They were gone for a long time, so long that I had started to comb my fingers through Mimir’s hair just to have something to do with my hands while we waited.
I didn’t know why every nerve in my body was on high alert, but perhaps it was because I knew that Grim feared nothing quite so much as he did opening his heart for judgement. His end of our bond was silent, yet something pulled on me, urging me to go to his side. Only knowing that whatever fragile trust was building between us would be shattered if I barged in on the private session between him and Freya kept me from stalking after them.
When he finally emerged from the tree line some forty minutes later, my heart leapt into my throat. I got to my feet and hurried to his side, leaving Mimir in the grass.
“Oh, finally. Are you all right?” I asked as I reached for his wrists.
Grim didn’t pull away, but he didn’t respond either. His face was cast in shadows, his features drawn in severe lines.
“Grim?” I asked, my chest constricting with concern again. “Is something wrong? I…” I zeroed in on the spray of gray liquid on his chest. Blood?
“Oh my God! Oh, what happened? Baby, please, are you hurt?” I asked, releasing his wrists to press both my palms against the blood smear. I reached for my magic on pure, panicked instinct and forced it into my mate, forgetting all about his lessons of control and accuracy, because the only thought that filled my head was that if he died, nothing would ever matter again.
“I am not hurt,” Grim said, his voice calm, emotionless. He closed his fingers around my wrists, severing the connection between his chest and my magic.
Slowly, his words sank in. The glow around my palms died as I looked up at him, confusion mixing with the panic.
“It is not my blood,” he said softly.
“Then whose…?” My voice died as I stared into his darkened eyes. Ice-cold dread crept up along my spine and down my arms. I jerked away, unable to move my gaze from his as I asked, “Freya?”
He didn’t respond.
“Freya?” I shouted, still staring at Grim. It was written all over his beautiful face—what he’d done. But I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. Because… Because it made no sense.
“It is too late, my mate,” he said, his voice soft like silk over ice.
“No.” I shook my head and took a step away. It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t. “No.”
Yet Grim kept silent as he looked at me, the truth staring me in the face in the absence of reassuring words.
I ran out of the glade and into the woods, some dark thread of horror yanking me along the mossy forest floor until I came to a waterfall.
By its side, half-hidden in vegetation, lay a slumped figure.
“Freya!” I cried as I threw myself to her side. My magic welled within me as I brushed my shaking hands over her, searching. She was unresponsive, and when my fingers touched her chest, they came back sticky.
He’d stabbed her in the heart.
“No, no, no! Please, goddess, stay with me,” I whispered. I was more conscious of my control as I directed my powers into her wound, searching for her heart.
The goddess spasmed once, and a wet gurgle escaped her throat. Slowly her eyes cracked open, her gaze finding mine.
“Annabel. Stop,” she croaked.
“I can’t.” I had never attempted to heal a damaged heart before, and I gritted my teeth as the broken flesh within knitted together, only to slide back open again, over and over. “Why isn’t this working? Please, please, help me!”
I don’t know who I was pleading with, but only Freya responded.
“You need to stop.” Her voice was so weak—barely a wheezing whisper. “You can’t… can’t save me.”
“I can,” I bit, forcing more of my magic into her chest. But her heart still wouldn’t stay fused, and I growled in frustration. “You can’t die!”
She closed her slim fingers gently around my wrist. “If you keep… trying… your child… will die. Please, Annabel. Stop.”
“My child?” I asked, uncomprehending. “I don’t—"
“You carry… his child,” she croaked. “But she is still… only a kernel. She needs your strength to live. I am… I am dying, and even your powers won’t stop that. Please. Save your strength. For her.”
The glow around my hands faded as I stared at the dying goddess. Her words echoed in my mind, through my chest, but I couldn’t take them in. Not now. Tears slid down my cheeks as I grasped her hand in mine.
“You can’t die. You are the Goddess of Love! There is no life without you. There is no stopping Ragnarök without you.”
“You have to keep trying. Until… Until the very end. I will give you… what I have left. You will need all five of them. If you channel… all your love… Perhaps… Perhaps it will be enough to bring you home.”
I wiped at my tears with my free hand, trying to comprehend what she was saying. “My mates? I can’t—Saga, Magni, Bjarni, and Modi can’t help me here. And Grim…”
The clutching, horrible darkness squeezed around my lungs, and I fought against the despair threatening to swallow me whole. I had loved him so completely, and it hadn’t been enough. He had still done this. He had murdered a goddess to stop me returning to the world of the living so I could defeat Ragnarök.
“Please don’t surrender the love you carry in your heart,” Freya croaked. “Please, Annabel. If you do, if you cannot find forgiveness… understanding… all will be lost. For eternity. Even if you… cannot find your way home… if you… remain here… with him… if you surrender to the darkness, there will be no more love…. ever again. For your… For your child. Hold on.”
Love him? She lay dying, pleading for me to love the man who had killed her? Who had betrayed me even after he had claimed half of my soul? Who had betrayed all the nine worlds?
I shook my head, my tears still falling thick and fast, but Freya placed her palm against my chest and rasped, “Call your mates to you. Unite with them all. You must, Annabel. There is no other way.”
Warmth spread from where she touched me, and then I felt it—a rosy, glowing ember of magic sinking into my flesh and threading through my own golden well deep within.
Freya let out a soft gasp and her eyes glazed over.
“No!” I cried, reaching on instinct for her with my magic again, but before I could connect, a gust of wind swept through the trees and over her still body. Her fingers turned to gray dust in my hand.
“No!” I shouted again, grasping for her face. Her skin disintegrated under my touch—every part of the woman that had once been the embodiment of love turned to ash before my eyes and swept up into the sky in a ribbon of smoke, another soul that would join the siphon churning high above Hel.
I was numb for a long time as I knelt by the waterfall, staring at the vegetation still flattened from where Freya had rested.
She was the patron of omegas, she’d once told me. Had been. Behind the numb wall of grief and despair, I wondered what would happen to omegas now.
If it would even matter when Ragnarök swept through the worlds and broke it into particles and darkness.
Grim had done this. My soulmate had done this.
I had found forgiveness after his first betrayal. I’d forgiven him for taking my life because I understood he’d thought it the only chance to save his brothers. He’d ultimately killed me out of love for them, and knowingly doomed himself to a fate worse than death in the process.
But this time?
He knew me now. He knew me so intimately, knew I loved him, knew I’d fight until the very end to stop Ragnarök.
He’d known I relied on him. Trusted him. And in those pleasure-hazy moments when he was inside of me, I’d thought he loved me too. How had he faked that? How had he made me feel so… whole when it was all a lie?
I pressed a hand to my aching chest. Gentle warmth touched my fingertips from the remnants of Freya’s powers. Call your mates to you, she’d said, but even if there had been a way to bring the four from Valhalla to me, Grim had made it clear he would never help me stop Ragnarök.
He had killed the Goddess of Love to prevent her from aiding me.
As I knelt by the water, I finally accepted that my love wasn’t strong enough to break through the kind of darkness that lay within Grim’s heart.
And so there would be no stopping Ragnarök, and there would be no more joy, no more love—no more anything. Just all-expanding, all-consuming nothingness.