Perfekt Balance (The Ære Saga Book 3) (28 page)

“What are friends for?” He stood up, pulling
Brynn along with him. “Come on, ladies. Let’s do some damage in the
kitchen.”

“Ooh, are there more of those white chocolate
ones?” Brynn skipped into the hallway, with Henrik close behind. As
Mia stood, I gave her a gentle smile.

“You’re going to be great at all of this,” I
reassured her. “Tyr wouldn’t have let you get involved with us if
he didn’t believe he could keep you safe. And I wouldn’t teach you
if I didn’t think you’d be a tremendous asset to Asgard. You know
that.”

Mia clutched her cup as she followed me into
the hall. “I know. But it’s scary.”

“I know it is. And there’s more scary to
come. Tyr has some family stuff he’ll want to talk over with you
when he gets home. He went through a lot on this mission, but he’ll
be okay. He’s tough.” I nodded.

“He sure is.” Mia paused. “What about you?
You faced someone who helped kill your parents. Will you be
okay?”

I scanned my feelings, but found no residual
anger. Only sadness. “I’ll never be okay with their being gone,” I
admitted. “But I was blessed to have parents who loved me and Tyr
with every fiber of their hearts. I always knew how adored and
cherished I was. Runa never knew that. And if she continues on this
path, she never will. If anything, I feel bad for her.” I meant it.
“I hope she realizes the value she could bring to the realms, if
only she could stop trying to destroy them.”

Mia looked at me for a long moment. “You’re
something else, Elsa. You don’t hold on to anything, do you?”

I tilted my head. “Only the things worth
holding on to. Like friendships. And family.” I squeezed her arm.
“And love. Always love.”

“Speaking of, how is our favorite stubborn
justice god?”

“He’s good. We’re good. I think we’re good,”
I corrected. “He kissed me.”

“He kissed you?” Mia squealed. “Ohmygod,
where? When? Why didn’t you lead with that? That’s huge!”

“
It was
just one kiss—I don’t want to get my hopes too high, but I
think…after everything he went through over the past few days…maybe
he’s ready to give us a shot.”

“It’s certainly taken him long enough.” Mia
grinned. “Now tell me everything!”

My cheeks warmed. “Didn’t you say you had
some cookies for me?”

Mia laughed as she walked toward the kitchen.
“I’ll get the sordid details out of you sooner or later!”

“I have no doubt you will. After all, we’ll
be spending lots of time together in the coming months. I hope
you’re ready, Miss Unifier.”

Mia smiled over her shoulder. “Oh, I’m ready.
The question is, are you?”

I didn’t
have to scan my feelings to know that I was ready to embrace my new
role as Asgard’s Unifier, Mia’s teacher, and Forse’s…well, whatever
we were to each other, I was ready for that, too. I was more than
ready to take on
whatever
the Fates had in store for me. And I couldn’t wait
to get started.

I joined Brynn at the counter as Mia and
Henrik each held up a plate. With a joyful grin, I picked up a
cookie and toasted our little group.

“To family. Even our impossibly
unconventional, insanely weird, wholeheartedly devoted mash-up of
one.”

Mia, Brynn and Henrik held up their cookies.
We tapped them together, and they echoed my toast.

“To family.”

“
ELSA! YOU’RE HERE!” A
raven-haired fairy waved joyfully from the top of Alfheim’s
tallest waterfall. She spread her wings and leapt from her perch,
leaving a trail of golden dust in her wake as she descended. Lithe
feet touched down in the grass beside the pond, and Lornara raced
to my side in more of a glide than a run.

It was a universal truth that fairies got all
the grace.

“Lornara!” I wrapped my arms around my
friend, careful not to bump her wings. “How are you?”

“
I’m
well, but how are
you
?” Lornara held me at arm’s length. She scrutinized me from
head to toe, her mouth turning down as she took in the crimson scab
on my forearm. “I heard about what happened in Svartalfheim. Do you
need me to heal that arm for you?”

“
It’s
mending itself, albeit slowly,
takk
. But I do need your help with
something.”

“Anything.” Lornara tossed her long, black
curls over her shoulder, and pointed to a bench beside the water.
“Shall we sit?”

“Please.” I followed Lornara to the edge of
the water. With each step, her fitted dress swished against the
tops of her knees in an undulating movement. Even her clothing
moved like a classically trained dancer.

“What brings you to Alfheim? Besides my
fabulous company, of course.” Lornara lowered herself onto the
bench. I followed suit, crossing my ankles as I sat.

“I need to run something by you—one new-ish
High Healer to another.”

Lornara smiled. “I’m glad we took on our
roles at around the same time—it would have been mortifying to have
to learn all of this on my own.”

“It’s a lot easier testing out new remedies
on you than on one of the Aesir,” I agreed. “You wouldn’t have
gotten half as mad as Forse did when I accidentally made him think
he was a cat.”

Lornara giggled. “Have you been practicing
your Unifying on Forse too? That god has the patience of a meadow
elf, I swear.”

“
That’s
why I’m here.” I stared at the waterfall. “Has Alfheim selected its
new Unifier yet?” When the light elves had lost their Unifier, they
hadn’t appointed an interim like we had. For a seemingly Zen-like
realm, Alfheim had a surprisingly intense selection process…and
a
lot
of paranoid
peacekeeping elves.

“Not yet.” Lornara dropped her voice. “And
between us, I don’t know how much longer we can hold out. We’ve
been detecting irregular surges of dark energy at one of our
portals. And the weather’s been really strange here all winter—some
of the elders think it’s one of the Ragnarok markers.”

I knitted
my fingers together. “Brynn and I are thinking the same thing.
Midgard is having a bizarre winter, too—or at least, the quadrant
I’m in is; I think the European quadrant is still holding up all
right. But us…we’re due for our third snowstorm in Arcata this
month. Third! Arcata is at sea level. In
California
.”

Lornara shook her head. “Two light realms
without official Unifier Keys—no wonder the dark energy is closing
in.”

“We have to stop it. I know I don’t have the
authority to do this, and I’m in no way trying to step on Alfheim’s
political toes, so we should probably keep this between us, but
we’ve got to go rogue or we’re never going to survive this. As
Asgard’s interim, I’m enlisting you to act as Alfheim’s until the
rightful Keys step up—or in Alfheim’s case, gets elected.”

Lornara paled. “I don’t know if I can hold
down both jobs. If Ragnarok really is near, that would mean
simultaneously shouldering two full-time, life or death
positions.”

“
Please,
Lornara. You have to help me. The attacks on Asgard, the hits
surrounding Tyr, the dark surges at your portals, now the
winters…it’s too much. We can’t let the darkness win.”

“I don’t know how to be a Unifier. But then I
didn’t know how to be High Healer when we got appointed, either.”
Lornara frowned, probably thinking of the untimely deaths of our
healing predecessors. They were killed during a peacekeeping
mission-turned-ambush in Jotunheim.

“Exactly. We figured that out together—we can
crack this, too. I’m starting to get a handle on it—it turns out
unifying’s nothing like healing. The last time we brainstormed, we
thought we should try removing energy blocks.” I shifted my
attention from the cascading water to the wide gold eyes of the
fairy beside me. “But it turns out the key to unifying is to speak
directly to spirits.”

“Of course,” Lornara said. “Why didn’t we
think of that before?”

“
Why
didn’t I read my mom’s journals before is the real question. Forse
pointed me to them, and the answer was in there all along. I
brought one with me.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the
bound notebook. “I’ve been poring over this one, and I think
reading it will help you, too. It’s the first one where Mom
mentions talking to spirits.” I sighed. Why couldn’t Keys train
their successors from birth, instead of when they came of age? Or
at least write everything down in a step-by-step manual? It would
have made all of this
so
much easier.

“I’ll read it cover to cover, and treat it
with all the love it deserves.” Lornara gently removed my mom’s
journal from my hands, freeing me from my thoughts.

“So you’ll be Alfheim’s undercover interim?
And we’ll figure this out together?”

Lornara nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

“
Takk
.”
I let out a
heavy breath. “I’ll feel a lot better knowing I’m not alone. It’s
you and me. And Mia.”

“Your brother’s mortal girlfriend?” Lornara’s
curls fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head.

“
Yes.” I
ran my hands along the smooth grain of the wooden bench. “Mia will
be Asgard’s
true
Unifier. The Norns only need me to be her stand-in until I
get her trained. But I hope the three of us can stave Ragnarok off
for a little longer.”

“Goddess willing.” Lornara studied the sky,
where a thick layer of clouds gathered. “I’m not ready for the end
of days just yet.”

“
You’re
telling me. I’ve never been on a real
date
; I’m hardly ready to die.”

As if on cue, my new phone rang—the one I’d
picked up in Arcata the day after my return from Svartalfheim. I
freed the device from my bag, and my face broke into a grin at the
name on the screen. “Forse Styrke,” I said, as I tucked the phone
to my ear. “Does this mean you’re finally back from Asgard? We
thought it was going to take a day—what’s it been, a week?”
Actually, it had been two days, twenty-one hours, and fourteen
minutes since Forse had left my side. But I wasn’t counting.

“Not just yet.” Forse’s deep voice carried
across the realms, sending a flutter through my heart. “Odin’s
council is interrogating Runa pretty thoroughly, and I’m sitting
in.”

“Make sure they understand that there’s some
good left in her—but that she’s extremely volatile, and might not
recognize that part of herself for a long time.” I studied the
clouds. They’d shifted from off-white to menacing grey.

Tell him you miss him,
Lornara mouthed. My cheeks warmed as I waved a hand at
her.

“Hopefully they’ll finish up sometime
tonight. If so, I’ll have Runa booked by tomorrow morning, and be
back at your place mid-afternoon. I’ve got big plans for you.”
Forse’s smile came through in his voice.

“Oh, do you?” I flirted. “Big plans like
dress warm because it’s cold inside the movie theatre, or big plans
like pack a bag because we’re heading to the southern hemisphere to
get away from this irrational winter?”

At
Forse’s long pause, my heart skidded to a stop.
Stupid,
Elsa. He kissed you one time. You don’t even know if he’s ready for
a relationship. Don’t scare him off!

“
Just
…big plans,”
Forse answered cryptically.

“
Oh.” I
filled my second energy center with soothing light, and dialed my
enthusiasm down a notch. “That’s fine.”
No, it’s
not.

“
I’ve got
to get back to the council room, but I am
really
looking forward to seeing
you.”

“Me too,” I said with a forced calm.

“Oh, and Elsa?”

“Mmm?”

“I love you. Just thought you should know
that.” Forse lobbed my words from Svartalfheim back at me, and my
heart warmed with joy. The brightness filled my entire body, so
every one of my energy centers glowed with happiness.

“I love you, too,” I murmured. “See you
tomorrow.”

“See you,” Forse signed off, leaving me
grinning like an adolescent school girl.

“Things going well with Forse?” Lornara
teased.

“Something like that.” I tucked my phone back
into my bag and set it on the ground. “But it’s early days, and I
don’t want to get my hopes too high.”

Lornara
raised an eyebrow. “Something tells me high hopes are
just
what the healer
ordered. You two have been dancing around a relationship for way
too long.”

“We’ll see.” I kept my tone light.

“You know I’m a High Healer, too. I can
literally see right through you.”

I burst into nervous laughter. “Okay, fine.
I’m so excited. And so scared. I don’t want to mess this up.”

“You won’t.” Lornara shook her head. “It’s
you and Forse. Justice and Inner Peace. How much more well suited
could two Asgardians be?”

“
Well
when you put it like that, it does sound pretty
perfekt
.” I grinned back
at my friend.

“Let’s go back to my house and have some
lunch.” Lornara glanced at the sky. “You’d better Bifrost out of
here before that storm hits. You don’t want to be stuck in Alfheim
and miss your hot date.”

I stood up and tucked my bag over my
shoulder. “The Bifrost works in all weather.”

“
Okay.
Then don’t you want to hurry home to pull
all
of your clothes out of your
closet and stare at them for hours before settling on your ideal
first date outfit?” Lornara asked.

“You got me there.” I linked my arm through
hers as she stood, and followed her along the bank of the pond,
back to her house. The wind picked up as we moved, bringing a cold
chill through Alfheim. I shivered. “Let me know when you finish
reading Mom’s journal so we can meet up and strategize. I have a
feeling things are going to get colder before they get better.”