She hadn’t realized until St. Martin pulled Frank, Axlam, and her inside his shell. She’d thought it just another strong Wolf, like Las Vegas Wolf, who had found a way to smear out its magic.
She’d never been so wrong in her life.
“Fenrir,” she said.
“All you need to do is ask for help,” Raven responded.
The World Raven sitting next to Dagrun was a trickster, but she was also the trickster who brought light to the world.
“You’ll help stop Ragnarok in exchange for a restaurant?”
Raven smugly examined her fingernails. “Plus a few other things.”
Of course there would be “other things.”
“It’s not much. Just a spark or two.”
The World Raven wanted an elven spark.
“Don’t look so crestfallen, Odinsdottir.”
Raven wanted a babe. “Don’t call me that. Two Odin aspects cannot govern an enclave. It’s forbidden.” Dag refused to answer Raven’s other proclamation.
Raven bit one of her examined nails. “Dagrun Delight of Frigg.”
Dag ignored the bait.
“Oh! Dagrun Eagle Head. No, wait, best not to annoy the World Eagle.”
“My name is Dagrun Tyrsdottir.” She fully dropped her glamour, hoping to put a stop to the names.
Raven made a faux-disgusted face. “You should probably fix that.”
“Why should I? I see fine.” If she revealed her true lack-of-eye to the world, she might need to wear a patch, and no one wanted a one-eyed queen.
Raven clasped her shoulder. “Aye, you do, my friend.”
Magic burst between the whipping snowflakes. “Dagrun!” Arne’s frantic voice called out from the storm. He’d find her momentarily, and then they’d find their way home.
Raven dusted the snow off her shoulders. “It’s a shame Ragnarok’s gonna kill that fine man of yours.”
Behind Dag, the altar fully dissipated. She no longer had its support. She no longer had anything between her and the raging gray flatness of a world without a sun or a moon. “No,” she said. Nothing else. Nothing more. Only her refusal to allow the inevitable to happen.
She would keep her husband safe.
Raven whistled. “You and I both know what fate has planned.” Huginn and Muninn left St. Martin’s body and landed on her shoulders. “If you want to change the future, you better ask for help, Dagrun Enemy of the Wolf.”
She had to keep Arne safe. If she didn’t, what would happen to their spark? She had no other choice.
So Dagrun did the only thing she could. She pushed herself to standing. “I’m over here!” she yelled into the soulless ice and snow.
“He’s going to freeze out there by himself. In the cold, moonless, sunless gray.”
They all were, Raven included. Dag, Arne, Frank and his concealed seer—everyone on Earth—all because the inevitability of the inescapable was going to kill her husband.
Huginn and Muninn flapped their wings against the blistering ice. “Bring help,” she said to the birds. What choice did she have?
The birds vanished. Raven grinned. And the deal was set.
Fae Touched Coming soon…
When the events surrounding the Samhain blizzard cause two dryads to come sniffing around Alfheim, Frank and Ellie are pulled into the center of a long-standing—and secret—battle between Arne Odinsson and Ellie’s terrifying mother, Titania, Queen of the Fae.
FAE TOUCHED, Northern Creatures #5, available now.
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Left broken and grief-stricken after deadly magic rips away her best friend, an alluring stranger offers seer Ellie Jones the one thing she’s never foreseen—hope.
PICTURES OF YOU
Magic moved the world. It started with a sway, then a rumble, then a twist in my guts as gravity moved sideways. I tried to speak. I tried to tell Chihiro—the one human who dared step across the boundary of my enchantments and extend her hand in friendship—to run. To turn away now and to never look back.
She realized what she was looking at the moment I handed her the photographic plate. She didn’t need me to explain, or to point out where magic intersected with her reality.
Death stared back at my friend through the sepia tones of the daguerreotype in her hand. Death as a shadowy mist over what should have been a happy image of her placing a lovely, sweet-scented bouquet of magenta roses on my side table.
Death’s hands signed the truth. Death’s head floated over hers. Death would not leave her alone.
Chihiro Hatanaka, friend to a lowly, enchanted seer, was about to die….
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The Worlds of Kris Austen Radcliffe
Smart Urban Fantasy:
Northern Creatures
Monster Born
Vampire Cursed
Elf Raised
Wolf Hunted
Fae Touched
Death Kissed
God Forsaken
Magic Scorned (coming soon)
Genre-bending Science Fiction about
love, family, and dragons:
World on Fire
Series one
Fate Fire Shifter Dragon
Games of Fate
Flux of Skin
Fifth of Blood
Bonds Broken & Silent
All But Human
Men and Beasts
The Burning World
Dragon’s Fate and Other Stories
Series Two
Witch of the Midnight Blade
Witch of the Midnight Blade Part One
Witch of the Midnight Blade Part Two
Witch of the Midnight Blade Part Three
Witch of the Midnight Blade: The Complete Series
Series Three
World on Fire
Call of the Dragonslayer (coming soon)
Hot Contemporary Romance:
The Quidell Brothers
Thomas’s Muse
Daniel’s Fire
Robert’s Soul
Thomas’s Need
Quidell Brothers Box Set
Includes:
Thomas’s Muse
Daniel’s Fire
Roberts’s Soul
About the Author
Kris’s Science Fiction universe, World on Fire, brings her descriptive touch to the fantastic. Her Urban Fantasy series, Northern Creatures, sets her magic free. She’s traversed many storytelling worlds including dabbles in film and comic books, spent time as a talent agent and a textbook photo coordinator, as well written nonfiction. But she craved narrative and richly-textured worlds—and unexpected, true love.
Kris lives in Minnesota with one husband, two daughters, and three cats.
For more information
www.krisaustenradcliffe.com
