clipped. “Are you suggesting I’d turn my back on my own son? In front of them?” He indicated Bjarni and Saga with a tilt of his chin.
“I am making no suggestions. I am merely asking why, when I captured Loki like you commanded and was stranded in Midgard with Magni’s life on the line, did you dismiss the connection I forged through the band?”
I tapped my bicep to indicate the band hidden there, the one he had gifted me so that I might always reach him—except, as it turned out, when I needed him most.
A look of confusion passed over his face, deepening his scowl. “I have no idea what you’re on about, son. I received no communication from you while you were in Midgard.”
I clenched my jaw as Bjarni’s and Annabel’s speculations about him echoed in my head. There was no way he was the Betrayer. No way he could be. I had known that in the marrow of my bones, and I had defended him fiercely.
And yet… And yet I knew that I had used the band to contact him—and that it had connected.
“It doesn’t matter,” Magni interjected. “We’re here for Trud. Finding our mate is more important than this discussion.”
“You are right. Our mate is infinitely more important than a man whose honor is more valuable to him than his own blood, and certainly more important than fighting an unwinnable battle.”
I turned to the stairs, intent on locating my sister, but before I could take more than two steps, Thor closed his hand around my arm.
“What do you mean our mate?” he growled. I was surprised he’d picked up on that tidbit in the midst of my other insult.
“I mean that Magni’s mate is mine as well,” I bit. My muscles twitched as instincts otherwise buried in sorrow reared up, ready to defend my woman. “I found my soul in Midgard—in her. I found two new brethren in her other mates. I found my purpose—my true purpose—and it is not to stand by your side as Ragnarök swallows all nine worlds.
“But she is missing, and I do not have time to argue with you, Father. I hope to see you on the other side of this madness, but if I do not, may your death be honorable.”
I pulled free of his grasp before he had a chance to respond and headed up the stairs with the others behind me.
We found Trud in her room. She was perched on a chair facing the window, but instead of taking in the pretty views surrounding our home, she was staring intently at the pages of a large, worn book.
She jerked her head up at our entry, and I halfway expected her to scold us for not knocking like she had so many times when we were kids, but she just expelled a deep breath, relief crossing her face.
“You’re here. Things have been… difficult while you were gone.”
“Things are difficult now,” I said.
A vague smile pulled at the corners of her lips, but as she swept her gaze over our group and our worn expressions, it withered. “Where is my sister-in-law?”
I grimaced at the pang from the hollow in my chest. “She is gone, Trud. We need your help.”
My sister stood so abruptly the book in her lap flopped to the floor. “Gone? What do you mean gone?”
“Someone took her,” Magni said, his voice raspy and pained. “We woke up, and she was… gone.” He pressed a fist to his chest, against the hole. “It feels like she is dead, but we are still here, still alive, so she can’t be. Right?”
Trud’s face turned ashen. “Annabel is gone? No. No, she can’t be. You would be dead too.” She swept her blue gaze over us, as if ensuring we weren’t ghosts returned from Hel to haunt her. “What do you mean, it feels like she is dead?”
I breathed through another painful flare and stepped toward my sister. “It will be easier if you…”
She nodded and placed a hand against my chest. I felt the jolt of connection, reminding me of how it had felt to blend my magic with Annabel’s, but where my mate had brought elation and warmth, Trud’s magic was paltry by comparison.
The second her power touched where my hollow bond rooted, she gasped and jerked back, severing the connection between us.
“Stars above, Modi,” she whispered.
“Can you find her?” I asked through gritted teeth, because I knew if I accepted the empathy radiating off my sister, I would break.
She