Modi stared down at where I had a hold of him, one eyebrow arched in clear bemusement at my reaction. “No?”
“I…” How did I explain to him how it’d felt like when Magni abducted me to Jotunheim through a portal and I’d thought I would die until Saga followed, gluing my soul back together? “We… We need to go together. At the same time.”
“It’s safer—” he started, but I cut him off before he had a chance to continue.
“No. If anything, it’s safer if all three of us are there, should something dangerous be waiting for us. It took the three of us to catch him, remember?” I said, jerking my head toward Loki without releasing my grip on Modi’s coat.
Modi sighed, an exasperated look passing over his handsome features, but he didn’t pry my hands off him. “Annabel—"
“Girl has a point,” Bjarni rumbled, his amusement obvious even without looking at him. “And if you make her use her magic to stay attached to you like a barnacle, she’s gonna need a fuck the moment we hit Niflheim. Dunno about you, but it’s almost been a week since I got off, and there’s no chance in Hel I’m keeping watch while you top off her magic.”
It was the first mention of the fact that that we hadn’t had sex since before we'd left Seattle, and embarrassment heated my cheeks at Bjarni’s bluntness. The journey had left me near-unconscious every night, and miraculously both alphas had decided it was more important that I recuperated my strength than satisfy them.
Modi grunted. “Fine. But you stay behind me. Got it?”
“Yeah. Got it,” I said, relief making me smile up at him. “Thank you.”
He only nodded and turned his focus back to the portal. “You’re with me, Betrayer.”
Loki sighed dramatically but trudged through the snow toward him and the portal—encouraged by the yank on his rope from Bjarni. He eyed the darkness and pressed his lips into a thin line. “I truly hate this place.”
“Everyone does,” Modi rumbled. “Forward.”
Loki rolled his eyes again, shooting the redhead an ungrateful look. Then he stepped through, leaving nothing but the end of the rope in Bjarni’s hand behind.
Bjarni grabbed my shoulder with his free hand and pushed, making me press up tight against Modi. I grabbed onto his waist as he turned around, effectively sandwiching me between his back and Bjarni’s chest.
We stepped through as one, and I sucked in a breath as the sensation of falling rippled through my body, pulling me apart and putting me back together again before I could scream.
A cold, clammy sensation clung to my face and seemed to bore into my lungs with every breath. I opened my eyes, blinking rapidly to try and regain my bearings.
For a long moment, everything seemed to be silent, gray nothingness. If it hadn’t been for the comforting pressure from in front- and behind me, I’d have panicked at the absence of sight.
Only when a shadow moved in the gray nothingness a little bit ahead did I realize that the clammy chill was thick fog surrounding us from all sides.
“Ugh. You could have warned me that this portal of yours would land us in the middle of a swamp,” Loki’s voice sounded from the dark figure. He waved his bound hands, making the fog swirl around him enough that he became somewhat more visible. “Where’s our exit, then?”
I shifted cautiously at his words, trying to make out the surface we were standing on, but it seemed to be frozen solid. A few dead tufts of grass crunched underneath my feet, but at least there was no snow.
“Three days east-northeast from here,” Bjarni rumbled behind me.
“And where exactly is ‘here’?” Loki said, forced patience dripping from every syllable. “Because it generally helps to know where you are when you’re looking to find somewhere to go.”
“We’re at the portal. Don’t really need to know anything other than that,” Bjarni said, irritation flickering in our bond as well as his voice.
“Just show him the map,” Modi sighed. “Your brother, the cold one—there is a rumor he spawned from this world, right? Which would mean your dear father knows these lands better than most. Odin or no, I am pretty sure even the God of Mischief can see the benefit of spending as little time as possible in Niflheim.”
“Is that why Grim’s so cold?” I asked, distracted by the unexpected bit of gossip. “His mother is from here? What—what is she?” I frowned, remembering what else Loki had fathered. “Oh, God, she’s… she’s human-ish, right?”
“Ish,” Loki agreed mildly, doing nothing to calm the wild images suddenly flying free in my imagination. “Ah, thank you.”
The last bit was directed at Bjarni, who thrust the rolled-up map at him. It took him a bit of fumbling to smooth it out with his bound hands, but when he managed he crouched down to scrutinize the old parchment. Apparently, god eyes had less trouble with the thick fog than my human ones.
“Ah, so we’re in Sötunmarsken,” he said, drawing his finger to the right. “And the other portal is—no! No, are you mad?”
The change in Loki’s tone was so immediate and volatile I took a step back. Bjarni’s hand on my shoulder kept me from tripping over another lump of frozen grass and falling on my ass.
Loki rose up to his full height, his face twisted with horror visible through the gray nothingness as he stared at us. “You’re taking us directly to Hvergelmir! Hvergelmir! Do you know what slumbers there? Do your puerile, foolish little minds not grasp the danger? You take us there, you take us to Níðhöggr’s door, and you will cost us all our lives!”
In the little time I’d known Loki, I’d learned you could never trust his words. He was the God of Mischief, or trickery and betrayal. But right then, as I looked at the absolute terror on his otherwise so divine features, I knew into the marrow of my bones that this time—this time he wasn’t acting.
He believed we were going to die.
Thirty-One
Modi
“Nidhug?” Annabel asked, butchering the word completely, yet removing none of the chill just the sound of that name caused. “You’ve mentioned him before, right? Who’s he again?”
“The Devourer,” Loki said, his face as pale as the fog surrounding us. “Your foolish mates are planning on bringing us directly into his maw.”
“I’m sorry, that’s really not an explanation,” she snapped. “Some of us aren’t all that well-versed in mythology.”
Loki turned to look at her. His eyes seemed dark as midnight as his gaze locked on her small form. “Perhaps that is the problem, human—you and your kind have forgotten what you once knew to be true. You have forsaken the old ways. Forsaken your old gods, your old fears.”
Annabel only blinked once, then turned to Bjarni. “Your dad is speaking in riddles. Could someone please tell me in plain English why this Nidhug is so bad the god of misery is shaking in his boots? What can possibly be worse than what we’ve already seen? Because I gotta tell you, that sea serpent we flew over on our way to America was kind of terrifying on an entirely new level.”