gesturing at me to follow the ravens. “Saga and Bjarni insisted they deliver their news plainly. They never developed the knack for rhymes or verses.”
The trek north of the ravine took us nearly six hours and involved a lot of scrambling up and down jagged paths, but the ravens led us safely around the canyon and deeper into the forest beyond.
On the second morning after they joined us, Arni landed on my shoulder and stayed there for most of the day, only occasionally taking off into the sky to see how much farther we had to go.
“We should arrive in her glade before nightfall,” Arni informed me when he returned to my shoulder sometime after midday.
“Have you visited her before?” I asked. “Here, I mean.”
He cawed a bitter laugh. “We have flown past once or twice. Visiting a goddess throwing a temper tantrum was… not entirely appealing, considering what happened the last time a god in a mood got his hands on us.”
I grimaced. “Bjarni was so distraught. Still is.”
“He’s always been a good boy,” Arni sighed before he shot a withering look over his shoulder at Grim, who was bringing up the rear. “Unlike the squalling little darkling his father brought home, rather than drown in the nearest stream like he should have.”
“Behave,” I said, bopping him gently on the beak. “That’s my mate. I don’t care that you don’t like each other—we’re all in this together.”
Arni ruffled his feathers with a final look of disdain in Grim’s direction. “He didn’t want you, you know. He spent years attempting to persuade his brothers not to send for you.”
I glanced back at Grim and gave him a half-smile. He was glaring so intensely at the bird on my shoulder I was pretty sure he’d heard most of our conversation. His scowl darkened when Magga swooped down from the sky above our heads to perch on my free shoulder.
“He had his reasons,” I said to Arni as I turned my focus back to the path ahead.
“Was it his inability to mount a female?” Magga asked, the innocent air to her voice not entirely managing to hide her malice. “Please do tell us. You would settle a long-standing bet. I have fifty silver marks on his cold blood inhibiting the function of his manhood.”
“I keep telling you, they worked fine that time I saw him underneath Madna in the woods,” Arni said. “Wasn’t much more than a whelp, either. Of course, old age could have taken its toll. Is that it, Misborn? Did you miss an apple one year?”
Before Grim could respond—if he even planned to—I reached up and brushed a finger against both birds’ taloned feet, sending a spark of my magic into them.
They both squawked and shot a foot into the air before they managed to unfold their wings for a more dignified incline.
“If you’re going to be bitchy, you can find another ride,” I told them.
“So sensitive,” Arni huffed as Magga shot me a few choice words and swung higher into the sky.
I looked back at Grim, whose face had gone stony. He hadn’t known Arni had seen him with her, I realized.
Madna. I hadn’t thought to ask her name. It wasn’t important—not to me. She wasn’t worthy of the effort of asking her name. But to Grim…
I reached through our bond and brushed a gentle touch against the wall he’d placed there, feeling it shudder in response. Without waiting for permission, I paused to let him catch up to me, then grabbed his hand.
His fingers were stiff as I laced mine through them, but he didn’t pull away. I gave him a small squeeze he didn’t return, but after a few steps he folded his hand around mine. He didn’t let go as we continued the journey side by side.
The funnel cloud of souls was fading to the darkness of the sky by the time the trees around us started to change.
It was subtle at first, and it took me a while to notice the droplets trickling down their broad, oaken trunks as we made our way through the woods. At first I thought it might be some sort of sap, and paused for a closer look.
“Tears of the goddess,” Mimir murmured as I touched my fingertips to the rough bark, and I remembered what the ravens had said about the woods weeping for Freya.
“We’re close,” I said, pulling away from the tree to look up at Arni, who’d perched on a branch above us. “How much farther?”
“Just