I asked.
“We can’t very well live in a world without love,” Annabel said mildly, completely unruffled by my interjection. “If not me, then who?”
I ground my teeth, biting back my retort that she needed to stop this unholy habit of martyring herself. It was a moot point anyway.
Annabel brushed a hand down my back, clearly taking my silence as compliance, and looked back to Freya. “How do we proceed?”
“I will have to look into your hearts to see if there is enough strength there to draw on. If there is… If the three of us combine our powers, I will attempt to send you through the dimensions and back to Asgard.” Freya reached out a hand toward me, palm up. Expectant.
Numb dread clutched at my gut. My heart. She wanted to see behind my shields, learn the truth of my devotion.
“We can trust her, Grim,” Annabel said quietly from behind me. When I didn’t move, she got to her knees, kissed the top of my head, and crawled a few steps around me before she placed her own hand in Freya’s.
“You can look into my heart,” she said.
Light flared between the two, bright at first, then turning to a soft glow.
Annabel gasped, but before I could reach for her, her lips turned up into a blissful smile and her eyes fluttered closed.
I watched them warily, the darkness in my gut turning acid. This was the last hurdle, the final step before Annabel could return to the living and continue her woven destiny. And for it to happen, I would have to let someone—a goddess of Asgard, no less—in.
There was some poetic balance in it, I supposed. I was the one who’d taken her life. I would have to give some of myself to return it.
It took a long while, but finally Freya released Annabel’s hand and they both opened their eyes. But now, as the goddess looked at my mate, some of that divine glow had returned to her eyes, her skin a bit less sallow and sunken.
“Your heart is… so bountiful, omega,” she said softly. “A true life-bringer, even in the depths of despair and darkness. Your blessing brings me so much joy, as it will those around you.”
“Oh.” Annabel returned her smile, even if she looked flustered at the praise. “Thank you?”
Freya chuckled and turned her focus back to me. “Are you ready to save your mate, Grim Lokisson?”
Save my mate. She was as manipulative as her reputation would suggest. I had no doubt she chose her words to stir my alpha instincts to life. Slowly, I got to my feet.
“Very well,” I said through gritted teeth. “But… not here. Somewhere private.”
“Oh.” Freya looked surprised for a split-second, but then smiled and stood as well, pleased she’d gotten her way. “Of course. If that will make it easier for you, young one.”
“Do you want me to come?” Annabel asked, already rising onto her knees to follow.
“No,” I said, and she fell back down in the grass, eager to make this as comfortable for me as possible. “Please, just… stay here. And keep the flying cretins with you.”
“Of course,” my mate said softly. She smiled at me, and I pushed away the thread of sadness worming its way through my chest at the knowledge that it would be a very long time before she looked at me like that again.
If ever.
I turned around and stalked out of the glade, into the dark woods surrounding us.
I stopped by the side of a small waterfall trickling over mossy stones and waited.
Freya’s soft footfall found me soon enough, and I steeled myself and turned around to her.
She gave me a gentle smile, and in it I saw the echoes of what she used to be before he drove his dagger into her heart and ripped her from the world. “There is nothing to fear. Your mate loves you so much. She has nothing but forgiveness and understanding in her heart for your sins.”
“She has such a soft nature,” I said. “It is perhaps her only real flaw.”
“What she feels for you, for all five of you, is no flaw, Lokisson. It is her greatest strength.” The goddess stepped closer. “Will you let me into your heart, young one?”
“I wish that you would take no for an answer,” I said. “But there is no way around this, is there?”
She shook her head. “No. There is not.”
I drew in a deep breath and inclined my head once. “Then do what you must.”
Freya placed her