Eleri Stone - Witch Bound

A collar. Is that really how Fen saw her?

“I don’t want to collar him.”

Christian held her gaze for a long time and then nodded. “Don’t screw around with him, Raquel. He’s my friend. I won’t help you hurt him.”

“Go stop him from making a huge mistake even if you have to beat him over the head to do it. Regardless of what happens, I don’t want to see him hurt.” She blinked back tears. “Christian?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you hurt either.”

He cupped the back of her neck and pulled her forward. A quick kiss to her forehead and then he let her go.

“We’ll talk later.”

At times, it wasn’t so bad. There were moments, brief and precious, that kept him from sinking into darkness. The way the blue-tinged light filtered through ice, casting kaleidoscope patterns on the bare rock. The special game he’d made of recovering Asgard’s most sacred treasures before Surtr could claim them. The peculiar triumph of escaping a pack of demons on the hunt. He knew it was dangerous to become addicted to the rush of adrenaline, but it was one of the few pleasures left to him.

He didn’t age. He didn’t feel hunger, leastways not for food. But he was slowly fading into the twilit world of Asgard, this cursed place of frozen death suspended between worlds. He’d been cast out of Vanaheimr. Rightfully so. His pride had cost countless lives. He could appreciate the justice of it, had even been resigned to accept his sentence. Exile. Death in the world broken by his hand.

But death wouldn’t come.

It would come soon though. After all these years, it crept over him inexorably as a rising tide. The cold presence at the edge of his consciousness claiming more with every breath. Surtr, in a fit of pique, had melted the ice he stood on, sealing him to the hip and binding his power with scraps of the same chain that had once held Fenrisúlfr. The chain alone would have restrained him. The ice was overkill, was, in fact, slowly killing him—though he had no intention of pointing that out to Surtr. He would die rather than let the bastard suck him dry so he could invade yet another world.

If he could spare Midgard this fate, he would. He blamed the girl for this strange willingness to sacrifice himself. She’d been such a fragile thing, dragged through the portal from Midgard by one of the sons. He’d come across her entirely by chance and some long-buried instinct to protect a child had compelled him to help her. He hadn’t been able to send her back.

When Odin cast the spell that allowed his people to live in Midgard, he’d also spelled the bridge that permitted their escape. A Vanir couldn’t cross that bridge. He couldn’t even be near it without every hair on his body standing on end. The backlash from what Surtr was forcing him to do was tearing him apart. It was why he couldn’t escape the ice or heal his frozen legs. It was why, after all this time, it would be something as simple as the cold that would kill him.

The crow was back. Her glassy eyes, hard and unblinking, fixed on him with disconcerting intensity. Asgardian spy. Black-winged birds had long been a harbinger of death for his kind, so he supposed it was only fitting that she should be here now. Her feathers ruffled in the stiff wind.

“Go away, stupid bird. They nearly tore you apart last time and I won’t distract them again.” Surtr had taken his anger out on him when she escaped. “One chance is all you get. I won’t encourage stupidity.”

She shifted her wings and resettled. Such a conceit of Odin’s to bespell his people to assume his various incarnations. He’d so enjoyed playing the crow. “I told you what you need to do and you didn’t bring a weapon. My own blade fell into the crevice there if you wish to retrieve it.”

He spoke to her with his mind, knew that she could hear him. Unlike last time, she replied. “I won’t kill you.”

“The sooner you do so, the safer you will be.”

“We’re safe enough for now.” She tilted her head. “Our witch has strengthened the wards.”

He laughed. There was a powerful witch on the other side. Wild and completely out of control. She’d almost destroyed not only the portal but the bridge itself. All the Æsir in Midgard would die if the bridge connecting them to their home was destroyed. Asgard would be lost beyond recovery and Vanaheimr would likely suffer as well. It was something he hadn’t considered when helping to plan the invasion. The bridges were the energy conduit that connected the worlds, but they weren’t the only thing binding them together. Odin had complicated things before his death, protecting his people but making it harder to undo the damage. At this point, anything that tampered with the delicate network of spells could be catastrophic.

One of many reasons that he would welcome a quick death.

Rather than waste time forming the words, he pushed that opinion toward the bird and she closed her eyes while she sorted through it. Why had she come back? Even with him using what little energy he had left to cause that small rockslide and distract the demon torturing her, she’d barely escaped. If her idiot clan leader had sent her back, it should have been with an order to slit Kamis’s throat.

She opened her eyes. “He didn’t send me. The woman and child you helped to survive belong to him and he feels beholden to you. The hunt plans to ride and will free you. Our witch thinks she can pull you through the portal.”

“She’s young and doesn’t know what she’s dealing with. Tell her to leave the portal the Hel alone and cut her teeth on weather magic until she learns humility.” The idea of an untrained witch with so much power terrified him, especially when she had her sights set on portal magic.

He would swear the crow was laughing at him. “She might learn portal magic from you but likely not humility. Aiden will cross. He’ll free you. Be ready for that, whatever you decide.”

And she was gone, lifting into the bruised sky and winging toward the portal. He remembered the woman, Grace—human, vulnerable, stubbornly brave. Lately, he’d had the feeling that she was trying to reach him but had hidden himself from those questing dreams.

Vanaheimr was lost to him. He couldn’t go back to his world, wouldn’t want to if he could. By now, everyone he’d ever known would be long dead and buried. But the woman and child—that brief connection he’d made with each. The evidence of love in the sacrifices the Æsir made to find the lost members of their clan. It had planted a seed of hope. Maybe instead of looking back, it might be possible to move forward, to leave his past and this place behind him and become a new man.

He had a library full of ancient texts. There had to be a way to unravel it all. To make things right. Or was that only his pride speaking? And could he risk being wrong again?

Raquel pulled onto the gravel road that led to Aiden’s home behind a red Explorer. She eased up on the gas pedal so she wasn’t following right in the dust trail the truck kicked up. It was a lovely day—sharp and cold but as icily beautiful as cut crystal. Tomorrow was the first of December and the forecast called for snow, but there were no clouds in the sky yet.

Aiden had called a meeting to prepare the hunt for the crossing at the full moon in two days time. Raquel was nervous about attending although she’d already met most of the hunt at her welcome party.

She hadn’t talked to Christian or Fen. She hadn’t slept at all last night. Green Day came on the radio as she pulled into the driveway and she turned it off, parking in the grass behind the Explorer. Three men climbed out just as she did, the last one was Fen.