My heart was resolute. I had one more day to open my mouth. A last chance to stop being a coward before we would both return to busy responsibilities. It had taken me too long already. While I visited her at home every day of our leave from duty, there was always some task, celebration, family gathering or...some other thin excuse to keep my mouth shut.

Not today. Today, it was just us, Dagheim's forest, and whatever surprise Riggs wanted to show me.

She greeted me mid-morning at the portal site and led me away from the city through the scraggly trees. Branches shrouded us in curious tangles instead of leaves cloaking the pathway. Shadows spattered us both, camouflaging us, making us look equal even though I was quite pale against her in normal light. It was a treat to be alone, no less so in such a quixotic place.

"Where are you taking me?" I quipped with a sarcastic frown.

"Nowhere boring." Riggs smiled, and her apple cheeks pitched in with dimples that rarely appeared. Her plaits hung loose and long around her face, not wrapped in a scarf the way she normally wore them. It made me less self-conscious of my own relaxed appearance.

She resisted the quiet and kept busy with our conversation. "Anyway, Lokison, it's your turn to ask me something."

"Aye. Hmm..." I tapped my chin and mulled over the options, grateful her game of revealing truths was well suited for what I had planned. It was a familiar tactic to waste time in training, especially in front of Astrid, who reveled in embarrassing confessions. Riggs, thankfully, seemed more genuinely interested in the answers and gave honest ones of her own.

"So hard to choose? Think you already know everything there is to know about me?" She bumped my arm playfully with her shoulder.

I love it when you do that. Hundreds of questions filled my mind that all revolved around some version of, "Do you feel the same way I do?" but none seemed like good enough ways to guide her into asking me the same thing.

"Hmm?" she prodded again.

I abandoned the concept of perfection and settled on something that might pique her curiosity. "Can't rush me in a strange place. You know I might trip if I don't pay attention." I lowered my eyes as if I caught her teasing me. "Anyway, I've got one. Do you still remember how to waltz?"

"Oh, how could I forget?" She giggled with a chime in her voice that never left and rang in my mind when I dreamt. Holding up her arms as if in starting position, Riggs performed the steps the same way we did as late teenagers. "I'll never forget how that teacher slapped your hand for not standing up straight. And how you mocked her when she walked away. One-two-three, one-two-three..." She repeated the count while making exaggerated steps, rising and falling in a circle around me, absent a partner but no less elegant. "I loved this dance. It was fun dressing in old Midgardian fashions with flowing skirts. Goodness, could you imagine trying to do something like that in your cape?"

I laughed, resisting my pockets just because I couldn't decide what to do with my hands. "I think you're right; it would have to go. Perhaps I could get away with a shorter version if the occasion arose."

She twirled under the trees with a joyful shine all over her face. How could anyone see her and not want her close? Before the moment's expiration, I caught her right hand in my left and joined her dance, surprising both of us with the ease at which I could still keep up.

"I didn't forget, either," I said while bouncing my brows cheekily.

"It seems not." She relaxed her grip and let me lead. "Maybe you can surprise me, Lokison."

"Maybe I can." I spun her out into the clearing once and resumed the basic steps along the perimeter of our private outdoor ballroom. My heartbeat kept time better than any music, and she followed me without deviating. With her so close to me, I was both lost and found. My past and my future tipped in the balance.

"Why did your father command that of us anyway?" Riggs adjusted her hand on my shoulder and moved up toward my neck. "Dancing seems at odds with what I know about him."

"Close combat is all about rhythm. Father says grace on the battlefield is much like grace with a partner. One wrong step, and everyone knows you are faulty; it shows your weaknesses, and enemies aren't quick to forget. But perfection is entrancing. If engaged well with an opponent, much like this very waltz, others will leave a private battle alone."

"Because it's impossible not to stare?"

I chuckled. "Partly. More like they're not worth interrupting. The soldier with the best skills is undoubtedly good at..."—immediately, I dipped her backward over my knee, making her clutch me tightly in fear—"...improvising."

Riggs laughed openly once she caught her breath. "Don't you dare drop me."

"Never." I stood her up again and kept moving, too addicted to her warmth to let go.

"I'm grateful to have learned this, then. Even though archery isn't helped much by it."

"Oh, I'm sure it is." Spinning her on her foot again, I put my chest to her back and looked forward, rocking her side to side with me as if we studied a target in the distance. "When you nock your arrow, don't you keep count with your pulse? Time your breath to be in tandem? Trust that your arms and eyes and body know the way?"

She snickered under her breath and didn't answer. She didn't need to.

I glanced down to see her face and tried to breathe silently. Her hair wafted over me in the standard fruit notes that I considered might not even be artificial. Surely her skin was as equally unctuous as her touch and her attitude.

Almost there. Almost there.

"So, dancing serves a mighty purpose. Any other bits of wisdom, Lokison?" Riggs turned in my arms and looked up at me. We weren't moving, but the world didn't stop. Her golden eyes read me raw—no questions required.

"Some say the casualties of war equal the pain of private heartache."

She raised a brow. "You think so?"

"I don't know, really." I shrugged and softened my tone. "Truth be told, I likely rolled my eyes the first hundred times Father said it. But now, as a man, I believe that is likely true."

"A broken heart is a casualty." She tipped her head slightly to the right, flirting with me through her long lashes. "What about the comparison of victory?"

My heart leapt to my throat. I couldn't catch my breath enough and inhaled quickly. Everything surrounding her grew hazy and thick, wrapping me in cotton and drawing me in. This is it. It's the moment.

"Victory?" I whispered, angling my face opposite to hers. "I imagine it's—"

She snorted just as a tickle on my forehead made me jump backward.

"Shit. What was that?" I muttered, swatting at my face.

Riggs could hardly talk through her laughter. "Should've warned you, Lokison. This part of the forest is ripe with striped catching beetles. Seems one liked your hair."

I turned away from her to hide my face, commanding my temper to cool in waves. My only sense of pride came from resisting the urge to transform and sprint through the trees to escape. At least I wasn't that much of a coward.

"It's gone now. I think you scared off any other pests for a while." She tapped my shoulder as the aura between us returned to platonic neutral. "We're nearly there anyway."

I scratched my temple to clear away the phantom sensation of bugs in my skin. "If you say so. Lead on."

Her tapering humor said she appreciated my change of mood. She didn't pester me with another pointless question on our way; the mission was to find whatever we came for. I made a mental pathway of where we'd been so I might find it again in the future if the outing ultimately turned out to be a trial run of my attempt to charm her heart.

At a bend in the road, Riggs traipsed over the edge and kept going. The grit beneath us was largely undisturbed; an animal path, not one made for travel. The branches on either side of us snagged my clothes at the shoulder, conveniently avoiding Riggs because she couldn't reach them. If I hadn't been so disappointed with myself, I might've been annoyed.

A clearing through the last bunch of trees caught my eye ahead and the landmark at its center was evidently our destination. It was unlike any pond I'd ever seen. Wind swept dust our direction, yet the water didn't move, like glass on the ground that reflected the sky. The only way to identify what was before us as water at all was the presence of small creatures drinking from its edge, which curiously didn't disturb the surface, either.

"What is this?" I asked, speaking quietly to stay reverent in case it represented some culture I wasn't familiar with.

Riggs knelt to pick up an orange stone and primed her throwing arm. "Watch this. Don't look away." She pitched it forward with ease.

It splashed silently, absent the typical thunk one would expect from something that size. A spike of water erupted from where the stone had displaced it, shooting high above us like a geyser. Instead of relaxing into a series of waves to the edge, the tower froze instantly, making an icy monument of Riggs's trick and wholly disobeying the laws of Dagheim's oppressive heat.

I scoffed with wonder. "Wow. Just...wow."

"Impressive, isn't it?" She folded her arms smugly. "It'll melt before too long. Then you can give it a try."

"How did you ever find this place?"

"My father did ages ago. I come here to think." She knelt at the edge and scooped up a handful of water, which quickly froze to slush that she squeezed between her fingers. "You can see why the animals like it; on hot days, this is probably their best reprieve. I think it's a remnant of a former realm, living on because it cannot disappear."

With that suggestion, the origin was obvious. I sat beside her and took a handful of the peculiar magic myself. "Of course. It has to be from Jotunheim."

"How familiar are you?" she asked, relaxing on her rump the same way I was.

"A fair amount. My father's Jotun, you know." I swirled a nonsense pattern in the slurry on my palm.

"I remember you saying something about that. Wouldn't know only by looking at you." She bumped my arm again the way she did when we started walking, jumpstarting my heart once more. "You've certainly never shown me anything quite like this magic here."

"I haven't?" I couldn't waste another opportunity to reset my intent; the small window she offered by suggesting I might impress her was perfect. Improvising a trick like I did with our dance, I took a bare twig from the ground and held it up for her. "Would you like to see what I can do?"

She grinned. "Go on."

I chuckled under my breath and snapped my fingers, lighting the top of the twig with a small flame. "The fire has a life of its own. See how it dances? Beautiful, but dangerous. Not unlike you."

"You're flattering me. I like it." She shined, widening her smile. "What else?"

"Well, let us say the flicker is you. Then I come in." Focusing on the fire, I welcomed the tickle in my chest that I'd long since mastered, letting it creep down my arm to my hand. "The power of cold puts it to sleep." The moment I stopped speaking, a wisp of light smoke wrapped the top of the twig, snuffing the flame.

"It's—"

"No, no. Not through yet." I let the cold grow from my hand, covering the twig in what started with light frost. "You see, like fire, ice has a mind of its own. But with a bit of intent..." I twisted my creation with both hands. What started as a long spiral shifted to a familiar shape I once spent hours practicing. Clear leaves branched from the sides, and a simple flower blossomed at the top. "It can be anything. Just as beautiful, and just as dangerous. Ice can burn as hard as fire. Together, they're unstoppable."

"May I?" she whispered, nodding at my creation.

"It's all yours."

Riggs brought the creation to her nose, though it obviously bore no scent. Pure instinct. She snickered more quietly than she had before—a nervous laugh. "I had no idea. This is so lovely. Pity it won't last long."

"I can fix that." I squinted, instantly transforming my gift to a realistic stem of her favorite orange floret. "Now you can keep it as long as you like."

"That's incredible." She brought it to her nose again and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes with a sigh. "Thank you."

A bit of the hazy glow returned. "You're welcome, Riggs."

She hummed before opening her eyes again. "Did you ever go to Jotunheim if that's where your father is from?"

"Go there? Oh, no." I tossed a stone into the pond, making a second, shorter spike of ice near the center. "I didn't even know Jotunheim existed until we came to Asgard. Probably don't know any more about it than you do, truth be told. If we hadn't stumbled over cold magic, I wonder when Father would've finally said something."

"What does that mean? How did you stumble onto this?"

"I didn't, actually. Narvi did." I brought my knees up and rested my chin on my hands. Lingering soreness in my heart made even saying his name difficult.

We were quiet for an uncomfortable minute. She twirled her flower and gently rocked, either debating what she wanted to say or waiting for me to change the subject. Nothing felt quite appropriate now.

Whether she could sense something in me that I couldn't say aloud, it wasn't clear, but Riggs knew better than to pretend I hadn't invoked his spirit. She cleared her throat. "Will you tell me about him?"

"Hmm?" I shot my face to her.

"I never met Narvi. What was he like?" She relaxed, settling in to listen.

"Gods, I wish I could remember." Scruffing my own hair helped keep me from diving too deep and embarrassing myself. "Let's see...he wasn't much like me at all. Looked more like Mum. Was endlessly gifted with everything."

"So are you."

I rolled my eyes. "You only say that because you never knew him."

We were quiet again, marinating in the itch of uncomfortable truths. What else can I say?

She leaned forward to catch my eyes again. "I'm sorry if I upset you."

"Oh. No, you didn't upset me. I'm sorry. It's just difficult to talk about him, that's all."

"I can imagine that. We can talk about something else if you want to."

I sensed a pause at the end. "Do you mean that?"

"Of course." She swiped at my hair lightly, undoubtedly shooing another pest. "But I'm happy to listen if you have something you want to say."

I did. I had a million things I wanted to say and never could. Not about him, all about her, yet here she was, asking me to open the vault shut tight ages ago, bursting with the things that no one would forgive me for.

"It's okay to let me in, Vali," she whispered.

Her voice knocked in my mind. Let me in. Let me in. Was this a power she had over me that I couldn't define? The vault crept open, answering her invitation with a trickle of confessions.

The words felt pulled from my lips. "All my life, I've been compared to a person that no one knew like I did. It worsened when he left us; instead of living up to him, I've been tasked with living up with the mere concept of him...this incredible kind soul, so gifted, so perfect, even if their projections didn't represent his reality. A person so incredibly grand, a whole realm and a race were named after him."

Riggs nodded. Her silence left more room to speak.

"We were nearly inseparable, you know."

"Siblings usually are when they're young."

"Not like us," I said with a cocked brow. "We had our own language. Too many secrets. Games and tricks and a perfect understanding of what the other needed. He wasn't just my brother—as my twin, Narvi completed me. Tell me, Riggs, do you remember the day we met?"

"Of course I do," she returned with a halfway-there smile. "Tousling on the field in Asgard."

"Right. That day was the very last day my family was complete...and the very first day I did something without him." I knocked my chin against my hands again, turning forward to stop myself from staring at her face awkwardly. "I wish I could remember him better. Wish I could tell you more details about what he sounded like or some of the things he said. Those memories are a blur now. The things that stand out feel like dreams and not reality. I'm not certain they actually happened, or if I invented them."

"You've made me curious." She put her hand on my elbow this time, touching me with a gentle force that said she truly wanted more. "What sorts of things?"

"Promise you won't call me mad if I tell you."

"Cross my heart," she said, drawing a line over her chest the way Midgardians did when reciting the same cliché. "Please."

With a sigh, I reflexively rubbed my right eyebrow. "Narvi was more skilled at everything. He read before I did, took up magic with ease, and everyone adored him while those same people said I was little more than a troublemaker who took after my father. But he never saw me as anything other than his twin, and he loved me. Loved me so much that...that he showed me things no other soul knew about." It was easier to remember with my eyes closed, so I took a long breath and did so. "I remember hurting myself one day. Scratched my knee or my shin...something minor. Mum's patented way to comfort us was to kiss our foreheads with a standard platitude."

"Mmhmm. My mum did the same."

"Yes. That day, I was alone with Narvi, and we weren't close to home. I cried in pain, but it was too far to walk home easily, and Narvi couldn't carry me. So, he did what any other young child would do—he kissed my forehead like Mum would. In that instant, my injury felt better. Like he sapped my pain away." I shrugged. "We stayed out to play a bit longer after that, but when we got home, I saw a scrape on his leg while we were cleaning up. I felt silly for being so upset over my injury while he actually got hurt but hadn't said a word. There wasn't so much as a scuff on my skin beneath my trousers."

"Is that terribly strange?" Riggs asked, squeezing my elbow again when I didn't answer quickly.

"Well, I...Gods, this is where it gets strange." I shook my head and put my legs flat out before me, and she did the same. "There was another time. This one, I recall a bit better. It wasn't long before I met you. It was after we met Modi for the first time. We were running home from Asgard, and I fell. Hurt my face badly enough to make a cut across my brow."

"Really?" She squinted, examining my face closely.

"There's no scar. But that's just it...there should be. It wasn't an innocent scratch; it opened my skin enough to need stitches from Mum. Narvi thought it was his fault that I became injured, and a few days later, he asked if he could heal me." I touched my right eyebrow again. "What harm would it do? He kissed my temple as he did before. But that time, when he pulled away, his face was bleeding."

She gasped. "What?"

I shook my head, not focusing my eyes on anything, lost in grasping memories from the beyond. "That isn't possible, though, right? Yet that's what I recall...my cut vanished and reappeared on him. Same place I'd gotten hurt. I panicked, told him he had to stop and not do that again. Not until we understood what it was and how he was doing it. We never spoke about it again, and...and I never told anyone about it until now."

Her warm hand found mine. "Thank you for trusting me. Whether it was real or not, I know he was extraordinary. And I know that because you are extraordinary. He's looking upon you from Valhalla, wishing you well, I'm sure."

I squeezed my face into a grimace. "Oh, Riggs." My confession hurt with an equal sting as saying Narvi's name. The lives of my kin were wrapped in the faith of our fathers, yet mine was shaken to the very core. "I'm...I'm not sure Valhalla actually exists."

Despite what I said being enough to shock anyone close to me, Riggs didn't budge. "Why would you ever say that?"

"Because I know what I can see, and I know what I can feel. I'm not a master sorcerer, a seer, a king...I'm just a man. Life's shown me many things, but since the Ragnarok, so much of what I thought I knew revolved around the idea of Valhalla and Narvi's status as our family guardian. Every time anything important happens at home, my mother makes us hold hands and pray...we pray to my grandmother, to the souls of people we know who are gone, and we pray to Narvi." I pinched the bridge of my nose while keeping my other hand in hers, unwilling to let her go even if I wept. "Mum says her prayer, hopes with her heart...and she says she can feel him."

Riggs gripped my hand tighter. "And?"

"I never do." I dissolved into tears, keeping my face turned away from her, embarrassed at myself beyond words. "I knew exactly what Narvi felt like, but he isn't there. He's not in Valhalla. He's not in Yggdrasil. He's nowhere and everywhere—his name rules my life, the Narvir, my home, but he's gone. How can I tell my mother that what she prays for isn't possible? And if I'm wrong, that would be worse."

"Come now. Why would that be worse?"

"Maybe she can feel him. Maybe he is there, but he doesn't visit me because...because he looks upon all I have done and thinks I stole the life he should've lived." Finally pulling my hand from hers, I wiped my eyes vigorously and raked through my hair over and over. "Maybe he knows that...that his death was my fault."

"No. Don't say that." Riggs dropped her pitch and strongly turned my chin. "That isn't true."

"It is." I sniffed back hard and choked over my words. "My last thought when he was alive was how jealous I was over everything he could do. It pushed me to change. My first time as a wolf was when I escaped the palace...and I promised I wouldn't leave him behind." I squeezed my eyes shut again and shook my head. "I left him behind, and he never came out."

"That doesn't make it your fault. Here. Please." She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and sat on her knees to be closer to my height. Her embrace was a balm to my every tear.

I clutched her in return. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Riggs. I know this wasn't what you wanted to know. I just needed to say it."

"Shh. It's alright to say. It's alright to lean on me." She sighed alongside me and encouraged me to match her slow breathing. Her scent brought me back to the moment at hand and left Narvi in the past where he belonged. If his healing wasn't a false memory, it still couldn't compare to how sweet and how perfect her presence was against the unnamed pain I'd carried all my life. "Thank you again for telling me. It feels good to have your trust."

"And it feels good to give it." I slowly unwound, deflating against her enough to appreciate how delicious it was to have her close, if only for a few minutes.