Page 42 of Valkyrie Unknown

No. Every bit of me protested her suggestion. Her threat. “No. I’ll go,” I said. “What happened before the fight, though? That kiss? No more. It’s a distraction.”

I braced myself for her to argue that she wasn’t a distraction. That I couldn’t make that decision for her. To give me some sort of protest.

Azzie sighed. “Agreed. No more.”

Good. We were on the same page. Great. Fantastic.

Want.

No.

Part2

Zeke

Twelve

Zeke

Three Years Later

My phone rang,andDiegoflashed on the screen. I could already hear in my head how the call would play out. He’d ask me how it was going, I’d hesitate then sayfine, and he’d say,It doesn’t sound like you’re fine. What’s up?I’d make him tell me why he called, he’d circle back to what I was hiding, and one of these days I’d spill because I really wanted to tellsomeoneabout what had happened over the last few years.

Especially since I’d ignored most of his calls for a while now, and those we did have, I cut short before I could say too much. The weekend I spent with him and Astrid at their place in New York was cleansing, but also a trial to hide things not even they would understand.

I sent the call to voicemail, and guilt whispered through me. It wasn’t as though it was unusual for me to go weeks or even months without talking to him or his she’s-just-a-friend-no-really, Astrid. But there weren’t many people I could callfriend, and I hated intentionally avoiding either one of them.

My mom used to tell me, “You’re not here by accident. There’s no obstacle too big. No dream you can’t accomplish.”

She was talking about the militia she was certain my father had built. Not that she’d seen the man since I was conceived, and I certainly never met him. But apparently he’d told her just enough about his army and how they’d step in when the world fell apart, that she believed I would command by his side.

My phone buzzed again, this time with a text from Diego that had a picture of a puppy.

Diego: This is the dog.

Me: She’s adorable. Astrid’s going to love her.

He was getting Astrid a therapy dog. I didn’t understand why a dog was good therapy for a woman who was terrified of them. Then again, I’d treated my trauma by crawling into a bottle and living there, so I wasn’t as well versed on what was good for me as the people who had degrees in psychology and had recently finished their residencies.

Too bad all their brain training hadn’t helped them figure out how completely they wanted each other.

Diego: I hope so. BTW, don’t answer my text right after you screen me.

Busted.

I played out another fake conversation with him in my head, since I couldn’t have a real one.Hey, you know how my mom thought I’d be some sort of general in my dad’s civil war? How she trained me for it my entire life? Turns out the gods think something similar, but in a magical way, instead of in a cache-of-firearms-and-ammo kind of way. Oh, yeah. Did I mention the gods Astrid worships are real,, and they’re even bigger assholes than the stories say?

Because that would be a good conversation to have with a man who had the power to have me committed. I still struggled with the reality of it after three years, and I’d seen one of those gods do things that couldn’t be explained any other way besidesmagic. I’d seen hints of my own power.

That last part was both the most bothersome and the most fantastic of all the revelations.

I pushed my phone to the other side of the scarred wooden table I sat at and turned my attention back to the sketchpad in front of me. That short exchange had tugged me out of a wonderful place of focus, and I wanted to lose myself in my work again.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and extended my senses through the familiar. The drafting chair I sat on, with wheels that rolled too much and thin spots in the leather. The lingering scent of fire and coal, and the hint of burnt metal that lingered on my tongue. The brush of a breeze coming in from the bar doors at the other end of the room, and the creaking of the trees tapping on a tin roof.

This part of the crafting experience hadn’t changed with the revelations Finn laid on me. What I could do that was mine alone was the same now as it had been before learning about gods and prophecies. The same as before I lost Mom. A little darker, maybe. A little more directed. But this design work was what I had picked for me.

I pushed everything else aside, pressed the tip of my pencil to paper, and let the image flow out of me. As more and more lines layered on each other, I was looking at the rough sketch of a handgrip for a gun. Aluminum would work best. This one had a Celtic knot sort of design in the middle, but I wove Norse runes around the edges.

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