24

Six years past and worlds away

Asgard’s bridge stone wavered into view, solidifying as the bridge’s void receded, taking my colors with it. Only the less vibrant colors of hanging prisms and faded Alfar silk remained, dangling and fluttering from branches of birch and aspen surrounding the heavy blue-gray stone.

We’d barely arrived when Heimdal hissed hotly beside my ear, “Your compassion needs to learn some common sense. What were you thinking?”

My face warmed even more. I stepped back and jerked my hand away from Heimdal.

Or tried to. As soon as he felt my movement, he tightened his grip.

“No. We are going to stand right here and wait for Odin to call for you to bring him back.” Heimdal had been calm to the point of ice with Odin, but now storm clouds raged in his deep blue eyes. “Exactly that, and nothing else. And while we’re here, you should hope they find Loki.”

Fury rose like bile in my throat. I yanked again against Heimdal’s grasp.

He leveraged my attempt and instead drew me closer. Lowering his face toward mine, he added, “And I will hold onto your hand, because you’ve proven already you can’t be trusted to cooperate.”

“To obey, you mean.” I fairly spat the words at him. “But I am not your servant, not your slave, not your property—not yours, not Odin’s, not Asgard’s. I am Alfar, and I am my own person. You have no right—”

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Something urgently fierce in Heimdal’s voice cut off my words and through my anger.

Fear. He was afraid.

Stunned into momentary silence, I gaped up at him.

All the tight lines of Heimdal’s face relaxed at once. He rubbed his free hand over his face, fingers scrubbing through his whiskers with a quiet rasp. He ended with his palm cupping his mouth, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with me. Weary lines crinkled the corners of his eyes, from which the storm had abruptly faded.

A tickle of fresh alarm replaced the warmth of my anger.

Heimdal lowered his hand from his mouth. “Are you hurt?”

I blinked, utterly confused by the abrupt change in Heimdal’s manner. As cold as he’d behaved in front of Odin, he was that tender now. I shook my head. “What?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I had to cut you off from Loki.”

His magic. He was referring to the moment when he’d used his ward to prevent me from following Loki through the bridge I’d created to Midgard.

I frowned. “Why?”

Heimdal snorted, but it was not an amused sound.

“‘Why?’ What did you think you’d do after you took him to Midgard?” Heimdal’s fingers twitched around my wrist, briefly holding me more tightly. “Had you even considered that? Were you going to drop him off and come back to Asgard to face the music? I doubt that.”

Heat again flushed my face. “So this is about protecting Asgard’s property—me. The last bridge.”

“This is about you not running off alone with Loki.” Heimdal leaned right into my face. Then he took a visible breath and leaned back again. “Do you really think you’re safe from him? If he hurt you, I would—”

Heimdal broke off. Again, he rubbed his free hand across his face.

I stared stupidly at him, whispers of so many emotions brushing my mind that I couldn’t make sense of any of them.

“Loki killed Baldur, and he used you to do it.” Again, Heimdal’s fingers squeezed my wrist before relaxing again. “Do you think he would hesitate to—”

“You knew?” I gaped at him all over again. “You knew I took Loki to Midgard?”

Heimdal stopped rubbing his face and looked into my eyes. A wry, unamused smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “I hear many things. Remember?”

My breath hitched. I remembered that day in front of the hearth, when he’d said that and then our eyes had locked. I’d known right then, that he felt about me like I did about him.

I knew it now, all over again.

The thumb of the hand holding my wrist rubbed the heel of my hand. His fingers slid down, leaving my wrist to enclose my hand. Gently, he tugged at my hand.

Then he hesitated. To judge whether I intended to resist him, I imagined.

When I didn’t, he stepped closer. Letting go of my hand at last, he put both arms around me and drew me close against his chest.

I leaned my face against him. His touch was no longer a shackle. His heart thumped beneath my ear.

“You have crossed Odin.” Heimdal whispered, but I could hear a tremor in his voice. “I’m not sure you understand what that means. I’ve spent my life watching what happens to people who cross Odin.”

Like Loki. But another thought impinged on that one.

Heimdal is afraid. I abruptly grasped just why it was that Heimdal had been so stern in Odin’s presence. Heimdal couldn’t protect anyone if Odin decided the Watcher himself was a threat.

Before I could fully process that thought, Heimdal drew our hands together between us, as he had the last time he’d held me like this. My body objected—it wanted us to stay right where we were.

Heimal’s face lowered toward mine. He glanced at my mouth. I waited for him to tell me again that I was too soft-hearted and vulnerable for him to—

He kissed me. His lips were gentle at first, but their friction against mine and the warm puffs of breath from his mouth sent a trail of heat curling through my belly. Then his lips pressed more firmly, and his tongue slid into my mouth. The hand that had so recently been holding my wrist trapped within it now tangled in my hair.

Behind us, barely audible above the sighing of leaves and the rush of blood in my ears, a chime sounded.

Heimdal groaned. The vibration tingled against my tongue. He broke the kiss, taking a moment to nibble my lip once before leaning back entirely.

Chime. The communication crystal.

Odin.

I glanced guiltily behind me, toward the bridge stone. The prism atop it glowed with a faint but steady light.

I’d forgotten all about Loki.

Heimdal’s hand lowered to my wrist. The other cupped my cheek and turned my face so that I looked up into his eyes.

“Please.” Some of Heimdal’s typical sternness had returned to his voice, but his eyes pleaded. “I can’t protect you if you keep fighting me.”

If I kept fighting him. If I kept fighting Odin, he meant. If I kept behaving as I had been, going against Odin’s wishes. If I continued arguing for or trying to help Loki.

I felt suddenly ill. How could Heimdal ask this of me—to stop being who I was simply because Odin was a bully?

Heimdal must have glimpsed something of what I was thinking on my face. Or heard it in my pulse or my breathing. Pure anguish tightened the lines of his face.

“You need to be here, Iris.” Heimdal spoke quietly but unevenly, as if a great deal of effort went into accomplishing that. “Unless you plan to flee to Alfheim and live there alone forever, you need Asgard’s protection. I can smooth this over, but you have to trust me. You have to stop fighting me.”

I couldn’t answer him. Part of me knew he was right—Odin might be a bully, but he was a powerful one. But I was right, too. I didn’t know if I could sacrifice who I was in order to make nice with Odin.

The communication crystal chimed again. It couldn’t actually sound angry, but I imagined that it did.

I moved to the bridge stone, Heimdal a step behind me with his hand still loosely holding mine. With my free hand, I touched the communication crystal. It buzzed beneath my fingers, a sensation that worked up my arm and into my temples. I closed my eyes so I could see better.

A vision drifted into my mind’s eye, centered on the lump of gray bridge stone where I’d sent Loki and then taken Odin and Thor. Odin’s face filled my mind. At the very periphery of the vision, Thor’s muscled arm was visible.

But nothing else. No one else. Did that mean they’d found and simply killed Loki on the spot? Or that they hadn’t found him at all?

Given the scowl embedded on Odin’s face, I judged it was the latter.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. A sense of relief washed through me, but it was all muddled up with the fear Heimdal had finally implanted in me.

Because if Heimdal was scared for me, then maybe I should be, too.

“They didn’t find him, I don’t think.” I murmured the words to Heimdal.

What I thought he’d say, I don’t know. What he actually said was, “Gods help us.”

The crystal chimed a third time.

“We’d better go,” Heimdal added.

I broke contact with the communication crystal. Heimdal shifted his grip from my hand to my wrist and squared his shoulders. By the time the bridge carried us to Midgard, he’d reverted to emotionless expression and cold eyes.

Ice filled my own stomach. Even knowing now that he was more scared for me than angry, Heimdal’s chilly persona filled me with dread.

Odin said nothing. He slapped his hand onto my shoulder. I waited for Thor to take hold of Odin’s shoulder, and I returned all of us to Asgard.

“She is restricted to her home, or to this clearing if necessary.” Odin looked at Heimdal and not at all toward me.

Property. He thinks I belong to him.

Ire reheated all the fear-induced calm I’d thought I’d found. My face warmed.

“Shackle her if you need to. I no longer care.” Without awaiting a response, from myself or from Heimdal, Odin stalked away. Thor glared silently at me before following his father.

We stood there for a moment, Heimdal and I, with his hand locked around my wrist. He made not a single move to stand up for me.

My instinct was to turn on him, to forget everything he’d said only moments ago.

Right before he kissed me.

Heimdal was the Watcher. Asgard’s protector. Obediently compelled to follow Odin’s every order.

“The Aesir always come first, little rainbow.”

I wanted to scream and rage, to break free and leave Asgard.

I stared up into the icy calm of the man who stood beside me, looking for signs that I shouldn’t do just that.

He returned my gaze calmly. But a ferocity seemed to light his eyes.

“I can’t protect you if you keep fighting me.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“I suppose, then,” I managed to say with only a little anger shredding the edges of my words, “That you had better take me home.”