Perfekt Order (The Ære Saga Book 1) (8 page)

“Exactly. Come over. It’ll be fun.” He
adjusted his glasses. “You settling in okay? Find the good takeout
and all that?”

“So far, so good.” I nodded at my roommate,
who rocked on her toes. “Brynn and I are planning a hike this
weekend. There are so many pretty trails behind campus. Have you
been out there yet?”

“Well, now that you mention it.” Henrik
chuckled. “My house —”

“You guys having a party and forget to invite
me?”

The back of my neck prickled at the sound of
that voice. It was deep, and warm, and smooth, and ridiculously
sexy. If the Scandinavian accent didn’t give him away, the trace of
irony in his tone would have.

Tyr.

Henrik looked behind me and raised an
eyebrow. “Play nice, Fredriksen.”

“
Hei hei
again, Mia. Brynn.”

“
Hei,
Tyr,” Brynn chirped.

“Hello.” The word lodged in my throat.

Tyr leaned against the door jam in fitted
jeans, a black T-shirt, and black motorcycle boots. His arms were
crossed, his palms resting on enormous biceps that strained against
the thin material of his T-shirt. His dark blond hair was perfectly
mussed, and his sparkling blue eyes betrayed an air of mischief. He
pushed off the wall and sauntered toward me, casually hooking his
thumbs through his belt loops. He stopped so he stood directly
across from me, with a desk separating us. I looked straight up to
meet his gaze. He was so close. Lord almighty, he smelled…
intoxicating. Like a redwood grove, and a foggy morning, and…
spearmint?
Stop it, Mia.
I closed my eyes and ordered myself
to focus.

When I opened my eyes again, Tyr was
smirking. “What’s the matter? Still tired from yesterday’s run? I
thought you said you were an athlete.”

“I’m not tired.” My equilibrium betrayed me.
I swayed.

Tyr leaned forward so his mouth was next to
my ear. His words came in a whisper. “Guess we need to step up the
intensity tomorrow.”

I shivered. Brynn snickered.

“What were you lot talking about?” Tyr pulled
back.

“The girls were planning a hike this
weekend.” Henrik picked up his books and walked over to Brynn.

“Where?” Tyr narrowed his eyes.

“Where do you think?” I teased. “I hear
there’s this really pretty creek-side trail just behind
campus…”

Tyr balled his fists and the veins in his
forearms popped up. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I told you
no, Mia.”

Adrenaline surged through my body, and my
stomach churned. “I was
kidding
. Jeez. You sent your message
loud and clear—stay away from the rabid animal trail.”

“The rabid animal trail?” Henrik stared at
Tyr.

“The rangers found a rabid wolf on the
Woodside Trail? Back behind the creek? Remember?” Tyr’s eyes looked
as if they could shoot daggers. When Henrik didn’t flinch, Tyr
turned to Brynn. “Re-
member
?”

“Oh! The wolf!” Brynn’s hand flew to her
forehead. “I’m so sorry, Mia! Tyr asked me to warn you and the
girls, and I completely forgot. Stay away from the Woodside Trail.
There’s a—”

“Big bad wolf. Yeah, I got it. Mr.
Congeniality over here told me himself. Ordered me to stay away
from that neck of the woods, actually.” I rolled my eyes at Tyr,
ignoring the throbbing in my arm where the phantom animal
hadn’t
bitten it.

“I would hardly say I ordered you, Mia.” Tyr
stared down at me.

“Um, yes. You did. And you weren’t
particularly nice about it.” I tapped my foot. “You didn’t even say
please.”

“I told you it was for your own good,” Tyr
pointed out. “That’s nice.”

“And I told
you
you don’t get to tell
me where to go. You barely even know me.”

“If I ask you to trust me, will you?” Tyr
asked.

I let out a sharp breath in frustration. “All
I’m saying is a little explanation, and in the absence of that, a
dose of good manners, can go a long way.”

Tyr’s eyes twinkled as he leaned forward.
Warm breath tickled my ear when he spoke. “Better get used to
disappointment,
prinsessa
.”

His expression was equal parts sexy and
infuriating. My breath hitched as he gave one last wink, then
turned on his heel and strode out of the classroom.

“You coming, Andersson?” He spoke without
turning around.

Henrik looked from me to the door and back
again. A thought percolated on his face, but he just shook his head
and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“See you next class. And send me your resumes
for the research project.”

With that, he walked out of the room, leaving
Brynn and me alone.

“Are they always that weird?” I turned to
her.

She shook her head with a wry smile. “You
don’t know the half of it.”

****

“Hey, Charlotte, can you come in here for a
minute?” Papers and highlighters littered my desk, bed and floor.
It was the kind of mess I usually would have deemed unfit for
company, but at this point I was too confounded to care about
tidiness. And that was saying a lot.

“What’s up? Oh, my.” Charlotte stepped
gingerly over to my bed and pointed to a clear spot. “May I?”

“Go ahead.” I swept the sea of index cards to
the side, making a bigger space for my roommate to sit. “I read
ahead so I could pre-outline for next week’s lectures, and I am
totally lost in art. Help.”

“Oh, honey.” Charlotte lowered herself onto
my bed and crossed her legs at the ankles. “Of course. What’s
confusing you?”

“It’s the mythology. There are too many
characters to keep track of on top of the artists and paintings and
themes. I can diagram and spreadsheet and notecard, but I can’t
memorize all of this if I don’t understand why it matters.”

“Oh. Well, that’s easy enough. Pull up
Wikipedia.” Charlotte nodded to my laptop, the beacon of
information in a sea of wadded up papers.

“I did that already. Plus I checked out John
Lindow’s
Norse Mythology
from the library.” I handed her a
spreadsheet I’d printed. It was filled with notes. “This is a
highlighted breakdown of the gods, their functions, and their
powers, sorted according to realm of residence. Asgard is in hot
pink.”

“I can see that. Wow, you are an
uber-overachiever.” Charlotte shook her head.

“Card-carrying member.”

“So what’s your question?”

“My question is what does all of it mean?
There are like a thousand different gods and realms and battles and
stories. It’s an entire religion, or it was for the Vikings, and
the Nordic cultures that came before them. And there are so many
different versions and variations—I’m not sure which ones are
right. I don’t know how it relates to me, or our society, or Art
History, or anything. Right now, they’re just facts on a
spreadsheet to memorize, but I feel like I should be relating to it
if I want to get the most out of the artwork it inspired. I should
be
feeling
something when I look at the paintings. I should
be connecting to the backstory.”

“Or you could just memorize the names of the
paintings and the artists like everybody else and get by with a B.”
Charlotte set the spreadsheet on my bed.

“I can’t do that. And neither could you.”

“You’re probably right.” Charlotte picked up
the spreadsheet again. “Okay, let’s go over the basics. There’s way
too much on this paper to tackle in one night.”

“Fair enough.” I closed my laptop and
swiveled my chair toward my roommate. “Enlighten me.”

“Okay. So the Norse creation story is pretty
standard—two opposite combined to make something bigger. The fire
of Muspelheim and the ice of Niflheim created a giant called Ymir.
Ymir fed off the milk of a cow, and created the first humans from
his armpits before Odin and his brothers killed him.”

“Hold on.” I ripped the spreadsheet out of
Charlotte’s hands. “I didn’t read anything about armpits.”

“Then you missed the fun part. Anyway, Odin
and his brothers killed Ymir and created Midgard—Earth—from parts
of the giant’s body. His blood became our oceans, his bones our
mountains, and every time you pick up a rock, you’re touching one
of his teeth.”

“Ew.”

“I know, right? Told you their myths were
crazy.” Charlotte took the spreadsheet back. “Anyway, Earth was
created, some other stuff happened, and big bang boom. We got the
nine realms.” Charlotte glanced at the paper. “You’ve got that part
on here. Asgard, the realm of the titled gods; Vanaheim, the realm
of the next rung of gods; Alfheim, the realm of the light elves;
Svartalfheim, the realm of the dark elves—seriously scary monsters,
those; Midgard, Earth; Muspelheim, the realm of the fire giants;
Jotunheim, the realm of the frost giants; Niflheim, the primordial
ice realm; and Helheim, the realm of the dead.”

“And then each realm has a ruler, and races,
and where do the trolls live? I didn’t see a ‘heim’ for them.” I
picked up an index card. “Nope. No Troll-heim.”

“Trolls are actually inspired by the Sami
people of Northern Scandinavia, but that’s not the point. What you
need to know is that the nine realms were all connected to each
other by Yggdrasil, the world tree. It was a living tree that was
fed by three prophetic sisters called Norns. Every morning they
gave Yggdrasil water taken from the well of wisdom, and that water
kept the tree, and consequently the realms, alive.”

“I saw the
Thor
movie.” I nodded.

“Well, that’s a start. Remember the guy with
the eye patch? That was Odin. He ruled Asgard, and he gave up his
eye in exchange for wisdom.” Charlotte smoothed the front of her
skirt.

“Did he get it? Wisdom?” I asked.

“Not the kind he was looking for, but he was
a pretty smart guy anyway. He had two ravens that he sent on recon
missions. They spied on the realms and reported back at the end of
the day to tell Odin what was going on.”

“And Thor is Odin and Flicka’s son?”

“Frigga. And yes. Thor was the God of
Thunder, and he married Sif, the Goddess of Beauty. She was also a
pretty amazing warrior. She had a son named Ull, who was the God of
Winter. And that’s the Asgardian royal bloodline, in a
nutshell.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, committing
Charlotte’s summary to memory. “What about the other gods? I found
at least thirty who seemed to be big deals to Wikipedia.”

“There are a lot. The most important were
Odin, Thor, Sif, Ull, Freya—she was the Goddess of Love. Loki, the
God of Mischief; Idunn, the Goddess of Wisdom; Balder, the God of
Peace; and,” Charlotte snickered, “Tyr; the God of War.”

“Right. Tyr, the God of War. Because I
couldn’t have taken up running with some guy named after one of
those nicer gods.”

Charlotte stretched her legs. “You have to
admit, it’s funny.”

“I’ll make no admissions. Tell me more
stories.”

“It’s pretty late.” Charlotte handed me my
spreadsheet. “And there’s a
lot
to Norse mythology. This is
just the surface stuff. The actual stories are really dark—murders
and rape and destruction and demons. Vikings saw a lot of terrible
things in their world, so it makes sense that their pantheon was
full of heavy characters. Let’s let this stuff simmer for a few
days, and we’ll come back to it.”

With a reluctant nod, I closed my laptop and
straightened the pile of papers on my desk. Then I followed
Charlotte downstairs and sat at the table while she pulled a gallon
of rocky road ice cream out of the freezer. “You’re running with
Tyr tomorrow morning?”

“I’m running. We’ll see if he shows up.”

“Hmm.” Charlotte took two bowls out of the
cupboard and opened the utensil drawer.

“Hmm what? What does
hmm
mean?”

“Well, it’s probably nothing, but when I was
leaving the gallery tonight, I saw him heading into that Italian
restaurant downtown.” Charlotte set two spoons and a scoop in the
bowls, then carried everything to the table. She set the ice cream
carton in front of me.

“Yeah, he mentioned Italian once.” I opened
the lid and started scooping.

“Well, he wasn’t alone.” Charlotte bit her
bottom lip. “He was with a girl who had strawberry-blond hair.”

Oh.
My hand froze mid scoop.

“I wouldn’t have said anything, except she
was hanging on his arm and looking up at him all goo-goo eyed. He
had on a big smile, and it kind of looked like a date.”

A tiny weight settled in my heart. “I see.”
Why did this news bother me? It wasn’t like I had any claim on the
guy. I finished scooping ice cream and pushed a bowl to Charlotte.
“Did he seem into her?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I couldn’t hear what
they were saying, but he looked pretty happy. She was laughing at
something he said; had to be an ego boost for him, if nothing
else.”

The girl. His muscles. His face. Being named
after a god. Tyr’s list of ego boosters was endless.

“You okay?” Charlotte asked gently. She took
the utensil from me and added another scoop to my bowl.

“I’m fine. It’s no big deal. Good to know
where I stand with him, right?” I stilled the disappointment
churning in my gut. Any connection between us was the product of my
hyperactive imagination. Obviously, I was just a new running buddy
he barely knew. Nothing more.

So why couldn’t I get Tyr Fredriksen out of
my head?

“
GOD MORGEN, MIA.”

The husky voice took me by surprise. I wasn’t
expecting to find anyone sitting on my porch steps. The front door
slammed behind me as I spun around. Hopefully my roommates were
heavy sleepers.

“You came,” I blurted. Then I mentally palmed
my forehead. Did I have to sound like a kid on Christmas?

“Of course I came.” Tyr’s brow furrowed. “Did
you not think I would?”