Page 37

“HOW,”

I DEMANDED in a low tone. “How did you steal me from Asgard?”

Móoir bit back her cries and hardened her face. “We did not steal you. You are our daughter.”

I pushed my hand forward. “My blood proves different. How,”

I repeated. “Somehow you took a child from the clutches of the gods.”

“We didn’t know.”

Móoir’s lip quivered, her hands hovering over her belly. “Until you said it just now, we didn’t know you were a goddess.”

That left me with more answers, but it was Faoir who answered. “You were a gift, when we needed you most, and that’s all we knew.”

He placed a hand over his wife’s where she was touching her stomach.

My gaze went there.

From behind them, Tova peered through the window, and upon seeing my face, she held our sisters back. Móoir let a tear slip. “I lost a child,”

Móoir whispered, the words threatening to break. “I lost a son. And I prayed for the gods to give him back.”

Móoir had always wanted a son. I hadn’t realized she had him once. “When?”

Finally, Faoir looked me in the eye. “When you were born. And while the gods did not give him back to us, they gave us you. A toddler in the empty cradle, looking for someone to care for her.”

“I didn’t know,”

Móoir wailed. “I thought you were an abandoned child or one who’d lost her parents, and who am I to refuse a gift of the gods? A man came in the morning to tell us you were from Odin, and we didn’t ask more.”

Hope unfurled inside me. Now I’d know who was responsible. “Which man?”

I pressed.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He had dark hair. Skin tinted blue. Lethal eyes like he would kill us if we didn’t accept. And to further honor us, he gave Tova Odin’s blessing. His only demand was no one know you were not born ours. But we had the marks from our son’s birth, and only had to move clans so those who remembered our son were gone. Then you grew up to look just like the rest of us, and we thought you really were made from us.”

I tried to process it all. Dark hair and lethal eyes. It had to be Aegir. He’d stolen me from Odin as a child.

No, his plan went deeper than that.

He wanted favor. “I was his token,”

I whispered. Steal a child, and when everyone else had moved on from the search, he would reveal me, please Odin, and regain his spot in Asgard.

But he waited too long. Balder found me first.

So Aegir did the next best thing. He reclaimed favor by doing what he knows—lying. Aegir took the chance to redeem favor with Odin by claiming I was a fraud. And he’d known me my whole life, so he knew I didn’t believe I was a goddess. I’d never stand against him.

He’d tricked Odin with Tova’s blood somehow.

I should have tasted my blood right there in the cave when Tova mentioned Aegir had seen her.

Aegir would be punished someday. I’d look forward to it greatly.

As for me, I had a whole other family out there. My interest piqued. “I wonder where my parents are,”

I said out loud.

My mortal parents flinched at the question. “The ones from Asgard,”

I amended, chastising myself for saying such a thing in their presence.

Faoir sighed. “We don’t know. We were never given information.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, planting myself back in Danmark, instead of plotting my revenge in Asgard. “Did you ever plan to tell me I wasn’t yours?”

With tender moves, Faoir advanced until his hands were in mine. I’d once felt so safe in his embrace, like as long as he stood nearby, everything would be fine. Now I didn’t know what to think. “You have always been our daughter,”

he said fiercely. “We did what we thought was best and pray that is enough for you.”

It would have been enough, if I’d never found out. But now, there was a whole other part to myself demanding to be explored. Astrid. I tried the name out on my tongue. The one from Asgard. Odin’s rightful granddaughter, and true fiancée to Ve.

The entire time I’d been pretending to be his fiancée, I really was.

They’d tossed me from Asgard. Odin turned on me, and Ve abandoned me when I needed him most. But I lifted my eyes to the sky anyway.

I had family up there. And I had family down here. Two sides to the same person, and now I was free to share them both. A goddess, still desiring to live in Danmark, but not wanting to lose the gods she loves.

“I am your daughter,”

I told them. They both relaxed. “But I am also a daughter of Asgard, and I’ve left some business unfinished there.”

Aegir would not be allowed to take away anything else from me. I would reclaim my place in Odin’s household, find Aegir, and throw him back into the sea.

I turned to step back into the house. As I did, Móoir grabbed my hand. “Can you forgive us?”

she whispered.

I squeezed. The answer came easily. “I can.”

It wouldn’t come overnight, but I had no desire to lose any more family.

The door swung open, and I was surprised to find my sisters weren’t huddled against the window. Instead, they were at the grand table, lighting candles and serving a warm mug to someone who sat there. As he took it, he threw down his wool hood.

My feet stumbled. He turned.

“Ve?”

He stood hastily, and kept a distance from me. His presence took up the whole room, as his head neared the rafters above. Tova was now trying to usher the family back toward the hearth to give us space, and struggling to get the younger ones to move. Sigrid leaned against my sword like she was waiting to see if this handsome stranger was someone to be welcomed or to run through with the blade. Ve eyed her warily before looking at me.

“Rune.”

He twisted the goblet a few times before passing it to me. “It’s good to see you safe.”

The obvious retort hung in the air between us. If he wanted me safe, he could have fought for me. Hurt from how he’d let me go still simmered inside. “Why are you here?”

“To beg for your hand back.”

That earned chatter from everyone in the family, and my cheeks heated. “Ve, these are my parents and sisters. You know Tova. Tova, you can fill them in while we have a moment.”

I finally got smart enough to grab a pair of leather boots before stepping back out into the cold and ushering Ve to follow.

The door clicked shut, and Ve waited instead of crossing the space between us. “I am so sorry,”

he said. His hair was left loose in the way I liked it, framing the sharp lines of his face and matching the dark color of the wool over his broad shoulders. He wore two swords along his back, and boots tied halfway up his calves. He was soaking in the sight of me just as I was of him. “I should have jumped in that arena as soon as Odin ordered you to fight Tova and gotten you out.”

“We managed,”

I said, as if I hadn’t been hurt by that very thing for days. “If I wasn’t good enough for you then, why are you here now?”

He risked a step. “You are,”

he replied. “I don’t care you are mortal, but it shook me, and I didn’t know what to do. I regretted it the moment you escaped through the vent. While you ran, I held the others back so they wouldn’t follow, and I shielded you while you were at the caves.”

I knew I’d sensed him when I was there. “But you didn’t come.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a bitter truth.

He ran his hand through his hair and took another step. “I didn’t know what to think.”

He was almost close enough to touch, and gods knew, I wanted to touch him. “I wanted a long life with you, but I’ll take as many decades as you’ll give me, if you’ll still have me.”

I was the one to take the next few steps. “You’d grow bored of me,”

I told him. “When I age and you remain a perfect god. You’d tire of my company.”

He was already shaking his head. “I will never.”

He wore a sly smile, and the next step was his. “You are not a girl who could bore me.”

His finger came to slip through my hair, caressing my cheek. “Rune, I love you, and I will love you forever.”

Ve was impossible to stay mad at. I knew when I first pressed that dagger to his neck and looked into those eyes, he’d have a hold on me for life. To hear he would love me as a mortal meant the world to me. I was good enough for him just as I was, not because I was a goddess.

Though I suspected he’d be pleased to hear my lifetime would be as long as his.

I collected his hands in mine, kissing them. “Aegir informed me I wasn’t a goddess a few days before the final fight,”

I told him. “I wasn’t trying to keep that from you, I simply didn’t know how to say it. Or perhaps, I was scared to lose you.”

He grinned, and the tension between us was gone. “I’m a difficult god to lose.”

“I hope never to try again. But I can’t be mad when I wasn’t being fully honest.”

He neared further. “Still, I was stupid not to chase after you.”

“I can think of an easy way to repay that,”

I told him, and I took the final steps to hover my lips close to his. “No matter what mistakes you or I make, I will always choose a life with you,”

I told him.

Before he could reply, I pressed my finger to his lips—the one that I’d just cut. The one that still bled.

He raised a brow.

“A long life.”

Getting the message, his tongue swept out. Then he exhaled. He grabbed my finger and checked again.

“It’s sweet,”

he breathed. “Aegir was wrong.”

“Aegir was lying,”

I corrected. “As he was the one to steal me as a child. My parents confirmed it.”

His smile overtook his face, and he tucked my cheeks into his hands. “You’re a goddess,”

he spoke, laughing with relief. “We have centuries left together.”

“Are you sure you won’t get bored of me by then?” I asked.

His reply was a whisper upon my lips before they met. “Never.”

“What do we do now?”

I asked between kisses.

His hands were on my back and words breathed into my hair. “We stay together. We let Odin know who the real traitor is, and you reclaim your place in his family. Then we be free of it all. Rune, we did it. We found a way out. One of us with more theatrics than the other,”

he said with a chuckle. “Now we explore the world for as long as we want.”

I was obsessed with that. The image of our future. The thought of us. “And after?”

“After that,”

he said as he paused to brush my hair behind my ear. His eyes soaked in the sight of me. “We make a home. Here, or in Asgard. Anywhere you are, that’s my home.”