“You must, though,” Loki said. “If you do not, you will die and never have a chance to protect your new friend. A dragon who is already very important to you.”
Even though Raven was still visibly frightened, her heart was in her eyes when she looked at Tor. She didn’t want him to go but not seeing him again terrified her even more.
“You do want to protect your new friend, right?” Loki went on, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. No wonder. The grove might be influenced by Vanaheim, but they were very much in Ireland. Enemy territory. “You want to help her as she helped you?”
Tor cocked his head in confusion before his eyes widened in understanding.
“Youdidhelp me, and I had nearly forgotten,” Tor murmured. “I owed you my life, Raven.”
Shehadhelped him, hadn’t she? How, though? The memory seemed just out of reach.
“I couldn’t risk not seeing you again.” Tor followed his younger thoughts. “I had to protect you. Keep you safe. Love you if you’d let me.”
“And I understood that,” Raven whispered. “Not that it made the moment any easier.”
“No,” he agreed.
Tiny Tor’s eyes brimmed with tears when he looked at her with farewell. When he nodded that he would see her again.
“I had no idea how.” Tor’s gaze drifted to a tiny orb floating in the trees nearby. “Or did I?” He looked at Cian in surprise when he realized what it was. “That’s you, isn’t it? Not as a grown man like you were when you aided Trinity but as an unborn soul?”
“It is,” Cian confirmed, leaving it at that as the memory continued.
Knowing she would be safe in the care of the orb, not to mention desperate to find his way back to her in life, tiny Tor gave Raven one last lingering look before he hopped into Loki’s palm. The second he touched down, the world tilted and darkened.
Not in the memory, but right here, right now.
Was she getting ready to pass out?
Raven no sooner thought it when everything snapped shut, and she was thrust into darkness before being thrust into light.
Blinding, blazing, powerful light.
Suddenly, Raven was inside her tiny ethereal dragon, flailing, trying to flap her wings. When her ethereal sisters whipped by her and burst free of the fire, she realized where she was.
Leviathan and Destiny were Forging in Fire.
She was reliving what had happened to her soul when it came into existence.
And it was terrifying.
Unlike her sisters, she was trapped in the Forge. Trapped in immense godly energy. She flapped her wings even harder, trying to gain altitude, but there was no hope for it. She was sucked back into the Forge, ensnared in not just Destiny and Leviathan’s incredible power but Loki’s. Caught in a vortex designed specifically to birth baby dragons. To release souls that would someday go on to mate and become the greatest weapons of this war.
The keywords, of course, beingreleased souls.
Something her soul didn’t do.
Rather, from what she could make of it, her tiny dragon spirit tumbled about in a cauldron of everything that had gone into making the Forge. Including, as she soon discovered, various Norse worlds. Not just that but the power of the stone circle they were in, so Ireland as well. Everything became a kaleidoscope of locations before she realized that, with sheer willpower, shecouldfollow her sisters.
Wouldshe, though?
Shouldshe?
Because something deep inside told her she was needed elsewhere.
She could help.
Save lives.
