I wasn’t even sure why I felt I couldn’t make Kanesha that promise. I had no intention of ending the world, after all.

Maybe it was just the sense that now I needed to know everything. Or nothing. Not just enough to be dangerous and confusing.

It all made sense. Which meant it was time to confront Thea. I found her outside a night club. She was dressed in, pretty much, head to toe black leather.

“Thruor,” I said, very quietly.

“Worked it out?”

“Kanesha worked it out,” I admitted. “Your dad showing up didn’t help.”

She made a wry face. “The man is as subtle as a young bull.”

“Which is probably why Loki pranks him so much, right?”

She laughed. “Oh yes. He’s an easy butt. I’ve tried to tell him that.”

“How did Loki get out?” Maybe she didn’t know. “Kanesha thinks it means…”

“I suppose it was time. Sigyn probably helped him. His wife. The goddess of fidelity.”

Which meant she’d be loyal even to a guy who… “Yeah. I get the impression he isn’t big on fidelity.”

“He loves her.” Her lips quirk. “But fidelity and Loki don’t go together, no. What did he do this time?”

“Stole one of your mother’s bracelets. Thor was threatening to shove him into the reflecting pool.”

“He’d just swim back out.”

I’d wanted to say that myself. “So. It’s all real, then. Who am I?”

“I can’t tell you that, yet.”

“Because I might remember something I’m angry enough about to take Loki’s side.” I kept my tone flat. “I can’t imagine what that might be, but…”

She let out a breath, then started to walk down the street. Not so fast as to discourage me from following her. No doubt she intended for me to do just that. “Jane…”

“You have to do what you have to do. If that means not trusting me, so be it.”

“There’s two versions of the prophecy. Most people don’t know that. Either Baldr is restored and Ragnarok is…significantly delayed. Or he is not, and it happens very soon.”

“Okay, so, Baldr is dead.”

“Hel could release him. She won’t.”

I nodded to that. “Hel is Loki’s daughter. I know that much.”

“But not his slave or servant. You don’t piss her off. Even he won’t piss her off.”

I had a sudden flickering image, perhaps a memory. Beautiful, white hair, one side of her face that of the loveliest woman I’d ever seen, the other black and rotten. The fair and foul sides of death.

Hel. “She scares me and I don’t even remember why.”

“Good girl. She might decide she likes you, but that’s almost worse than the alternative.”

I didn’t want to think about what that meant. “But if she does, maybe I can talk her into letting him go.”

“She and Odin both have power over death. For somebody to be freed from it, both have to agree.” Thruor sighed. “Odin will not allow her to release her brothers.”