Page 35 of Thorulf
For the first time since this all began, Jade’s anger at him eased ever-so-slightly. She recalled the moment too. How relieved she’d felt that he was willing to be family. How comforted she’d been wrapped up in his wings, though they were barely big enough to encircle her.
“It was his mother’s passing, wasn’t it?” Dagr said softly. “That’s what Thorulf had been so sad about.”
“Yes,” she replied just as softly, remembering with vivid clarity finding him in the cave from her dream. His lair. He had been curled up in a little ball crying. “He didn’t like me finding him like that.” She couldn’t quite look at Thorulf yet, so she looked at Dagr instead. “He was embarrassed.”
“You were...very kind.” Thorulf obviously recalled the moment as well. “You’d lost your mother too and talked about it. Told me that everything I felt was perfectly natural and that you had cried too.”
“Yet it became too hard for you, Jade,” Maya surmised, chewing the meat Loki had cooked for them. “Watching him be that sad. Feeling it along with him.” She offered Jade an apologetic forgive-me look. “So, like you’ve always done for us over the years, you took it away.”
“I couldn’t help it.” Jade gestured that Maya not worry about it. All was forgiven. The truth was, Maya was right. Jade was playing a dangerous game not letting go of built-up negativity. “As an adult, I would know Thorulf needed to work through those emotions, but at that age, I just wanted him happy again.”
“And I appreciated it more than you know,” Thorulf provided. “My sadness came back, but between you and Dagr, things got better. Easier.”
“You seem better, Jade,” Vicar noted, swigging from a skin of ale. “Less angry than you were before witnessing that memory.”
“I guess I am,” she admitted, realizing with a start shedidfeel a tad better, however briefly, after every memory. The one before last was a little rocky, but that was because Thorulf followed it up by pressing her for answers she wasn’t ready to give. “I’m sure it’s just because the memories have been...” Endearing? Strangely heart-wrenching? Cherished? “Cute to watch.”
“Or they’re doing for you what you do for others,” Loki theorized. He looked between her and Thorulf in that how-can-this-benefit-me way of his. “Or, more specifically, Thorulf’s younger self is returning the favor without being the wiser. Which would only prove you really do balance each other out as well as Dagr and Maya do one another.” His eager gaze flickered back and forth between them. “I suspect every memory you witness puts you one step closer to your truth and the Forge.”
Jade was done arguing this one. At least for now. Let Loki think what he would. The bigger concern was how she got here in the first place. She wanted to understand her backstory. The missing pieces.
“These memories definitely weren’t dreams.” She popped the last of her meat in her mouth and looked at Maya. “Just look at my size this past time. I was hereandat home at the same age. Which meant I must’ve time-traveled much sooner.”
It blew her mind that she had no recollection of it. Any of this. She glanced around the cave, remembering it well enough now. How could she not when she and Thorulf had visited here several times...especially as they got older.
“Why is that?” Clearly following her thoughts, Thorulf frowned at her. “Why did we spend less and less time at my...our...lair together?”
Everyone startled a little at him saying ‘our’ and with good reason. Unless they were mated, it was no small thing for a dragon to share his lair, never mind call it another’s.
“If I were to hazard a guess,” Maya said, keeping the conversation going for Jade’s benefit rather than focusing on the lair thing too long, “I’d say it was getting too full of Jade’s memories.”
“Which brings us back to our current mission,” Loki said before anyone else could respond. “Going to Thorulf’s,” he winked at them, “I meanJadeand Thorulf’s lair tomorrow to see just why that is. How they got there. See what else turns up.” He gestured at their surroundings. “Which means it’s time for everyone to rest while I keep watch.”
While she expected that meant they would all find a place to settle down, in Loki’s reality, that meant now and at his magical command. Because before she could utter another word, her eyes grew heavy, and no matter how much she tried to stop it, she rested her head against Thorulf’s fur-clad shoulder, and that was it. She was out like a light.
Until she wasn’t.
Not really.
Jade knew she was dreaming, but it felt so real when darkness fell away only to be replaced by bright light. By multiple swirling colors and an incredible amount of magic, all centered around a large flame.
She drifted closer, drawn to what was unfolding. Good versus evil. Gooddefeatingevil. Yet for all that was happening between a variety of entities, some wearing kilts, others aglow in magic, she could only look at that glorious fire.
At the couple deep within its flames.
“Destiny,” she whispered. “Leviathan.”
This was the moment.
They were Forging in Fire.
They were creating Jade and her sisters.
Almost the moment she thought it, four tiny ethereal dragons whipped out of the flames. Three flew into the sunset, continuing on to whatever world they first emerged. The fourth, strangely colorless in this place and too curious for her own good, did no such thing.
“Oh,no,” she groaned when her tiny self skidded to a halt, distracted by God knows what, and shot off down Ireland's shoreline. “That’s not where I’m supposed to go.”
Yet off she went, bouncing from rock to rock like a ping-pong ball before her goal became apparent, and she high-dived off a stone into a thick bed of green clovers. Jade headed that way, wondering if she could somehow help herself go in the right direction, but slowed when she sensed someone else coming.