“Oh.” She blinks. “Then what?”
“Thunar wants Hyperion and me and all our siblings—all Freya and Odin’s children—dead. He says we’re abominations, and he might be right. I’m both flame and earth blessed. Hyperion might have been something like that, but he was roasted into char as an egg.”
She stops moving and takes my hand again. “You’re not an abomination. You’re amazing. Every single blessed would be lucky to have more than one affinity.”
“I was created from an unnatural pairing—an æsir and a vanir. I should be leery of creating another, even more strange pairing.” I pause. “The earth cannot truly join the sky.”
Jörð and Veralden Radien, if their story’s true, taught us that much. It means that Liz and me, our fingers entwined, our hearts drawing closer, and this feeling I think must be fairly close to love. . .they’re all doomed to find a terrible ending. I should walk away from her and this thing I feel, this bond that compels my every action now. I should do everything I can to keep Liz away from me to keep her safe, too.
We really are doomed, any way I look at it. “I know it’s a bad idea, and I know you and I shouldn’t be doing any of this, and yet, I choose you anyway, Elizabeth Chadwick. I think I’ll always choose you, and I think no matter the cost, I’ll always pay it.”
Her lip trembles. “I took that choice from you.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Loving me killed you before, killed Azar. Freya told me if you’d let go of your memories of me, Azar wouldn’t have died. It was my memories that weakened you, and you chose to keep them.”
“I’d do that same thing again and again,” I say.
“I’m sorry I took that choice away,” she says. “I told Freya to take your memories and restore Azar’s life, because I didn’t want to be responsible for causing you more pain.”
“If I could make that trade again now, I’d do it,” I say. “My flame blessed side for my memories.”
“But Thunar?—”
I shake my head. “He wouldn’t care about me anymore as Axel. No one would.”
“But. . .” She frowns. “You might be able to do it. Your mother, before. . .” She coughs. “She said the memories are still there.” She grabs my arm. “But we’re making new ones. I can remember for both of us. I don’t want that decision weighing on us anymore.”
“I can see it causes you distress, and that’s the only reason I won’t try to make that trade again,” I say. “But Liz.” I drag her closer until her hands are pressed against my chest. “Don’t ever choose anything that turns you away from me again. No matter the cost, I’ll pay it. No matter the pain, I’ll bear it. And you’ll let me. Say it.”
Her eyes look pained. Her hands clench against my jacket, balling up the fabric in her fists. “I choose you, too, I promise. No matter how scary, no matter how different we are, no matter how steep the cost, I’ll choose you.”
In that moment, light floods my field of vision, and suddenly, all I can see is Liz, shining like the sun. And then her hair changes. It’s not brown. It’s not red. It’s a golden-red with dark brown on the underneath.
It’s all three colors it’s been.
Her eyes blaze, too, bright greenish-gold, just like mine. All the skin on my body gets tight, and then something inside me expands, and I feel stronger, lighter, and better in every way. “What just happened?” I ask.
“I think we just entwined again,” Liz says. “It felt different the last time. . .but somehow, this was even better.”
“Why now?” I ask. “What did we do?”
“I think we talked,” she says. “We got closer. That was the key last time, and I think it may be the key for all the times.” She smiles. “I’d rather not un-entwine again, though, if it’s all the same to you.”
We walk around a few more minutes, and several shopkeepers offer us things, “free,” they say. I can’t tell whether it’s because they recognize Liz, or whether they saw her give the children rides, or whether it’s some combination of the two. I do understand her desire to soak in the Christmas spirit a bit more than I did, even if I’m not sure what the Christmas spirit really is.
It’s joyful here.
In spite of the cold weather, there’s nevertheless a warmth that makes you want to smile, entwine, and kiss. It makes you want to stay here, doing exactly this, forever.
But eventually, we have to join the others. “It’s time,” Liz says.
I want to argue, but I’ve been feeling that, too.
“If we don’t go to Finland now, we’ll miss them entirely.”
I sigh, but I reluctantly climb on her back and take a ride, at least far enough away that we don’t give anyone a heart attack when I switch back to Azar and open a portal.
Only, when I do force a portal open on the edge of the designated space, the scene before us is not at all what I expect to see. There aren’t besotted humans staring at their equally excited new blessed. George isn’t amicably chatting with some local humans while his blessed looks on with an indulgent tolerance.
No, when I open the portal, there are vanir and blessed fighting, and Hyperion’s screaming as he swoops down to flame a whole line of vanir.
