I blink. I knew Azar had lots of brothers, but. . . “Was that common?”
We thought it was because she was an ice vanir and Odin was a flame æsir. We’d never heard of such a pair. We weren’t sure if the eggs ever could hatch.
That’s not good either.
Freya spent more and more time with the heart, looking for answers. From the time you found it and brought it, only Odin and Freya were able to shift into humans, and you were the only earth child gifted with wings, other than your children.
Children? Azar looks ready to roast something.
“You weren’t even alive then!” I point at Euphrasia. “Can you focus?”
He can’t seem to stop glaring at me.
Euphrasia stands and begins to pace, which she can’t do much of in the smallish space. Meanwhile, Freya’s efforts to win vanir over to our side were causing a lot of æsir to doubt Odin and the ongoing legitimacy of his rule, given he was in love with the enemy.
Maybe humans and dragons aren’t all that different.
Most of the opposition came from Odin and Frigg’s other offspring. They never liked that Odin mated with the sister of Frigg’s killer.
“Frigg killed Freyr too,” I say. “That’s a pretty unfair double standard.”
The blessed don’t worry about fairness. Axel looks utterly serious.
No, Euphrasia agrees. They do not. And as more eggs were laid by Odin and Freya and still none hatched, the other æsir began to agree that there might be something wrong with a pairing between a vanir and an æsir. Freya spent more and more time with the heart and her eggs, looking for answers.
“Did the vanir keep attacking?”
Euphrasia sighs. They did, and Bjorn seemed to be creating more eggs and raising more offspring than ever. Rumors grew and expanded, that Bjorn had sent Freya and Gullveig to bewitch Odin. There began to be attacks on all three of you. She’s looking at me.
“And I was the weak link,” I say.
You began to help her with experiments with the heart. You tried your best to draw out its magic and use it to hatch her eggs or help her lay a stronger one.
“What did they look like, the eggs?” I ask.
Flame blessed eggs are always scarlet, Axel says. Like our scales.
These weren’t regular flame blessed eggs, Euphrasia says. They weren’t ice vanir eggs, either. They were something else entirely. Some were nearly black. Some were red. One was purple. They were all iridescent, like the inside of a clamshell.
“Wait, so Axel’s egg?—”
It hadn’t been laid yet, she says. It was the very last.
We’re almost out of time. Axel looks annoyed.
And I’m still in my pajamas. “We can hear the rest when we get back.”
Tell me something important. Something I should already know. He’s still upset, or maybe unsettled is a better description. The bond feels unsteady.
Their work with the heart was working to a certain degree, Euphrasia says. Freya called frantically for Odin to come one day when she had used magic from the heart and channeled it into her very first egg. But when she called him, Odin was with his son at the time. Her eyes are hard. Thunar came with him.
Yep, this feels relevant.
The very first egg Freya had laid was rocking. It looked close to hatching. It was the dark, nearly black egg, the first one she’d laid. When Thunar saw what was happening, he was livid. The only thing he could hate more than Freya was a child of Odin’s that was related to him. . .and also to her. He exploded, releasing a torrent of flame that entirely subsumed the egg.
I swear under my breath. “That can’t have been good.”
Freya was holding the heart, and instead of attacking Thunar, she began to shake. She looked entirely and completely possessed, like something else was controlling her body and her mind. She began chanting, and she said, “This egg, the first hatched of flame, heir of the fire-king, shall herald the doom of all the sky-children, casting them back into a darkness that shall consume them for time and evermore.”
