Page 140 of Valkyrie Unknown

I hooked the ax to my belt and it vanished, the same way the sword always had. “How do I knowyou’rereal?”

“I don’t have that answer. Either you trust your senses and believe me, or you go back to your fuck fantasy with a man you could have in real life if the two of you stopped pretending chastity and denial have ever been your kinks.” He huffed and shook his head.

Yeah, this was Finn. The line between reality and fantasy solidified in my mind, and he sat distinctly on thenot fakeside. That didn’t erase the image from my mind of him killing Davyn without hesitation. “Where are Zeke and Davyn?”

“I hoped they were with you.” The words drifted over Finn’s shoulder because he was walking toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

The man I love. The words were part of the fantasy. But the real Finn said them. But he said them to a fake Davyn.

Why did you come for her first?

She was who I found.

You know that’s not how this works.

I could drive myself mad reliving what happened, or I could keep an eye on my companion and find the others. Finn might give off bad vibes on occasion, but he came to my rescue and he was right that we needed to leave. I was on my feet and following him into a living room that was a parody of the one in Salt Lake.

Despite knowing all of that, I was still bothered by the image of Davyn dying. Of Finn executing?—

I needed to focus.

“You landed in a fantasy too.” I realized. What were the others seeing right now? Did I truly want to know if Davyn’s trial was like mine?

Finn paused in the living room, his back to me. “You and Davyn showed up looking for a bladesmith. When you realized who Zeke was, you killed him.” He faced me. “We wrote our biggest fears on a piece of paper. These aren’tfantasies.”

But…No. That didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t afraid of— “I wroteSpiders. There are no spiders in here.”

“Uh-huh. We need to go.”

I followed him toward the apartment’s main door. “What did you write?”

“Redheads.” Finn tossed the sarcastic response in my direction. “I’m overwhelmingly terrified of redheads.”

Cute. I opened my mouth to push the issue as we walked through the door?—

And snapped my jaw shut when we walked into the apartment again. What the actual fuck? I stepped into the doorway and stood between mirror versions of my apartment, but if I went one way or the other, everything blinked into the right places, rather than looking like a reflection.

“How did you get in?” I asked Finn.

The confusion on his face matched mine. “I walked through a door in the hallway and I was in your apartment.”

“What hallway?”

He nudged me aside. “Stay.” He walked past me, out the apartment door. The instant he stepped both feet outside the frame, he was walking into the room again.

If I thought too hard about what I was seeing, it made my head throb. It was like a bad movie edit, but I was living it.

“The hallway.” Finn slammed the door shut and gestured at it. “After I figured out we were in an illusion, I heard a voice saymake it to the front door and you can go free.”

The same thing I saw on the scrap of paper. But I was warnedbeforeI lost track of reality.

How did I know Loki was real? The fact that I’d face him one day was certainly a fear.

But if he’s hunting me, that means the prophecies are real.

Of course they were. I shouldn’t have to keep reminding myself of that. “And?” I prompted Finn for the rest of his explanation.

“And I stepped through a door into a hallway. Like a generic thing from a house. I opened the next door and found you and not-Davyn…”

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