What memories have you regained? she asks.
“I first had one of myself talking to my brother Gorm’s children, just before Freya was set to marry Odin. That was a shock, since I’d met Freya in human form in the volcano already. Then I saw how Freja bonded me when I was Gyda, and then I saw the two of them locate and steal the heart.”
Euphrasia nods. I do worry that whatever I share might alter what has been foretold.
Foretold. . .by my mother? The one who stole the heart and sent all of us to die?
Euphrasia’s eyes look sad. Freya became my very best friend in all the world. She was a very good vanir, and she wanted what was best for all of us. It’s true; I knew Gyda. Her mother was bonded to me. Then I met Gullveig. Gyda bonded Freja and returned with wings, the heart, and a new name. She showed up one morning quite early, after Odin returned to question myself and my bonded again about the failure of our plan.
“As I see it, our main questions are, what happened to the water dragons’ wings, where did earth dragons come from, and why did you have to leave here in the first place?”
In order to answer those, there is much you must first know.
There’s a loud crash outside, and I jog to the edge of the platform around our room that overlooks the porch and courtyard outside. I have to poke my head past the red bubble to really see well. Hyperion has crashed in the courtyard, and his inelegant landing appears to have destroyed all the cobblestones Gordon put down.
“Sorry.” Coral waves. “Hyperion said I could drive, but I’m not very good at it yet.”
“Drive?” What’s she saying? “Drive what?”
Her cheeks flush. “Him. I was telling him when to go up and down, and when to turn right and left. You know, like that dragon movie.”
“But he’s not injured,” I say. “You can just ride.”
“I can,” she says. “But I wanted to try to fly myself.”
“You have no wings.” I frown.
“It’s almost time to go.” Coral tosses her head. “Why do you look like a makeup remover commercial?”
My pajamas. Right.
We’ll be ready to leave in five minutes, Axel says. I’m finishing up some things with Euphrasia for the water blessed.
When I duck back into the room, Axel and Euphrasia are staring at each other.
Tell me something significant, Axel says. We’ll talk again after we’ve gone to look for bondable humans and returned.
Euphrasia circles twice, and then drops to the floor, her head resting on her feet. You may not have witnessed it yet, but Odin the boor and Freya the fresh-faced vanir looking to change the world wind up spending a lot of time together. They were the only two ‘dragons’ as you call us who could take a human form. In trying to figure out what had happened, they fell in love. It was a pretty epic love story, and frankly it gave them both hope that they might change the vanir. They wanted to end the war and save the earth children—humans as you call them—who so often became the collateral damage.
But what happened? Why didn’t their plans work?
“In my dream, we were aided in our escape from the vanir by a moon vanir and her bonded. They were happy together, and it made me wonder if maybe they weren’t the monsters we thought.” In fact, the thought of poor Nótt being stuck in that volcano makes me a little ill.
You were quite taken with the moon vanir and her bonded in that time as well. Euphrasia’s smirk annoys me.
“What does that mean?”
You and the earth child bonded to Nótt wed. She glances at Azar.
His eyes widen, and his nostrils flare. They what?
“Let’s focus,” I say. “The vanir weren’t so bad, right? Some of them helped, and notably, Odin and Freya both worked to try and change the vanir’s plan of forcibly bonding humans. Why didn’t it work? We’d also taken the heart, which should have weakened Bjorn.”
Repairing age-old feuds takes time, Euphrasia says. And a lot of power. The vanir, and most importantly, Freya’s father, felt forsaken by her. They were angry. Angrier than before. Their attacks became more frequent, and more vicious than ever.
That’s not great to hear.
And to make matters worse, over more than a decade, Freya laid countless eggs, but none of them ever hatched.
