“No,” I say. “Leaving her, forgoing the chance to become something more was your mistake. But don’t worry. We’ll fix it for you.”
Fix it? How? He laughs. You think to detain me here? You want me to, what? Repair the enmity between the sky vanir and the sky æsir? I created it. He smiles, and it’s terrifying. I am the struggle in life, and I always have been. Struggle makes strength and strength is all that matters.
“You didn’t know or understand Jörð at all,” I say. “You saw something pretty, but you don’t know what love is, and you’ve never been touched by it. You don’t even know how to sacrifice, which is why you’ll never be anything but a desperate, pitiful yearning, a hole that can never be filled, a desperate desire that will never be sated. You’re the saddest, most pathetic creature I have ever seen, in every single one of my lifetimes.”
You’ve been begging me to kill you since I arrived, and I held off, for Jörð, but now, I’ll kill you and take what remains of her magic with me. And then I’ll never look back here, not at you, not at my abandoned and ultimately doomed children, and not at Jörð’s pathetic whelps.
You won’t kill her. Azar steps in front of me. He’s small—smaller than his father Odin, much smaller than Veralden Radien.
I fear that I’ve made a mistake in that moment, looking at them side by side.
My big, terrible mistake will cost me everything. It will cost all of us everything. Jörð’s gone, and now Azar. . . Veralden Radien’s more than I expected, and there’s less good in him than I hoped.
This is the last time I’ll tell you to step aside. Veralden’s glaring at Azar. Or I’ll end you, too.
Azar shakes his head. You can’t end me, because Liz and I are more powerful than you. Now that I’ve met you, I’m surprised. I’m impressed by the strength, grace, and beauty of Jörð, that she could take something as flawed and as ugly as you and make something like us. Someone as strong as Hyperion. Someone as bold as Odin. Someone as brave as Gordon, and as elegant as Asteria. Someone as kind as Rufus, and as loyal as Euphrasia. We are more than you. You can’t destroy us. We’ve already surpassed you. We don’t need you to fix the enmity between us and the vanir. We’re already more powerful than you—we can fix this so-called balance you cursed us with ourselves.
If I thought I’d made him angry before, Azar has shown me how to truly enrage his creator. Veralden Radien trembles with power, with fury, and with intent to destroy.
I rush toward Azar, wrapping my arms around his leg. If we’re going to die, I say, shift so that you can hug me while we do it.
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell me it’s a weaker form, he just does it.
Veralden laughs. This? His laughter grows and g r o w s until it’s all I can hear. And then it stops, and he strikes, all of his magic, and all of his power, and all of his life force transforming back into his truest state, a comet of light, energy, and rage, and then he plows forward, hitting Azar right in the center of his body.
Like a nail gun striking soft, green wood, like a raptor punching through a cloud, Veralden hits Azar and burns him with a force much greater than fire.
Pure energy.
Azar’s pain pulses through the bond like a lightning strike. It hits me like a Mack truck. There’s nothing but pain. Azar is gone. The world melts away.
But Azar doesn’t let go.
He refuses to disappear. He clings to me, he clings to his love for me like an ant clinging to a twig in a torrential downpour.
When I think Veralden has destroyed him, Azar shifts.
He becomes Azar.
And Veralden twists, regroups and strikes again.
Pain unlike any before explodes down the bond. And yet, Azar refuses to relent. He shifts, he writhes, and he trembles, but he holds on.
And then, when it’s too much, when I’m ready to disappear from the reflected pain, Azar shifts again. Now he’s Axel.
With a horrifying shout, with a deafening squeal, Veralden Radien coils back, gathers up all his energy, and he whips it into a frenzy. He screams again and this time, instead of striking, he assaults Axel with every ounce of his strength.
He pours all his rage, all his power, all his light, and all his destruction into my beloved, and Axel takes it all. He bows backward, he screams silently, and he endures.
And then, when the bright power, when the shining assault is too much, Axel shifts.
Into something I’ve never seen.
His head is the same.
His eyes are unchanged, but his body is blue and sinuous. He’s an ice vanir, just like Freya. And then, before Veralden can regroup, he shifts again, this time into a moon vanir. And then again, into a storm, then a strike, and then a water vanir.
Veralden recoils slowly, and he draws himself up.
