Weaving Fate - Nora Ash Page 0,63

open and handed it back to him. “Try it out.”

Apparently trusting my abilities far more than I did, Bjarni grabbed his sword and swung it at the vines around his feet. They parted with a satisfying slick of his blade, the brambles falling to the ground. A few more swings, and he was free.

“We do not have time for you to free us too,” Modi said, his voice urgent. I followed his gaze and saw Loki make quick work of the last block of ice still encompassing one of his feet. It looked like he was aiming a high-powered laser at it, the way it melted around his flesh.

“I’ve got this,” Bjarni rumbled, raising his blade. His handsome face was locked in a fierce scowl. “Cover me.”

He leapt across the clearing, his powerful legs carrying him faster than a regular human would be able to move. He roared a battle shout and the air vibrated around us all, raising the small hairs at the back of my neck.

More vines sprouted around his feet, but he slashed through them with a single swing of his sword, hardly slowing to do so.

Two more shadow-wolves leapt from Loki’s fingertips, and then another two.

One died from lightning, the other from a ball of golden energy, and the two remaining from Bjarni’s blade.

Loki bared his teeth at his son and raised both hands out straight, sending a shockwave through the air that shot Bjarni backward as if an invisible giant had kicked him in the gut. He landed on his ass by my side, gasping for breath.

“Damn!” Modi growled as I bent as best I could to ensure Bjarni wasn’t injured.

“Just winded, sweetie,” he panted. “Don’t… waste your focus… on me. Focus… on my… asshole father.”

I glanced at Loki, who’d finally managed to get free and was fleeing at full speed this time. Modi pulled bolts of lightning from the sky, but he only managed to slow the cowardly god by forcing him to raise his magic in protection or dodge the blasts.

We were never going to capture him this way.

Unless…

It came to me more as an instinctive pull rather than a thought. My hand still clutching Modi’s, I reached my other out to grab onto Bjarni too.

A current of awareness passed between us, not spurred by magic, but every bit as intense. And then, without giving any of us a moment to prepare, we became one.

All barriers of flesh and identity blurred and vanished, sweeping me into a warm, throbbing awareness. Anger, hurt, love, fear, desperation, longing—they were my emotions, and they were not. They belonged to all of us. I felt them—both of them—cocooning me from all sides, their consciousnesses shielding me.

And I felt their strength.

We were one.

My mind blinked back into reality, where I was once again staring into Bjarni’s blue-gray eyes. Only now they glowed with a light that seemed to radiate from within him—from within all of us.

“Go,” I said.

Bjarni didn’t pause. He barreled across the clearing once more. Loki shot more waves at him, making the air itself shudder, but this time my mate plowed through them as if they were no more than a mere breeze.

Wolves made from shadow sprung at him—five, seven, ten. He cleaved them all with his sword, and my arms felt the swing as if I were wielding the blade myself.

Loki ran, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. Bjarni was on him before he could make it four steps, falling atop of him like a feral bear.

Loki attempted to evade him, his figure fading to mist, but electricity sparked from Bjarni’s grip, lighting up the God of Mischief and jolting him back into flesh with a scream.

Finally he lay still, his long body sprawled in the snow beneath his son.

“I got you, you traitorous cunt,” Bjarni growled, and I felt his rage as keenly as if it were my own. “God of Mischief? God of Cowards, is more like it. I hope you regret betraying your own blood before Odin takes your head.”

Twenty-Four

Annabel

Modi showed me how to infuse my magic into a length of rope he pulled from the rucksack they’d carried with us from Asgard. It was tricky, my fingers fumbling on the twine and my vision blurring.

Now that the fight was over, the connection between the three of us that had flowed so freely seemed barely there, and I had to focus to keep my rapidly waning power connected with Bjarni so our prisoner didn’t escape before we could tie him up.

“Just