch her forehead with the back of my hand.
“You are burning up!”
Shit. Was she sick? I knew little of human ailments and even less about keeping a sick one alive.
“Yeah.” The way she said it, dodging my gaze as if she was hiding something, made me narrow my eyes.
“I take it you have been feverish for some time?”
“A couple of hours,” she muttered.
So she decided to get sick shortly after Bjarni left. Of-fucking-course.
“What do you need? Medicines?” I asked. “A human healer? What do you call them… a doctor?”
“No. I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just need to rest until Bjarni comes back.”
I stared at her, suspicion still hot in my gut. She wasn’t telling me something. Her forehead was locked in a frown, and she was worrying her bottom lip with her front teeth in an oddly vulnerable display I hadn’t seen from her before.
But pressuring her probably wasn’t the wisest course of action right now. Hopefully she would indeed be fine until Bjarni returned. He had spent much more time with humans over the last decades—he would be better at figuring out what to do with a sick omega.
Being trapped in the dingy apartment with nothing to do but wait quickly turned from an annoyance to torture.
I couldn’t sleep. By the time morning rolled around, I was pacing back and forth between the bed and fireplace, my muscles straining as if preparing for battle.