Dead Embers (3 page)

The lightheadedness of high altitude held my attention until
Fen grunted.
Damn it, Fen.
What's your all-fired rush, anyway?
I
guess Fen had missed the part where I wasn't a frickin' super-powered Ulfr like
him.

I straightened, scowling as I asked, "How much farther
do we—"

The rest of my question disappeared as my vision cleared,
and I stiffened, forcing my gaping mouth shut.

We stood on a solid stone platform, carved out of the
mountainside so skillfully that no climber would know it existed until he
stepped right onto it. Solid rock hemmed the ledge in on both sides. A yard or
two away, the ledge narrowed toward a shadowed entrance flanked by two gigantic
statues sculpted straight out of the rock itself.

A gasp froze in my throat. Two perfectly carved Valkyries
guarded the passage, wings outstretched above us, each feather so lifelike.
Their wings beckoned, and promised safety. My feet moved, following Fen as he
walked into the passage.

Into the mountain.

Inside the dark tunnel, I sensed the change in the air. With
each reluctant step, my lightheadedness receded. The bite of the winter cold
softened to a more bearable, breathable freshness.

We emerged on the other side, and I squinted against the
brightness, shading my eyes against the glare. Fen moved aside, and this time I
did gasp out loud.

The mountain housed an impossibly beautiful secret within
its rocky face. Fenced in by the rising peaks, draped in an elegant filigree of
snowflakes like a gleaming white pearl within a craggy oyster shell, lay a
stunning hidden valley.

I gaped, entranced. Then Fen's voice broke the spell.
"Welcome to the Hollow of the Valkyries!"

"This is your training ground."

Fen's voice echoed around us, reverberating on my eardrums
as I breathed the icy air deep into my lungs. The valley floor lay far, far
below, almost as far down as Odin's castle on the other side of the mountain.
At least the trip down would be easier than our muscle-burning hike up.

I hoped.

Fen folded his arms and faced me, his face as shadowed and
unrelenting as the rock-faces hemming the valley in. "Are you ready,
Valkyrie Brynhildr?"

I nodded, clenching my jaw and lifting my chin a fraction.
He'd used my full given name, a name that reminded me of my one claim to
fame—being a clone of the
real
Warrior Princess Brunhilde, who'd lived
and died centuries before I'd even been a figment of my father's crazed
imagination.

"You do have to remove your cloak, you know." Fen
tempered his dry tone with a sudden cheeky grin, for a brief moment
transforming his forbidding, hooded features into a genial, approachable face.

I threw him a reluctant, tight smile, undid the ornate clasp
at my neck and dropped the dark, silky cloak over the nearest boulder.

"Very good. Now face the edge of the cliff. And
jump." He spoke the words so matter-of-factly he might as well have
invited me for a cappuccino.

"You're kidding, right?" I asked in horror, half
believing he meant his words, half unable to think straight. The sober glance
he threw me squashed my urge to burst into laughter.

I risked a peek over the edge.

No way in hell is he serious. No friggin' way.

I'd never been afraid of heights, but then again I'd never
spent much time in skyscrapers or on mountaintops as high as Mt. Everest. But
the height thing wasn't even the issue. It was the
jumping-off-the-edge-of-a-cliff
thing that really bugged me.

I shook my head, taking a good half-dozen steps away, my
heart thundering against my ribs. When I glanced at Fen, I couldn't hide the
sudden stab of fear that thrummed through me.

Fen must have recognized my terror—I hadn't bothered to hide
it—but he just laughed, the sound hollow and brittle in the frigid air. Bitter,
gravelly laughter edged with a sadness I couldn't explain.

Whoa, Fen. What's gotten into you?

The strange laughter stopped, and I met his eyes, scanning
their depths, unsure of what I should do next. Had he really expected me to
jump? The rock-hard grey of his eyes glittered, like chipped stones stolen from
this hidden valley.

Hard and dead.

"Valkyrie, you look at me with fear in your eyes. As if
I am truly my father's son."

His words hurt my heart, and confused me at the same time.
But I remembered that his father was the reason I'd lost Aidan. I studied Fen
for a moment. I hesitated, my head still hot with fear, then broke eye contact,
fixating on the clear, pale blue sky, wanting to look anywhere but at his face.
The silence between us was cold and hard, and many minutes passed before he
spoke again.

"I am very sorry, Bryn." The ripple in his voice
drew my gaze, but he just stared off into the valley, his soft words forming
little puffy clouds that swirled and dissolved on the icy air.

I shook my head, even though his attention lay somewhere out
in the stark white snow. "No. You don't need to apologize to me, Fenrir.
Loki may have been your father, but you can't hold yourself responsible for his
actions."

I wasn't sure anyone could be held responsible for the god
Loki's notoriously deceitful actions. The blame lay solely in Loki's own
traitorous hand. And the last person who should ever claim responsibility for
the trickster's actions should be Fen. Fen had proven his loyalty to Odin many
times over. Nobody could doubt Fenrir.

Except, apparently, Fenrir himself.

Fen cleared his throat, as if his words had dammed there,
struggling for freedom. He avoided my eyes. "Even so, I am sorry."

I laid a finger on his arm, muscles tight, as I hoped he
wouldn't pull away. What a puzzle he was, this beautiful man who'd sent shivers
of horror crawling up and down my spine the first time I'd seen him. This man
who was a wolf. This man who offered his life and his service to Odin, flouting
the ancient legends that claimed he would betray the All-Father and bring about
the end of the world.

Fen's rugged profile darkened, his shoulders stiff like
granite. But only for a moment. I guess he struggled with his own share of
brooding demons.

I shuffled my feet, and a few loosened stones went tumbling
down into the snowy slopes, scattering like my thoughts as I tried to think of
something comforting to say to him. Compared to Fen's father, I could hardly
complain about my own, so I mentioned a different not-so-nice father. "You
know, you aren't the only one to have a crappy dad. Look at Aidan's dad. He
sent his henchmen to kill his own son. That's way worse, in my opinion."

Fenrir tilted his head, a skeptical gleam in his eyes.
"Loki meant to kill Aidan. I do not understand why you are not viciously
angry."

"But I
am
viciously angry. Just not viciously
angry with
you
! Come on, Fen. You can't let this whole thing affect you
like this." I couldn't believe I needed to give advice to a being hundreds
of years older than me, a being so powerful he could kill me with one blow.

He shook his head and turned to face me, a contemplative
wrinkle to his brow as he laid a hand on my shoulder. "I had always
thought that humans did not possess the capacity for purity of heart. I believe
you are different."

"Maybe because I'm not human. Never was, never will
be." I sighed, and my wings fluttered their answering sadness. A tiny part
of me still yearned to fit in with humanity. But my own reality killed that
option. I no longer belonged. I'd never belonged, never understood or fit in
with the whole cheerleader, popularity-contest side of human life. Always on
the sidelines, always playing new girl, never more than a temporary friend and
freak.

"I do understand what you mean, Bryn," said Fen,
"but it is the failings of humanity that I am referring to."

I bristled. "Failings? Are you saying you admire me
because of my failings?" I clenched my fists, ready to follow my Valkyrie
instinct into full-blown fury. Fen had me pretty off balance today.

"Yes," he answered enigmatically, moving to the
edge of the precipice. My heart thundered in my throat, and when I swallowed, I
might as well have taken a sip of solid stone.

What was he looking at? I inched forward and peeped over the
edge.

He stared down, eyes focused on the black rocks and snow
mingling in the hushed valley. "Your failings are what make you so
special. You are not perfect, and that is a rather good thing. It is all that
emotion inside you that makes you so different."

Different? Thanks for the reminder, Fen. At least now I
know exactly what you think of me. Guess I was wrong to think I'd finally found
a place where I belonged.

I clenched my fists and snapped at him, "I hardly see
how different my emotions are from yours, or any of the other gods, for that
matter." Odin's and Freya's natures were both fickle and capricious,
selfish and selfless—an aspect of godhood I'd found difficult to understand at
first. "Freya showed me that even the gods have their popular crowd."

"Popular crowd?" Fen glanced at me, a shadowed
frown darkening his forehead, his ebony hair sweeping his shoulders.

"Yeah. The cool dudes. The hip chicks," I teased.

Fen scowled, though it didn't mess with his handsome face at
all.

"Okay," I relented. "The people everyone
wants to be like. That's Freya. And the haters, like Loki."

"Ah. I understand." He nodded, a sad gleam in his
eye.

"The gods of Asgard are really no different from us
humans, you know," I said, a satisfied smirk at my lips. "Unless, of
course, you consider the whole thirty-foot-high size thing." I paused to
gauge his mood before adding, "And the gods can die just like us,
too."

Fen nodded, eyes still trained on the depths of the cavern.

"So what are we doing here?" I followed his gaze
down into the valley. "I am so not jumping off any cliff to prove how not
human I am. What are you trying to do? Check if I can defy death?"

"No, Bryn. This is part of your training." He
spoke slowly with exaggerated patience.

"What is? To jump into oblivion when I can't fly?
You're supposed to teach me how to fly—not force me to jump to my death!"
I couldn't help it when my voice reached a shrill and almost hysterical squeak.

"How will you know if you can fly if you do not
try?"

"Well, I certainly ain't trying to fly by taking a
flying leap off the side of a frickin' mountain!"

I snapped my gaze away from him, folding my arms in a huff.
My eyes traced the rocky pathway leading down into the valley's pristine
depths, as if the scenic view somehow held the answer to Fen's psycho training
plan.

Glaring at the view meant turning my back on Fen.

Big mistake.

I'd assumed he still stood beside me, lost in his funk,
entranced by the silvery-white valley. But when my back suddenly warmed, as
some large object shielded my body from the icy fingers of the gusting wind,
every muscle in my body tensed. I glanced over my shoulder, my heart tripping.

Too late.

Too late to turn and defend myself.

Too late to stop him.

For a shadow of a second, I stared into his eyes, shocked,
horrified he'd do such a thing to me. A thousand fears filtered through my
frigid brain. Was he in cahoots with Loki? Or was he Freya's dog all along?

It took an eternity for him to blink. Even longer for me to
blink.

Then Fenrir pushed me, and I fell off the cliff into pure
white oblivion.

I fell, tumbling and twisting in the arms of the frigid
wind. Regret and hurt dived with me, and I screamed, a hoarse mix of fear and
vicious anger at Fen. After everything he'd taught me, had it really come to
this? How could he just shove me off a cliff?

Did he really mean to kill me?

Bitter tears froze on my cheeks.

Time slowed.

Embroiled in my icy rage, I almost forgot I was plummeting
to the ground—until a gust tipped me forward and I had a sudden, clear view of
the jagged rocks below racing up to meet me. Vertigo clawed at my head and
churned in my gut, threatening to empty what little food I had in my stomach. I
moaned, too terrified to scream.

I was going to die.

I sucked in a breath, tried to relax myself, grasping at the
fast-disappearing threads of my calm. The temptation to close my eyes was
almost impossible to ignore. But I didn't dare. Instead I remained paralyzed,
unable even to blink at the oncoming rocks. My wings flapped frantically, loud
and desperate in my ears. I wasn't going to make it. With a shudder, I went
into full-scale panic, arms flailing, screaming like a banshee. My heart
thrummed, beating so fast it thundered in my ears.

Between my heartbeat in overdrive and the roar of the wind,
I almost didn't notice the other odd sound: a hollow flapping close behind me,
like boat sails buffeted in a strong wind.

The sound of calmly beating wings.

I threw a desperate, hysterical glance over my shoulders. My
jaw dropped. At my shoulders, my wings spread out in a dramatic array of
gold-tipped, red-bronze feathers. As magnificent as those appendages were to
look at, they'd never been much use to me. They were just there.

Until now.

Now they flapped and flailed about as crazily as my arms,
scattering fluffy, feathery bits of dark red as I plummeted.

My wings were beating!

The only problem was, those random, frantic sweeps of my
wings came a bit too late. The uncoordinated movements barely slowed my plunge
toward the onrushing ground. Only on the very last hysterical breath before
impact did I feel a tug at my shoulders, as muscles, wings and feathers
struggled against the air.

Thanks, Fen. Too bad you didn't throw me off a higher
mountain.