2
Asgard
Alva walked along the edge of the forest known as Aasveigheimr near Freyja’s home. Home. That one simple word held such a strong meaning for her. Home was somewhere you could go and be safe. A place to fill with love and memories, not hate or regrets. Aasveigheimr should be her home, but it wasn’t.
With a sidelong glance at the dense trees beside her, the darkness blanketing each broad trunk seemed to thicken. She shivered and forced her gaze back to the uneven path, her booted feet hardly touching the sparsely graveled dirt.
Her thoughts turned inward, which was almost worse. She hated everything about her miserable childhood, except when she left to live with her father in Alfheimr. Those few years had been magical.
After her mother became involved with Anders, she all but threw Alva and her siblings out of their home to either survive or die. Her sisters relished the challenge and excelled, living with friends or one of their aunts, the only one who offered them shelter. The other two aunts...well, they were hell-bent on power and had tried to murder Alva because she could not bring herself to kill an innocent male just to survive. When her father had appeared and offered her a home, she jumped at the chance.
Her tail flicked the dirt behind her, reminding her that she needed to return to Freyja and report about the Huldra uprising. Her family’s chaotic existence was out of control. No male in any world would be safe if it continued.
Her steps slowed as a strange feeling washed over her. Stopping in the middle of the path, she listened—but heard nothing. Moments before, the forest had been full of bird chitters and calls as well as the scurries and squeaks of small mammals as they rushed to and fro gathering their winter food hoard. Now, the silence hung over her skin like a scratchy cloak.
Rubbing her hand up and down her arm, she glanced all around, trying to discover what had silenced the forest...before it did the same to her too. Along with the cute brown squirrels and fluffy bunnies, terrible creatures roamed these woods. The last thing she wanted was to run afoul of one. Coming off this last mission had all but depleted her energy and her power of persuasion, but the human conflict was finally over. Now, the Asgardian battle would begin.
Too many Elfkind had been displaced after their own civil war, and many had disappeared. The dwarves declared the underground for their own, which Hel would not take lying down. No one wanted to cross the goddess of the Underworld, not even her father, Loki.
The worst, though, was the Jötnar, giants from the world of Jötunheimr, who had once again declared war on Asgard and all the worlds, siphoning magic from their creation chaos. This was what Óðinnhad done by worsening the war and imbibing all the resulting energy, which he converted to magical power. Not a good thing for the other eight worlds at all.
Trying to look casual, Alva turned back to the path that would take her to Freyja’s quarters and started walking at her normal pace. She sped up gradually until she was sprinting. Still, whatever creature had pegged her kept up with her, all but breathing hot air down her bark-covered back until it felt as if she was on fire.
Taking one last running leap, she whirled around in midair and pulled out the one magical weapon she possessed. The knife smoothly slid from the golden band she wore on one wrist and continued to lengthen. As always, amazement spread through her at the sentient metal, spelled with some of Freyja’s and Heimdall’s strongest spells to know what the bearer needed for protection.
A dark blur sped by her, and she lunged, the sword striking whatever or whoever it was. Hearing a low grunt, she smiled as she dropped to the ground. Rocks poked into one knee as she balanced the crouched stance with her fingers digging into the dirt. Not sensing anyone else around her, she inched upright, the bloody tip of the sword pointing at the familiar scowl of her older cousin, Maya.
With one hand covering the wound on her side, evidently deep enough for the blood to seep through her fingers and drop to the ground, the angry Huldra flung her red-gold braid over her shoulder. Her dark-green eyes blazed with hate.
“You will pay for that, traitor,” Maya hissed and slid her own clean blade into the sheath on her back. The glint from light hitting the gold cuff bracelets on each wrist momentarily blinded Alva.
Sighing, the heavy weariness from a lifetime of dealing with her family’s anger toward her choice to leave the family fold weighing down her heart, she stared at her cousin, but kept the sword aimed at her midsection. Maya was the fiercest of all her cousins. She was probably the most bloodthirsty of their entire clan, which numbered in the hundreds and had spread throughout the Nine Worlds. At last count, Maya’s death toll was nearing two thousand—almost one thousand more men than all other Huldra combined. She was revered, so to see her here, hunting Alva, was a deadly omen.
“Why can’t you leave me in peace? I’ve scratched out a life for myself—why can’t you accept that?”
Maya’s scowl darkened, the lines around her narrowed eyes and the edges of her lips giving her an evil visage, and it took all Alva’s long-earned control to stop the shiver. Once her cousin sank her teeth into something, she would never let it go, and it had been Maya leading her family’s rebellion against men. Her cousin’s hatred and narrow-mindedness poisoned everyone, turning most all Huldra against Alva. At least, that was the conclusion she had come to. No one else could control the Huldra like Maya.
“Your refusal to act like a Huldra is a deception to our kind. You are nothing more than a traitor—weak and lost. Your mother decreed that you are to be given one more chance to return to the forest and to your true way of life. If you refuse...” Maya’s evil smile sent Alva’s heart racing, and the hair on her body stood on end. “I get to kill you.”
“That was not the deal, and you know it, Maya!”
Alva turned at the familiar and very welcome voice of her sister, Adriana. At her side was another cousin, Isla. Her fear abated just a little at the sight of her two favorite people. She opened her arms with a smile and stepped toward them, the sword magically disappearing into her golden wristband. “I missed you both so much!”
The three women embraced, laughing and talking, until Maya’s loud growl interrupted them. Alva turned to face the angry Huldra, Isla and Adriana taking their stances on either side of her.
“Maya is mistaken, Alva, and must not have committed your mother’s orders to memory. Queen Isabel requested that you appear before the council.”
Alva twisted her head to face her younger sister and frowned. “Why? She made it very clear at our last talk that I was never to return home.”
Isla laid her hand on Alva’s arm, gently wedging her body between theirs. “Something has happened, and she is requesting your expertise. Your decision to leave our forest home and Freyja’s recent battles against Óðinn during the war on Midgard have come to her attention.”
Alva wasn’t sure quite what to believe. The mother she knew would have placed a bounty on her head, dead or alive, and Maya would be the assassin she sent to complete the job. The one thing commonly known about her people—Huldras were bloodthirsty, no matter the circumstances. Other than Freyja and Idunn, there were only two people she trusted with her life—Isla and Adriana.
She studied Isla, whose light strawberry-blond hair was pulled up on the top of her head in a thick ponytail with twin strands hanging in large ringlets from each temple. Her dark-green eyes were filled with concern. Alva patted her cousin’s hand still gripping her arm and turned to her sister, staring into her familiar emerald gaze, seeing empathy and worry in their depths.
She loved how Adriana styled her silvery-white hair and wished she had the patience to do the same. On each side of her pretty face were three smaller braids pulled back and woven into one tight braid which hung almost to her waist. Alva immediately felt frumpy and fat. Her curves had always bothered her when she was around her siblings’ and cousins’ thin forms.
“Adriana?”