But there’s nothing we can do about it now.“I know,” I say.“I’m not angry.”
“Really?”Coral slowly bobs her head.“That fast?No big deal?You’re just over it?”
I point.“Do not get any ideas.This is a huge mess.Like, please tell me you’re not planning on going off with your dragons and sleeping who knows where, now.”I glare pointedly.
“Of course not,” Sammy says.“Gordon’s always slept in the room next to mine.”
The open air freeze-box.Right.
“And that’s close enough?”
Gordon bobs his head.
“Fine.”I turn.“But what about you, Princess?”
Is that directed at me or at her?They’re both the most imperious, holier-than-thou creatures I know, but at least Jade’s kind.I suppose Asteria’s kind enough, for a dragon.
“Asteria says she’ll stay in that room as well, for now.”
For now.I hate hearing that.Unlike before, I’m not in charge of keeping Jade safe anymore.I’m not the boss of where she sleeps or what she does—Asteria is.
“You’re bonded to the sister of Mom’s bonded.”I hate that.Ocharta was the literal worst.
I’m nothing like my sister.
I can’t argue that.No one could even approach her level without being at least half-devil.No matter what strange sort of rivalry Asteria and I have, I don’t hate her.She seems to be mostly good.“I can’t think of another dragon I’d rather see Jade bonded to,” I say.“Though I’m not happy it happened.Thank you for understanding that she’s very young and still needs her human family.”
That night, in spite of the late hour, I take the time to tuck the kids in, hug them, and kiss them.Then I tell them a story.It’s not an epic story.It’s not about the love between the earth and the sky.No, that night, I tell them the story of how our mom and dad met.I talk about how they fell in love, and how, in spite of their differences, they built our family.
“But Mom kind of let you down,” Coral says.“Aren’t you mad at her?”
“She wasn’t nice to you,” Sammy says.“She didn’t come see us, either, and you were bonded, but you did.”
I pull them all close, Sammy against my left, Jade on his other side, Coral on the right.“Mom helped me escape when the humans were torturing those dragons.Without her, I would never have made it back.”I tell them that story too, and I realize that without a bad guy, without a villain to fight, our stories don’t mean a lot.
“Heroes are defined by the things they do when life’s hard, and the way they’re willing to stand up and fight, even when the enemy’s scary,” I say.“You three are too young to become heroes or villains, yet.Do you hear me?”I press a kiss to Sammy’s forehead.“No fighting or saving or anything else until you’re eighteen.”
“Do you think they’ll wait for us to grow up?”he asks.“Or will everything awesome happen while I’m stuck in this room, growing?”
Nothing ever waits.“I hope so,” I lie.
14
Gullveig
It feels surreal, now the moment is finally here.
I’ve stood here, docile and patient, silently preparing myself for what’s about to happen as well as I can, but there’s not much more I can do.Gorm and I were carefully chosen for our aptitude, and then we trained intensely for years—sent here for just this purpose, but now that the vanir have taken us, I can’t help the trembling in my hands.My feet are grimy, the hem of my roughspun dress, ragged.
Running through the woods does that, I suppose.It was necessary, to be captured and brought here against our will.They’d never have trusted it otherwise.When we heard that Freyr and Freja had both lost their human bonded, we knew the time to be ‘caught’ was right.
“It’s alright,” my twin brother says.“We’re ready.”
Maybe he is.
As the black creature approaches me, its head lowered, its eyes intent, I want to huddle and cry out like a child.The vanir are so different than the æsir we love so much, so much crueler.
Then I feel it—a sensation I’ve felt hundreds of times, or maybe even thousands.A sensation I’ve been prepared to fight against almost my entire life.
