Page 14 of Delinquent Dette
“Yes. Who are you? Why do you not want to face me?” The interloper shuffled about as if he were searching, but Frikka didn’t want to be seen.
“Just a Dette who doesn’t want to see one more Dette forced into a den to breed. And this Dette of Hallr’s. He has red hair?” Frikka took a calming breath and bit his tongue.
“I believe so. And he lacks decorum. He taught myFuhow to swear and it’s beenexasperating.” The Dette huffed, using the Chinese word for their Dette parent. “Grateful that Baba voted to give them a Dette council, though, to handle our matters.”
“Is your Baba Sile, by chance?” Frikka’s mind hummed. He’d had sparse contact with Sile over the years, carrying out dirty work, taking out Drakes that would threaten him or theirDettes. If this wayward Dette was their son, it was definitely Suyin.
“Yes.” His short answer made up Frikka’s mind.
“Due north, six kilometers is a peak with a cave and outcropping. There’s a noticeable patch of Huangshan pine. There’s a golden Dette there who weeps often. He is not lost, yet, but soon.” Frikka hated to see Dettes go fully wild, but Gabriel had more pain than he could handle. Perhaps it was kinder.
Frikka should have been wild, too, but the future called to him too hard.
“Many thanks, friend. Are you sure you do not wish to go home?” Suyin waited for an answer that never came as Frikka shifted and flew off. He had business to attend to. First and foremost—to make sure his son hadn’t forcefully taken a Dette.
Chapter Nine
Frikka
Early 2023
It had taken time to make his way back home, and the first of his tasks was to unearth his fortune. If there truly was a Dette council… Old lands had changed, but the lot was still there, razed to the ground. Seven tall ash trees lined the lot, their boughs strong, the leaves budding and green. Lovingly tended, each and every one of them had become picture-perfect images of Yggdrasil. He’d not known Sten had done that. And at the foot of every tree was a stone engraved with a name.
Möl. Gunni. Jon. Klakkr. Bjorn. Mak. Audun.
Frikka stared the stones down, his heart weeping tears his face wouldn’t.
“I’ll plant an eighth tree here for Hallr if he’s hurt that Dette.” Frikka turned and strode purposefully across the property and into the woods adjacent to them. Sten still owned the land, apparently, so the entrance would be… Twenty minutes of pacing brought him to a creek that he followed, the water brackish and less plentiful than he recalled. And when he spied the concrete structure caging in the entrance to their cave, he snarled. It figured Sten would have sealed it off.
Engraved upon the door was a few words in old Norse.I knew you’d come back. The password is blossom.
After all those years, Sten would still hold hope? Frikka stared at a keypad by the door and frowned.
B-L-O-M-S-T.Frikka typed the letters in and it beeped. His goose’s name. Blossom. Such a silly time in his life when he was a spoiled little jarl’s son.
The entrance and the first few feet of the cave were much nicer than he recalled. Structure had been reinforced and lightsadded so he didn’t need flame. The floor had been leveled clean, and it was much drier.
It’d been almost two hundred years, and he remembered the way, winding through the passages until he reached his little hidden… A door had been placed where his secret entrance had been. Sten had found it.
“Honk.” Frikka read the runes on the door and he tapped a passcode in.Orne.
Stupid bastard goose.It was fitting, though.
Frikka dared not travel deeper into the cave, toward where their home had once sat, toward their old nest. What Sten may or may not have done to the place made his stomach clench.
But inside the room, it was all there. Largely as he remembered. A yellowing letter lay atop one of his more favored spoils.
Dette,
Every time this letter crumbles, I rewrite it. I know you’ll come home. I belong in no other Dette’s nest.
Sten
“Romantic bastard.” Frikka wasn’t fit to love. Sten didn’t deserve him, never had and never would deserve something so awful.
Frikka loaded up all he could carry in a sack and left, not wanting to stay in that accursed spot any longer. Knowing what he knew of technology, Sten would know he’d been there and would be on his way.
Hallr hadn’t moved far from his home, a day’s carriage ride away—nothing in flight time, but he had people to see first.Now to find a pay phone…
