Page 39 of Soul of Shadow #1

Sophie stood with her wings at their full expanse. As Charlie watched, the wings folded in on themselves, tucking into Sophie’s back until they were no larger than a child in a swaddle.

It was impossible.

It couldn’t be.

Sophie was dead. She’d died two years ago, in the hospital just outside town.

Charlie was there. Mason was there. Her mom was there.

They had watched her die, and they had mourned her.

Half the town had shown up to her funeral.

Her mom had given a speech that no one could understand, because she was crying so hard.

She’d gripped Mason’s hand until there was no blood left in his fingertips. No one had been the same since.

Sophie was dead .

And yet there she stood.

In the corner, the v?tte peered out from behind his half-eaten cookie, trying to get a look at whatever had frightened Charlie.

Crumbs clung to his white beard. Setting the cookie down on the floor, he scampered over to the bed and clambered up the duvet.

His little arms were surprisingly nimble; he made it up in no time, perching himself on the corner for a better view of what was about to happen.

Trembling, Charlie pushed herself off the carpet and rose to her feet.

She kept her eyes on Sophie, who didn’t smile or frown or even display any sign of recognition; she only stared down at Charlie, eyes tight and watchful.

Charlie stepped tentatively toward the window, leaning over her desk to unlock the latch.

Her fingers slid around the handle and pulled up.

As soon as there was an opening large enough for Sophie to duck under, Charlie let go of the window and stumbled back, as if afraid her twin sister might strike her.

“Are you—” Charlie wet her lips, willing the rasp to flee her throat. “Are you an… angel?”

The first words her dead sister spoke to Charlie were these:

“Not quite.”

Sheathing the sword in the belt around her waist, Sophie ducked under the opening in the window and stepped onto Charlie’s desk. The desk in the bedroom that had once been theirs . Sophie leapt carefully off the desk, landing on the carpet as softly as a cat.

Straightening, Sophie said, “I don’t have much time.” Her voice was deeper than Charlie remembered. Could her voice have deepened between fourteen and sixteen? “Mom will be up soon to check on you before she goes to bed.”

At hearing her twin sister casually call their mother Mom , as if she hadn’t been gone for the last two years, as if she’d never left at all, Charlie’s stomach twisted painfully.

There were a thousand meanings and a thousand memories loaded into that one word.

They had dropped it so many times, often in unison, running through the halls of their house in search of a snack or a movie or a toy they’d lost for the fifteenth time.

And two years ago, it suddenly vanished.

No more running through the halls. No more unison.

Charlie thought she would never hear that word come from her sister’s lips again.

“H-how is this even possible?”

“I’ll explain that another time,” Sophie said, striding across the room in her leather boots and locking the door.

She didn’t glance around the room in wonder.

Didn’t even express surprise at how it had changed since the last time she’d been there.

Which made Charlie wonder… Had she visited before?

“Wait.” Charlie’s brain caught up with itself enough to realize the implication of Sophie’s earlier statement about their mom. “Would Mom be able to see you?”

“Of course, she could. I’m not a ghost, or part of the spirits of nature in any other manner. I’m very much alive.”

Very much alive. Charlie felt like she was going to cry with relief and throw up at the same time.

“Like I said, I’ll explain more later, but for now all you need to know is this—” Sophie spun around, her dark locks catching in the light of the lamp on the bedside table. Her hair was impossibly long, as if she hadn’t cut it since the day she disappeared. “I never died.”

Charlie’s mouth opened and closed. “You—”

“I was chosen by Odin and taken from that hospital. Brought before the Throne of Ash from which Odin rules, where I was tested and deemed worthy.”

“Deemed worthy of… of what?”

“Of joining the Valkyries.”

Blood roared in Charlie’s ears. She felt dizzy. She felt like she was living in a dream, like the entire night that had passed since she’d woken up from her draugar injury was an impossible work of fiction. Was her sister really standing in front of her? Was she really a… a…

“A Valkyrie,” Charlie whispered, seeing through the fog of her mind long enough to take in the armor on her sister’s body, the weapons hanging from every part of her, the folded wings curled up on her back.

What had Elias told her about the Valkyries?

Human women born to human parents, blessed with supernatural gifts by Odin in exchange for their service to him.

As if looking for confirmation that she hadn’t gone mad, Charlie looked down at the v?tte, who was still perched on the corner of her bed, watching them curiously. Noticing Charlie’s attention, he only shrugged.

Sophie followed Charlie’s gaze. For the first time, her twin seemed to realize that they were not alone in the bedroom. She paced over to the bed, reaching out a hand to scratch the v?tte behind his beard.

“How curious,” Sophie muttered, more to herself than Charlie.

“Wait,” Charlie said. She was scrambling to put together a semicohesive version of her past—one that no longer included the death of her sister. “That night in the hospital… what really happened?”

Sophie looked up, pulling her hand away from the v?tte. “The flatline you saw was a trick by one of the elder Valkyries. The one who came to collect me. She used magic to fake my death, then whisked me off to Hlidskjalf.”

“But… but your body? The funeral?”

Sophie quirked an eyebrow. “Was it an open-casket funeral? ”

“No, but—”

“Magic can do wonders, Charlie. Including making humans believe that a body is there when it’s actually far, far away.”

“But I thought magic was cut off from humans. How could—”

“All will be explained in time, sister,” she said, and Charlie’s stomach twisted again. “Right now, I need you to listen: Asgard is in danger.”

“Asgard meaning … Earth?”

“Correct.”

“Danger from whom?”

“How much do you know,” Sophie asked, fixing her twin with a hard stare, “about the trickster god Loki?”

Charlie’s memory hopped backward to the first day she spent in the woods with Elias.

The day they’d spoken with the wood wife and were chased by goblins.

Had that really only been on Wednesday? Reflecting on that afternoon was a welcome distraction—a line of thought she could follow that had nothing to do with her dead-not-dead twin sister, one that didn’t scramble her brain so utterly.

Concentrating hard, she pulled up the story Elias had told her.

The story of Loki and Odin, blood brothers for all time.

Of Odin’s betrayal of Loki. Of Loki’s punishment, forced to live out his eternity in the prison of the underworld. She shivered.

“A bit,” Charlie said at last. “I know that he and Odin once shared a blood bond but that it wore down over time.”

“That’s a polite way to put it.” Sophie shook her head, the circlet staying firmly in place atop her hair. “Loki is cunning. He made Odin believe that they were partners, destined to rule side by side forever. But that was not the truth. ”

Now this was a different version than the one she had heard from Elias. “What happened?”

“Loki envied Odin’s place as the Allfather.

It wasn’t enough for them to be partners; he wanted the throne for himself.

” Sophie rested a hand atop the hilt of her sword, as if preparing for someone to burst through the window.

“Long before the gods laid the Seal, Loki set out to usurp Odin’s position.

He fathered a great many beasts, each deadlier than the one before.

He didn’t care for the danger the beasts presented to the humans.

He relished it; he knew how deeply Odin cared for human life, and he exploited that tenderness to his own gain.

He said, in essence, Give me the throne or watch your precious humans burn . ”

By now, Charlie’s eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. “But I heard Odin betrayed Loki .”

Sophie blew air through her lips. “Right. And who did you hear that from? It wasn’t a certain mare of night, was it?”

Horrible premonition trickled down Charlie’s spine. A certain mare of night.

“No,” Sophie went on. “Odin did not betray Loki. It was the other way around. Loki is the beginning and the end of why the gods decided to create the Seal—because of how dangerous his army of beasts had become. And although Loki never succeeded in usurping Odin’s throne, he did manage to do something else: kill Odin’s most beloved child, Balder. ”

“Oh.” At those words, Charlie was transported two years back.

To the week after Sophie’s supposed death.

To the overwhelming, air-sucking grief that hung over her home.

To a mother who didn’t get out of bed for a week.

Who, when she finally did, cooked meals like a zombie, drove them to school like a zombie, and whose flame of life seemed to have been extinguished entirely.

She knew what the death of a child did to parents.

She could only imagine the bloodred rage that Odin would have felt toward Loki. He would have been blinded by it.

“As punishment for his crime,” Sophie said, “Loki was banished to Helheim, the underworld, where he lives with his daughter. Odin and the remaining gods joined together to lay the Seal, thus protecting humanity from Loki’s many beasts.

” She paused. “Loki has not stopped trying to destroy the Seal since.”