I cut Tore off with a raised palm. “I said I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. What I do want to do is say goodbye to my mother, who lost a lot of energy last night.” My throat closed up, making me choke over my next words. “There’s barely any life essence in her. I don’t know how long we’re going to be in Jotunheim, and I want to make sure, if God forbid anything happens to her, I at least got to say goodbye.”
“I’ll stand by the entry. But I am not leaving this house.” Tore didn’t budge. It was the best deal I was getting.
“Fine.” I glared at him. When he moved away from my mother’s bed, I turned back to look at her. My mom’s once golden hair was a dull dishwater color. Her creamy skin was almost grey, and her lips were dry and brittle. It didn’t take a healer to know she was barely hanging on. I dropped to my knees at her bedside and rested my head on her upturned palm. At the touch, a fresh series of forgotten memories nudged at my brain—nights watching stars in the backyard, a campfire, my mother’s laughter filling our home with pink, bubbly energy. Oh, Mom.
Grief poured over me in waves. How had it come to this? Was Nott really powerful enough to break through whatever protections the gods had set around their realm and attack my mom? Or had someone else done this for her? Greta said she’d removed six thick energy cords, one from each of my mom’s lower six centers. Whoever had done this was one cord away from draining the life force straight from my mom’s seventh center—the one at the top of her head that linked directly to her soul. As weak as she was from the other six, if one more cord had gotten in there, she would have died—no question about it. As it was, her signature barely registered—and that was after Greta and two of Asgard’s top healers spent the night working on what was left of her energy.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I whispered. “I promise I’ll keep training; keep getting stronger. I’ll work as hard as I can so that when I find the pieces of Gud Morder and put them back together, I can free you. And I can destroy the monster who did this to you.” I pressed my cheek into my mother’s hand and waited for some kind of response. A twitch, an energetic pulse, anything. But she remained still, not so much as a blip coming from the bed.
“And when I do that, and you wake up . . .” I raised my head. “We’ll finally get to know each other. I can tell you what a great guardian Gran was; you can tell me about the year we lived here . . .” A wave of sadness pressed against my chest, and I swallowed the lump that threatened to emerge as a blubbering wail. It sucked that I’d never known my mom, and it sucked that I’d never know my dad. And it sucked that I had to leave on a mission to track down pieces of the only weapon that could avenge my family, without knowing if my mom would be alive when I got back.
My life straight up sucked right now.
“All right, Pepper. That’s enough.” Tore’s husky voice came from behind me. Directly behind me. Liar.
“You said you’d stay at the entry.” I glared over my shoulder through unshed tears.
“Ja. But I also said I took an oath to protect you. And your aura just nosedived from rose to charcoal. I can’t have you go down a dark path before we head into Jotunheim. Dark realms screw with our energy enough as it is.”
“So what, you’re the boss of my moods now, too?” I challenged.
“If it’s in your best interest, then yes.” Tore stepped up. “I am. What are you going to do about it?”
Anger bubbled inside me, percolating from my gut through my chest. My necklace vibrated, and when the energy reached my throat, I unleashed my frustration in a shout. “I can’t take this anymore!”
Tore put his hands on my shoulders and whirled me around. My fingers balled into fists, and I struck him in the chest before I registered what I was doing.
“Don’t freaking touch me!” I pounded Tore’s apparently steel-lined pecs. In one swift movement, he pulled me closer, pinning my arms to his torso. I tried to push him away, but my effort was futile. The guy had a hundred pounds of solid muscle on me, easy. So, I resorted to the juvenile tactic of screaming. “Let me go!”
“Shh.” Tore’s lips brushed against my ear as he whispered. “It’s going to be okay, Allie.”
“No, it’s not!” I yelled into his chest. “Let me go!”
“Shh,” Tore repeated. I kept pushing, but I couldn’t shake the boulder-sized demigod off me. When it became clear Tore really wasn’t going anywhere, my anger dimmed to frustration, then dipped back into heartbreak.
“This sucks,” I said into the grey buttoned Henley at my face. The scents of pine and fresh snow and all that was Tore filled my nose.
“I know it does. I’ve been where you are, Allie.” Tore’s lips still brushed against my ear. He was keeping his voice soft, probably a deliberate choice to soothe the crazy who’d just attacked him. Whatever. He had it coming. “I understand how hard it is to see someone you love hurting, but we are going to fix this. I promise. We’ll find the pieces of Gud Morder, and we’ll fuse them together. We will wake your mother. You will see her alive again if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It feels impossible,” I admitted. Then I shivered. Now that I wasn’t raging like a maniac, I could appreciate the way his hands slid down my lower back, resting possessively just above my butt. My insipid, unrequited crush was working its way back into my space. And I wasn’t doing a darned thing to stop it.
“I know it does. That’s what being a demigod is. An eternity of the impossible. But we slay monsters the same way humans get through their problems—by taking it one step at a time.” Tore rested his cheek on the top of my head, and I shivered again. “So here’s the plan. First, we tell your mom we’ll see her soon. Because we will see her again. Greta’s one of the best healers we have, and she’s been reversing the energy drain since the minute she got the call. She’ll keep your mom alive until we get back.”
“Okay,” I murmured.
“Second, we take our team into the frozen realm, and we hunt. You’ve come a long way in your tracking, and you’ll have your armor with you. Between you and me, and any intel the ravens can get us, we should be able to locate the Jotunheim piece fairly quickly.”
“We have no idea where it is,” I reminded him. “And our bodies aren’t exactly acclimated to a freezing planet.”
“No. But Johann brought plenty of cold weather gear with us from the safe house. And the Alf?dr’s ravens will continue to scout Jotunheim while we’re there. Huginn and Muninn will see something that will lead us in the right direction. I have faith.”
I drew a shaky breath. “And then we’ll get the piece of Gud Morder, bring it back to the safe house, and go to the next realm. And the next. And the next.” I tilted my head up so I could look at Tore. “This feels endless.”
“I know it does.” Tore looked down. His face was just inches from mine. “But we will end this. I promise you, Allie.”
My eyes fixed on those pillowy lips as they formed the words. God, they were beautiful. And they were so close to my face. I ran my tongue over my bottom lip at the same time Tore’s hands pressed tighter against my lower back.