“Excellent,” she breathes. “Let’s launch a reconnaissance team to report back on a full scale.”
I shake my head, my shoulders squaring. “He saw me.”
Freya sinks into her chair, her lips tugging down at the corners, and a heaviness settles across her brow. Harald curses under his breath, his knuckles rapping against the round tabletop.
“Which means we’ll only ha’ one shot at this,” Lachlan announces. He sits rigidly beside me. But there’s something about his face, his expression. It’s serious, calculating. The man next to me is now the warrior who was put in charge of the guard.
“I say we go right this second,” Odr adds. He leans an elbow on the table and a lock of black hair falls over his eyes. “They’ll think we’ll spend time plotting and planning. So we catch them off guard.”
Freya shakes her head, scrubbing a hand down her face before eyeing my end of the table. “They’re nowhere near ready. Their powers fatigue too rapidly.” She gestures to me. “Lena can’t even fly!”
Her words were not intended to cause any harm, but they did.
I can’t fly. And it stings.
Harald grimaces before adding, “All that aside—I agree with Odr. We’ll have the element of surprise.”
Luna slams her fist against the table. “You’d be sending all of us to our deaths!”
I’m inclined to agree with her.
Lachlan tilts his head, studying the map of our realm. “What if we don’t launch all of our troops? What if we launch a small unit to invade their castle?”
Freya and Odr share a look. “If we could see their castle, that would be the plan. Unfortunately, with the mists, we have no way of gauging if they’ve enhanced their fortifications.”
“We also have no way of knowing if they plan on moving their captives now that we know where they are. We risk losing our one grain of knowledge if we wait too long,” Odr replies, looking around at the table before his gaze settles upon me.
Evander speaks up before I can argue.
“So we split the difference between all the plans. Give us a week.”
My throat bobs with a forced swallow.
A week? For what?
“A week will make no difference,” Piominko replies. His face is carefully neutral, but there’s a calculated measure, as if he’s thinking through all the possible outcomes at once.
Freya’s nostrils flare as she inhales sharply while squeezing the bridge of her nose. “Even an extra hour would make a difference. A week it is. Lena needs to learn how to fly, and Tane,”—she eyes him across the table—“needs to learn how to fight again.”
“A week,” Mathilda whispers, her face reflecting the horror I feel writhing in my gut.
“I need to return to Vanaheim and let my generals know they need to prepare for a full-scale operation and the contingency plans, if we fail.”
If we fail.
If we fail, it would launch all the realms into a war to end all realms.
If we fail, it’s because we died, and couldn’t stop it.
Lachlan’s hand finds mine under the table. I cling to it, holding onto this last piece of normalcy before we leave this table and prepare for the fight of our lives.
One week.
Freya and Odr stand. “Harald, stay and help them train.Piominko—do what you can to help Tane. We’ll be back in six days. And we leave here in seven.”
They stride swiftly from the room. Freya’s opalescent wings vanish through the door ahead of a rigid Odr. His black hair glimmers in the light pouring from the ceiling.
He pauses with one hand on the door to turn back and look at us. “Good luck.”
