After a while, the offensive stench of mountain troll numbed my sense of smell. It made staying in the cave much more tolerable, but after four days, I was about to lose my mind.
At least I thought it had been four days—Grim refused to let me so much as look outside, and without hunger or thirst, it was difficult to gauge the passage of time. All I knew was that we had been there forever, twiddling our thumbs while Ragnarök proceeded as planned in the living realms.
I was beginning to suspect that this was why Grim had accepted my bargain. If I was stuck in a cave instead of searching for ways to escape Hel, he didn’t need his magic to protect me, nor did he need to expend any energy in stopping me. He just had to wait until it was too late for me to do anything anyway.
I didn’t know how long I’d have to wait for my heat to make an entrance. Supposedly it was a monthly thing for omegas, but I wasn’t sure there had been a month between my two previous heats, nor exactly how long since my last one. And clearly my hormones were all kinds of fucked up anyway, given my singular period since I’d been pulled into this mythological clusterfuck. It could be weeks before my heat. Months, if I was really lucky.
Mimir seemed to be doing his best to distract me from my darkening thoughts. He told me stories of his many adventures before he lost his body, most of them about his and Odin’s travels.
“Are you still good friends with the god-king?” I asked after he finished a tale of an old woman they came across while disguised as peddlers. She had bought a pretty comb from them, haggling with the two gods until they sold her the trinket well below its value just to get rid of her. But she had wished them “Odin’s blessings” as they parted, and in return, Odin had indeed blessed her—with youth.
And later on that evening, he’d blessed her again, this time with a child, much to the dismay of his queen.
“He sounds kind of... vain and unfaithful, for a supposedly wise god. But I could be biased—I’ve not been a fan since he tried to have my mates killed.”
Mimir chuffed through his nose. “Gods and men are much alike, in that aspect. We all have flaws. Odin has all days vied for recognition and worship from mortals.”
“And your own flaws?” I pried.
Mimir gave me a half-smile. “Too numerous to count, plum, pride perhaps chiefly among them. No, Odin and I are no longer friends like we were.”
“Is that why you lived in that well before you were taken here? Did Odin banish you there?” He seemed the type to banish people to wells.
“I chose the well of my own free will. Its waters bring wisdom. I did not, however, choose to leave.”
I resisted the urge to suggest he might have decided to live by the well, rather than in it, but who was I to deny a bodiless god his quirks? “And the creature that took your place? Was it drawn by the water too?” I shuddered at the memory of the thing that had nearly killed Magni.
Mimir gave me a long look. “I suspect it was placed in my well after I was taken.”
“You think someone deliberately set a trap for us? But who could have known we’d be going there? Verdandi wouldn’t tell anyone—I think. I mean, I don’t know her, but—”
“Verdandi would never betray you,” Mimir interrupted. “Think, child. Who would gain from your death?”
“Loki,” I said. “If he could have stopped me, then—”
“Loki was hiding in Midgard then,” Grim broke in. I jolted at the sound of his voice—he’d ignored me ever since fetching Mimir, and I’d more or less gotten used to him being a silent shadow.
“He is right,” Mimir said softly. “The trickster god had no access to my well.”
I frowned. But who else would have gone to the lengths of planting some vicious monster in hopes it killed me? If Loki was behind the coming of Ragnarök, if he wanted me out of the way bad enough to have had Grim lure me to Hel—
I jerked upright, my spine straightening. If Loki had wanted me dead, why hadn’t he left me to die along with Modi and Bjarni when we’d faced Nidhug? He could have run, saved