Descendant

southernmost tip of North Brother Island, Mason and Fennrys saw that their ride was waiting for them.

Just not quite in the way they had expected.

XV

Aken the ferryman floated in the water about ten feet from shore.

More precisely, pieces of him floated in the water. The boat that Aken had been meaning to transport them from the island in was smashed right through the middle, upended and jammed against a shoal of rocks. Its two distinct halves bobbed awkwardly just off shore.

Rafe hunched in the shallows of the water; a huge, sleek black wolf howling at the dark night sky. It was the most heart-wrenching, mournful sound that Mason had ever heard. As she and Fennrys slowed to a stop, the howling died and Rafe’s outline blurred until he knelt on the shore in his transitional man-wolf state.

Mason heard him swear in what she could only assume must be his ancient Egyptian tongue, and she was glad she couldn’t actually understand what he was saying. It sounded like curses—in the original sense. After his outburst, Rafe seemed to deflate a little, his shoulders sagging. He mumbled something about needing to perform a ritual of passage for the dead demigod Aken’s spirit, and began uttering a low, singsong incantation full of raw, welling emotion.

Fennrys and Mason moved off down the shore to give him privacy, both of them pretending not to notice the tracks of bloodred tears that marred the fur of his cheeks as he did. As they walked down the beach, Mason couldn’t help but notice that Fenn’s hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists. He glanced over and saw that she was staring at him.

“Random boating accident?” she asked, hearing the tightly controlled anger in her own voice.

“Yeah.” Fennrys snorted in disgust. “What are the odds?”

“I think it’s fairly clear that someone doesn’t want us getting off this island,” Mason said quietly.

She sat down on a moss-covered rock at the edge of the trees, and her gaze drifted across the East River, toward the dark, glittering shapes of the towers in the city. Her father had offices in one. And a palatial penthouse apartment in another.

And what else?

There was a whole, hidden side to Gunnar Starling that Mason had never known about. Or maybe she’d always suspected it was there and she’d never been able to bring herself to wonder further. . . .

“Looks like there’s a fog rolling in,” she said, nodding toward where the lights of the skyscrapers were starting to shimmer with distortion, haloed in the evening light. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to broach the subject. But of course she would have to eventually. It seemed there were a lot of unpleasant truths she was having to face up to all of a sudden. She wasn’t sure just how much more she could handle. But she had to know.

Fennrys sat down beside her and waited.

“So tell me. As a . . . a Valkyrie, I would . . .” She hesitated, trying to frame the question in a way she could understand as she asked it. “I mean . . . what, exactly, was it my father wanted from me? What was I supposed to do?”

For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. But then he did. And she almost wished he hadn’t.

“There’s Valkyries and then there’s Valkyries, Mase,” he said. “Just like everything else, it’s a matter of degrees. The Valkyrie that your dad was trying to make out of you was to be the one who would choose a third Odin son to lead the Einherjar out of Valhalla.”

“A third.”

“Rory, Roth . . .” Fennrys ticked them off on his fingers. “You were, it seems, supposed to be the third. A son. And when you turned out otherwise, it seems Gunnar just assumed that the prophecy was flawed. Unattainable. According to Rafe, he was on the verge of letting it go for good. But then, thanks in large part to my dumb ass, the rift between the worlds opened. And I could walk between them. That’s when Gunnar’s plans got dusted off and adjusted. If I could fetch the Odin spear for him, Gunnar could make a Valkyrie. A Valkyrie can make an Odin son.” Fennrys glanced sideways at Mason from under his brows. “That’s what your dad wants.”

“Because, according to this prophecy, these Odin sons are needed to lead the Einherjar,” Mason said, struggling to understand, even though she strongly suspected that she already did. “Lead them to what?”

“Ragnarok.”

Mason closed her eyes, and all she saw was red.

Ragnarok. She had always feared that word. Harsh and guttural, it was made of sounds that stuck in the throat like a death rattle. Which, she supposed, it was. Death. Ending. Mason had never understood the myths of her forefathers. She hadn’t embraced them the way Rory had—with his gruesome enthusiasm and sneering disdain for humanity—nor had she ever emulated them the way Roth had, with his silent, stoic, fatalistic approach to life. And she certainly hadn’t aspired to manifest them, as it appeared now her father always secretly had.

“Ragnarok. The end of the world.” Her voice echoed hollowly in her ears.

“Yeah,” Fennrys said quietly. “That certainly seems to be the direction your father’s pointing toward.”

My father . . .

He’d promised Mason, after that time with the game—the hide-and-seek game when she’d been lost, locked in the abandoned shed for three days—that he’d keep her safe. For what? So he could sacrifice her humanity later in life to fulfill some kind of twisted global death wish? She could barely believe it. And at the same time, something about it made absolutely perfect sense.

Bastard.

For the second time in less than an hour, Mason felt as if she might actually faint. Her vision was starting to tunnel, even in the darkness, but there was no way she was going to give in to the despair that washed over her at the news of this . . . this . . .

Betrayal.

That was the only word that seemed to fit at the moment. Suddenly, Mason saw everything with a startling clarity. And she knew somehow that her mother—her real mother, wherever she was— had known. About the prophecy, about the fact that Mason was supposed to be born a boy. She must have. And she’d . . . she’d done something. Made some kind of bargain or willed Mason to be a girl or sacrificed herself somehow to alter that doomed outcome.

No wonder Loki had granted Yelena Starling the power of a goddess. Her mother must have had extraordinary strength of character. Or maybe Mason was just deluding herself in order to feel better. Certainly, it was only a guess, but she felt sure that in life, Yelena had done everything she could to save Mason from her prophesied fate. Because, in death, her mother had sent her Fennrys. For that alone, Mason would be forever grateful.

“There’s irony for you,” she murmured softly.

“What’s that?”

“You told me that Hel—the real Hel—sent you to me. My mom sent you to me so that you could help keep me from becoming an instrument shaped for ending the world. You.” She smiled wanly at him. “A guy who was so eager for his own ending. And now? You’re back, fighting to keep me from fulfilling the most sought-after destiny of Vikings everywhere. I find that ironic.”

“I probably would, too.” Fennrys shrugged. “If I hadn’t gotten the chance to get to know you, Mase. Some things are worth dying for. Some are worth living for. And some are both. I suspect your mom had a suspicion I might think that way about you. She struck me as pretty insightful.”

Mason blinked against the sudden sting of tears that threatened. “I wish I’d met her—the real her—while I was in Asgard. She sounds cool.”

“I can vouch for that. And I kind of got the impression that you mean everything to her, Mase,” Fennrys said