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If
they
were to fulfill the prophecy, then he would be the one brought low. He would never rule.

But he had one more test for Mist. He stepped out from among his personal guard and met her with a grin.

“Do you think you’ve won?” Odin asked. “What do you feel, Daughter? Triumph? Satisfaction? Do you think you will finally have everything your own way?” He looked over his shoulder. “Anna!”

She walked out from behind him, whole once more, a Valkyrie clad in armor and bearing a sword inscribed with Rune-staves that spelled out the word Odinsnautr, “Odin’s Gift.”

“As you can see,” Odin said, “your prodigal child released Anna’s body back to me. I will be most curious to see how you fare against her.”

Mist looked past Odin at Anna. “Don’t do this, Anna,” she said.

“You should not fear for
her,
” Odin said. “She holds the spirits of four Valkyrie, and my favor. She is your match.”

“Four Valkyrie?” Mist asked in horror.

“Hrist, Regin, Skuld, and Olrun. Those that already belonged to me.”

“What did you do to them?”

“They were of no further use to me.”

“Mist,” Dainn said. “You have no need to fight her. There are other ways.”

Mist laughed. “I don’t think I’ll have much—”

“Kill her,” Odin said, pointing Gungnir toward Mist.

Raising her sword, Anna charged Mist, fearless, nimble, ferocious. A strange hesitation seemed to take hold of Mist, and Anna struck the first blow, sinking her blade into Mist’s arm.

Then Mist was fighting for her life. Hissing between her teeth, Mist wrenched free and struck out. Her sword sank into the mail covering Anna’s thigh, and the mortal woman hopped backward.

She didn’t stay away for long. Anna fought bravely, with all the skill imparted by Mist’s slain Sisters. She felt no pain. And she was ruthless. Again and again she nicked Mist’s flesh and forced her to retreat.

Odin felt new stirrings of triumph. Mist was too proud. She would never believe this girl could defeat her, and she wouldn’t stoop to the Eitr now.

But she was not yet finished. Gaining herself a little distance, Mist grabbed the raven pendant from under her shirt and pulled it out for Anna to see.

“You wanted his before,” she said, retreating with every swing of Anna’s sword. “Do you remember what it meant when I gave it to Rebekka seventy years ago? How Geir took care of her? How she passed it down as a precious gift without knowing what it was?”

Anna paused, and Odin screamed for her to fight. Still the mortal remained frozen.

“Do you remember when Orn was just a parrot, your best friend?” Mist asked. “What happened to that friend, Anna?”

With a cry of rage, Anna attacked. She beat Mist to the ground, and the sword flew from Mist’s hand.

But she wasn’t alone. Dainn appeared between Anna and Mist, and when Anna struck, her blade passed through Dainn as if he didn’t exist. Mist scrambled to her feet, grabbed the nearest abandoned sword, and caught Anna’s blade with her own, twisting it to yank the weapon out of Anna’s hand. Anna fell on her back like an overturned beetle, helpless and exposed. Bryn’s pouch, which Mist had given her earlier at Odin’s command, lay clearly visible upon her chest. Mist rested the point of her blade against Anna’s exposed throat and sliced the cord around her neck, quickly tucking the pouch in her jacket pocket.

“What…” Anna stammered, staring up at Mist with wide eyes. “Where am I?”

Mist released her and stepped back. “Are you satisfied, All-father?” she shouted.

Odin’s skin grew hot with rage. But he still understood one thing Mist did not. She had cast out the dark Eitr with Dainn’s help, but it was not gone.

And Dainn … he believed he had gained complete control over the beast, silenced the darkness within himself, become the powerful being he had been long ago. But Odin knew that neither Mist nor Dainn had accepted that the darkness would always be there, a part of them. It would rise again, and the more they fought it the more entrenched and powerful it would become.

“Mist False-daughter!” Odin cried. “Dainn Son-slayer! Loki Lie-smith! Will you face me now, when nothing stands between us and all your allies have fled?”

Mist stepped forward, her chin high. “It’s our charge to bring you down,” she said. “You must pay for the lives you have taken and the evil of your hubris.”

“And Laufeyson?” Odin asked. “How will he pay for what he has done to this city?”

Loki spat. “I have paid with my son,” he said. “And I will make
you
suffer for it.”

“It is Dainn you should cause to suffer, is it not?” Odin said, smiling at the elf. “Has he not robbed you of everything you loved?”

“No,” Mist said. “We all have a greater enemy to fight now.”

“With what?” Odin asked. He lifted his arms, and the clouds of toxic Eitr began to spin with the storm, whipping with heady violence around the field, dislodging trees with even the deepest roots, flinging shrubs in every direction. “All I need do is release the Eitr, and you will have no world to claim.”

Mist began to sing in a rough, carrying voice, drawing ice from the air, raising stones from the ground, chanting spells of iron and steel. Ice and stone and steel formed densely woven cages, and one by one they encircled the distorted spheres of dark Eitr like ravenous cells in a body riddled with disease. Dainn summoned tree roots from under the ground to tangle about Odin’s boots, and fading leaves from the trees to blind his eye. Loki bombarded Odin with missiles of fire.

And none of it touched on the dark Eitr. Mist would not risk it, nor would Dainn use his beast again. They were still afraid.

Laughing in the face of the storm, his single eye watering from the constant assault of debris and his mouth filled with grit, Odin sang the dark Eitr. One by one the globules of Void began to split open. Those encased by Mist’s magic leaked only a little; those she had missed began to disgorge their contents in a steady stream, the miasma drifting upward to join the greasy haze that already floated over the park.

“You must work more quickly, Mist,” Odin taunted. “The wind from the ocean is refreshing, is it not? How long will it take to carry the poison over the entire city?”

Clenching her fists, Mist raised her voice. She conjured more cages, but she could not keep pace with Odin’s work, and the raw materials she had used became scarce. Dainn touched her arm. Her face screwed up in defiance, but the tone of her song changed, and suddenly the oozing drifts of Eitr turned against the force of the wind and curved back toward Odin.

Now Mist was using the dark Eitr, but she was not losing herself. Dainn was beside her, chanting spells not even Odin understood. They steadied Mist, and Odin witnessed the precise moment when she understood, when she accepted all she had become and could be. It was in the calmness of her expression, the way she held her body, the glance she gave Dainn as he rested his hand on her shoulder.

There was a force here that Odin had discounted, an emotion he had abandoned long ago and had no means to fight. As the Eitr drew nearer, he knew he would not be able to hinder Mist’s determination or cripple her power with his own.

But as she threw all her concentration into guiding the Eitr precisely where she wished it to go, she was vulnerable. He shifted his grip on Gungnir, preparing to throw.

Another hand seized it from his grip, and a ragged voice whispered close to his ear.

“She is mine,” Vidarr said. And with a move as swift as it was deadly, Odin’s son hurled Gungnir directly at Mist’s heart.

35

Mist’s legs gave way as the Spear’s head pierced her chest and emerged from her back, just missing her heart.

But it was close enough. Dainn caught her and eased her down, his hands coated in blood, his breath seizing in his lungs.

“Mist!” he choked, holding her just off the ground. “Loki, get the others!”

But Loki had vanished, and so had Vidarr, Odin, and his followers. Mist’s breath frothed on her lips. She tried to smile.

“Vidarr,” she whispered. “Who would have thought—”

“Hush,” he said, as much for himself as for her. His heart seethed with panic, but his mind still functioned.

Cradling her body in one arm, he curled his hand around the shaft of the Spear with the other. The healing Eitr was already within him; he sang the ancient magic, his voice grinding with fear, and visualized the metal and wood of the weapon dissolving inside her, the blood vessels mending, the bleeding stopped.

Mist gasped and arched upward. Gouts of fresh blood, bubbling with lost air, welled up around the shaft.

Dainn knew he was failing. Mist was only alive now because of her own will.

“Don’t worry, Dainn,” she said, blood gurgling in her throat. She touched his face. “If I … wind up with Hel, I’ll … lead the rebellion my—”

Her eyes closed. Dainn raised his voice in a howl that shook the trees, and the others came: Rota, Konur and half the Alfar, Taylor and the surviving mortals, Gabi and her
curanderas
.

“Gabriella,” Dainn rasped. “Help me.”

The girl knelt beside him, her brown skin pale with shock, and laid her hand on Mist’s chest. Opening his mind, Dainn tried to reach Gabi with the Eitr, to let her feel it and draw it into herself. She blinked rapidly, but Dainn knew that his attempt was failing.

“The wound’s too bad for me,” Gabi said, turning her head to wipe her face on her sleeve. She called to the
curanderas
, and they gathered close, chanting their prayers to the White Christ and their God.

But the life was leaving Mist, her heartbeat slowing, her breaths shallow and rattling. With a sudden twist of her body, Gabi pressed her palm to Dainn’s chest.

“You’re still not whole,” she murmured. “You are still fighting it.”

Hel drifted up behind her, casting a deeper shadow in the poisonous twilight. Two other shapes emerged from the gloom she wore like a cloak. One of them was Ryan, and he was dead.

“Ry!” Gabi cried.

He ignored her, fixing his blank stare on Dainn. “Accept,” he said in a ghost’s wasted voice. “You grieve for Danny, but he was never meant to live apart from you. The beast was always there, but you refused to…” He rolled his eyes at Hel. “There can be no life without death. Set the beast free.”

Fury built in Dainn’s chest, a feral rage he knew all too well. He reached deep into his soul to pull it out, held the beast at arm’s length as it snapped and snarled and laughed at his weakness.

You will always fight me,
it growled.
You will never admit that there is darkness in the first and the wisest
.
Give in. Let me
—

Dainn pulled the beast close. Its teeth sank into his neck as its claws raked at his belly, disemboweling him, shredding his organs and piercing his heart. Eating him alive.

But suddenly Danny was there, within him. He opened his arms, and the beast fell into him, both boy and beast dissolving into Dainn’s blood and bone.

Whole for the first time in centuries, Dainn took Gungnir’s shaft in both hands and sang the healing again. The wood began to disintegrate, the honed steel to crumble. Blood rushed from the gaping wound in Mist’s chest, and just as suddenly stopped. He continued to sing until he was hoarse, mending each blood vessel, the torn lung, every severed muscle and tendon.

With a fit of violent coughing, Mist sat up. Dainn continued to hold her until her breathing was steady again. She felt her chest.

“Did I dream it,” she asked, “or did someone just impale me?”

Dainn tried to laugh, without success. Gabi sobbed. There were other sounds, but Dainn could make no sense of them. He knew that Danny was gone, and that he was no longer afraid of the beast. He knew that somehow Ryan was dead, that Odin was still free, and that the dark Eitr continued to leak its poison into the air above the city.

But Mist was
alive
.

“Gabi?” Mist said, pushing herself up on her elbows. “You’re all right?”

Dainn met the girl’s gaze, and she looked away. He sensed that she knew what had happened to Ryan, but Mist clearly didn’t realize that the young mortal was in Hel’s possession, and Dainn wouldn’t let her take on that burden now.

There was still hope. More than Dainn had felt in a very long time.

“Where’s Odin?” Mist said, struggling and failing to stand until Dainn lifted her and held her up.

Something hard, white, and cold landed with a thump at her feet. Dainn recognized it as Vidarr’s severed head, frozen through and close to shattering.

Loki arrived just afterward.

“Odin’s taken off,” he said, “literally.” He kicked Vidarr’s head, and a sizeable chunk of his jaw broke off. “He found Sleipnir and forced him to fly.”

Mist met Loki’s gaze. “The Einherjar?”

“Scattered. But we have a bigger problem. When that fog of Eitr descends onto the city…” Loki shrugged. “There will certainly be chaos, but not of my making. I would prefer to start over than let Odin steal my thunder.”

“Then you start thinking up a way for us to follow him.” She leaned heavily on Dainn and looked at Gabi again. “I’ve never been properly introduced to your healer friends. Are they prepared to deal with our casualties?”

“They’ve been helping people all along,” Gabi said, her lower lip trembling. “Anything we can do, we will.”

“
Gracias,
” Mist said, inclining her head to the women. “Taylor, send people to find any survivors and make sure the
curanderas
get to them.”

Taylor hesitated, as if he were reluctant to leave Mist again. Konur consulted with his elves.

“Would you have us join the hunt for Odin, or seek the remaining Einherjar?” he asked.

“Bring the bastards back, by any means necessary, and use whatever spells you have to keep them immobile.” Mist glanced from Dainn to Loki. “Odin is
our
problem.”

“Tell me,” Loki said, “have you ever used the Eitr to fly?”

“I have the means to teleport,” Dainn said softly, “but that is of no use to us if we do not know our destination.”