As the parts of me finished meshing back together, my memories of all my lives finally reorganising into some semblance of order, I still felt as awed by all I had done as I had been as Darcy, without my memories of a life as a goddess. That my scheming had brought me back to where I needed to be amazed me, because even though I'd know we could end up right there, in that moment, it hadn't been certain. It had been as far from certain as it was possible to get, without becoming impossible.
"We did it. We got this far," I breathed.
Leof laughed at my wonder, kissing me deeply, as thoroughly as if he hadn't seen me for a thousand years, and then admitted, "I'm slightly disheartened by your surprise. Did you really doubt us so much?"
"I was realistic about our chances," I admitted, looking up into to blue of his single eye. Then I murmured, "It's been a centuries, and that's going to take some reacclimatising to." Touching his cheek, under his missing eye, I confessed, "I know you sacrificed it for knowledge, but are you truly sure you don't want it healed.
"It never bothered you before." He tipped his head, studying me. "It wouldn't be a sacrifice if I could recover what I gave up. I gave up my eye, and in return I received knowledge of the minds of men, and of uncharted worlds and peoples. Those gifts have served us better than one eye would have done." He brushed my hair back behind my ear. "Those gifts helped me retrieve you from Viola when this body and it's missing eye mattered not one bit, my love. My eye is as unimportant as the scars on our vampire bodies. But this, on the other hand," he indicated to my arrow wounded thigh. "This, need to heal, especially if you're still intent on a prison break."
Nodding, I reminded him, "We've followed the plan thus far, I have no reason to stop now. I can do this. I promise. We built the escape tunnel for a reason, and this is that reason. I'll wait in the gardens until the guards shift change, after which I should have some time before anyone discovers the escape. It'll be a simple task to send the guards to sleep and keep them from sounding the alarm. Once that's done, I'll free those who are loyal to us. I'll lead them back here. I'll be fine. In the meantime, you can give Will, Gunner, Katie, and Natalie the biggest surprises of their lives. And Will mocked me for my secret identities. The joke's on him now. I just hope they forgive me for the centuries they spent asleep."
"Don't you already know that they'll forgive you?" Leof asked, curious.
"I'm too afraid to look," I admitted, feeling sheepish. "Will was forced to become a slave because of me, and admitting that I did this without giving him a choice..."
Laughing, Leof shook his head at me. "Then let me tell you how this will play out, mínu Fríge. They will be stunned. The won't believe me, not at first. And when they do? They'll forgive you, love. We've all known for a long while that we only survived so long by following a plan you wrote in history. Will knows and accepts his role, love. And five centuries of sleep is still better than all the centuries you spent with Ragnar. You condemned yourself more than any other, they will understand that. I promise."
"And our children? Children who have known nothing but cages and darkness for almost as long as we've been on earth?" I asked, and Leof's expression fell as he looked down.
When he raised his head again, he considered, "They might take longer to heal, but although they've lived in darkness, in degradation and neglect, I'm not convinced even they will've suffered the way you did with Ragnar. You made a decision to take the brunt of the pain and fear, and even our children will come to understand eventually. They were raised by us, to know the importance of protecting all realms, not just this one. They will understand. Now, let me heal your leg."
I nodded, sitting back and letting Leof rest his hand over the aching wound. I could've healed myself in the blink of an eye, but I relished the touch of his magic. It flowed into me, calling to my own, our souls connecting as they always did. My body relax as I enjoyed the tingling warmth as my husband wove flesh and muscle back together. When he was done, I brushed my fingers over my thigh, my skin smooth and flawless once more.
"You're better at that then you were when last we were in Ésageard together," I appraised.
"I had a good teacher on earth," he teased, meshing his fingers briefly with mine, before confessing, "I still don't like this. The idea of sending you back to the palace alone. We should both go..."
"If both an eagle and a falcon turn up in the gardens together we will draw undue attention," I reminded him. "Tiw saw us fly together in the past. Alone, I could just be another bird. He won't be expecting me to come back here voluntarily, especially not on my own. But if he sees us together, even in our avian forms, we're going to draw suspicion. And one of us really should find Vili, Ve, Sjöfn, and Syn. You get some of our family home, and I'll rescue the rest."
Smiling, I kissed him, promising, "I'll be careful. I'll come back to you. Trust me one more time... Sometime soon you're going to have to bring this war to a close. You will need to defeat Tiw. That will be in your hands. But this, right now, this is in mine. My part in this is almost done, so let me finish what I started when I asked for the escape tunnel from the cellar."
Leof sighed, "What happened to being better together?"
"We are together. We came to Ésageard together," I reminded him. "We planned this together. We will go to bed together before dawn. You can still hear my thoughts, and if I need you, you'll find me. We'll always find each other. We're always in this together, even when we have our own roles to play.
He relented, tapping my forehead. "If I hear anything untoward, I'll find you."
I nodded as I stood, retrieving my falcon feather coat from where I'd left it following my retrieval of Woden's body. "I know you will, Leof."
He followed me to the door, and when we stepped out of the sanctuary and onto the cobbles and flagstones of the courtyard, it was to discover my lynxes waiting for us. They melted out of the night-time shadows, two sleek predators who were as tame as kittens as they butted their heads against me, demanding ear scritches. I knew the had it in them to be as dangerous as any other lynx, but they would do so only on my command, or to protect me. In that sense, they were much like my husband's wolves.
"I don't want to leave them here. Can you take them back to Milbank too?" I asked.
Leof looked less than impressed with my request. He'd never fully appreciated my cats. Or rather, he didn't appreciate their rivalry with Gifré and Frec. But that was one more thing we would have to reacclimatise too.
"They did take me to your body. They are the reason I got you to the sanctuary, so we could become ourselves again. And they guided me to the sanctuary when I escaped Tiw. They don't deserve to be left behind," I insisted.
My husband relented, even managing to smile as he petted each cat in turn. "Alright. I'll get them to the human realm, along with my brothers and their wives."
Smiling too, I gave Leof one last, lingering kiss, and then I swung my falcon feather cloak around my shoulders. At my command, the enchantment I'd cast so long ago came instantly to life, swirling around me in a glittering light show as my body shrunk and shifted, clothes and hair becoming rust coloured feathers, striped with black and cream. My arms became wings, my legs shrinking into vicious talons that had taken out rabbits and game birds with ease, and in a split second, I was airborne for the first time in centuries.
Rising into the sky with strong beats of my wings, I spiralled, climbing in lazy circles until I wasn't only over the hidden citadel, but also over the ring of rock and earthen mounds that formed the circumference of the basin in which our sanctuary had been hidden, out of sight and mind. Behind me, the mountain rose higher, but I didn't need to reach the clouds, and as much as I would've liked to soar, to fly as I had done in the distant past, without a destination in mind and for the pure joy of flight, I still had a job to do.
High above the forest I'd once raced through in terror, escaping Viđarr's guards, I turned towards the golden sandstone and rose veined marble of the palace. When I reach the lakes of the water garden, I followed the rippling mirrors of interconnected waterways back towards the very prison I had escaped from, and a sense of unease settled over me. Not because I doubted myself or my plan, but because I doubted I would ever reclaim the sense of 'homecoming' that had once welcomed me.
It had been my home once, a place I'd been happy as Woden's queen. My children had played in the wild gardens which Tiw had replaced with his formal, ordered borders and flower beds. The halls had once rung with music as Woden played the lyre, or panpipes. My life had been one of song, and of watching my husband create art and poetry with as much skill as he could wage war. Despite the plan we made and the darkness we knew would follow, our world had been bright, beautiful, and filled with laughter.
The palace was my home, and part of me longed to reclaim it, and to reclaim the halls at Fensalir and upon the Folkvangr plains. And at the same time, there was another part of me which saw the very things that had been familiar as something foreign, corrupted by Tiw, and far away from a life on earth which I loved just as much. I had an image in my head, from a dream I'd had weeks ago, of Conn stood in the atrium of Alnford Hall, under the great glass dome that let in starlight, with two little boys in his arms. I wanted that future.
I loved Ésageard. I loved Wenhám, where I had spent my first childhood. But I loved earth too. But how could we take back the truth now that the wider world knew who we truly were? When the war was over and done, if we came out of it victorious, how could we go back to being Conn and Darcy? Would Woden even want that, now he was whole again?
I didn't know, but it wasn't a question I could answer right then. It was a distracting concern that could be addressed if we came out of the last days of Ragnarök with our lives intact.
Refocussing on what I needed to do right then, I spiralled downwards, towards the palace gardens where I'd spent so much time during my imprisonment. When I reached the kitchen garden, I perched in the boughs of one of the orchard's fruit trees. The branches overhung the kitchen garden wall, high above rows of herbs and vegetables, and I hoped the foliage would hide me from any watching eyes. At least it was night, and the gardens were empty of gardeners and servants, and I was out of sight of the palace's gates and the valkyries and guards who screened all who came and went.
Ignoring the risk I'd taken by returning, I focussed on the staircase cut into the earth alongside the palace wall, in the far corner of the kitchen garden. Amyrdrian had led me down there before, an act which had cost her life and had seen Tiw and Viđarr tighten their hold on me. I could remember merchants bustling in and out of the cellars, bringing mead, and cured meat, and salted fish. Grain for the city had been stored there, so we could ensure our people always had plenty. But Tiw had turned much of the stores into dungeon instead, a place to store dissenters rather than food. Where once the promise of life and plenty had been stored in the subterranean chambers, now the bowels of the palace were heavy with misery and pain. With starvation and cruelty. But soon they would be empty, and Tiw would realise his control was slipping, finally.
A long time passed before a pair of armed guards finally entered the garden from the kitchen door. One laughed, paying more attention to his companions stories than to his surroundings. In a way the guards lack of concern irritated me. I'd struck a blow to my enemies when I eradicated Dorian Osier, and yet Tiw and his guards were so confident in their superiority, in their inevitable victory that even on duty, the guards seemed almost disinterested.
I guessed I should be grateful; wariness would've made my discovery more likely, and a smarter guard might've asked 'Hey, didn't Woden's queen have a cloak that allowed her to fly on falcon's wings?' Tales of my cloak had been written into mythology, and so the guards over-confidence was a stroke of luck. The unwary didn't notice threats until it was too late, and I counted on that.
Even when the guards descended into the cellar, I still waited. Amyrdrian had told me they would spend an hour debriefing with those who'd been on duty before them, and when the off duty guards finally escaped back to their beds or to eat, that would be my signal to make my move. No need to raise suspicion by incapacitating guards who might be missed in the dining hall or barracks.
Yet despite having reason to wait, I couldn't help fidgeting, feathers rustling as I shifted in nervous anticipation. Going after Osier alone had been daring, but this, this was another level. It could work. It could fail. And the uncertainty felt bother familiar and foreign all at once. I could know the future of all things, and yet the very skill that made it possible for me to see more than the wyrdæ also meant I could see every prong of every fork, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to be followed to their conclusion, and that was immense. It induced anxiety, and only the calm confidence I could still feel radiating from Woden, through the connection we'd always had, as both gods and vampires, soothed me enough to stop me driving myself insane in the interim.
When the relieved guards finally climbed the stairs, leaving the dungeons behind them, the proved to be as unconcerned as their relief had seemed. They too laughed and joked, one playfully shoving the other as he made some obscene remark about the best ways to make use of a valkyrie. I had the urge to take them both out of the picture, judging their characters on the vulgar misogyny they displayed as they pondered over which shield maiden Tiw would invite into his bed next. But that would make my patience waiting for them to leave redundant, so I allowed them to slip back into the palace unhindered.
Once I was alone again, I glided down to the staircase, then down further to the doorway to the cellars. Only then, hidden from view, did I revert to my original form, my body stretching and growing back into Fríge, exiled goddess, still wrapped in the blood-stained and dirty clothes of a servant. I entered the cellar with caution, moving silently through the passages, between the vaulted chambers where game birds hung, awaiting the oven, and sacks spilled barley and oats.
For the second time in recent months, I ignored the contents of the palace's stores and paused only when I reached the heavy wooden door of the guard room, with its wrought iron fixtures. Last time, Amyrdrian created a distraction. This time, I performed the same trick I had used so many times on Milbank's sentries and even on Conn himself; reaching out with my magic, I sent both men to sleep with little more than a thought.
Once I knew the guards were under, I slipped into their room just long enough to take the keys from the hook over a weapons chest. I could have opened the barred gate down to the dungeons with magic, but if the keys were missing, the guards would have a far more difficult time following me, and delay could only prove beneficial.
Upon leaving the guards room and entering the dungeon, I relocked the full height gate behind me, then descended into the gloom of the cells. The stench of urine, faeces, sweat, and sickness burned my nose, and bile rose to sear my throat. The dungeon was no more horrifying that it had been on my last visit, and behind the bars men and women still lay amongst the dirt and rats, or sat, rocking back and forth, their eyes glazed over, dazed with fatigue or hunger. Some were dressed in rags, others were naked. Most kept their heads down, refusing to look at me. They probably hadn't even noticed that I wasn't a guard. They'd learned to bow, to keep eyes downcast, to never raise their eyes, or spirits, or their fists in defiance. So many of them seemed unfamiliar, gaunt, skeletal, so entirely different from the people they'd been that even with my memory in tact, I didn't recognise people I had once known. Others I might never have known, after all, twelve centuries had past since I'd become Dunthryth.
"My queen," a voice said in alarm. "What are you doing here? You were free!"
I went to one of the cages as Lofn scrambled to her feet, and a gasp of horror escaped me as I took in the bruises and welts that marked her unclothed body. Tiw had punished her for her role in my escape. He must have been responsible, or he'd had the guards torture her, to uncover whether or not she'd played a part in it.
"What has he done to you? Where's Fulla? I'm so sorry, Lofn," I said, horrified.
"I'm here," Fulla announced, climbing to her feet in the next cage along. "But you shouldn't be. If Tiw or Viđarr catches you..."
"They won't. I know who I am now. I remember everything. I'm here to help you escape." Reaching through the bars, I pressed the keys into Lofn's hands. "Free anyone who will follow me. There's a hidden passage out of here. I can take you all to safety."
Lofn took the keys then gripped my hand, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. "My queen, it's good to have you back."
"I certainly hope so," I told her, then stepped back, going to the cell in the darkest corner of the dungeon, where the cage with thicker, sturdier bars.
He wasn't asleep this time, the red haired man who I'd only recognised from the paintings in the boathouse when last I saw him. But this time I recognised Thor as the baby who had been placed in my arms so long ago, while a storm raged outside the palace. When I reached his cage, I didn't hesitate to use magic to unlock the door, slipping into his cell as he climbed stiffly to his feet.
Part of me still expected anger, accusation, but I received neither. Instead my son pulled me into his arms, and I flinched as hid bones dug into me. I could remember him being immense, bound in muscle, so that even his father was dwarfed. Even Fenn would come up short against my firstborn, but muscle had wasted through years of disuse. Starvation and neglect had stolen so much of his strength and yet he still crushed me against his chest, were his ribs added the only definition under his loose skin.
"Mother," he breathed, and a sob escaped him. "Mother, Lofn said you had escaped. What are you doing here?"
"I came back for you. I was always going to come back for you," I promised.
Thor stepped back, a wry smile tilting his lips upward and I wondered how long it had been since he last smiled. "I won't lie, there have been whole centuries when I doubted you hadn't abandoned us. Then Tiw told us you had died. He told us you'd lived a long, brutal life, without ever knowing who you were. I think he thought that truth would dishearten us. It was a new way to hurt us when these cells had become our normality and the guards had grown bored of centuries of torture with no secrets left to force from our lips. But if anything, hearing his claims were a relief."
"A relief?" I repeated. I wasn't entirely convinced I'd ever find my past something to be relieved at, even with everything I knew, even understanding that it had been essential, I couldn't feel relief.
Thor considered me a moment, and his smile turned sad as he admitted, "If you died without knowing who you were, then you didn't abandon us. And that was... More comforting than you death was disheartening. All of us down here have longed to die, Mother. Dead, you were beyond Tiw's reach. When I saw you down here with that Valkyrie... For a moment I hated you. I hated you for surviving, for looking well fed, for being free to come and go... if Lofn and Fulla hadn't been brought back down here, if they hadn't told us the truth, I might have hated you still."
That truth hurt, and I felt my heart give a painful squeeze as tears burned my eyes. Reaching up, I cupped my son's cheeks, promising, "Everything Tiw told you was true. I died, after many lifetimes of slavery. I was reborn, but I only recently discovered the truth. Then your father died and things got... I can't explain now, there's too much. But I need you to help me get everyone into the escape tunnel, and once you're safe, I'll explain. I promise."
Thor nodded, and he followed me out of his cell without question. His stride was more of a limping shuffle than the confident gait I remembered, but he stood, he followed, and that was enough. I hoped the others would do the same.
"We have one problem," Lofn advised when I re-joined her, helping open further cages. "I told you before, Tiw made us beacons, Fulla and me. It's possible he did the same to others."
That, at least, drew a grin from me. "You've forgotten who I am," I appraised. "I'm not the frightened mouse with no memories of myself and my magic locked behind Tiw's blocks. I'm back, kids, and I'm bad ass."
Several of the prisoners looked at me as though I'd grown a second head, but I shrugged and admitted, "I've been on earth a really long time. Courtly manners haven't been all that important recently."
My power flared at a thought, and sorcery shot from my finger tips, winding into the hearts and minds of each and every prisoner. I'd never sought to use magic on so many targets before, not at Requiem when I sent our human assailants to sleep, nor in Valhalla when I took control of my dead. It didn't matter. I was no longer constrained by the inherent weakness of a vampire body. I was a goddess. I was the mother of magic, and it took nothing to search out every scrap of invasive sorcery in those I'd come to free.
Those who'd become beacons, I freed from the mystical equivalent of a GPS tracking device. Those who had magic, whose own power had been bound, I gave back what had been taken. Many were too weak, too malnourished and tired, to perform any serious magic. In months to come, when they recovered, then they would make use of what they were, gods and goddesses. Valkyries, and elves. A vast array of people who had drawn the ire of the usurper.
When my magic receded once more, leaving the prisoners free of magic if not yet free of the palace, several stared at me in awe. Some clearly had forgotten who I had been, other had never known, but they were grateful all the same, at least until an argument started behind me.
"You can't open that door!" an unfamiliar man yelled. "She is mad! She's dangerous! She knows neither friend nor foe and will just as soon murder us as escape with us!"
"She's my sister!" a woman answered, her eyes flashing gold, her arms folded over her chest and her chin jutting with stubborn defiance. She looked so much like me, from the earth brown of her hair to the way she held herself. While she showed all the same signs of neglect shared by the others, right down to the rags she wore which barely covered her body, she was as familiar as Thor.
"Hnoss!" I exclaimed my daughter's name, and pushed my way towards her. "What's going on?"
"He won't let Fulla free Gersemi. He says we should leave her behind!"
Gersemi. My other daughter. The one Viđarr had raped.
"We aren't leaving anyone behind," I insisted.
The man tensed, glaring at me. "Forgive me, your highness. But I was born down here in the darkness. This is all I've ever known. While you have seen the sun and stars, I saw what living down here did to people. I witnessed Gersemi claw Forseti's face because he 'looked at her askance'. Forseti, Balder's son, your grandson, god of courts and trials, Forseti the impartial. I witnessed Gersemi attack any man who so much as sat next to her. There's a reason she's in a cage on her own. And she's been so much worse since you were last here, since Tiw had Viđarr interrogate us about what you said and did. She's a liability."
"She's afraid of men!" Hnoss retorted, squaring up to the stranger again. "She's traumatised! But she doesn't deserve to be abandoned here. What do you think Tiw will do to her if we leave her here?!"
"No one's being left behind," I interjected, pushing my way between the bickering pair. I turned towards the man, asking "How old are you? Do you know?"
"He was the last child born down here. The son of Gefjon and one of the guards," Fulla answered. "We weren't exactly kept up to date with the calendar down here, but he could be four hundred, maybe. Five hundred at most. Whenever a new prisoner is placed down her we do our best to gauge the date from what they can tell us, but we only have estimates."
The man glared at Fulla, then at me as he stated, "My mother was raped by one of the guards. She isn't mad. She isn't known for trying to tear the faces off family members."
I nodded, but then stated, "I'm sorry for your mother's suffering. I know what it's like to be forced. I'm sorry for you, that your father did something horrific to your mother, just as I'm sorry for the child in my womb," I placed my hand over my midriff. "I'm sorry he'll grow up the product of rape, sired by the very monster who usurped his mother. I'm sorry for everyone whose suffered, and everyone who will if we fall without defeating Tiw. But if we want to be better than the usurper, more than the monster he is, then we are not going to callously leave a tortured woman behind unless there is absolutely no other option."
Taking another step towards Gersemi's cage, I old paused to add, "And remember this, even if I decided to give you the benefit of an extra century and claim you're six hundred years old, I still spent longer in the dark, without sunlight, rarely seeing the stars, than you have been down here. Tiw ensured I lived for a long time in hell, raped and tortured nightly, forced to kill for others entertainment, until insanity almost seemed like a relief, so don't you ever, ever, tell me that the fact I've seen the sun and stars in the last three decades erases what I know of degradation and torment.
"I know what a dungeon does to people. I promise you this; thirty years from now, you still won't have fully recovered from this place. But in three hundred years? Then you might find you have a life, you might find yourself in a world where Tiw is gone, where you can spend your days in the sun, with a warm breeze caressing your skin and a glass of mead clutched in your hand. You might have a wife. You might have children of your own. You might be helping to shape a better future than you've experienced in the past. But if you attempt to condemn someone to remaining in this dungeon, then you are no better than Tiw, and you don't deserve the freedom I'm trying to offer."
Without waiting for a response, I opened the barred door on the last closed cell, and stepped inside, raising my hands in surrender as I crouched beside the blonde woman who cowered in her own filth. Her once golden hair hung in rats tails, matted by blood and goodness knows what else. She didn't look up, yet she backed further from me, trembling.
"Gersemi, it's alright. I'm not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you," I promised, but my daughter still didn't look at me. Instead, she clutched her hair, tugging at it and rocking back and forth. Very slowly, I moved closer, reaching for her hands and taking them in my own as I whispered, "Can you remember what I said to you before? Just remember that it's alright to get a little mad sometimes, as long as you can pull yourself back again. Can you pull yourself back, princess?"
The frightened woman finally raised her eyes to me, a broken sob exploding from her as tears welled in eyes which were as blue as her father's. "Mother... He hurt me... My brother... He hurt me."
"I know, princess. I know. But I'm going to do everything I can to make sure no one ever hurts you again, alright?" I asked as I tugged her into my arms, holding the shivering woman as tightly as Thor had clung to me.
"We need to go," she whispered. "Viđarr will find the guards soon. We should leave before he does."
I pulled back, assessing her, remembering that I'd always suspected she knew more than she let on. I felt no inclination to argue as I stood and helped her to her feet. Gersemi hesitated, however, murmuring, "I'm sorry I told them about you and the valkyrie. I always knew you'd come for us, but everything got so confused. I thought you had left us here."
"I wasn't ready before. I couldn't have erased the magic Tiw would've used to hunt you down," I told her as I helped her limp from her cage. "But I know everything now. Everything will be over soon. But we can talk about it once we're safe."
Turning to Lofn, I ordered, "Those who are most able-bodied must help those who are the least. No one get's left behind. If they can't walk, then we'll carry them. If no one can carry them all the way, then I will get them at least into the tunnel, then I'll heal those who need it, at least enough to walk."
My handmaid nodded and busied herself ensuring all the cells we open and empty, ensuring no one would remain in the dark, dank hell beneath the palace. Fulla followed her lead, while I guided Gersemi and Hnoss towards the blank expanse of wall Amyrdrian had shown me. Thor joined us, guiding a man with white and unseeing eyes who nonetheless reached form me, tears tracking over his cheeks as he croaked, "I'm sorry, Mother... Balder... I'm so sorry."
Letting Hnoss take over aiding Gersemi, I cupped Höđr's cheeks, promising, "It wasn't your fault, son. It was an accident. It's alright." Looking up at Thor, I requested, "Can you help guide your brother?"
My eldest son nodded, "Of course. I can guide Höđr and help another to stand. I have strength enough for that."
Forcing a smile, I turned back to the wall. For once I had no doubts, even when faced by a seemingly impassable obstacle; I had designed the escape route, after all. Once I located the block carved with the algiz rune, I counted three blocks across and nine down, then placed my palm flat against the roughly hewn stonework. Just as I knew it would, and just as it had done at the gates of the hidden citadel, my own magic heated my palm, drawing from me as a section of wall slid back half a foot and then slid sideways, pulled by chains and rolling on iron casters which had been designed to my specification.
The heavy wheels themselves sat below the dungeons floor level, so that they remained hidden when the great stone door was closed. The stone panel itself sat flush against the slab, in line with the rest of the cellars walls, except when it opened to reveal the wide corridor beyond. As for the mechanism by which it moved, a simple ward triggered the movement of cogs and pulleys which opened the escape; a ward designed to recognise only myself, Woden, or a valkyrie captain, just as Amyrdrian had claimed.
In truth, many of my schemes had incorporated the tunnel. Some relied on me, some on Leof, and some on Amyrdrian herself, but I wasn't sorry that the path I'd finally set my feet upon had led me, rather than Leof or the valkyrie, back to the secret door. It was the safest option, not risking Woden while not relying on a woman who'd loved Tiw either.
"Quick, everyone into the tunnel," I ordered, and helped the rag tag bunch of men and women step down into the passage beyond the wall. Black eyed valkyries assisted gods. Elves assisted valkyries. More than a hundred beaten and bruised people staggered into the deeper darkness of the passage, and I found their numbers both daunting and disheartening. On one hand, there were so many of them. On the other, there were so few considering the length and violence of Tiw's reign. I wondered how many he'd executed, as he had the cook, while he held me prisoner. I could've looked, discovered the numbers. One day I would, and I would mourn all those who'd died in my absence, but in that moment, the living were more important than the dead.
"Viđarr is coming," Gersemi warned as I helped the last limping elf into the corridor. "If you want to use him to recover the wolf, you might manage to capture him now. You might fail and get us all killed as well," she added, watching me speculatively.
"Viđarr will die," I assured her as I used magic to force the sliding door back into place. "His day will come, but I don't need to risk myself or any of you right now. I don't need his soul to recover Fenn."
In fact, as I made the claim, I became ever more sure that was the case, and I added confidently, "Freyja always get's first choice of the fallen. As a vampire, I didn't have the strength to enforce that claim. But as a goddess? I'm Freyja of the bloody slain, mistress of the Fen-hall, and my word brought about the wolf's conception. His love for me, and mine for him, is stronger than Tiw's dominion over him. Fenrir belongs to me, and I can retrieve him. Now lets get you all out of here."
A/N: I know there are typos in this, and probably bits that don't make sense/don't work which I will fix before releasing, but as my health keeps me from writing so much, I don't want to sweat the small stuff when I'm actually managing to write. The details can be fixed later. Right now, I just need to get the story out of my head. Thank you for understanding. Love you all. A xxx
