Freya doesn’t make a peep.
Aaaand, we’re doomed.
Okay, I’ll do it. The teensy little vanir starts to vibrate, which I’ve never seen up close, and then as her magic engages, the whole world becomes a little hazy. I’ve heard about this, but I’ve never experienced it myself.
It’s amazing.
For all intents and purposes, we just disappear to everyone but Tiny Bits.
So where are we going, exactly?
I hadn’t really thought past the escape part. I just didn’t want Bjorn to kill us, but now. . .
We’re going to the æsir, Freya says. Because the vanir shouldn’t be forcing bonds on the earth children as we have been.
It really is you, Little Bits says. Then you’ll understand when I say I really need to make one quick stop before we depart.
“Where?” I hate how panicked I sound, but even through the hazy place the world has become, I can see vanir answering Bjorn’s calls in the courtyard we just flew out of. “Because, I’m guessing the other vanir like you have ways of seeing us.”
They do, but no one would have any reason to suspect I’d help you. The only one who might have even seen us disappear was Brynhild, and I waited until we went behind a cloud to engage the dispersal.
“Another problem is that I’m slow,” I say. “Like, really, really slow. You may not have noticed, but it’s going to take us forever to get out of here. Like fleeing a racehorse in a cart.”
“Or on foot,” Freya mutters. “If you were crippled.”
I glare.
I’d offer to carry you, Little Bits says. But the stop I’m making is to pick up my bonded, and I’m probably not strong enough to carry all three of you.
Of course she needs to take her own bonded. I hope hers doesn’t hate her. “Then we should hurry.”
She waits patiently while I fly pathetically slowly behind her to her tiny, remote cave entrance on the very far side of the vanir complex. When we land on the lip, however, her small, muscular earth child attacks, spear in hand. I watch, dumbfounded, as the spear arcs toward the tiny moon vanir’s frame, wondering how he can see her.
Just as I think she’s a goner, which means we are too, she shifts and the spear sails out past her and down, down, down. That was sloppy. Now you’ll have to make a new spear. I bet that broke on the rocks below. She makes an actual tsking sound.
“I did what you said,” the guy says, grimacing. “The wards warned me someone was coming, and I. . .”
When she drops her shield, his eyes widen. “Who are—what’s—why are they here? And who are they?”
This winged earth child is Freja’s bonded, and the other one is Freja.
Actually, it’s Freya now.
We have a lot to catch them up on, but thanks to the speed of my flight, or the lack thereof, we’ll have plenty of time to do it. Now I’ll be praying to Jörð that once they know the truth, they won’t turn around and betray us. Because by the time we leave, the vanir are everywhere, and they’re definitely looking for us.
My speed actually works in our favor.
As we pass by the various vanir out on patrol, they’re all looking ahead, expecting Freja to have flown us far and fast once we managed to sneak out. No one’s expecting us to bob along like a tiny boat on a river.
Chapter 6
Gullveig
I thought flying the first day was tiring, but the second day, my shoulders and back hurt like I’ve been beaten. If Nótt—Little Bits has a real name, apparently—and her bonded earth child wanted to turn us in, it would be pathetically easy for Bjorn and his vanir to catch us.
“I can’t fly,” I say. “I can’t. It hurts to move at all.”
“Then we’ll walk,” Freya says. “Isn’t that how you reached us in the first place?”
