Page 21 of Valkyrie Unknown

She took a step back, looking up in the process, and relief flashed across her face. Exasperation replaced it so quickly, I might have imagined anything else.

“Did you follow me home and sit out here all night?” She brushed past me.

I fell into step beside her. “Not in the way you think.”

She glanced at me but kept walking toward the exit at the far end of the hotel. I followed. Her room was on the first floor.Smart. A room like this had multiple ways out if needed.

“Just because I’ve lived a life filled with cryptic replies doesn’t mean I care for them,” she said.

I liked her strength and refusal to back down. There was a pull to her that was impossible for me to ignore, though I couldn’t define it yet beyond knowing it was there. If she wanted a direct answer, I’d give her one. I leaned my head closer to hers, never pausing in my step, and drew my nose up the side of her neck. “You have a distinct scent. Vanilla and talcum powder.”

The shiver that raced over her was visible in the shake of her shoulders and her head. She scowled. “And magic and ash. Yeah. Berserkers smell things. I get it. I can do that too—You have the smell of someone who worked in the sun in his clothes all day yesterday.”

If she was trying to hurt my feelings, she needed to up her game.

“Because I did,” I said. “I also spent last night trying to leave town, but no one was going in my direction. There comes a point where you decide to give fate what it wants, to get it over with.”

She glanced at me again, and her expression softened. “Yeah.”

We reached the exit, and when I pushed the bar, a loudclangechoed through the hall, and the door swung open so hard, it bounced off the outside wall before hurtling back toward us. I stopped it with my foot, and we kept walking.

“What are you giving fate to shut it up?” I was guessing what her reaction meant. She’d probably snap back that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Ascension. If I make thepowerpart of my destiny happen, maybe I can be usef—” She snapped her jaw shut and pointed to the small of her back instead. One of her holsters was tucked under her shirt, hidden unless one was paying attention. “You did your job. You kept me safe with that pretty little crystal. Doesn’t that make fate happy?”

Despite the question, she didn’t sound irritated. Instead, her tone was neutral with a hint of pleading underneath. As if she needed my answer to beyesfor a reason other than the obvious one.

I hated to admit this next bit, and it wasn’t going to be the answer she wanted. “Loki is looking for you.”

“The way I understand it, for most of my life. Did you know he sent Sceadugengan to destroy me when I was thirteen? Then there was the small pack of Draugar that showed up three years later at the dojo I was training at, like some sort of twisted sweet-sixteen gift.”

Shadow beings and the undead. Both creatures that Loki had power over, where few did. Still, if she hadn’t met him personally… “Are you certain it was he who sent them?”

Another about her said that there was someone just like Azzie—her equal and opposite—and that one of them would have to kill the other. Given that was the only prophecy about him, while there were multiple about her, it seemedthe other guywas destined to lose by default.

Sucked to be him.

“The way I understand it, the myequal and oppositeis no more powerful than me, so no, I don’t think a thirteen-year-old him sicced shadow monsters on me. Besides, whenever I beat whatever monsters are hunting me, there’s always the same message. Burned in the ground as a corpse self-immolates, or screeched into the night—Loki sends his love. Wait.” She stopped and gave me a wide-eyed look. “Do you think someone is framing him?” Her question bled sarcasm.

“Perhaps.” I played along for all of a second. “No. That all sounds like Loki.” He was happy to let someone else do the fighting but always wanted credit for the plan.

Azzie resumed her walk. She seemed to have a specific destination in mind, and it was taking us away from the gas station and any of the otherstations,and deeper into town. “You talk like you know him.”

“When he and I were younger, we were lovers.” I’d thought we werein love, but that was the whimsy of a foolish new Berserker.

Azzie barked a laugh and turned left down a side street, in the opposite direction of the casinos and other businesses. “Of course you were. Do you have a lot of experience with prophecies? Being old and all that? I’m going to assume so. Does it ever seem to you like the beings who wrote them were teenage girls, writing self-inserts on fanfiction-dot-net?Oh, the pretty boys were lovers, and one will protect her, and one will try to kill her.”

I had no idea what half of that meant, but I could infer her full meaning from the rest. I couldn’t hide my smirk at the apt description. “You think I’m pretty?”

Her huff didn’t hide her almost-smile.

We’d gotten off-topic. “My original point was, because he and I were close, he knows how to find me now. He’s… attuned to me.” I didn’t have a better word to describe it because for the most part I didn’t understand how the magic worked any better than most people understood how their computers worked. I knew some gods could do some things and other gods could do other things and I couldn’t do any of those things, but I could turn into a big mean bear. “When I gave you the charm last night, I exposed myself. He assumed that meant I was keeping you safe.”

“That’s amassiveleap of logic on his part.”

We walked away from all of the buildings except for a giant warehouse on the outskirts. Was that our destination? Why?

“Massive leaps of logic come with living a life guided by prophecy.” I didn’t like it either, and it was another reason I wanted to be free of it.

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