Foresworn (17 page)

“Bigger than several heads,” Arun agreed.

I picked my spaghetti surprise back up. Didn’t know why because I had no intention of eating it at that point. “Do you see the way he looks at the Valkyrie who brought him here? And the way she looks back? She’s completely in love with him. What do you think will happen with that? She can’t stay here, I’m sure.”

“Why are you sure? Once this is over, her job is over.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. But it’s hard to imagine her picking Earth when she lives in some kind of utopia.”

He reached out, snagged my pack of food and took a bite. “Yuck. Cold.” He licked my fork and winked at me. “Some people will live anywhere if it’s with the right person.”

I held my breath, watching him lick the utensil that had just been in my mouth. “What are you saying, Arun?”

“I do love my name on your lips.”

I rolled my eyes. “What did I tell you about saying stuff like tha—”

He shut me up by lurching across the small space between us and kissing me. I had no idea where the food pack went, then didn’t care as I slid my fingers into his soft curls. Could a person become addicted to another person’s kisses? Because it was starting to feel that way—like I craved his mouth on mine.

“I love my lips on your lips better,” he murmured between kisses, his hand big and warm on my neck.

I nearly snorted and managed to hold it back. Barely. Gods, he could be cheesy. But hell, I cared about the guy. I liked his corny lines, though I wouldn’t be admitting that anytime soon. Then I thought about him with the sword, standing strong and powerful against that giant, and my belly fluttered. He was such a cool mix of nice guy and tough guy, he made my head spin. These feelings for him had moved fast past the like stage sometime when I’d held him as he’d slept the day before. Sliding my fingers deeper into his hair, I cupped his head and let myself go into the kiss. In the back of my mind, I thought it might be the last time. A part of me still believed I had a date with fire.

“Damn,” he whispered as he pulled back enough to rest his forehead against mine. “We will be figuring out this geographical problem we have after all this. You get that, right?”

“What, you better not be thinking I want to be some kind of young bride because—”

Instead of a kiss, I got his hand over my mouth as he laughed. “No. Of course not. But I’m not ready to let you get away from me yet, either. Please tell me you feel the same. Your kisses sure feel like you do.”

I stared at him, then sighed. “Yeah, I do. I don’t know how we’ll deal with this.”

He smoothed his hand down my hair, curled his fingers in it. “We just will.”

He leaned down to kiss me again, and I stopped him. “Holy crap, Arun, your eyes are doing that thing again!”

“What thing?”

The seal brown that I loved was no longer just brown. His eyes had taken on a golden sheen. “They’re glowing.” I sat up straighter.

“I knew you could light me up.” He couldn’t keep a straight face with that one, cracking a grin.

I punched his shoulder. “Really? That one was bad. But seriously, today’s your birthday, right? We have to get you to some kind of magical place so you’ll get all your power. Coral and Raven both said that Taran and Vanir had to be in a place like that.”

“Hey, calm down. Gillian just turned eighteen and she wasn’t anywhere special.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t get bigger powers.”

“Kat, the girl can walk through fire.”

“True. But she could do that before. Nanna overheard Coral telling us about the wolves on the water in Florida and she said that Brigg had been on sacred ground when he turned eighteen. She thinks that’s why he turned into a human glow lamp.”

“I don’t know of any magical place around here, Kat.”

“Really?” I lifted an eyebrow. “Music on the lake, Arun.”

“Oh, you’re probably right then. And really, they’re glowing?” He actually looked nervous, which made sense.

If my eyes were glowing
,
I’d be tripping.

He started to say something else then, stopped when screams outside the tent caught our attention. Before we could scramble out, it was like someone tried to roll us into a ball or something.
Inside the freaking tent!
Our bodies crushed together, and I gasped in pain when something wrapped us like a vise—right before we went airborne.

“It has to be a giant!” Arun yelled over the screams outside the tent. “Can you breathe? Shit, Kat, you’re turning blue.” He tried to pull me free but couldn’t get around well enough. Then he managed to twist and I felt him feeling around before he jabbed something into the hand holding us. I think it was my fork, which couldn’t make much of a dent in a giant hand.

It did something because the thing howled and dropped us, but we were snatched back up fast.

This time I could breathe, so I fought to get out of the tent with Arun. Fought until something slammed into my head and everything went dark.

* * *

“I asked for Arun—not the girl.”

I recognized Branton’s voice and felt Arun tense against me. My head hurt so much, I couldn’t figure out where we were at first—only that the ground was hard beneath us...right before we went airborne again. He wrapped around me as we were snapped out of the tent. Hard. Snow cushioned our fall, but we rolled. Arun grunted when his body took the brunt of the impact when we hit a tree. I scrambled off him and patted him down to see if anything was broken. The snow stung my bare fingers.

“I’m okay,” he murmured quietly as he quickly sat up. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Outside of the head pain. And the cold. Unfortunately, I was only wearing the tank top—I’d never had the chance to finish putting on my layers. Turning, I looked for the coat that had been in the tent with us, but my gaze landed on the guy responsible for destroying Arun’s home. “You know, Branton, you’re the worst sort of asshole.”

His striped hair wild and messy about his head, Branton walked toward us. “You got a mouth on you. Maybe I should let Vrunlin here shut it up with a fist—make your mouth match your forehead.” His gaze flicked toward the top of my head. “Nice lump. Ouch. Bet that hurt.”

That name made me turn slowly until I spotted the elf Coral swore was our father. He was just as she’d described him. Short silvery-white hair covered his head and his skin was the same shiny, hard-looking black as the other elves. Coral had called it marble. I could see where she’d get that because it had an odd surface sheen to it. He stared at me in complete fascination, his look so probing, I couldn’t hold his stare. Then I realized I didn’t want him winning any sort of stare battle and snapped my gaze back to him. I even added a fierce snarl.

His slow grin sent shivers down my spine.

Coral was right...This elf was completely captivated with us.

A group of elves stood around him and another I recognized stalked forward, his expression tight with fury, his white suit still covered with smeared bloody runes. He ran at me, his clawed hand out like before and I felt air instead of his fingers as Vrunlin smacked him away from me. The two started arguing and when they stood facing each other, their profiles made it obvious they were related. No, more than related—they were twins. The one in white, the one I’d given a rune, suddenly made this horrible ragged noise, grabbed his head and bent. He panted, then looked up through his hair to glare at me.

Guess my rune worked. I couldn’t wait to tell Coral as I sneered at him.

When a third white-haired elf came forward to put his hands on their shoulders, I sucked in a breath.

“I know—wild, isn’t it?” Branton had knelt next to me and leaned over to whisper. As if we were friends or something. “Triplets, too. It’s why Vrunlin was picked to seduce your mother into that grove. Triplet elves are rare—like so rare, they’d never happened before. Your mother’s a triplet. He’s a triplet...it’s like triplets gone wild! They orchestrated the norns’ rebirth perfectly.”

Wait. My mother was a triplet? That information stunned me so much, it made me forget the cold for a moment.

“Branton, why are you doing this?” Arun asked while he kept his gaze on the elves.

“Destiny. Just like you, Golden Boy.” He reached out like he was going to pat Arun on the head and Arun grabbed his wrist. Hard, too, because Branton’s fingers started turning colors.

“You should let go,” Branton said through gritted teeth. “These guys need me.”

“How long have you known you carried Surt?” Arun tightened his hand.

Branton grimaced and tried to pry Arun’s fingers off his wrist. “Most of my life. Couldn’t really tell you, considering who you carry and all. What a mess, eh? Seriously, dude, let go or I’ll set you on fire right now.”

“You really plan to kill your friend?” I asked him. Like Arun, I kept an eye on the elves as their voices escalated in anger. The snow started up again and wind swept into the small clearing, both stinging my eyes, making me shiver and file away the new information about Dru for later.

“We all have parts to play in this, Norn.”

I frowned at him, shivered, and brushed snow off my cheeks. “But you’ll die, too. So will everyone—your mom even.”

Branton shook his head. “No, we’re going someplace else. They promised.”

“Yeah, into an early grave,” I snapped. “You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re going to die by fire. I have the spot all picked out and everything.” He snickered at me.

My hand slid over a rock next to me and I curled my partially numb fingers around it. Arun let go and before Branton could move away, I grabbed the rock and brought it around as hard as I could, slamming it into his face. He wasn’t braced for it, had no idea it was coming, and he fell back against a tree as blood poured from his nose. A cut sliced open one eyelid—blood poured from that, too. I got to my feet, the blood-covered rock in my hand. “You want to say anything else to me?”

Laughter made me look toward the elf triplets. They all watched me and the expression on Vrunlin’s face made me feel as if spiders were crawling up and down my spine. Even the elf I’d defaced gave me a certain surprised look of pride. I just rolled my eyes and glared at him, lifted the rock in warning.

He chuckled, turned back to his brothers and continued the argument.

“You bitch. You are so gonna die. Right now.” Branton stood, staggered a couple of steps as he held his hand over his obviously broken nose. He lurched toward three backpacks piled on top of a picnic table.
A
picnic table?
In the middle of a massive forest of burned dead trees. I looked around to see if we were by the lake, but I didn’t make it past the giants.

Seeing the one yesterday hadn’t prepared me.

Nothing could have prepared me
.

There were more than I expected. Something like thirty, I guessed, and they stood as tall and taller than a lot of the dead trees around us. Unlike the elves, every giant had white hair and they all wore ragged burlap-type clothes. Mostly loincloths. They had hands larger than beach balls and feet that looked as long as my legs. One of the females narrowed her eyes and screeched when I met her gaze; the sound made me wince and cover my ears. The shorter male next to her hit her in the face with the back of his fist to shut her up. She hauled off and knocked him on his butt.

There were so many of them, my heart dropped to my feet. I backed up, hoping to find Arun. His arm came around my waist. Then I twisted to look at him because the power coming off him was so strong, it made my skin tingle. “Your eyes are glowing again,” I whispered as I looked around and realized we were near the water. I didn’t have to ask to know it was Yellowstone Lake.

The fear that gripped me then made me cling to the arm around my waist.

“Branton,” Arun said, his voice deeper than normal. “Whoever said you’d survive a fire here lied to you.”

“Who said anything about me staying here?” His eyes narrowed on me. “You are supposed to be dead. The elves are arguing about that, though it sounds like they’ve included other subjects. Wish I could understand them because they are always bitching about something.” He shrugged. “They don’t seem to grasp their roles here, though the giants aren’t a problem at all.” He bent forward and whispered loudly. “They are all kind of dumb. Will do anything you tell them to. Watch this!” He stood up and swiped a sword off the ground. He held it high, turned it back and forth, then grinned as fire shot down the gleaming surface.

The giants began murmuring, some started chanting.

Fire streaked up and down the sword.

I wished for the elk antlers badly right then. Not that they’d do any good against that sword, but I knew this story—knew that sword was supposed to kill Freyr.

Branton laughed and lunged toward us.

Arun pulled me out of the way, did this sort of graceful turn, then kicked Branton right in his broken nose. Branton howled, dropped the sword and grabbed his face.

I winced and had to look away. His nose was no longer in the right spot on his face and blood had smeared over his cheek, forehead and up into his hair.

Arun lunged for the sword, but one of the giants jumped toward us and smacked him away. He flew over the picnic table into a tree, and I lurched after him only to get swept up in the air by a massive hand. Arun yelled, jumped onto the picnic table, grabbed up a backpack and dug through it as he ran toward the giant holding me.

I gasped, trying to breathe as I kicked out my legs and wiggled my body. The fingers around me wouldn’t budge, so I bit down as hard as I could and had to actually gnaw through the tough leathery skin until nasty metallic blood hit my tongue. Acid rushed up my throat and I gagged, but I bit harder. It didn’t faze the thing.

Me vomiting all over its hand from the blood worked. I hit the snow hard, its cold stinging my exposed arms and shoulders.

Arun reached me before the giant and pushed me behind him.

“You have a knife?” I asked, spotting the blade in his hand.

“All the backpacks have them. For fishing, hunting, whatever.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier,” I mumbled, wrapping my arms around myself as my shivers grew worse. “I have a sweater and coat in that tent somewhere.” I looked around and spotted the orange material in a heap.