Weaving Fate - Nora Ash Page 0,103

Magni’s sister had proven herself a valuable ally. She’d asked questions I would never have been granted an answer to and lobbied for me, Magni, and Saga to receive some freedom to move around Valhalla during our captivity.

But on the fourth day, after discovering Freya’s disappearance, she’d informed us that she would leave to search for her, certain that the wayward goddess was linked to the traitor she’d claimed resided in Valhalla and leaving us to search for clues on our own.

I shot my brother a look across the room. Not that he and Magni had been particularly helpful.

“She’s still alive,” Magni murmured as he slid down on the floor by Saga’s side.

Saga nodded, clenching his jaw as he looked from the scroll in his hand up at the redhead. They shared a long look, one that made me uncomfortable every time I saw it.

It had become their mantra: "she is still alive." Those were some of the only words they’d spoken since Annabel had left Valhalla. Most of the time I wasn’t entirely certain they even registered that I was around, or perhaps it was simply that they didn’t care. They searched through old texts in a bid to discover Mimir’s whereabouts, but I had the distinct impression they were only doing so because it was what the human omega needed.

When I looked at my brother, I knew in my gut that he would watch the world burn, and us along with it, so long as he found a way to keep Annabel safe through Ragnarök.

Worse was the knowledge that while he had turned his back on me, his bond to Thor’s bastard seemed stronger than iron. They even fell asleep together each night, their mutual and pathetic need for comfort allowing them to seek it in one another.

I shuddered and focused on my own scroll. If this was life as a mated alpha, I was starting to suspect that death was preferable.

The bitter thought that perhaps Saga would now be more inclined to let me select that option than he had while we'd planned for Annabel’s arrival to our farm wormed its way through my mind.

I rubbed at my forehead and stared out the window in our tower room. Not that there would be much of a choice one way or the other if Bjarni didn’t return with our father before the moon rose tomorrow.

I tossed a scroll containing yet another of Mimir’s more absurd prophecies to the floor, shooting a disgusted look at the two other alphas. Magni’s hand covered Saga's, a silent, intimate gesture of support. The brother I’d grown up with would have never accepted such closeness with a man who was supposed to be our enemy, shared mating claim or not.

“There is nothing helpful in these records,” I bit through clenched teeth. “No indication of where Mimir is, and certainly no help in discovering who this supposed traitor is. If there even is one.” At this point, I was starting to think Freya was less reliable than we’d given her credit for. She was the goddess of love, after all—not intrigue. “Perhaps Ragnarök is simply here because it is time, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.”

“You’re wrong, little brother,” Saga said, his voice surprisingly gentle. He looked up at me, possibly for the first time in days. His eyes were as dull as they’d been for the past three weeks, but the flicker of fire in them heartened me. “This isn’t the time for everything to end. Once you and Annabel are united, you will understand.”

“Hel’s beard!” I snarled, my patience shattering. “What happened to you, Saga? You used to be cunning, clever—an actual god, not… this empty shell of a being! Annabel is not the answer to everything! She is a human girl. That’s all. A vessel, at most!

"Look at yourself. You’re crumpled on the floor, incapable of so much as saving your own ass from the god-king. Waiting for a woman to come rescue you! I am not about to join you in this madness. You two enjoy your misery. I am going to find a way for us to escape.”

I stormed out of the tower room, slamming the door behind me. There hadn’t been any Valkyrie guards stationed outside of it for weeks, which was fortunate, seeing as I’d been shouting about staging an escape.

I scrubbed my face with both hands and inhaled deeply before I continued down the corridor. I was done following these harebrained schemes.