The fire giants might not have invaded my meeting with Kanesha. No, they just waited to jump me when I left school.

Metaphorically jump, that was. They didn’t attack, just fell in, one on each side. “So, she’s important enough to you to fight for?” That came from the woman on my left, her hair caught in complicated braids that made it look, no doubt deliberately, even more like flames than it did naturally.

“And I will send anyone who touches her home in the most painful way I can.”

“I don’t intend to touch her.” A pause. “You aren’t going to give her up even to be queen. Of course, Surtur might offer her a position at court…if mortals could survive in Muspelheim.”

I shrugged a bit. “Which implies that could be fixed.”

“There’s enchantments that could, some kind of item, even a spell on her. It’s been done before. She’ll still fade and die, though.”

“And?” I shrugged. “She’s who she is, and I wouldn’t love her if she was a valkyrie or something.”

“But you could bring her with you.”

“To be, what, a lady in waiting?” I shrugged. “She isn’t interested. Neither am I.”

“Even if it were part of a truce?”

“Do you want a truce?”

“Badly,” she admitted.

“Then you don’t want to push for this. As soon as Surtur has me he’s going to attack. He’s told me. He’s told everyone.”

“Maybe he’ll listen to you. If he starts a war, even if it doesn’t trigger Ragnarok…we can’t take it. We want one, it’s in our nature, but we know we can’t.”

Did Surtur? “Then he needs to think things through. Or is it that he’s not capable.”

“If he wasn’t capable, we’d have killed him and replaced him centuries ago. No…he really thinks this is the best course of action.”

I nodded. “Maybe it’s time to replace him.”

She laughed a bit. “Nobody wants the job.”

I managed a grin at that. “I certainly don’t want it.” Or were they, some of them, hoping I would? Waiting for me to marry Surtur and then take him out, make it look like an accident. “If I marry him…”

“You’ll be next in line until you produce an heir. Unless he’s assassinated.”

“By somebody other than me.”

“You’ve considered it.”

I nodded. “But I know I can’t. Remember who my mother is.”

“That’s not important. It’s who you are that matters.”

I wasn’t sure I knew. Not in the sense they meant it. “I’m not going that way.”
And really, Muspelheim wasn’t my responsibility. Neither was Surtur.

Not my responsibility at all.