Mist

Mist backed away, raising her hands. “This won’t work, Dainn. Look, even assuming we gather enough mortals willing to believe us and risk their lives for their world, we can’t have battles in the streets. The only way we can fight Loki is through some kind of guerrilla action, like the Resistance in—” Her vision began to go dark. “Oh, gods. I can’t do this. I can’t be responsible.”

“You can. As a wise man once said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ You have a clear responsibility, Freya’s daughter. One must lead. One must inspire men and women to do deeds they will believe are beyond their capacity, and convince them that their survival depends upon it.”

“You don’t know,” she whispered. “You didn’t see.”

Dainn grabbed her arms, his fingers digging deep into muscle. “Will you pity yourself at a time such as this?”

He had said nearly the same thing to her before, when she had blamed herself for not recognizing who Eric really was. She didn’t despise herself any less now.

“I’m not what you think I am,” she said. “I never was.”

He dropped his hands. His eyes were filled with contempt, but there was no beast lurking behind them. They belonged wholly to Dainn.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said, “and this world will fall into chaos because you would not accept the burden of the gifts with which you were born. I will tell your Sister that she has made a mistake, and send Vali home to his brother. The children will be sent away, and I . . .” He closed his eyes. “Loki will kill me eventually, but I believe I can slaughter a few dozen of his Jotunar before he can stop me.”

Mist understood. Dainn would let himself go, because he would see no reason to fight any other way. He had been sent to find her, protect her, help her prepare the way for the Aesir. If she gave up, he would truly have no purpose except to kill whatever the beast could hunt down.

That was the choice he had been given: to help her fight for Midgard, or let the beast take him. That was his fate.

His decision, she thought. But Dainn knew her too well. He knew she would blame herself if he became the thing he hated. He knew she understood that what would happen to him was nothing compared to what would become of the people of Midgard: kids like Ryan and Gabi, men and women like the bikers in her living room, the receptionists in Century Tower, the patrons of Asbrew— millions of mortals who didn’t deserve what was coming.

Mist knew she had a one-in-a-million chance of stopping it, even if she had every one of her Sisters and thousands of mortals on her side. But the Norns couldn’t have revealed her destiny more clearly if they had been spinning the thread of her life right in front of her.

“I recognize you now,” Ryan had said. “You were always there, in the middle.”

He’d just gotten the position slightly wrong.

“Odin-cursed elf,” she said. “You always knew you’d win.” When she looked up, Dainn’s eyes had changed. There was sadness in them, yes, but there also pride. In her. As if he had any right to —

Oh, Hel.

“There’s one question you’ve never answered to my satisfaction,” she said.

“Only one?”

She couldn’t help but smile, but it didn’t last. “What ever ‘exiled’ everyone to Ginnungagap during the Last Battle . . . how do we know it won’t happen again?”

“We do not. But if there was some force responsible, it has almost certainly long since vanished.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to have to worry about that on top of everything else.”

“Worry only about what you have the power to change,” Dainn said. He started toward the door. When she didn’t follow, he stopped and looked back.

“Are you coming?” he asked softly.

“Tell Bryn I’m on my way.”

He bowed his head as he might to one of the most powerful of elf-lords and walked out of the gym. Mist lingered, looking around the room as if for the last time.

In a way, it was. There wouldn’t be any more friendly bouts with lovers followed by a shower and a laughing tumble between the sheets. If Dainn was right and firearms couldn’t be used by either side in this war, the weapons displayed on the rack—and all the others she could make—were badly going to be needed, and the gym would become a training ground for warriors.

They’d all have to learn very, very fast.

Turning off the light, Mist went to join her army.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With special thanks to my editor, Lucienne Diver, my husband, Serge Mailloux, and my good friend Geri Lynn Matthews, for their ongoing support and enduring faith in me;

To Mary Kay Norseng, Professor Emerita, Scandinavian Section, UCLA , for her help with Norwegian words and phrases;

To my sister, Lauran Weinmann, for taking me on a tour of San Francisco after all my years away;

To Jeri and Mario Garcia, for their help with colloquial Spanish;

To MacAllister Stone, for her information and advice about blacksmithing.

And also to Genevra Littlejohn, for information about Kendo terminology.