Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (33 page)

Fuki heard the commotion and stopped running, nearly skidding as he pulled up short. When he noticed the toddler racing in his direction, the little wolf sat back on his haunches. He tilted his head to the side in that familiar, questioning way.

I felt nothing but eager curiosity in the thoughts Fuki shared with me, but I started to step forward to call him back to me anyway.

Ronan put a hand on my arm to stop me. “Wait a minute,” he said.

The little boy stopped a few feet from Fuki. They stared at one another for a minute, both tilting their heads side to side.

“Hi, doggie,” the little boy said.

Fuki yipped and thumped his tail against the ground.

“Pretty doggie,” Aaron giggled, peals of babyish laughter echoing around the rest stop.

Fuki yipped again.

The boy’s mom caught up to the wayward child and grabbed him as he reached out toward Fuki with one chubby hand. She gasped audibly when she got a good look at the wolf, no doubt recognizing he wasn’t the domestic doggie her son thought him. “Aaron, get away from him!”

“No, mommy! Doggie! Doggie!” The little boy squealed, still reaching for the nearly grown wolf.

His mom ignored his cries and lifted him into her arms to carry him to safety.

Fuki lowered himself to the ground and whined, as if asking her why the funny boy couldn’t touch him. The woman watched Fuki warily, seeming caught between a desire to protect her son and curiosity over Fuki’s friendly demeanor. The little wolf didn’t run away or threaten the boy. He merely whined again and scooted toward the woman on his belly.

The boy’s mother began to back away from Fuki, casting brief glances over her shoulder. When she was far enough away, she set Aaron back on his feet. He turned toward Fuki and waved. “Bye, doggie.”

Fuki whined, sounding forlorn.

Aaron toddled away, his hand clasped firmly in his mom’s.

“This is why Buka sent him with you,” Ronan murmured to me. “He lacks the fear needed to survive in the wild. If he stayed with her, he wouldn’t be so lucky next time the hunters stumble upon him. Buka knew it.”

“I know,” I said, sad for Fuki and Buka all over again. The little wolf would never live with his pack mates again. Never truly know the wild again. And Buka did what any mother would do to protect her baby. She let him go.

“Do you?” Ronan asked. His expression was so serious, so assessing. Whatever he saw on my face must have satisfied him, though, because he nodded. “I think maybe you do.” He let go of my arm.

The young boy and his mom stepped up onto the sidewalk. Aaron waved at Fuki again, then toddled off toward a silver minivan.

“What’s your point?” I asked Ronan then.

Ronan turned his sharp, raven eyes on me again. “You think Sköll and Hati hold Idun captive, but have you stopped to think maybe Freki showed you that because captivity is all she knows? Until two months ago, she was trapped with no way to free herself. Even now she’s stuck in her cage, unable to do anything more than whisper to you. Maybe you saw Freki’s own desire for freedom, shared with you the only way she knows how.”

“I….” I hesitated, thinking back over all the times I’d felt Freki, and then shook my head, defiant. She might have been trapped, but she wasn’t mindless. She still responded when she felt Geri. She still tried to fight for him and Dace when they were hurting. She wasn’t so far gone as Ronan seemed to think.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “Freki may be stuck, but she remembered Idun.”

“Did you recognize her?” he asked me again.

“No, but Freki knows her,” I said, refusing to believe otherwise. Refusing to give up on Freki like Ronan seemed to have done.

I couldn’t free Freki from her cage. I couldn’t even communicate with her most of the time. But she was part of me, and I wouldn’t give up on her now just because Ronan said so. I
couldn’t
give up on her now.

Fuki decided the little boy wasn’t coming back to pet him and climbed to his feet before loping back toward us.

Ronan sighed. “Maybe you’re right and Sköll and Hati are holding Idun, but I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that you’re wrong about her.”

“Why?” I demanded, glaring at him. I didn’t understand why, after all his talk about my instincts, he was so reluctant to believe me. And I didn’t like how closely his doubts mirrored my own. If Freki was wrong about Idun, if the goddess did choose Sköll and Hati’s side of her own volition… where did that leave Dace? I couldn’t even help him deal with Sköll and Hati. How the hell was I supposed to keep him alive with a full-fledged goddess on their side?

“Why what?”

“Why are you so sure I’m wrong about this?”

Ronan rubbed a hand down his face. “I’m not sure you’re wrong,” he said. “I think your dream probably does mean Idun is with Sköll and Hati. But you’re looking for a savior in the eleventh hour, and there isn’t one, Arionna. There never has been.” He shot me a look I couldn’t decipher. “No one is going to step in and magically fix Dace for you. He either gets it together himself, or he dies. You need to accept that before you get the rest of us killed too.”

“Well, I don’t accept it,” I snapped. “I won’t let Dace die just because you don’t like him.”

“You think that’s why I’m telling you this?” Ronan asked.

“Why else?” I glared at him, feeling belligerent. “You don’t care if he lives or not. You probably hope he dies before this is all over!”

Ronan eyed me. For a minute he looked… sad and disappointed, as if my angry accusation truly bothered him. And then his gaze cleared, that damn inscrutable mask of his slipping into place. “You’re right,” he said without inflection. “I don’t care if he lives or not. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when the rest of us die right along with him because you’re being careless.”

I glared at him, my hands clenched. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I couldn’t. The fear he might be right choked me like icy fingers clamped tightly around my throat.

“We’ll stop in Dayton for the night,” he said, pushing away from the Yukon, then jogging toward the restrooms.

“Are you okay?” Chelle asked late that night, looking at me across the table shoved into the corner of our room in Dayton.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, pushing my plastic fork through the gravy congealing on my take out tray. I’d eaten little, my appetite lost somewhere beneath the disquieting questions tumbling through my mind.

“You’ve barely said two words all night.” Chelle sat her fork down and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. Her expression firmed and her eyes narrowed. The no nonsense look in her eyes made it clear I couldn’t stall her this time. “What’s going on, Ari?” she asked.

“Ronan thinks we’re going to die.”

“What?” Chelle blinked.

“He thinks I’m going to be the one that gets us killed,” I said, dropping my fork into my tray and sitting back. I looked Chelle in the eye, wondering if she thought the same thing. “He says I’m looking for a savior, and there isn’t one. He thinks I need to stop trying to save Dace.”

“He
what
?” She narrowed her dark eyes, twin spots of anger blooming on her cheeks.

“What if he’s right?” I asked before she said anything else.

She opened her mouth and then closed it, but no sound came out.

“Dace and I keep trying to save each other, and it’s gotten us nowhere,” I said. “I was so angry at Dace for doing it, but I’m doing the exact same thing he did.” I laughed bitterly. “I’m a hypocrite.” Worse, I was a fraud. I yelled and raged at Dace about putting Ronan and the wolves in danger, and then I did the same thing to Chelle. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Dace, so I went looking for someone who could save him for me. That’s why I was really running, and we all knew it, even if Ronan was the only one brave enough to say it.

“You aren’t a hypocrite, Ari,” Chelle said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “You’re in love, and you’re afraid. We all are. That’s not wrong.”

“Isn’t it though?” I asked her. “I talked to my dad this morning. Dace can’t communicate with Geri anymore.”

Chelle’s eyes widened and I knew she hadn’t known that. No one told her either.

“He’s defenseless right now; all because I thought I knew what was best for him.” I swallowed against the urge to cry. “We’re all defenseless right now, and I don’t know what to do, Chelle. If I go back, I’ll get him killed. If I stay away, I may lose him anyway.” I looked up at her. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, frowning sadly.

Defeat coursed through me, burning like acid through my veins with each beat of my heart.

Why did everything have to be so damned complicated? Just once, I wanted the answer to be simple. But it wasn’t. I could go back, and hope for the best. I could hope that Dace came around and decided sacrificing himself for me wasn’t right. I could hope I found the strength to help him instead of being the reason he died. Or I could keep wasting time, looking for a miracle that probably didn’t exist. Neither led to rainbows and puppies. Neither saved Dace. And neither made my heart hurt any less.

What the hell was I going to do?

What
could
I do?

stared out the window, watching rain sheet down outside. Thunder rattled the cheap windowpane, and the lights in the room flickered with each loud clap. Fuki danced at my heels, growling each time lightning lit up the sky outside. He didn’t like bad weather. Neither did I. It was storming when my mom died, and again when we buried her.

I watched the tempest rage anyway, my forehead pressed to the cool glass. Every exhalation caused a little patch of the window to fog over, warm air fighting the cold for dominion over that one small spot of glass. The heater in the room was cranked to full blast, but wind whistled beneath the door, kicking up a draft that made the paper-thin curtains sway back and forth.

We’d been in Indiana for an entire day, but we hadn’t gone anywhere near the campus or Dr. Michel. Ronan was waiting, I think, to see what choice I would make. I hadn’t made one yet. How could I when neither choice led anywhere good? When both led to living without my heart?

I wanted Ronan to be wrong. Everything in me wanted him to be wrong, but I couldn’t stop the little voice inside whispering that maybe he was right. Maybe the only way to win this time was to stop running and accept whatever came. Accept that the only chance we had of winning was to fight, knowing the best we could hope for was to weaken Sköll and Hati and send them back wherever they came from. And to fight, knowing that people we loved might die anyway.