Apparently nothing, because we touched down fine in a spring-warm Baltimore.

I’d rather have got us into National, but we’d had to take what we could get. Waiting on the platform for the train, the back of my neck started to prickle.

And there he was. No minions, no thugs. Surtur. His semblance was a thirty something guy with very light hair, but I recognized him immediately and pulled Kanesha close to me.

“Truce?” he called.

There was nobody else on the platform. I nodded. “Truce.”

“I came alone.” His eyes flickered to Kanesha.

“I’m not leaving,” she said, defiantly.

“Your mortal lover. She can stay.”

“So, what, come to try and talk me into it after all?”

He sighed. “You realize I’m doing what I’m doing for survival. You realize the Aesir hate us. You realize Odin will never trust you with anything important. He won’t even let you be a valkyrie.”

“Maybe I’m just as happy not being trusted with anything important. I don’t fancy being a queen.”

“Which is why you would make a good one.” He crossed the distance between us.

“And at the price of her and this world? No.”

“And what happens to Muspelheim if you stop Ragnarok? It’s a re-balancing. It’s our chance…”

“Oh, shut up.” I glared at him. “If you just stayed quietly in your own realm, nobody would bother you.”

“And you know exactly why I don’t.”

I supposed I did, at some levels, but  it was still reality. He was not going to stay quietly in his own realm, and there would still be fights. “I wish you would. I wish you’d go back, leave me alone.”

“She could…” He glanced at Kanesha.

“Don’t even think about offering me immortality,” she snapped. “It’s been tried. And you’ve tried to have me killed.”

“You understand that’s not personal?”

Kanesha shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Motives are only important if you’re trying to figure out who the killer is. When you know, they mean absolutely nothing.”

I put a hand on her arm. “Don’t provoke him, beloved,” I asked her. I really didn’t want to know what he’d do, and I wasn’t sure I could protect her.

“We could find a place for her. If she…”

“Didn’t mind sharing?” My lips quirked. “No. The answer’s no now, and it will always be no.”

“I have something I want to show you. Just you – she’d burn into a crisp. Something that might at least help you understand.”

“Don’t go with him.”

I detached myself from her. “Go home. If I don’t come back, you know what to do.”

Brownies.

Loki.
Then I walked towards the lord of Muspelheim.