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ODIN WAITED FOR me when I pushed through the doors. He extended an arm. “Walk with me.”

He said it kindly like I had a choice. When Odin asks you to walk with him, you don’t say no.

I draped my hand over his forearm, and let him lead me to a grand stairwell built of silver stone, where my shoes slapped against each slab. It filled the silence. Every part of me wanted to start talking, or to fall on my knees before Odin and beg for my sister’s life. But I held my tongue until Odin pushed though double doors leading to a balcony. It overlooked the north side of the mountain where the city lay, now coated in the blue hue of night.

He released my arm, moved to the balustrade, and sucked in a large breath. It came back out through his teeth. “I cannot do what you are about to ask.”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “Will you fight me too?”

There was a trickle of humor in his voice, one mixed with sadness.

If he knew how much this hurt me, then why hadn’t he stopped it?

I took small steps to his side. “No. I’m not stupid enough to believe I’d win.”

Silence fell again, growing into a tension that thickened the air. I couldn’t lose my sister. It was the only thing I knew. I couldn’t lose her.

Finally, I broke the quiet. “There has to be something I can do.”

Odin smiled. “The mortals have given you a kind heart.”

Funny, because I didn’t think they had. Vikings weren’t known for their jolly dinners and happy neighbors. Though, as I was thinking that, Odin amended himself. “Perhaps that was from your móoir.”

A dim pain struck me, but I counted it as just another drop in the sea of hurt. When they spoke of my mother earlier—my Asgard móoir—I’d paid no attention. Why would I, when Rava didn’t belong to me? But as the suspicion crept in that Astrid and I were the same person, my curiosity about my heritage grew.

“I’m sorry I never got to know her,”

I whispered. “Maybe someday she will return just like I did.”

Odin slipped a hand over mine and squeezed. “I’ve suspected for a long time my daughter is dead. Rava won’t be coming home to us.”

Shock rippled through me. My chest constricted like it’d lost something, though I’d never known her in the first place. Still, if she were my móoir and I’d never get to meet her. . . I felt robbed of that.

Odin’s eye misted, and I suspected the depth of his sadness could crack a mountain.

While I wasn’t certain the Vikings gave me any kindness, they certainly taught me how to fight for what I want, so the cruel way I used his pain was all from them. I swallowed my own questions about what she was like, and focused on what I came here to do. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a daughter,”

I told him. I pulled my hand away and stood at full height, betting on the magnitude of his pain and the hope that he wouldn’t want to see me go through the same thing. “But if I don’t save Tova, then I’ll lose my sister and my best friend.”

His frown straightened to a hard line. “You cannot interfere.”

“But you can.”

I squared my shoulders and looked him right in those stormy, blue eyes. “You can save her.”

It wasn’t like when he spoke with Trig. He wasn’t stoic. He wasn’t hard. Instead, he appeared as torn up as I was, running his hand through his hair and skirting his eye across the balcony as if the answer lay amongst the polished stones.

“No one can interfere with the sacred Champion Games.”

Odin’s hand retook mine, dwarfing it. “Please Ruin, ask anything else of me. I can give you whatever you want in these lands, but I cannot save Tova.”

I wasn’t willing to accept that answer. “She is all I want.”

“And you being happy is all I want. Ask me for anything else. Ask for a tonic to erase all memory of her so it does not sting. Ask for an emerald palace on a mountaintop. Ask for a holiday in your name. I would grant you anything, but I cannot give you this.”

I was silent on the outside, but it was all a front that hid the storm within. I had no use for any of those things. A palace or a holiday served no purpose to me. Removing my memory of Tova would hurt as bad as her dying, for the concept was the same. I had to save her. I owed her that.

For my entire life, she had been there for me. As the clan tossed me aside for my breathing weakness, she had held me close. I’d only been allowed to train because she demanded it. Without her, I’d have become a farmhand tucked in the back fields with no one caring whether I made it home or if the wolves got me. Tova cared. And now she needed me.

“What happens if I interfere?”

Odin tilted his head and shook it, warning me. “Some rules are ancient enough, even I can’t undo them. If you interfere, you are sentenced to the same fate as the mortals. Death.”

The words shook me. I swallowed. “Then I know what I want to ask for.”

“Anything.”

“I’d like a weapon strong enough to take on the gods.”

I wouldn’t interfere. But I would give this weapon to Tova, and she could wield it.

I expected him to say no, but while Odin’s gaze was knowing, he nodded. I thought then of the story Frigg told me of how he put down one of his prized wolves after I attacked it, and now I truly felt that love. It was overpowering, and unlike anything I’d felt before. He placed a gentle kiss on my hairline. “I will craft you the finest weapon you’ve ever held.”

He pulled away and left me on the balcony wondering if his love was enough to protect me if I chose to throw myself into the arena to save Tova after all.

Wondering if I could betray Odin when I loved him like a faoir.

With luck, and a new weapon, I’d figure it all out.

Several minutes after Odin left, I pushed through the balcony doors to leave and begin the process of unwinding myself from the palace and the mountain to find my way home in the dark. As I crossed the first room, footsteps sounded from the corridor. I wasn’t certain what made me stop, but I did. Someone knocked on a door.

It opened, and Odin spoke. “Yes?”

A woman’s voice came. “We have information about when we lost Ruin, and we uncovered why the mortals wanted her.”

My knees almost buckled, but I forced myself to stand still. Why the mortals wanted her. Odin was searching for who had taken me out of Asgard as a child.

He’d found answers.

The door creaked as it must have been opened further. “Come in.”

A breath later it slammed shut, leaving me with a fast-beating heart and a million questions burning inside. I slunk to the door, bracing my heels against it so I could both listen and watch if anyone approached, but as hard as I tried to make out the words, nothing coherent came through.

Then, above the nonsense, two lines rose loud enough to make sense. I only heard it because of how loudly Odin said this, as if he was just as surprised as me. He wasn’t. No one would be.

“Ruin was the child I meant to mark as my own?”

The woman replied in an equally loud tone, “You were never supposed to lose Astrid. But the mark somehow went to Tova instead, and when she wasn’t Astrid, we moved on with our search.”

My breathing quickened, and I abandoned the attempt to act as lookout in favor of pressing my entire ear against the door to listen, but all I got was heated mumbling. That was, right until the very end as footsteps drew near to the door.

“And the mortals who took her?”

Odin asked.

“They’d lost a child. Rune was the replacement. She was shielded from our sight before, but the shield grows thin, and answers are coming to light.”

The voices were dangerously close now, and I had to flee so I wouldn’t be caught eavesdropping. I barely made it around the corner when the door opened. My feet moved as swiftly as I could manage until I’d thrust open a well-oiled wooden door and stumbled outside. The fresh air filled my lungs, and I sank to my knees.

Ruin was the child I meant to mark as my own.

They’d lost a child.

The shield grows thin.

Questions were arising, but some answers were sliding into place. One thing was certain—I couldn’t leave Asgard with Ve until I had the truth of what happened to me as a child and the truth of where I belonged.