Eight-four nights.

Tonight.

Tonight I’ll see him.

For the first time since our spring bargaining, Soren will be here with me. I hardly can think what I’ll say first. I pluck at my hair and change my dress three times, until finally Freya arrives to take me to Bright Home for the Summer Solstice celebration.

She thrusts a new dress into my arms. It’s long and formal, a strapless white that falls to my ankles. Delicate sandals to go with it. I wear my mother’s black pearls and push rings from the gods onto my fingers. Freya helps me paint my eyes and cheeks and mouth, vibrant with glittering pinks and frosty cream. She says the makeup will help with her shine—that magic she fixes around me so that nobody remembers my face, even when the cameras catch Idun at the high table or record her dancing tonight with Thor and Baldur and, if I’m lucky, my own Soren. I’m bouncing and reckless with his name as Freya weaves her spell. She swallows her sighs.

“I advise you to stay away from him at the feast,” my goddess says.

I deflate. “Why?”

“You are Idun the Young, and he is a mortal boy, sworn to Baldur. What have you to do with each other in the eyes of the world? This is simpler.”

“But our bargain…”

“Soren will be delivered to you here at dawn for your time together, Idun. We do not break such promises.”

Nodding, I spread my hands down the silky dress as I wonder if he’ll even be there to see me in it and what he will think.

Freya presses into my hand a coin of copper. “This,” she murmurs, “is the first of the finding charms I’ll give you. Put it into Soren’s hand and he’ll always find his way to this orchard. You control which mortals know it now, my love. When you return tonight, a small chest of them will wait on the hearth.”

I throw my arms around her cool neck, breathing in the light candle scent of her: juniper and summer grass today.

My fingers tingle, and my toes, too; my heart thuds incomparably.

Bright Home is alive with sunlight and drums, for this is the longest day, Thor’s own holiday, and the battle games are just drawing to a close as we arrive at the mountain. There’s feasting and awards for the greatest warriors, contests of strength and speed, and finally a sacrifice of two goats that represent the eternal loyalty the Thunderer bears to his flock. I look for Soren while attempting to seem as though I am not. The crush of people is too great to pick him out, even though Soren usually is very poor at blending in.

Baldur comes to me after the feast, after the awards are handed out and all the company has scattered to mingle. He surprises me with a hand at my waist and a sparkling grin. “Idun, good to see you.”

I lean into the warm press of his hand. There are a million things I might say, but I only relax against him for a moment. Those indigo eyes of his, shifting with the orange-purple hint of sunset, narrow and wrinkle when I kiss his jaw.

He grins a flirtatious grin, and my heart lights up with gladness that he is here and not some dead, silent star. “My lord Baldur,” I breathe, for I do not know how to call him anything else, even if I am supposed to be playing his equal, a god myself. Baldur says, “My friend Bearstar waits outside the hall because he’s so nervous he can barely speak.”

Despite Freya’s advice, I slip through the crowd, unrecognized by mortals, unremarkable to the media, and out onto one of the myriad porches where the shadows creep heavy and slow. Sword-like pine trees surround the buildings, black in the evening, and there’s Soren in a T-shirt and jeans and boots, plus a white, tailored summer jacket sharpening the shape of his shoulders-to-hips. The pale clothing darkens his skin, highlights his difference from all the gods of Asgard and most of their famous followers.

Soren doesn’t see me, and he’s frowning. His hands hang at his sides. I thought I would want to kiss him immediately, press against him, breathe his breath and swallow that hot energy he carries around him like a second skin. But I can’t seem to move.

His name is called; a crowd of godlings wave at him from the corner. It makes him half-turn, and he sees me.

Astrid, his mouth shapes the name, and I force a smile because people are watching. I am Idun. I am Idun.

I let the crowd pull him away.