Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (31 page)

I considered the possibility, but didn’t think it worked that way. What were the chances the apples only revived Sköll and Hati exactly when we were reborn? That seemed a little far-fetched, even for magic apples from a goddess. But so did the rest of my life for that matter.

“So, what?” Chelle asked, calling my attention to her. “We go find this goddess and steal her apples? That’s how we defeat Sköll and Hati?” Not even the darkness hid the look of heavy skepticism on her face.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think….” I honestly didn’t know what I thought. But Freki had shown me Idun for a reason. Freki thought the goddess could help Dace. I couldn’t let myself believe otherwise. “I don’t know,” I said again, blowing out a breath.

“Does this change anything?” Ronan asked me.

I wanted to tell him it changed everything, but I couldn’t. “I don’t know.”

“Great,” Chelle sighed. “Any idea where we’re supposed to start looking?”

“No.” I rubbed my temples. We didn’t even know how to find Sköll and Hati. I kind of doubted finding Idun would be any easier. If the twin monster had her, knowing she was out there changed nothing until we found them. But if we could find her… maybe we could win this war. Maybe we could save Dace.

“Have you considered the ramifications?” Ronan asked quietly.

“If she’s still here, then the other gods might be too,” I said, trying not to get my hopes up. According to the Ragnarök prophecies, the gods no longer dwelled here. They remained locked up in Asgard or assorted other realms, waiting for the golden crow, Gullinkambi, to call them to battle. But what if the prophecies were wrong about that? What if some of them still lived on earth, hiding amongst the throngs of people, watching for the stirrings of
Jötunn
like Sköll and Hati? If that were true, then maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there, help waited for us after all.

can’t do this,” I said hours later, gritting my teeth against waves of nausea.

Ronan sat on the edge of the bed across from me in the small hotel room Chelle and I shared on the outskirts of Charlottesville, demanding I try to reach Freki again. Sweat dripped from my brow, and I felt mentally exhausted from my efforts. My head hurt five times worse than it had in the car, and I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t find the wolf locked away in my soul.

“You aren’t trying.”

I narrowed my gaze on Ronan.

“You keep losing focus.”

“You try focusing through a freaking migraine,” I snapped, shoving my hands deep into the pockets of my hoodie so I didn’t throw something at him. He was as bad as Dace, an overbearing dictator. Worse, he was the one who cautioned me not to try to reach her in the first place. Now he hounded me to reach deeper, push harder.

Ronan held my gaze, unmoved and unblinking.

“She’s doing the best she can,” Chelle said, coming to my defense.

Ronan ignored her, focusing instead on me. “How did you reach her earlier?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled, the last hour of frustration boiling over. “I don’t know how I got through to her in the car. I don’t know how I understood her. I don’t freaking know, okay?”

Fuki leapt to his feet, laid his ears back on his head, and snarled at Ronan.

Ronan held his hands up as if signaling his surrender to the protective, little wolf.

I slumped back in the uncomfortable wicker and wood chair, squeezing my eyes closed. Blood pounded in my ears in time to the painful throb in my head. I wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep. I felt drained and physically weaker than I’d been in weeks.

Fuki stopped snarling and nudged my knee. I reached out blindly to pat his head.

Silence reigned in the room for long moments, and then the sink came on in the bathroom.

“What were you thinking about before you went to sleep?” Ronan asked.

“About Freki,” I muttered. “I told you that already.”

“You dreamed her, Arionna,” he said, “and maybe that’s all it was. A dream. Something you wanted to be real.”

I cracked an eye open, shaking my head slowly back and forth. It might have been a dream, but Freki sent it to me. She remembered Idun, and she wanted me to find her. “Freki showed me Idun, Ronan. I know she did.”

The water in the bathroom shut off and Chelle came back into the room. “Here,” she said, handing me a cold washcloth.

I took it gratefully, pressing it to my forehead. Cold water dripped down the side of my face and into my hairline.

“Prove it,” Ronan demanded, watching me with sharp, black eyes. “Reach for Freki again.”

I took a deep breath, refusing to give in to frustration this time. I closed my eyes, focused… and found nothing. No Freki, and no clear path to her. I didn’t even know where to begin reaching out to her, or how to begin. A wall existed between us, exactly like the one between me and Dace, too tall to scale and too thick to burrow through. Freki was on the other side, but she might as well have been in China for all the good knowing that did me. I couldn’t reach her any more than she could unchain herself.

“I can’t,” I whispered, my shoulders slumping.

Ronan said nothing.

“I know Idun’s out there. I know she can help us.” I lifted the cold cloth from my head and looked across at Ronan. I wasn’t sure if I tried to convince him that I wasn’t dreaming or wishing or hoping or whatever he decided happened in the car, or if I tried to convince myself.

She was out there, wasn’t she?

Ronan eyed me for a long moment and then he climbed to his feet. “Get some sleep,” he said. “We’ll head to Dayton and then cut through to the university tomorrow.”

I watched in silence as he walked toward the door, frustrated at him for not believing me, and upset at myself for not being able to prove him wrong. I’d expected Dace’s doubt when I told him about Fenrir because Dace didn’t accept anything about our destiny, but I thought Ronan, at least, trusted me to know the difference between the subconscious rumblings of my mind, and a message from the other half of my soul.

The door closed behind him with a soft click.

“He’s tired,” Chelle said, her soft voice full of apology.

“Aren’t we all?” I muttered, laying my head against the chair back.

Chelle shot me a sympathetic smile. “Do you need your pain medicine again?”

“No,” I lied. I did need it, but I didn’t want to take it again. Not when Dace wouldn’t be here to wake me from the nightmares sure to come this time. I sighed heavily. “I didn’t just dream her, Chelle.”

Chelle smiled at me, but I saw the doubt lurking in her eyes, turning them a softer brown than usual. She didn’t believe me either, and why should she? I couldn’t prove anything. I didn’t even know where to begin proving it. Unlike Ronan though, Chelle was too polite to argue with me.

“We should get some sleep,” she said instead. “Ronan will want to leave early.”

“How’s your research going?” I asked my dad the next morning, clutching the phone to my ear with one hand and trying to pack my things back into my bag with the other, all while keeping a watchful eye on Fuki.

He’d given up on trying to get into the bathroom with Chelle for the moment, and was sitting at the foot of her bed. His gaze tracked back and forth across the television screen. His thoughts were a jumble of confusion as he tried to understand why little people were trapped inside the flat screen. I didn’t try to explain the intricacies of film and technology to him, content to let him try to work it out himself.

My head still throbbed, and I’d barely slept. Doubts plagued me all night, making me question everything. Why I left. What I saw. What the hell I thought I was doing out here, running from place to place with no real plan.

“It’s going slowly,” Dad said. “I tracked down a genealogy professor at Boston University, but she didn’t have anything particularly insightful to contribute.” He sighed into the phone. “She thought I was joking when I told her what I was looking for. I doubt she gets calls like that every day.”

“Probably not,” I said, rolling up a sweater and shoving it back into my bag. “So she wrote you off as a hack?”

“I think so. She said she’ll look, but I’ll be surprised if she calls me back.”

“Damn.” I really hoped my dad found something we could use, or, at the very least, something to offer a little kernel of hope.

“I’m sorry, hon,” Dad said. “I know you were hoping I’d find something on Sol, but maybe there isn’t anything to find.”

“Maybe there isn’t,” I sighed, sinking down onto the bed. So far, nothing seemed to be going our way; why should this be any different? The Sun god’s descendants were probably already dead, sacrificed by Sköll and Hati and an ancient prophesy Sol’s lineage probably didn’t even realize affected them. I hated destiny.

“You all right, hon?”

“Yeah, I’m―” I broke off, shaking my head. “No, not really.”

“What’s going on?”

Where did I begin?

“I had a… dream about Freki.”

“What happened?”

I hesitated for a long moment. I trusted my dad to keep my secret from Dace, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to put him in that position. It was bad enough I convinced Chelle and Ronan to say nothing about the flowers or Idun. How many others was I going to pull into lying to Dace for me, all so I didn’t have to deal with reality?

“Talk to me, hon,” Dad said. “Let me help.”

“I think Idun’s here, Dad.”

I held my breath, waiting for his response.

“Idun? The goddess?”

“Yes.”

He grunted as if I knocked the breath out of him. “Well, that’s a surprise,” he said then.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, relieved to hear genuine acceptance in his voice alongside surprise. Part of me kept expecting him to throw up his hands, call me a freak of nature, and walk away from this entire mess. Probably the same part of me that wanted to do the exact same thing and pretend none of this was happening to me. But I couldn’t walk away, and I think that’s why Dad didn’t either. I couldn’t, so he wouldn’t.

“That’s not all though. I think she’s with Sköll and Hati.”

“She’s playing for their team now?”

“No, I―” I stopped, my eyes widening. I hadn’t thought of that possibility before. Had she switched teams willingly? “I don’t think so,” I said, doubt coloring my tone. She was a captive in my dream, not a willing member of Team Evil. “I think they’re forcing her to help them.”