When I’d seen the goddess before, she’d been basically mummified. A desiccated corpse in moldering robes propped up on an old throne. Now she was stunning, her body perfection, her hair a silky onyx.
I stole a glance at Barthol. He had gone completely still, and his eyes bulged so wildly they looked like they might pop out of his head.
Hela slipped a thin robe of pale silk over her shoulders. She shook her hair out, then strode from the room.
“Woah, woah, woah,” Barthol breathed out. “Who was that?”
“Did you see her blue and ivory skin?”
“Hela,” he whispered. “She is perfect.”
“I mean, she’s okay, I guess,” I said sourly. “She may have trapped Galin here against his will, you know.”
“Hela …” Barthol echoed, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
Rolling my eyes, I started to crawl forward. When I’d gone a few yards I twisted around to check on Barthol. He still stared through the grate.
“Barthol,” I whispered sharply, “we have to keep moving.”
“Hela …” Barthol said again, in a slow monotone.
“Snap out of it bro,” I said in my best big-sister voice. “She’s a goddess, and she’s out of your league.”
At last, he started moving again.
“She was totally naked,” he whispered.
“I noticed. Can you get a grip? We both know you’ve had plenty of women. What was that elf’s name, the one you met at the mushroom harvest last year? She was totally cute. I know you and she had a little thing together. Hela is forcing Galin to be here against his will, and unleashing draugr into the world of the living. Red flags, my friend. Red flags.”
Barthol nodded, even as his expression remained vacant. “Do you think I’ll get to meet her?”
“No,” I snapped.
Because if we met Hela, that would mean that something had gone very wrong, and our chances of making it out of here would dwindle to nothing.
Chapter 6
Ali
Barthol and I continued through the tunnel, crossing over more grates—none with naked goddesses, much to my relief. Barthol stopped to peer into each one of them just in case. We passed a couple of storerooms, and an empty hallway lit by purple flames.
As we moved deeper into the ventilation tunnel, the air got warmer. My pants and jacket began to dry, which was nice. Assuming we weren’t heading for a giant flaming fireplace.
My chest tightened as I saw a barrier up ahead—a horizontal grate at the end of the tunnel. If anyone looked through at this point, they would see us.
Crawling on my stomach, I inched towards it until I could peer through the metal.
This time, I recognized the room on the other side. It was Hela’s tomb, the place where Ganglati and the shades had taken Galin and me when we first entered Hel—a hall of enormous rock and vaulted ceilings. Warm light from candles in alcoves danced back and forth over the stones and the piles of bones. What a gloomy place.
Hela’s crumbling throne was empty, but standing in front of it, his back to me, was a familiar form. I would have recognized his powerful warrior’s body anywhere. And yet he wasn’t the same Galin—not at all.
Shirtless, his chest was marked with inky runes that snaked over his thickly corded muscles. Instead of the golden blond hair I’d last seen, his hair had returned to black. But the most concerning thing about him was the dark vapor drifting around him—like the shadow magic around the raven.
He turned and strode towards a door beside the throne. For an instant, I caught a glimpse of his profile, and I drew in an involuntary breath at his unearthly beauty. There were the familiar sharp cheekbones, sculpted by shadows, his masculine jawline.
I wanted to talk to him. Why did this dark sorcerer in Hel still feel kind of like home?
Staring at his beautiful face, all the time we’d spent together came back to me in a flash: climbing the wall of the Citadel, the battle in Boston Common, running my hands over his chest in the Well of Wyrd.
He seemed so familiar, and yet entirely alien. Back then, we had a soul bond, and I’d been inextricably drawn to him, like the proverbial moth to a flame.
Now—I reminded myself—he was just another elf. Not my mate. He was just a very, very beautiful elf who I felt nothing for except a sharp squeezing in my heart and extreme excitement, a racing pulse—
Stop it, Ali.
I wondered again if I’d done the right thing, but the bottom line was—if he didn’t love me without magic, then it was never real, was it? It was like mind control. I’d needed to know the truth.
Forcing myself to focus, I scanned the empty hall. Unfortunately it wasn’t empty; shades drifted about slowly, like motes in still air. As much as I wanted to jump down and run after Galin, that wasn’t possible.
Barthol slid up next to me. “Hela seemed lonely,” he whispered.
“I will murder you with the wand if you don’t stop talking about her. She’s had Galin to keep her company, anyway. She would chew through you like a starved leech. There’d be nothing left but a dried-up corpse. She’s bad news. Anyway, our goal here is to talk to Galin. I just saw him slip through that door next to the throne. We need to find a way to get over there to follow him. Any ideas?”
He stared through the grate. “We could just make a run for it?”
I shook my head, wondering why I’d brought him. “The shades will see us as soon as we step out of this tunnel. And if I create a portal to where he was standing, they’ll notice. What about a diversion? When the shades are distracted, I can create a portal that opens near where Galin was headed.”
“Oh good idea.” Barthol’s eyebrows flicked up, and I hoped his next idea wouldn’t involve Molotov cocktails and catapults. “What if you made a fire?” He pointed at Levateinn on my hip.
Not a bad idea. “That works.”
I drew Levateinn and began to conjure the fire spell. A moment later a small gout of flame burst out of the wand and into the great hall. It began to burn on the stone just in front of our vent.
“It’s working. The shades are coming,” said Barthol, while I quickly scribed the portal spell. As I did, I pictured where Galin had been standing. I smiled as a portal crackled into existence in the tunnel.
“Be careful,” I said as I started forward. “It’s going to be a tight fit.”
I slipped through the portal and into the hall near the thrones. From here, I looked across the great expanse of stone. The shades had gathered around the fire, ignoring us completely.
Barthol grunted quietly as he dropped through the portal. His bear fur jacket looked slightly singed.
I pointed at the arched door Galin had gone through—wooden, with sharp metal studs jutting out—and we hurried toward it.
When we reached it, I paused. I might be an Empress now, but I hadn’t forgotten my years of assassin’s training. What if all this was a trap? Galin, after all, hadn’t looked quite himself. I glanced back around the cavernous tomb, at the shades bustling frantically around the fire. In the ancient stone walls, the blocks were dusty and chipped. I slid Levateinn into a gap between the stones, a plan already forming in my mind.