House Of Gods 9 - Samantha Snow Page 0,49

witch. “You have already gotten everything you wanted; I have finished my servitude, Tara and Tannin have united and are ready to preside over the realms, the threat of Rolf is no more. What more is it that you want?”

“It is not up to me to solve this puzzle,” the witch said. “They were given the same amount of time that you were, and they failed to meet it. Now they need to figure out how to repair what has been broken. That is how great leaders are made.”

“But we had a bargain. You said that if I gave you one hundred years of my life to oversee the two of them, that you would restore Brandt’s memory.”

“And I have,” the witch answered.

“But what good is it if I am stuck here for an eternity and cannot get back to him?”

“That much is not up to me.” The witch turned and took her cup of tea with her as she readied to leave. “Have faith in those around you, Brenna. I think you might be surprised by what they can do.”

Brenna went back to her room on Vanaheim in frustration and flopped down onto her bed to cry. A few moments after she had gotten there, there was a knock at her door.

“Come to tell me more non-answers to riddles?” she called to the witch outside her door.

“No,” Njord’s voice answered. “I’ve come to deliver a letter.”

Brenna wiped her face and tucked in her shirt before going to the door to open it.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I thought you were the witch.”

Njord looked at her with sympathy as he handed her the letter from the guys back home in New York City.

“You’ve been crying,” he said. “I know it is hard for you to be stuck here, but I’m sure it won’t be forever.”

Although she appreciated his attempt at comforting her, he couldn’t possibly understand that each and every day apart from Brandt felt like forever. She thanked him and then closed the door and went back to the bed to read the letter. These folded pieces of paper were the only things keeping her going lately—a connection to home and to him.

The letter started out the same as they all did. Jerrik told Brenna how Colby had somehow managed to get his finger wedged into the back of the espresso machine, and Erik had to pry it out with a greased-up butter knife. She giggled as she envisioned the fiasco in her head. Then he told her about a new bar that was opening up on Fifth. It was a fusion that some fancy, independently wealthy entrepreneur had bought with his trust fund money and was supposed to be a coffee bar during the day that turned into a nightclub in the evenings; not at all an unusual concept for Manhattan, except for the fact that it was supposed to be some sort of immersive experience where all of the cocktails were made to look like potions and each summoned a pretend creature to guide the entertainment.

She wondered if some of the mortals had lingering remnants of their memories of magic tucked away in the back of the subconscious, which allowed them to tap into creative ideas such as this one. As she neared the end of the letter, she prepared herself to hear the part about Brandt. It was always hard for her to hear what he had been up to because it usually included a mix of both provocative activities that made her stomach turn and painful isolation that made her heart hurt. In the previous letter, Jerrik had said that Brandt hadn’t had any girls to the house all week and that he had been inside his room drawing nonstop instead.

At first glance, she thought that sounded great, but as she read on farther and found out that Jerrik had gone into Brandt’s room and saw that all the drawings were of self-portrait renditions of his death, Brenna’s heart sank in despair. There was no middle ground for him. If he allowed himself to think of Brenna without distraction, then he felt like he wanted to die. She knew the feeling. She couldn’t even imagine how much worse it would be if she couldn’t even remember the person who was causing her heart so much grief. She hated to hear that Brandt was suffering so much. But she also wanted to hear about all of it because it was her only connection to him. She finished reading