Gone makes it sound like he’s lost, like he went out for milk and hasn’t come home yet. He’s never coming back, and he’s bonded to Sammy.
Oh, Sammy. What happened when he died?
Is my little brother dead? His bonded dragon just died. I scan the gathered dragons, but of course they wouldn’t have brought little Sammy here. But for a bonded, it doesn’t matter whether you’re there on the front lines or not, not if your dragon dies.
My heart hammers in my chest, and I cry out. “No, Sammy.”
Who’s Sammy? Odin asks. Wasn’t that Rufus? Did she rename one of our people?
He was bonded to her younger sibling, Thunar says. That’s why the threat was effective.
Odin grimaces. And now?
Gordon steps forward, his eyes flashing. Sammy’s suffering, but he is yet alive.
Did one small earth child bond two blessed? Odin smiles.
He did, Gordon says. He’s an extraordinary child.
He may have survived, but we can fix that. Odin lunges for Gordon.
I don’t think. I draw my swords and fling one at Odin, hitting him in his shoulder, the blade sliding right through his thick hide. I slam into him next, plunging my other blade into his neck. Then I retrieve the one I threw, and this time, I aim for his head.
Before Odin, and all his many, many children and subjects can destroy me, I pull hard on the magic of the heart and beg. Change this arrogant, demanding jerk of a sky child into an earth child form, please.
The light explodes out of me, lighting the awful Odin up like a bonfire.
I only wish I’d left the swords inside him, because the look on Odin’s face as he shrinks down into a human shape is priceless. He looks just as I recall him looking, and he’s wearing the same clothing he wore back in Gullveig’s time. A tunic and rough-hewn trousers. The wounds I inflicted on his dragon form are now just small bleeding wounds on his shoulder and neck, but if I’d left the sword blades in place. . .
Nothing in this world is free, however, and my attack to defend Gordon has consequences. I don’t even know all the dragons who descend then, many of them flame blessed, many strike blessed.
I have a proposal, Thunar says. Before you destroy Gordon, Liz’s brother Sammy, and everyone else she loves, set her a reasonable task. She must bestow the ability to shift on a few hundred blessed a day. As long as she complies, she will be spared.
Azar shakes his head. Even if she does as you ask, at the end, is your plan to cut the heart from her chest and leave earth?
Odin ignores Azar. “How do you propose we force her to do this? She already denied me, and when I went to attack Gordon, she tried to attack me herself.”
You eliminated the leverage you had almost as soon as you had it by killing Rufus immediately, but when her brother’s life was threatened, she did shift you, Thunar says. I suggest we go straight to what will harm her the most. In a shocking move, instead of attacking me or Azar or even Gordon, Thunar shifts into his human form. “In this pathetic shape, I can inflict harm but not kill. Humans in this day and in this place struggle badly with watching the people they care about suffer.” He points. “Bring Sammy here.” That’s when I see it.
The whip in his hand.
Dread floods my chest. “No,” I say. “Whip me instead. I’m already here.” I land in front of him. “Unless you think injuring me directly would somehow be less effective than harming a little boy.”
“I’d actually like to see this,” Odin says. “Proceed until she’s agreed to beg for this change for at least five hundred blessed each day.”
Stop, Azar says. He and Hyperion have been busy fighting Frigg’s other children, I assume, based on the similarity in appearance between the dragons attacking them and Thunar. You can’t really mean to be so cowardly you’ll leave the earth children to deal with the vanir alone. Liz tells me you and my mother fought the vanir together for years and years.
“We lost,” Odin says. “Over and over, we lost more and more blessed.”
We were called the æsir, Azar says. You even changed our name. Was that from guilt?
“We needed to start over,” Odin says. “Your mother knew that. Everyone understood it.”
We should have stayed, Euphrasia says. We never should have left. You’re not alone now, Azar. We support you in staying.
Murmurs from dragons I recognize come from all over, but mostly from those behind us.
We are with you.
