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THE SUNRISE CAME QUICKER than I would have liked, and I tried to straighten my body out, but my muscles cramped. Reyfyre groaned next to me, as well. His legs stretched next to mine and the heat radiating from him was almost unbearable in the cramped sack.
He unzipped the bag and stretched his arms, and his face scrunched in a wince.
“We need to look at your wound.” I stretched alongside him now that we weren’t fully restricted by the sleeping bag. We should have tended to his arm last night.
He rolled his eyes, but he did unzip his coat. I helped him remove it from his injured arm, leaving the coat draped over his back. The sleeve of his right arm was saturated with blood, and my gaze bounced to his.
“Jesus, Rey, what the hell were you thinking?” I grabbed the tear in the sleeve and ripped the tacky fabric away. My heart thundered at the amount of blood still seeping from the wound, but it was the sharp shard still lodged that had me taking air through my teeth. “Get me the first-aid kit. Use your magic if you have to but I need it now!” I barked the command.
He reached over to my bag and unzipped a pocket, pulling the kit out before he set it on his lap. He didn’t argue with me or get sassy like usual, and the color from his cheeks had leaked out to a sickly pallor.
I paused and shot him a narrowed eye. “You knew it was this bad.”
He nudged his good shoulder and avoided my gaze, confirming my statement. “Can you just get the barb out?”
“You are an ass.” I gripped the piece of the spider’s barb sticking from his skin. “You should have had me look at this last night.”
His cutting glare focused on me. “We had no light and neither of us were in the condition to deal...”
I didn’t wait for the rest of his reprimand. I yanked the barb from his skin.
Reyfyre hissed at me. Fresh blood slid from the wound. “With this,” he finished through clenched teeth.
On closer inspection, the wound appeared red and puffy, like it was infected. My gaze shot to him. “Yeah, well, this does not look good.” I refocused on the emergency kit, hoping like hell we had what we needed to combat whatever had made his skin flare like burning embers. Flipping open the top, I dug out the antiseptic cleaner and a clean cloth. Then I began the painstaking job of cleaning the puncture along with the cut above it where the creature had scratched before they pierced his flesh.
Reyfyre’s molars grinded together through the entire cleaning process, but he didn’t wince or hiss or display any sort of pain beyond the tightening of his jaw muscles.
“I think it’s deep enough to require sutures.” I sighed and shuffled through the kit. There wasn’t anything to stitch him up.
Reyfyre plucked a tube out of the box and handed it to me. “Try this.”
It took me a moment to sound out the words on the package. “Liquid bandage?”
“Yes. It’s like skin glue. Just put a small strip on one side and then use these to pull the sides together.” He handed me a half dozen little bandages that were attached with a thin strip between them. “Butterfly bandages,” he said, as if that would explain things.
I looked at the things in my grasp and then back at him for direction.
“The thick tabs go on either side of the cut.”
“Instead of stitches.” My brain slowly painted the picture of how to utilize the items he handed me. I thought I understood but the materials were as foreign to me as this realm.
“Yes, and now, since the barb is out, and you’ve cleaned it, and will be closing my wound with those things, I should heal faster.” He pointed to the tube and bandages in my hands. “I couldn’t heal with the barb still lodged in me.”
I refrained from saying something snide or rolling my eyes. I handed him the butterfly bandages, unscrewed the cap on the tube, and wiped his arm once more to remove as much blood as possible before I squeezed the liquid onto one side of the cut. Then, starting from the top, I planted the bandages one after the other, using them to close up the cut so the liquid sealed on both sides.
It wasn’t a half bad job, and the flow of blood stopped as soon as I connected the lower part of the broken skin together. I went to wipe it again, but Reyfyre stopped me. He handed me a large bandage instead.
“You don’t want to wipe the glue away. Just cover it.”
I ducked my chin in agreement and then peeled the adhesive off the edges of the large bandage. I lined it up so it covered the entire area and then pressed the sides to his skin. I ran my finger around the outside to be sure the seal was tight and then gathered up all the mess into a pile as he pushed his arm back into his jacket.
He scowled as he zipped up. “I’ll need to find a new jacket when we get to civilization. In the meantime, we have to keep an eye out for predators. I’m sure my clothing reeks of easy prey.”
The idea of the predators that I had seen in the cave hunting us sent a wild shudder through my bones. Neither of us were in any condition to put up a fight if more than one attacked us in this harsh landscape.
He dug a small hole in the snow and took all the garbage from cleaning him and shoved it inside and then covered it before helping me out of the pit. He handed me my snowshoes and then my backpack before rolling up the sleeping bag and tucking it back in his bag.
I watched him in fascination at his efficiency, even while injured. Although, after he clipped his backpack on, he seemed to pause to take a deep breath. Reyfyre tossed his snowshoes out of the hole and then reached out his hand for help.
The man had to be a solid two hundred pounds, but he seemed weightless as I yanked him up the three feet to the solid snowbank I stood on.
Without a word, he strapped his snowshoes on and then started to walk toward the distant mountains due east, where the morning sun framed the mountains in a halo of light. Once it crested the mountaintops, it would be blinding against the unbroken white landscape.
“Aren’t we going to eat something?” My stomach growled, punctuating my words.
Reyfyre pivoted toward me and folded his lips shut before he marched back and rummaged in my pack. He slapped a package of jerky in my hand and then slid a bottle of water into my water holder without a word before stalking off.
I caught up to him. “Aren’t you eating?”
“No. Not yet.” He still held dark circles around his eyes, but both his forehead and cheeks were flushed with fever. “I’ll replenish my energy later.” He kept traveling forward. “We need to reach the forest at the base of the mountains today.”
My eyebrows rose as I scanned the distance. Daunting, but not impossible. I agreed with his aversion to being out here in the open. Our snow gear and coats were not white. We did not blend in, so if anyone was traveling overhead, we stood out like a speck of shit on a pristine blanket of white.
I unwrapped the jerky and took a piece, carefully closing the package and stuffing it into my pocket. I chewed on the end of it, savoring the salty meat flavor. I couldn’t tell whether it was dried venison or what, but I didn’t care; it satiated the growling of my stomach and energized my poor aching body. “This is good,” I muttered around a bite.
The edge of his lip twitched up into a smile.
“How much farther beyond the mountains?”
“We have about thirteen hundred miles between here and where I have a boat waiting in Hudson Bay. Then we can sail down to New York City from there.” He focused on the mountain ridges ahead of us.
“How far was it from where you found me to the cabin?”
“About the same distance, but I used magic to get back to my cabin. It took a fraction of the time.”
“So how many days do you think this trek will take us?”
He blew out air through rounded lips. It plumed in front of him. “Probably a month or so, unless we run across someone with a vehicle who is going that way. But hitching a ride could be risky, too.” He glanced at me. “But I’d be inclined to take the risk if we’re lucky enough to run across vehicles out here.”
A month?
My brain stalled as it tried to calculate what a month meant. I knew a week was seven days, but a month was harder to define. I glanced at the sky and then the timeframe sunk in. “Is a month a full rotation of the phases of the moon?”
“Yes. More or less. It’s about thirty days, give or take. Four weeks and then a couple of days added on.”
Reyfyre had been so patient explaining things to me over the time we had been at the cabin. The only time he seemed to get irritable was when I took over the television, or he was hungry or tired. Well, I guess, in retrospect, the only time he wasn’t irritable was when he was explaining things of this world to me. Except soap operas. The man hated those things with a passion near to how he felt about Odin and Thor.
Thirty days. His words sunk in. He wanted us to walk for thirty days? My gaze scanned the snowy terrain. “Thirty days out here?” My voice cracked, and I nearly swallowed the piece of jerky wrong, but caught it before I had a coughing fit.
“Consider this your training for the next thirty days.” He gave me a side-eye and a smirk. “We’re going for endurance instead of skill. And if predators attack, then we can rely on our skills with the swords.”
Again, I did not want to dwell on what type of predators were out here. So I focused on another tidbit he had mentioned. “What kind of vehicles would be traveling here?” I waved at the land surrounding us.
“Snowmobiles. And once we get over the mountains, we’ll eventually run into roads. Then we might be able to hitch a ride, but that’s more of a wildcard than the predators in the tundra.”
Oh great. I wished I still had my wings. I’d just fly us to our destination instead of making my entire body hurt for days on end. I stared down the hulking hills in the distance. “Over those?”
“Yes. I know a path through that isn’t as harrowing as it looks from here.” He glanced at me. “Stop whining and eat your jerky.” He nodded toward the partial piece still clasped in my hand.
Although we had spent time together in the cottage, it was usually filled by the television or books or music. The silence of the surroundings made me feel closed in, as if I were still locked in that cavern. Even with the wide-open space, claustrophobia of only the whoosh of our snowshoes had me on edge.
“Tell me about this realm.” I only knew what I saw on television at his cabin, and he said that wasn’t real. We never really talked much about this realm beyond the fact that Odin ruled it with an iron fist. We never spoke about our pasts, either. Reyfyre had been ultra focused on training and getting me back to fighting shape, so there wasn’t time for much else.
Reyfyre laughed. “I don’t have any references of anything other than this realm. Tell me about Asgard.”
“Deflection much?”
That earned me a tilt of his lips. “I’ll tell you about Earth after you tell me about Asgard.” His eyes scanned the landscape.
“This isn’t a quid pro quo.”
“Isn’t it though?”
“Rey, stop being an ass and tell me what you know about this realm.” I aggressively took another bite of the jerky while leveling my best stop bullshitting me glare.
His sigh could have caused an avalanche had we been on a snowy mountain. “I am trying to conserve my energy while I heal. Talking drains me.”
“Oh.” I chewed up the rest of the bite and swallowed, feeling like a supreme ass for giving him a hard time. “In that case, Asgard was nothing like this.” I waved around me. “We did have mountains capped in ice, but the valleys were lush and green and dotted with farms. And the city rose around the Bifrost. It gleamed a glorious gold with the light of our suns. When they passed in the sky, the Valkyrie training room gleamed with the colors of the Bifrost. It was magnificent, and the Bifrost was stained with all the metallic colors of the rainbow. Kind of like what you’ve done with my hair.” I tilted my lips at the memory of my home. “The air was always crisp and clean.” I sighed, and then scanned our surroundings. “This realm doesn’t seem to have the grand architecture or farmlands like my home did.”
“You haven’t seen much of this realm, Kara.”
“I know. And what I’ve seen, beyond the cabin, isn’t nearly as advanced as Asgard was.” I glanced at him. “We had almost everything you had. Except television. That is a new novelty that I don’t see myself tiring of.”
He chuckled softly and kept the pace moderate. Only the shuffle of the snowshoes and the howling of the wind accompanied us for a while. The sun glare in our eyes faded as the sun rose almost overhead. It was only then that Reyfyre spoke again.
“My parents used to tell me Earth was much less advanced than Faery, as well. When we came, it was only humans. When we arrived, the realms still existed, so Earth wasn’t overrun by other species. Even so, I still had to hide my heritage here. Earth had no clue there were other provinces with intelligent societies out there, so my parents taught me the spell that still to this day hides the one easily identifiable trait of my fae heritage.” He waved to his ear.
“What were your parents like?”
Reyfyre’s eyes went unfocused as he strode forward. “They were militant about keeping our magic a secret. My father had the foresight to keep us under the radar for a very long time. He kept his heritage a secret and hoarded our riches, hiding most of it from being discovered. We lived just barely over the poverty level, but they took me everywhere. They got away with it by saying they were homeschooling me, so no government came after us for missing school. And they taught me fae, wraith, and human history. They made me humble with their knowledge and how freely they shared with me, and even though we lived like nomads, I knew I was cherished. It’s funny.” He chuckled under his breath. “When I was little, the only time my father used his magic was when my mother lost her temper.” He grinned. “She was a holy terror when she was angry, and his magic could only hide so much of her black smoke, so whenever she went ballistic, we moved to another area of this realm. I saw almost every country there is on this planet.” He waved his hand at the land around us.
“So, you’re more like your father?” I asked, because I had never seen Reyfyre lose his temper.
He snorted a laugh. “My dad said I was more like my mother, and my mother said I was more like my father. I guess I’m a good mix of both of them. When refugees of the other realms started to flock here, that was when they started secretly teaching me complicated magic and trained me with weapons. They didn’t want me to be vulnerable. As I said, they had much more foresight than I’ve ever had.”
Reyfyre sucked in his lower lip. “Once they heard what Odin was doing to the realms, they stepped up and started to pull in the higher ranked species on the magical spectrum to form the resistance. And hiding became a matter of survival. Then, more and more refugees from the other lands came to hide from Asgardian wrath as those assholes systematically destroyed the realms.” He side-eyed me, as if I were part of the group that shattered so many dominions.
“If I had been there, I wouldn’t have let that happen. My superior wouldn’t have either.” My eyes misted at the memory of Freya.
“Well, she did.” His razored tongue lashed his words, as if all Valkyrie were evil beings.
“No. Freya didn’t.”
Reyfyre shot me a dirty look.
“She died in Greece. I killed her when she came to punish me for disobeying.” I plodded along next to Reyfyre. “If I had died instead, she may have questioned Odin’s greed.” I could not see Freya buying into the destruction of the realms. It was against her nature, just as much as it was against mine.
“Then she would have died publicly.”
I snorted in agreement. “She could have led the Valkyrie against Odin.” I thought about how angry Freya had been at me for disobeying a direct order, and doubt crept in. She had tried to cut me down as if it didn’t matter that Hippocrates was an innocent.
Maybe my recollection had been tainted with my time in chains, and it was only my wish that she would have stood up against this type of tyranny. My stomach tightened, still pushing the belief in Freya’s view of what was just and what wasn’t.
“They followed him like blind sheep.”
Reyfyre’s growling response made my stomach twist.
“I’m still not sure Freya would have.” I stuck to my gut feeling on that and kept thinking perhaps if she hadn’t come in with swords swinging, I might have been able to convince her of how wrong the assignment was. “So, society hadn’t advanced the way Odin thought it would had Hippocrates and others not been killed?”
Reyfyre glanced at me. “What do you mean?”
“He sent me to reap a healer who apparently had been historically significant. He said there had been others as well, so this race couldn’t build things that would destroy this realm. But I venture to guess it was so they wouldn’t be able to fight back when Odin and Thor came to rule here.” I scanned the tundra slowly, searching for predators.
He walked in silence with that deep crease between his eyes. “He planned the destruction of the realms as far back as three thousand years ago.” He blew a stream of air from his lips that immediately fogged in front of him.
I stopped. I knew Asgard was no longer, but he had never mentioned the remainder of the realms until today. And his words finally sunk in, sending a shiver of dread through my entire form. “Nothing is left?”
He took a couple of steps and then stopped. He didn’t meet my gaze right away and when he finally looked at me, he slowly shook his head. “It’s why things like those spiders are here. Their realm was destroyed. But they aren’t organized enough to be a threat to Odin. There are other things hiding here, too.” He glanced over his shoulder. “But Odin and Thor stomped out most alien species that could put up any sort of fight. The resistance consisted of an array of beings along with a handful of humans who did not like this new world order. If we had been able to stop the squabbling between us all, we might have been able to stop them, but there was no trust across species. There was always tension between us and eventually, the humans gave up on any hope. They’d rather live under Odin’s thumb than take up arms and fight for freedom.”
I started to move again and reached into my pocket, peeling another piece of jerky from the group. I offered it to Reyfyre, and this time he took it. I pulled another strip off and then pocketed the rest. “So why are you trying to save them if they don’t want to be saved?”
He sighed. “I’ve asked myself that same question every day,” he admitted. “But then those assholes do something unimaginable to remind me they are not fit to lead this world. Or I pass another starving child who is nearly freezing to death, and it reminds me that we are this world’s last hope. Someone needs to stand up for those who don’t have a prayer.”
Reyfyre was an idealist. Who would have guessed.
“I just want to pound them into oblivion. It’s not for the same altruistic reasons as you. For me, it’s personal.”
He laughed. “Even without his hammer, Thor is a beast.”
I nodded. “But he’s never gone up against me when I wasn’t chained.”
“You can barely beat me.” A dimple appeared in his cheek as he side-eyed me. “Besides, my reasons aren’t as noble as you think. I do carry the same need for vengeance as you.”
I grunted around my jerky. We ate while walking. I didn’t want to stop if we didn’t have to because if we sat to rest, I wasn’t sure I’d be getting up.
As it was, when the need arose, squatting to relieve myself was a major pain, but there was no other way around it. There were no chamber pots or facilities in this frozen wasteland.
“I certainly hope where we are going is as well-equipped as your cottage,” I muttered as I buttoned up my pants and stepped away from the yellow snow.
“My boat has a well-equipped head.” He continued to walk, picking up the pace a little now that he seemed to have all his color back.
I guessed the jerky was the boost he needed. In the distance, I could just about make out another grove of trees, but these seemed to climb the hillside that rose before us. I hadn’t realized we had crossed the tundra itself, but I guess the long stretches of silence between us with only the shuffle of the snowshoes were longer than I had thought.
But the idea of another spider-infested forest had my pace slowing and my heart galloping in my chest. Another attack from those monsters might very well kill us.