Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (26 page)

There was a question in his tone, one I couldn’t help but answer. “It is hard.” I looked down at my hands. “There’s this hole inside me, and it never goes away now. I feel like I’m only living with half a body, half a heart.” My vision blurred. “Dace needs me, and the only thing I can do to help him is tear out the other half of my heart and hope for the best.”

“The night I met you, when I followed you, I knew how terrified you were, but you didn’t break like I thought you would. You accepted Dace without reservation. Even though you didn’t remember any of this, you didn’t hesitate. You were always like that. No matter what else you forgot, you never hesitated with him.” He paused. “You’re wrong, you know. So was I.”

I looked at him.

“You’re more useful than I expected, and you’ve helped him more than you think you have. He’s accepted his role in all of this because of you.”

“He also tortures himself because of me,” I whispered.

“Do you blame him for that?” Ronan shot me another sharp, perceptive look.

I shook my head silently. I didn’t blame Dace for the way he felt. I merely wished things were different for him. That he didn’t have to fight so hard. That destiny didn’t pull him in two different directions. It wasn’t fair that we’d always done this together, and now we couldn’t because Dace didn’t trust me to be strong enough or trust himself to let me try.

“He loves you,” Ronan said. “He’s loved you forever, but love doesn’t change who he is. There’s always been that dark spot in him, that potential to lose himself to battle. That’s the line he walks because of who he is. You think you make that harder for him, but you’re wrong. You’re the thing that’s kept him from giving in to that rage thus far. You’ve kept him human.”

“I don’t feel like it,” I admitted, wrapping my arms a little tighter around myself.

“Because you’re afraid. You’ve seen what hatred can do to someone. You saw Sköll and Hati, and Fenrir.” At least
he
believed me about seeing Fenrir. “You don’t want that for Dace.”

No, I didn’t want that for Dace. There were no words to describe how very much I did not want that for Dace. Oddly enough, I didn’t want that for Ronan either.

“He’s lucky,” Ronan said. “He has someone to fight for.”

“So do you,” I whispered, thinking about Dani.

He looked down at the ground and then back to me. “I have revenge. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes burning with something I couldn’t name. Whether it was emotion or memory or something else altogether, it made him look harder than ever before, and somehow more brittle. “There’s a difference. Once Sköll and Hati are gone, I don’t care if I survive. The only thing I wanted in this world is gone.”

Tears pooled in my eyes, tears for him and for Dani and for the chance they never had. Once again, our destiny just wasn’t fair. None of us asked for any of this, Ronan and Dani least of all. “I’m sorry, Ronan. I am so sorry.”

His lips twisted again, but he didn’t respond.

We stood side by side for a long moment, staring blankly at Fuki. He slept beneath the tree, his ears twitched in response to some dream.

I turned toward Ronan again. “I felt her, you know,” I said.

Ronan looked at me.

“Freki. The night Sköll and Hati burned down Dace’s house, I was so angry…. I liked how powerful the emotion made me feel, so I kept reaching for more.”

“And you found her,” he said.

I nodded.

“She wasn’t what you expected, was she?”

“No, she wasn’t.” I expected her to be like Geri. To be as gentle, and as fierce as Dace’s wolf. But Freki was something else altogether. Everyone said women were more frightening. That they were stronger than men. After feeling Freki trying to fight her way free, I could believe that. If she was a blade before, time had sharpened her to a lethal point.

Ronan gave me an odd, assessing look. “She’s been caged for too long.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Imagine loving someone so powerfully for so long, and then being shut away in the dark with no way to communicate with your lover or fight against your bonds. Eventually, your anger is as great as the love you feel, and not because you learn to love less.”

“You make room for more emotion,” I said, frowning thoughtfully. Is that what Freki did?

“Yes,” he said. “Parents don’t love their firstborn less when a new kid comes along; they simply draw on more emotion for the new kid.”

“Do you think it’s possible to free her?” I asked, watching Ronan’s expression carefully.

He didn’t so much as bat a lash, and I knew he’d considered the same thing at some point. “Two months ago, I would have said no, you can’t reverse what’s happening to all of us, but now?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I nodded, satisfied with his answer. He didn’t know the rules governing our lives any more than Dace or I did. And if I could reach Freki once, maybe I could do it again. I probably couldn’t bring her all the way to the surface, but with any luck, I could chip away at the barrier between us. I could loosen her bonds, even if I couldn’t strip her of them entirely.

“I wouldn’t try it though,” Ronan cautioned.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s spent years in her cage. Years working up the same fury Dace and Geri now fight. Do you really want someone with that much power calling the shots for you?”

His question pulled my nightmare vision of Dace to the surface of my mind. If that’s what waited for him if he gave in… what waited for me if I found a way to free Freki? I’d felt her anger and hatred before, when I first met Ronan, and again when I found out about Sköll and Hati. It scared me then to feel that inside of me, to know I was capable of murder. If her anger was that bad before she woke, how much worse would it be now? Was what I felt the other day the depth of it, or was there more of that rage locked away inside of her?

Did I really want to find out?

I considered the question for a moment.

If freeing her helped us win, did it really matter how much worse her rage might be?

It didn’t, and Ronan and I both knew it.

“I might not have a choice,” I said.

Ronan nodded as if he’d expected that answer all along. “Where will you start?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I answered. I didn’t have a clue where to start trying to pull her to the surface. I wanted to free her, not be consumed by her. Was it possible to walk that line?

“Are you sure?” Ronan asked again. “Really sure you want to take that path?”

“No,” I admitted. “Do you think I should?”

“I’m not Dace,” he said. “It’s not my place to decide for you.”

If Freki was really as fearsome as Ronan suspected, Dace would never let me try to free her. He wouldn’t let me accept the risk it posed to me, or to her. But he wasn’t here now…. My heart throbbed painfully at the reminder.

“Can you take me to see my mom?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, shooting me an odd look at the quick subject change. He started to say something else.

“Don’t, please.” I cut him off, unable to have this conversation now. I couldn’t even think about Dace without feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to talk about him, let alone to Ronan.

Ronan hesitated for a moment, and then, thankfully, let it go.

ittle tufts of new grass stuck up from the mound of dirt covering Mom’s grave like flowers poking their heads bravely through the disturbed dirt in search of sunlight. The mound was smaller than I remembered, time and wind having worn it down over the last few months. Soon enough, it would be flat again. When that happened, the sad date on her headstone would be the only evidence of how close her death remained for those who knew and loved her.

Flowers still sat in groups around the headstone, some fresh and clean, others caked with dried mud. An overwhelming sense of gratitude washed through me at the sight of the newest flowers. Even if I hadn’t been here, someone else had. Her friends, neighbors, or coworkers… I didn’t know who looked after her for me, but someone did.

Ronan parked the car in the narrow lane closest to her grave and shut the engine off. “I’ll stay here.”

“Thanks,” I said, grateful he didn’t make me ask for privacy. I wanted―no, I
needed―
to do this alone.

I climbed from the car and made my way toward her plot, placing my feet carefully to avoid stepping on any of the graves standing between me and her. I stopped at the foot of her resting place and stared. Seeing her name engraved on the headstone was hard. I never really expected it to be easy anyway, though.

I lowered myself carefully to my knees. Moisture seeped from the cold ground, wetting my jeans.

“Hi, Mom,” I whispered, tracing my fingers over her name. The marble felt cool beneath my fingertips, the etching rougher than I imagined. “I miss you.” Twin tears slipped down my cheeks. “I miss you so much.” I took a deep breath, dashing my tears away. “But I’m okay, and so is Dad.” I smiled a little, my bottom lip trembling. Even after my parents divorced, they remained such good friends. Mom would want to know Dad was doing okay, too.

“I met someone. His name is Dace Matthews, and Dad really likes him. So do I.” I tried to laugh at my understatement, but tears choked me. “That’s not true. I’m in love with him. He’s….” How did I put to words everything Dace meant to me? “He means everything to me,” I said, the best way I could find to explain how important he was. “He’s everything to a lot of people right now.”

I had no clue how to explain the apocalypse, Sköll and Hati, and everything else going on in my life either. I couldn’t imagine telling my mom those things even if she sat across from me, not because I didn’t think she could handle them, but because I didn’t want her to be afraid. But more than anything else, I wanted to talk to her.

“There’s so much going on, Mom. I feel like the whole world has changed, and I don’t know what to do. How do I help Dace find his way? How do
I
find my way?” I asked her.

She gave me so much in my life… .Normalcy, love, and patience. Growing up hadn’t been hard because she was always there for me to lean on or talk to when I needed guidance or advice. I missed that so much since she died, tricking myself into believing everything about her was long gone. But out here, sitting at the foot of her grave, I felt like I heard her again. Like if I closed my eyes and sat quietly, she’d tell me what to do.

You’re stronger than you think you are, Ari. Trust yourself.

She told me the same thing so often over the years, and she’d always been right.

Dad was the same way. He didn’t tell me how to deal with my new world or how I should proceed. When it counted, he let me make my own decisions, and he was there to dry my tears and encourage me when I needed him.

My parents taught me to follow my heart no matter where it led, and it led me to Dace. I thought my heart would always lead to Dace. Without fate or destiny or whatever magic Odin breathed into us when he created us… I thought I still would have found my way to Dace.

But somewhere over the course of the last days or weeks, I took a wrong turn. Just like Dace, I’d lost sight of so much, and I didn’t know how to get that back. I didn’t know where to even begin. We were both so messed up. And I didn’t know what was right for us anymore. All I knew was that the things worth fighting for, the people worth fighting for… were worth fighting for no matter how hard or long the battle.