Perfekt Balance (The Ære Saga Book 3) (13 page)

“
Skit
!” My brother swore out loud. “Abort. Elsa says it’s a
trap. Coming from the north—”

A second
explosion blasted the area, sending my brother to the ground. Pain
ricocheted across his mind, the sensation so intense I felt it
along with him.
Is your back okay?
I rubbed the bottom half of my
spine
.

It’s been better
, he admitted.
You felt that?

Yeah.
I rubbed harder, until the stinging ebbed.

I scanned the screens in Tyr’s head until I
came to the one that viewed Forse. He remained standing as a third
blast shook the stones loose from the base of the tower. “Are you
positive Elsa isn’t here?” Forse asked my brother.

“She says she’s not,” Tyr muttered through
his teeth. He pushed himself to his feet. A second flash of pain
across his mind sent my hand to my ankle. I sucked in a sharp
breath at the knife-like sensation slicing through my tendon.

Are you hurt?
I
pressed into his head.

I’ll be fine. Just twisted something.
Tyr moved forward, limping across the soot
just south of the tower. When he reached Brynn, he bent down to
help her up. The movement sent a stabbing ache shooting up my own
calf.

“You all right?” Tyr asked, ignoring the
pain.

Brynn bobbed her ponytail as she stood.
“Barely. That thing nearly took my head of.”

Tyr’s viewpoint scanned a car-sized boulder
resting a meter from Brynn. “That’s not from the tower. Where did
it come from?”

Get out of there!
I urged Tyr.
There’s a blackness bearing down on you from the
northeast mountains. Those explosions might have been activated
remotely, but whoever’s triggering them will be there any
minute
.

“Forse,” Tyr barked, as he pulled Brynn
alongside him. The valkyrie unsheathed her rapier, and held it at
the ready.

“If Elsa’s not here, then where is she?”
Forse growled.

I’ll recap the landmarks I passed on my way to you later.
Just get everybody out of there
.

“I don’t know yet. Just port us out of here
so we can figure it out.” Tyr shifted his gaze to the horizon. His
viewpoint narrowed as he pushed Brynn to the ground. An arrow
pierced the air, soaring through the exact spot where she’d been
standing. “It’s an ambush.”

Forse swore as another arrow flew by. “Gather
in,” he ordered, holding out his arms. Tyr and Brynn moved closer.
“We’ll port on three. One. Two. Th—”

Before he could finish his count, the sky
exploded. A sea of shrapnel rained down on my friends. My body felt
the sting of each impact as my brother’s vision clouded with pain.
The screens in his head dimmed nearly to black as he and Forse
hunched their bodies over Brynn’s. Through Tyr’s mind, I could see
Brynn escaped injury. But the blood soaking through the back of
Forse’s shirt showed he wasn’t so lucky.

No!
I
screamed.
Tyr, Forse is hurt
.

“You okay, Forse?” Tyr barked.

“It’ll heal.” Forse shrugged, the blood
dripping onto the soot. “We port on ‘now.’ Now.”

And with that my friends disappeared, leaving
my energy to scramble back to my body. I could only pray they’d
made it to safety as the heavy footsteps of a monster thundered
down on my cell.

* * * *

“Have you decided to play along? Or do I
actually need to go kill someone to motivate you?” The door banged
against the wall as Runa stormed into my cell. The soles of my
shoes scraped against the stones as I scrambled to my feet. Runa
bore down on me with all the fury of an enraged fire giant. Her
nostrils flared as she crossed the room, boots pounding on rocks.
“Well?”

“I’m trying to track Fenrir,” I lied. Runa
pulled her arm back, and I threw my hands over my face. “Don’t. I
said I’m trying.”

“
I don’t
believe you,” Runa spat. “Whatever you did to me before made me
sick. There’s this…thing. Right here.” She jabbed at the base of
her spine.

“Thing?” I asked cautiously.

“
Yes. It
feels…fluttery. I don’t like it. What the Hel did you do to
me?”

My eyes widened. Had I actually loosened the
black knot? Stopped Runa’s dark side from completely choking out an
innately good soul? Was it possible I wasn’t a total failure as a
Unifier after all?

“Stop smiling and undo whatever you did,”
Runa demanded.

“I can’t undo it.”

Runa drew her hand again, and I braced for
the impact.

“
I mean I
don’t know how,” I protested. My eyes closed as Runa’s hand struck
my ear.
Ouch
.

“Figure it out. Now.” Runa glared at me.

“In order for me to do that, you to have to
let me back in.”

Runa
clenched her fists. “You better not screw with me again. I’ll off
your boyfriend
and
the valkyrie in one strike.”

“
I know
you will,” I whispered.
Come on, Elsa. She’s giving you
the chance. Don’t mess this up.
I chose my next words carefully. “I’ll do my best to fix
what’s wrong inside you.”

“You will stop this awful feeling you gave
me,” Runa corrected. “I’m not playing some game with you. Mess with
me again, and it’s goodnight gods. Do you get that?”

“
I do.
Just…”

“Just what?”

“Just promise you’ll be open to me? If you
kick me out it’s not going to do either of us any good.”

“Just fix this.”

I closed my eyes and drew a breath. After
doubling up on my protections, I pushed my energy at Runa.

She pushed back.

“I can’t fix you if you don’t let me in,” I
reminded her.

The growl that came at me sounded more
resigned than angry. If that was progress, I’d take it.

With a slow breath, I directed a stream of
energy at Runa’s knot. It raced through the tangled trenches,
searching for something, anything, that might tell me what had
happened to Runa to wrap that black cord around her heart. If I
could find the root of her anger, I could heal her emotional injury
and eradicate her darkness. Then maybe she’d stop hurting the gods
I loved. As I traced the windy path of the cord, information shot
back at me. The clarity of the images was fuzzy, but Runa’s
emotions hit me as if they were my own. All the while, I kept an
eye on my mental stopwatch.

Five seconds passed.

A preschool-aged Runa sits alone outside a
schoolhouse, waiting for someone to pick her up. A teacher comes
out, shakes her head, and offers a hand. “Your parents forgot
again? Well, I’m sure they’ll send someone for you. In the
meantime, you can wait in the classroom with me.”

Ten seconds.

A young Runa cowers in a closet, cradling a
toddler in her arms. She looks a year or two older than the
toddler, who gazes up at her with confusion. Runa starts to hum,
her voice drowning out the sobs of a woman being beaten. “Hide and
seek is almost over,” she reassures the tot. “Then I’ll take you to
a special park. A park far, far away from here.”

Twenty seconds.

A primary-aged Runa stares in horror while a
woman lies on the bathroom floor, screaming. “How can you be so
selfish? Only a monster would stop me from killing myself. Why
would you wish this never-ending pain on your own mother?”

My gut
clenched, and my perception of Runa tilted on its head. The images
from Runa’s past were heartbreaking. They didn’t excuse what she’d
become, but for the first time I understood why she had so much
darkness inside. Her life had been so different from
mine
…she’d never had a
childhood. And now she would live out the rest of her days in
Asgardian prison. What an awful existence. This girl needed
help—the kind only a High Healer could provide.

As I readied myself to blast light at Runa’s
black hole of pain, one final memory flashed at me. It was so
intense I felt myself sucked into its vortex as if it were a
vacuum.

An adolescent Runa walks outside, head low
and face strewn with tears. A male figure follows at a distance,
hatred dripping from his words. “I knew it. I always knew you were
the one who took him from us when he was a baby. You bring him home
by nightfall or you are dead to me. Do you hear me? If you don’t
come home with your brother tonight, don’t bother coming home at
all.”

My stomach churned, and my hands flew to my
mouth. In the vision, Runa looked exactly the same age as she’d
been when she arrived in Asgard. She even wore the same blue
sweater she’d been wearing when Forse had first introduced her to
us. I remembered, because I had one just like it. I’d tried to bond
with Runa over our obviously similar fashion sense, but she’d blown
me off. She’d blown everyone off, except Forse. He’d been the only
one she let in.

Why hadn’t I tried harder? If she’d had more
friends, seen more kindness, maybe whatever goodness had inspired
Runa to protect that little boy could have won out. Instead, Runa
had become the very thing she grew up fearing. A killer. A monster.
A—

“You. Little. Liar!”

The shriek made my energy retract like a
recoiled spring. I pulled away from the pain inside Runa,
retreating into myself and staring wide-eyed at the enraged face
directly in front of me. The young girl from Runa’s memories was
barely recognizable behind the angular red face hissing
obscenities. Runa grabbed my hair, her long fingernails stabbing my
scalp as she forced me into the wall. The crack of skull on stone
was almost deafening. As I fought to shirk the darkness that
threatened to overtake me, I stared at Runa.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For everything
that happened to you. For not trying harder to be your friend. For
all of it. I’m sorry.” A hundred mallets thudded at the back of my
head, and my lids grew heavy as I gave in to the pain. I drew a
raspy breath, and whispered the words I never thought I’d say. “And
I forgive you.”

Runa drew a sharp breath, and behind my
closed eyelids I could have sworn I saw a flash of light within her
aura. Was she feeling surprise? Disgust? I’d probably never know.
In the next instant, whatever emotion she’d felt had passed, and
Runa’s rage took over.

“You’re not half as sorry as you’re going to
be,” she hissed. “You had no right to betray my trust. But
turnabout’s fair play, right? You take a memory of mine—I’ll take
something of yours. I hope your boyfriend’s ready to die.”

Panic squeezed my heart as Runa’s heels
clicked on the ground. But I was trapped. By the time she’d slammed
the cell door, the pain was so intense my body had started to shut
down. My hands lay limp at my sides, too weak to channel healing
energy. And as I drifted into blackness, I sent one final thought
to the universe.

I’m sorry.

I wasn’t sure who I was talking to; I only
knew that I’d failed. I’d failed Runa all those years ago, when I’d
written her off as a mean girl instead of trying to find out why
she was so cold. I’d failed my friends when I couldn’t undo the
energy block that would end up killing us all. And I’d failed
Forse—who’d done everything in his power to help me fulfill my
destiny—when I couldn’t perform my first and only assignment as
Unifier.

I’m so, so sorry.

But it was too late. Runa was out on a
mission to kill.

Again.

I FLOATED IN A
sea of darkness, lost somewhere between the searing pain
that sought to end me, and the utter exhaustion I always felt after
a healing—even an attempted one. As I drifted, too tired to grasp
consciousness and too battered to want to try, my brain gave me a
beautiful reprieve. It switched into sleep-mode, freeing me from
the nightmare of my reality and releasing me to the dreamland of my
past. In that unburdened state, my subconscious returned to one of
the happiest memories it could recall—the moment I’d realized, even
without the Norns telling me, that Forse Styrke was fated for
me.

“
Elsa?” Forse looked up as I barged into
his study. When he glanced from my bare feet to my drawn face, he
placed his hands on the desk and rose. “You’re white as
snow.”

I shook my head, running my fingers through
my abnormally messy hair. “I’m fine.”

Forse threw his pen on top of a stack of paperwork and
walked around the desk in long strides. He wrapped his arms around
my shoulders and pulled me to him. I rested my cheek against the
thick muscles of his chest, raising both hands to press my
fingertips into his back. If I held on tight enough, maybe I could
stay in this moment, with my one constant, forever. Everything else
had changed, or disappeared
…or died. My parents had barely been set to sea,
and now I had
this
to contend with?

“
I want them back.” My shoulders shook as
I started to cry. I wept delicate tears of defeat, not the deep
wracking sobs of grief. After the week I’d had, I didn’t have the
energy.

“
I’m so sorry this is happening
, hjärtat.
”
Forse rested his chin on the top of my head. “Your parents
were like a second family to me. I can’t believe they’re
gone.”

“
Me neither.” I sniffed.

Forse rubbed the space between my shoulder blades with his
thumb. The touch sent a warmth along the length of my back, and
despite my pain, in that moment I felt
…almost happy. My world had turned
completely on its head. My parents were gone. My brother was
tearing through the realms on a revenge rage. But Forse was still
here, just as he always was. He’d been there my first day of
primary school, when the kids made fun of my powers. He’d been
there when Skadi’s clique of mean girls had made everyone’s life
unfathomably awful. And he’d been the first to show up at our home
last week when Fenrir did the unthinkable. He’d intercepted me at
the door as I came home from school, steering me back to his house
and making sure my last vision of my parents was Mom waving me to
school from the front porch, Dad’s arm firmly around her waist. His
parents took care of the bodies while Forse held me on his couch
and delivered the news that would change my life
forever.