20
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I woke, not to the sound of Fen, but to a million quiet whispers. They slipped in and out of my ears like tiny echoes. My head came off the ground, but I couldn’t open my eyes.
They were frosted completely shut.
“Ow.” I shook my hands, my fingertips coming slowly back to life as I infused power into them. It felt like a thousand needles had been inserted at the same time.
Once I could move them, I lifted them to my eyes, careful to proceed gently.
The energy was warm and felt good as the ice crystals melted away. I blinked a few times, plucking the remaining stubborn chunks off.
My arms and legs felt stiff and heavy. I had no idea how long I’d been out.
As I tried to sit up fully, I cried out. Everything ached. I’d been in the same position for too long, and my body was like a cube of ice. The cage was too small to stand upright, which wasn’t a problem at the moment, since I was pretty sure my legs wouldn’t hold me up anyway.
I directed energy downward as I squinted into the darkness. “Gah!” My head crashed into the bars. Hovering around me were hundreds of ghostly faces. I managed to swallow the scream that was edging up my throat, remembering to keep quiet. I didn’t want Matus to be alerted that I was awake.
These souls were trying to communicate with me.
Or they were trying to eat me.
I leaned forward. The image of a young male floated directly in front of me. His head was pretty well defined, his body not so much. He was handsome and must’ve died around the age of twenty or so. He was mouthing something to me, and I strained to hear.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” I told him. The ghost tried again, and I shook my head. “No luck.” He floated through the bars, which shocked me, but shouldn’t have. He was incorporeal, so not much would keep him out, but it was still an adrenaline rush.
I held perfectly still as he floated up to my ear, freezing air accompanying him, numbing my earlobe instantly.
“You…shouldn’t…be here,” he whispered on the barest of breath.
“I know,” I replied. “I’ve been exiled here by a powerful goddess. It seems that Hel was unprepared to have a visitor such as myself. So she sent me here.”
“You…must…get away.”
“I’d love to,” I told the ghost, who continued to hover near my ear. “But I don’t have anyplace to go. Like I said, I’ve been exiled here. I’m not allowed to leave. And before I can even think about leaving, I have to save my brother, and in order to do that, I have to convince your esteemed leader that her real king is ready to arrive. It’s all pretty complicated.”
The spirit floated in front of me with a grimace on his misty face, and he shook his head, which was totally weird, since it resembled a normal, everyday gesture. Then he bobbed back toward my ear. I sent warmth to my ear to compensate for the deep freeze. “You…will die…soon,” he said. “And you will be trapped…among us…forever.”
Alarmed, I craned my head around.
Did this ghost know something I didn’t? “How do you know that?” I leaned forward, glancing out of the cage, trying to locate Matus. Had Hel really sent me down here to die?
“You must…break out…I will show you…the way.”
I had no idea if I could trust the spirit or not, but I wasn’t about to die. Adrenaline pulsed through me, helping with the warmth. Gundren lay on the ground beside me. I picked up the swords, the blades immediately amplified by light. “Escaping is going to make noise,” I said. “Is Matus going to hear me?”
Almost immediately, the spirits floating in a thick haze around me began to chirp.
There was no other description for it.
It sounded like a million birds had taken up residence in the gorge. They were covering for me, and I wasn’t about to waste their efforts.
I contorted myself in order to get the blades over my shoulders, trying to eke out as much space as I could in the tiny area. When I whipped them forward, I concentrated my energy, the small amount I had left. A loud clang rang out as one of the bars gave way. “There was no way Matus didn’t hear that,” I muttered, positioning my blades over my shoulders for the second strike.
The spirit murmured in my ear, “He is not in the hall.”
I brought the blades down again, severing another few bars. Then I kicked at my enclosure, bending the bars further, creating a hole big enough for me to crawl through. The cage clearly wasn’t Valkyrie-proof, and since a Valkyrie had never been here before, no one had known.
Now they did.
I scurried out as fast as I could, the phantom still hovering over my shoulder. “Okay, where do I go?” I asked. The spirit glanced upward, and I followed his gaze. “I have to scale this gorge?” Just like I’d thought when I arrived.
“There will be…danger at the top,” he said as I began to move forward.
“For once, I’d like to be sent to a nice, peaceful place.” I jogged to one of the sides and evaluated the situation. “What’s at the top? Are there more beasts lurking in the shadows?” I had no actual plan of what to do once I got out of here, but first things first. Staying alive was at the top of my list.
“We cannot…pass through,” the spirit replied. “I do not know.”
“You’ve never been up there?” I asked. I tried to spot a patch of wall that looked scalable.
“It is restricted to us.” He was fading in and out as I began to jog toward a location that looked plausible.
An invisible barrier of some kind must be in place so the souls couldn’t escape. It was a good thing I wasn’t dead. I stopped, finding a place that looked the most scalable, with some outcroppings of rock that I could hold on to. I sheathed Gundren, took Gram out of my belt, and began to climb, using the dagger to stab into the rock as a handhold.
I was making good time until I heard a boisterous roar.
Matus was back.
The young spirit had stayed with me during my climb. By my estimate, I was halfway up the wall. “The master is angry.” The ghost stated the obvious.
“He sounds like it,” I grunted, forcing Gram into another rock as I maneuvered up as quickly as I could. I had no idea if Matus could follow me all the way up or not, but likely he could. After all, he was the foreman and had Hel’s favor. “Is there any way your ghost pals can distract him?”
“He will not be denied.” The drifting spirit began to float away. I didn’t blame him. Being seen in my company would implicate him.
In twenty feet, I would be at the top. What I was going to do when I got there was still up for debate.
After a few more footholds, something tugged on my ankle.
It yanked roughly. Lucky for me, Gram had been sunk firmly into a deep crevice. I dangled against the rock face, clutching the dagger with all my might.
Matus made a sound resembling a wild boar when I didn’t tumble off the wall and plunge to the depths below. He was going to do everything in his power to keep me from reaching the top.
I had to think of something else. And quickly.
As I hung there, trying to find my footing, knowing that Matus was going to swoop in for another attempted takedown, my hand began to tingle. My head shot to where Gram was inserted into the rock.
A light was beginning to kindle.
I’d hit a spot where I could make a cillar!
I had no idea if it was a lucky break or not, but I wasn’t going to question it. I didn’t have much to lose at this point. Matus came at me again, his beefy, invisible hands closing around my neck this time.
As I struggled to get free, I forced as much energy as I could through my hand, into Gram, and into the rock wall.
The telltale tug happened a moment later.
Thank goodness, because I was about to lose consciousness. “Matus,” I gasped. “I’m sorry to leave you here, but I must get going. It’s not on my agenda to die today.”
I heard a strangled cry from behind me as a cillar sucked me in.
Matus didn’t join me in the vortex, but I hadn’t been extremely certain he wasn’t going to come along for the ride, since he’d been holding on to me.
I had no idea how to direct myself in the cillar, but I focused my mind on staying in Helheim. It would be folly for me to leave.
It was hard to open my mouth because of the air rushing by at wind-tunnel strength, but I managed, “Please keep me in Helheim.” I closed my eyes and imagined my original cell, the one where I’d felt the cillar the first time. “Take me to that place.”
Once I’d made my mind up, my body was tugged to the right.
Maybe it was working.
A few seconds later, I was ejected from the vortex.
I rolled twice before my body was stopped by something on the softer side, something that grunted, “Oooof.”
I’d know that grunt anywhere.
My body sang with pleasure. “Fen!”
I was in his arms before he could respond. He embraced me tightly, his heat singeing my cold body. He pulled back, his face quizzical. “Shieldmaiden, it’s like your blood has run cold.” I angled my face up to tell him where I’d been, but his lips met mine first, scorching me with their heat.
The kiss was hungry and deep, my hands tangled in his hair.
I’d missed this man with every fiber in my being, and I was so happy to see him. Reluctantly, after a few more delicious moments feeling his firm lips on mine, I pulled back. I was panting, but the kiss had warmed me up considerably. “I have so much to tell you.” I glanced around the room. “Where are we?”
“The better question is where did you come from?” His arms didn’t move an inch from my body, his grip like a vise around my waist.
“In a nutshell, Hel sent me to one of her labor camps, I’m pretty sure to kill me.” I stroked his shoulders. “Matus, the guy who runs the place, locked me in a cage, but then I broke out, thanks to a bunch of spirits who woke me up.” Fen’s expression darkened. “I had to scale the gorge to get away, but Matus came back. Luck was on my side. Well, luck and Gram.” I quickly glanced over my shoulder and, to my relief, saw the dagger lying on the ground near the cillar. “I managed to stick Gram into a rock and created a cillar—which apparently is one of the specialties Odin gave me so I could protect myself. Thankfully, it sucked me in before Matus could pull me off the wall. I don’t really know how to get around in Yggdrasil, but I told the tree that I wanted to stay in Helheim. I pictured my old cell, but it sent me here instead.” I glanced around. The place was sparse, just a little bigger than mine, with the added benefit of torchlight. “Where are we?”
Fen chuckled. “You’re in rare form, Valkyrie.” He leaned over and kissed the tip of my nose. “Welcome to my containment area.” He stepped back, and I instantly missed the heat of his body. “That, of course, is how my sister phrased it. I am to be kept here until I’m willing to cooperate like a nice doggie. Her words, not mine.”
“Well, at least you have room to move and light,” I said. “Mine was a tiny, dark cubicle. What does your sister have against furniture anyway?”
“Hel doesn’t eat or sleep.” Fen clasped my hand and led me to an opposite wall, tugging me down next to him. “She has never been much for trappings. I’m fairly certain she spends most of her time sitting on her throne and talking to the dead.”
“I have so much I have to tell you,” I said. “But first, tell me about your trial. What happened after I left?”
He draped a forearm over my thigh in a very distracting way. “After you left rather abruptly,” he growled, “the hall erupted and could not be quelled. Odin seemed furious with Frigg. He barely managed to keep it together. All the Valkyries threatened to retaliate. It was quite a scene.”
“Well, Frigg deserved it.” I was proud of my sisters for avenging me. “She didn’t give me a fair trial—not that I would’ve had one in the first place. But it would’ve been nice to at least have the formality of one.”
“Think of it this way, shieldmaiden,” Fen said. “You’ve garnered much more sympathy this way. If we succeed in our quest of bringing Baldur back, there’s no doubt that you will have good standing in Asgard. During your short time there, I heard the gossip. People want to like you. They want to know Odin’s secret daughter. You are a delicious mystery.” He leaned over, tilting my chin up, his lips warm and firm.
It would be so easy to get lost in him.
I craved his touch and his body like no other. But we couldn’t afford to take that time at the moment. I gripped him tightly before I let go. “I’ve missed you so much,” I murmured into his neck, taking in his masculine scent. “I’m glad you’re here with me. I’m not sure I’d be able to do this alone.”
“You’ve already proven that you can do well enough without me. You just freed yourself from the labor camp.” Fen’s intense gaze sent shivers rushing through me. “But I’m glad I’m here, too. I would be out of my mind with worry if you were in this place alone.”
“As much as I want to make up for lost time,” I said, “I’d rather get out of here as quickly as possible. I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, but I found a possible solution to getting Baldur out while you were locked up.”
Fen raised a single eyebrow. “You worked fast.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” I said. “It seems my mother had kept in touch with a powerful oracle called Mersmelda. She found my grandmother, who took me to see her. She’s the one who told me about the demigod Vali. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes,” Fen said. “The son of a giantess, like me.”
I chuckled. “Yes, well, that’s where the similarities end. He’s a recluse who lives out in a forest on the outskirts of Asgard. It turns out he’s always had a thing for Hel. Mugin even showed me his memories. He loves Baldur fiercely, and it’s his destiny to take his brother’s place here. We just have to convince Hel to give Baldur up in favor of Vali.”
“And how do we get the demigod here?” Fen asked.
I patted my belt. “She gave a jewel—”
It wasn’t there.
I sprang to my feet, frantically patting all around my belt. “It’s not here! The jewel is not here!” I spun in a circle, searching the ground where I’d landed. “I had it before I went to the labor camp. I tried to show it to Hel. One of the spirits had to have taken it, possibly when I was out cold for a while.” I glanced at Fen. “Or maybe it was Matus? But he didn’t seem like the jewel type, and he wasn’t around. But I was asleep for a while, so it’s a possibility.”
Fen steadied me with his hands on my shoulders. “It’s going to be okay, Valkyrie. Calm down. We’ll find this jewel and get it back.”
“You don’t understand. Without the jewel, we can’t—”
The door to Fen’s room burst open.
“Just as I thought,” Hel’s voice rang out. “How dare you defy me?”