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“Goodie,” I muttered. “Because the last meeting went so well.”
“Are you going to come with me, or whine like some puling infant?” she snapped.
“What’s puling?”
Fyrcat let out a long-suffering sigh. “Never mind, child. Let’s go, before I abandon all of you to your idiocy.”
“Love you too, bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
But she was right. We had people to save, and if that meant working with the witch with a hole where her heart should be, I’d do it. So, I trudged after her in the snow, wishing desperately for a parka.
***
Sandy’s house wasn’t built to accommodate over sixty people, but she’d stuffed them in anyway. I felt like a sardine jumping into a can already over capacity when I stepped through the door.
All eyes turned toward us, shining and scared. Putting on stolen clothes did nothing. Their stares stripped me bare again and left me feeling small. It was my fault that they were here, huddling together for warmth, instead of in their homes reading a nice book or watching TV to round out the evening. If I hadn’t come to Marshall Heights, none of this would have happened.
“Where is everyone?” Torsten asked, taking stock of them.
Sandy stood, fixing him with an unfriendly stare. “They’re all dead. Fyrcat and I went from house to house, dodging the dead, and this was all we found. Sixty-five people out of a town of thousands. You have to hand it to the All-Father. He’s thorough.”
“Blame Freya for the Winters,” Torsten snapped. “This is her doing.”
“It isn’t,” Fyrcat said. She sounded tired. She was leaning against Skarde, and he wasn’t pushing her away. Which was more tolerance than I thought Skarde had in him, unless... Was it possible the two of them? No, no, it definitely wasn’t possible.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Odin bound Freya’s spirit to Midgard until such time as she can be killed,” Fyrcat explained. “The Winters are meant to keep her in place or freeze her out. You’ve all been fed a careful fiction. If we don’t stop him, she will die. And no one cares how much of Midgard dies with her.”
Torsten looked mutinous. I took a small side-step, putting myself between Torsten and the much smaller Fyrcat. If he lost control of his beast, he’d rip her apart, and we still needed her to save the survivors. I figured it was a safe bet he wouldn’t tear into me to get to her.
“You lie.”
Fyrcat threw her hands up in frustration. “What possible reason could I have to lie, Stormblood? What possible reason could I have for putting up with your odious brother, if not to stop this? You think I like freezing my ass off? You think I wouldn’t have begged Freya to call it off if I could? No. This isn’t her doing.”
“But—” he began.
“Brother,” Skarde cut across him, sounding as tired as Fyrcat looked. “She’s telling the truth. I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes. I don’t like it, but if we want to reverse this winter, we have to help the bitch goddess.”
Torsten’s mouth opened, closed, then pressed into an unhappy line.
“Did you do what you set out to do?” Skarde asked.
I’d been wondering that myself, but hadn’t found time to ask, what with the snow and potential ice zombies wandering around. I ran my hands down his back to feel the corded muscle beneath the man’s button-down we’d stolen from a nearby house. He was warm against my hands, warding away the worst of the chill.
“Are you free?” I asked. “I mean, do you feel any different?”
“Yes. I can no longer feel the shackles of my oath holding me down.”
He pulled away slightly, cupped the back of my head, and brought our lips together. He tasted like a campfire and the mead he’d drunk in Muspelheim. I gasped when I felt his tongue against my lips. My hands clutched onto his hips to steady myself as he broke the kiss.
“Thank you, Jovi. You freed me.”
“That’s… a hell of a thank you,” I responded as Torsten released me. My hands took their sweet time to relinquish their hold on his hips. When we finally separated, however, we were both faced with Sandy’s firm disapproval.
“And it’s totally inappropriate, given our circumstances,” she said tightly. “These people don’t have the benefit of an inner beast or magic to keep their blood warm. If we don’t hurry, we’ll drop from sixty-five to sixty-three. Then from sixty-three to sixty. And so on and so forth. So, what’s the plan?”
I stared out over the sea of faces, guilt punching me in the gut. I wanted to throw up. My fault. All my fault.
