Perfekt Balance (The Ære Saga Book 3) (18 page)

“Huh. Well, whatever you did, thank you. My
mind feels more refreshed than it has in years. If I had my
caseload in front of me, I’d be able to work clear through my
spring sentencings in two, three hours tops.”

“Good. Then I did my job.”

Forse held up his forearm so I could see him
as he lay on his back. If the bags beneath his eyes were any
indication, the poor guy was still exhausted.

“You need to go back to sleep,” I
advised.

“Not while you’re still out there. Thank Odin
your bruises look better.” Forse squinted. “Does your head still
hurt?”

“It’s fine.” I reached up to touch the skin
behind my ear. It was a little sensitive, and dried blood matted my
hair, but my energy ball had knitted the wound back together
nicely.

“You holding up okay otherwise?” Forse tucked
his free arm behind his head.

“I guess.”

“
What
does that mean? Talk to me,
hjärtat
.”

My teeth worried my bottom lip. Forse needed
to focus on healing, and capturing Runa before she made good on her
promise to kill him. Everything else was superfluous.

“Elsa,” Forse warned. “If you don’t tell me,
I’ll never bring you Coke in a bottle again. You’ll be forced to
drink that inferior canned variety, into perpetuity.”

“
No need
to get mean.” I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m worried about how far
Runa’s going to take this fight. We’re a strong team, but she
captured me, she almost killed you…things aren’t going well
at all
. It was my job to
keep the peace on this mission, and I failed. My inability to
master unifying could very well be the weakness that gets us all
killed.”

“What are you talking about? We were all
responsible for bringing Runa in. And I promised I’d keep you safe
on this mission. If anyone’s a failure here, it’s me.

“
You
couldn’t have known she’d ingest some superhero pill,” I argued.
“And you may have had one off moment in Svartalfheim, but I’ve had
tons.” I quickly recounted my attempt to turn Runa into a kinder,
gentler sociopath. “We both see how that ended,” I finished,
pointing at my head. “This is my first actual mission, and I’ve
been abducted, beat up, and sent my charge off in a rage to kill
you. Nobody could accuse me of doing a decent job this round. What
if it’s like this every time? What if I never figure this out?
Asgard needs a real Unifier, not some lousy interim. If I can’t
master this skill, then I can’t teach Mia how to do it. And if
neither of us get it together, the realm’s going to be susceptible
to attack all the time
.
Then the light realms will fall. And it’s going to be all
my fault.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re new at
this. And you haven’t had anybody to train you. We need to figure
out how your mom did it.” Forse looked at the sky for a moment.
“Mmm.” He typed something into his arm and waited. A moment later,
he swiped his finger across the screen. “That’s what I was hoping
for.”

“What?” I leaned forward.

“
Freya
finished scanning your mom’s old journals. I’ve got them in my
inbox. Let me send them to you.” Forse typed again. When he
finished, my arm hummed lightly.
I’ve got mail.

“I see them.” I swiped the flashing image on
my skin, and my mom’s journal appeared, splitting the screen with
Forse’s face. “We are so blind, Forse. We should have looked at
these weeks ago, when we first found them. There’s definitely
something we can use in here.”

“Agreed. If you read them from your end, and
I read from mine, I’m sure we’ll find a tool that helps us figure
this out.” Forse’s finger moved across the screen as he scrolled
through the document.

“I need you to focus on healing,” I told
Forse softly. “I’ve got this, please rest until you feel
better.”

“I will,” Forse promised. “In a minute.”

“Forse—”

“You have my word.” Forse met my gaze and I
sighed.

“Five minutes. Then you rest,” I
confirmed.

“It’s a deal.” Forse winked at me, then
turned his attention to the text.

I leaned back against the cold stone wall as
I stared at my mom’s familiar handwriting. The chill dancing along
my spine barely bothered me. At this point, I was pretty much
numb.

One minute passed before Forse spoke again.
“Here’s something interesting.”

“What?” I looked over from my reading,
meeting Forse’s gaze in the screen.

“Your mom mentions spirits.” Forse rubbed his
jaw. “When you worked on Runa—before you sent her off in a
homicidal rage—”

“Hey,” I protested.

“I’m kidding. But when you worked on Runa,
did you push your energy at her like you do during a healing?”

“
Ja
.” Where was he going with this?

“What if unifying isn’t about energy?” Forse
asked.

“Don’t be silly; everything’s about
energy.”

“Hear me out.” Forse closed his eyes, like he
was deep in thought. “What if unifying is about connecting with
someone on another level. A spiritual level.”

Intuition pinged from the recesses of my
brain. Forse was on to something. “Go on.”

“Sometimes you call your energy your spirit.
And you’ve said before that you can tell whether someone has a
light or dark spirit.” Forse opened his eyes. “But have you ever
communicated with another spirit?”

“Like, talked directly to someone’s spirit?”
I paused. “No. I never have.”

“Do you think it’s possible?” Forse
asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’ve
never tried.”

“Want to try with me?”

My breath
caught. Did I? That could get
really
personal. “I don’t know. What if I…do
something wrong?”

Forse shrugged. “Then you do something wrong.
It’s just me. I won’t tell anyone.”

That was true. Forse never divulged my
confidences.

“You are pretty trustworthy,” I agreed. “My
parents never found out about the time you snuck me home three
hours after curfew.”

“You were a sophomore. They would have
shipped me straight to Helheim if they knew I took you to a junior
party. Especially one with that much mead.”

I rolled my eyes. “Letting me have one drink
wouldn’t have killed you.”

“Maybe not. But your brother would have.
Don’t forget, he was there too.”

“Isn’t he always?” I grumbled.

“Mmm. And speaking of your brother, I also
never told him about the time you asked me to teach you how to
kiss.” Forse raised one eyebrow and heat flooded my face.

“
Oh my
gods! You can’t bring that up,
ever
. I was, like, twelve.”

“You were six hundred and eighteen,” Forse
corrected. “Plenty old enough to know what you were doing.”

“That’s twelve in mortal years,” I hissed.
“And there’s a statute of limitations on bringing up embarrassing
memories. That one passed.”

“
Let me
check my law books.” Forse pretended to scan through the
communicator. “Huh, would you look at that? It says I have your
whole entire existence to bring up any and all kissing memories.
Sorry,
hjärtat
.”

“You’re terrible,” I muttered.

“Am I? Or am I an exceptional secret keeper,
one you owe big time for never telling the headmaster those sick
notes you gave him to get out of combat class were fake—since you
actually spent fifth period reading in the woods behind
school.”

“I’m sort of wishing I’d read less and
combat-ed more right now.” I gestured around my cell.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. You had
a solid grasp of the self-defense maneuvers I taught you before we
Bifrosted in here. And you did everything right when Runa grabbed
you. That crystal she consumed had properties nobody expected. None
of us could have fought her off.”

“Thanks.” Forse’s words loosened the feeling
of failure that had dogged me since my capture. “Will you teach me
more when we get home? Maybe some offensive stuff, too? It’d be
super fabulous if this could never happen again.”

“You want me to pin you to the wall and watch
you squirm? Why Elsa Fredriksen, what would your brother say?”
Forse drew his brows up in mock surprise.

“My brother can just deal. Besides, he owes
you one. I do too. For bringing Tyr home when he went on that
rampage after our parents died. I thought we’d lost him—that he’d
finally given in to the darkness he’s always been so afraid of.” My
stomach felt hollow as the memory passed through me.

“It was no big deal. He was easy enough to
turn around.”

“What did you say to him?” I raised an
eyebrow.

Forse shifted, repositioning his arm beneath
his head. “I told him he was an idiot for leaving you alone when
you needed him the most. And that if he didn’t get his sorry butt
back to Asgard and look after you, I’d have him put on my list and
brought into custody until he got control of himself.”

“You threatened to put the God of War in
jail?” I laughed. “That’s not a nice thing to do to your
friend.”

“You were hurting, Elsa. Your brother needed
to god up and be there for you.” Clear green eyes met mine through
the screen. They were impassively cool, as they always were, but
beneath the façade Forse maintained for the worlds rested a warmth
only a few got to see.

Right now, that warmth was lighting a spark
somewhere just south of my navel. If I hadn’t been stuck in his
psycho ex-girlfriend’s tower, I’d have asked him for another
kissing lesson right then and there.

“Thanks for always looking out for me,” I
whispered.

Forse shrugged. “I’d do anything to ensure
your happiness. You know that.”

“I know,” I murmured. “And I want to do the
same for you.”

“You already do.” Forse repositioned himself
so he lay on his side. His coloring still hadn’t returned to
normal, and I knew our five minutes were nearing their end, but
since I didn’t know when I’d get the chance to talk with him like
this again, I pressed forward with the question I’d been waiting
decades to ask.

“Forse?” I ventured.

“Mmm?”

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth for a
beat. When I released it, my words tumbled out. “Why did you date
Runa? She was so awful to everyone—why did you choose to be with
her back then?”

Forse closed his eyes. When he opened them
again, they were clouded with remorse. “I know it’s hard to
believe, but she was different with me. Maybe it’s because of who I
was fated to become, or the code I was bound to uphold as Justice,
even when we were still in high school. But the Runa I knew in
private was very different from the Runa she showed to the rest of
the worlds. She was softer, more vulnerable. There was this
sweetness to her that’s unfathomable now. It was obvious someone
had hurt her very badly, and that she lashed out from fear. Back
then, I didn’t believe she was the girl she presented to the rest
of Asgard; I thought her coldness was just a mask to cover the
vulnerability. Someone did a number on her Else, though I never was
able to get her to open up enough to tell me who—or what—had hurt
her. And I honestly believed I could help her—or at the very least,
be a non-damaging presence in her life.” Forse shook his head.
“Talk about a gross misjudgment of character.”

For the
millionth time, my heart tugged at Forse’s actions. He was just so
very
kind
. And I
so very much adored him for it.

“I don’t think you misjudged her back then,
Forse. Runa changed, but when you were together, I believe she
still had a chance at choosing a good life. Maybe she still does.”
I sighed. “You’re a good guy, Forse Styrke. I didn’t understand
your previous assessment of Runa, but I know you saw more good in
her than the rest of us did when you were together. And I respect
you for wanting to be there for someone who needed a healthy dose
of light.”

“
Yeah,
well, look where it got us.” Forse nodded at his arm. “Let’s take
an hour and comb through your mom’s journals—see if your mom
explains
how
the
whole unifying thing works; if it has anything to do with spirit
communication or not. Do you want to stay on the coms and read
together?”

“
Yes. But
your five minutes are up and you promised me you’d rest. Another
few hours of sleep will do you a
lot
more good than reading old diaries with
me.”

“I promised I’d rest, but there’s no way I’m
waiting a few hours to come and find you.” Forse didn’t blink.

“Okay, let your body regenerate for an hour
and call me again when you wake up.”

“I feel fine,” Forse protested.

“Your energy says otherwise. And I’m sorry,
but I’m not letting you go back in the field without being fully
charged.”

“I’m not a battery,” Forse groaned. “But I
know you see things I can’t, so fine. You have thirty minutes. If
Henrik’s guesstimate on the locator’s performance time was right,
that’s the earliest it might be able to pick up a trace on you. The
minute it does, we can move out.”

I smiled. “Then I’ll expect you here in
thirty-five.”

“It’s a date.” Forse’s eyes crinkled. “And
Elsa?”

“Hmm?”

“
I miss
my
hjärtat
.”

With that
he signed off, leaving me with a warm feeling in my chest. Runa’s
blast might well have been the best thing that could have happened
to Forse…and to me.

It had opened up Forse’s heart.

WHILE I WAITED FOR
Forse to come for me, I positioned my back against the cell
door and turned on my communicator. Runa wouldn’t be able to see me
through the window at this angle, and if the door opened I could
just turn off my screen. My arm hummed, and I opened the document
to the first journal I came across. It was dated before I was
born.