The Apple Throne

  Soren pushes to his feet, gripping his hips tightly. He sways a little. “I let them arrest me. It was the right thing. I killed him.”

  “You defended yourself,” I insist. It had been a shock to me to stand face-to-face with an elf, and I’d been expecting it.

  “I wanted to call you,” he mutters, “but I didn’t know how, and I had to go with them—I had to. I killed him.” He sways again and sits heavily onto the bed. The skin around his mouth is tight, grayish.

  “Soren?” I stand before him, nudging his knees apart so I can lean his forehead against my chest. It’s burning.

  “I can feel it all sinking down.” His hands find my hips as he talks to my stomach. I run fingers through his longish hair, bend over him as much as I can.

  “You’ve been ill, weakened from bearbane.”

  “The frenzy is spinning inside, and I’m worried I’m too tired to control it. I’m… I think you need to go.”

  “Never.”

  “Astrid.”

  I scrape my nails down his neck, wrap my arms around him. “I am not leaving. There’s no door even if I wished to. I will not leave you to this. You know how to calm yourself. You control it. Stop being terrified.”

  His skin is oh-so-hot, and sweat beads on his forehead, around his lips. He pants like a wild dog, his shoulders shudder, and elf-kisses break out along his arms.

  “Soren.”

  He shakes his head, pulls away from me.

  I let go and calm myself, long breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth—warrior breathing. Soren wraps his arms around himself, leans over his knees, shivering. Slick sweat drips down his spine.

  This isn’t working, but I know he can stop the frenzy. Me getting upset doesn’t help.

  I slowly move in again and touch his shoulders. Murmuring his name, tiny tut-tuts, and nonsense syllables, I push him back onto the bed. His hands fly to his face, grinding into his eyes. His mouth is a grimace, and his teeth gleam as he clenches them.

  “Soren, listen to me,” I say gently. “Listen to my voice. You can do this, you can relax. Shift the energy, channel it, my bear.” I climb on top of him, straddling his hips, and brush my hands down his chest, his arms, as soothing as I can. “My hands, Soren, my voice. My mouth.” I hunch over and kiss a trail up his stomach to his chest. I press my cheek over his frantic heartbeat. He groans and tears at his hair, all his muscles twitching and hard. I refuse to think of his rage, his spitting fury when he devastated my mouth and shattered my shoulder. I refuse.

  “The poison is gone,” I murmur instead. “Ride this tide and wash it away.” I let my mouth caress his skin as I speak. My own body is flushed, and I struggle to remain gentle, wanting to press myself into him, kiss him like my life depends on it as much as his does.

  It’s working. He’s just shivering now, with his hands fisted in his hair. I slide up and kiss his elbow. I kiss the backs of his hands and curl my fingers around his wrists. I pull on them, and he lets me touch his knuckles to my head instead. He twists those strong fingers into my hair, tight enough my scalp burns, and I kiss him hard.

  Soren sits up under me, tumbling me into his lap with his fists buried painfully in my hair. I wind my arms around his neck for leverage and don’t stop kissing him. Never stop. He’s fevered but not lost, and his hands flatten against my skull, thumbs at my ears, holding me against him firmly but not hurting me anymore. Tears fall down my cheeks, and a desire heavy as melted gold slides down my spine.

  This—this is a way to channel the frenzy, to transform the mad berserking into passion.

  I twist enough to untie my wide belt, drag off the tunic and let it fall away. In my mind’s eye, I see a pulsing red heart. I remember the skirt of destiny woven around me, and as I touch him, as I kiss him and bring him inside me, I imagine scarlet trails, cords and knots, binding us together in this madness.

  • • •

  Soren sleeps brief and deeply. I don’t. I sprawl half on top of him, hands folded on his chest and my chin on my hands, staring up at his neck and jaw, his nostrils and long cheeks, his short, thick lashes. His face is become a mountain range, and I cannot see his spear tattoo from this angle. I wish I had the leisure to burrow down and wake him in a fashion that would cause his eyes widen in that blushing way, to learn everything I want to know about his body and my body. We’ve loved each other for almost two years but never had the time to study. I think of Amon’s word—buzzer—and how I can’t know if I prefer sex with a berserker because I’ve never been with anyone else like this, and never want to be.

  I shift sideways to lie against Soren’s left shoulder. He is so warm against my bare skin—sticky in some places, sleek in others—and I close my eyes.

  At any time Eirfinna will come in, demanding the answer I promised her. And the answer is that she was right: It was Signy becoming the Ninth Valkyrie that triggered the plague. Signy won her title by killing that troll mother and taking her heart. Taking the heart broke some magic between all the trolls, those red lines of fate I saw in my seething, causing them all to calcify and die.

  Signy still has the heart: her pendant. It’s the thing Freya wanted in return for saving Soren. And certainly when I tell Eirfinna, the elf will want it, too, for it is the key to the plague.

  Soren moves his head, looks down at me. “You’re still here.”

  “I’m still here.” I flatten my hand over his heart. “Tell me about the heart Signy took from the troll mother.”

  He goes quiet and still. I glance up to see his frown, which is more confused than angry. “Why?”

  “It caused, or is connected to the cause of, the Stone Plague, and I promised Eirfinna to tell her how to end the plague in return for your freedom.” I sit up, letting the blanket fall away. “Tell me.”

  Scooting up to prop against the wall, Soren looks away from me. “It was the…original troll mother’s heart. Do you know the story?”

  Sharp in my mind is the seething image of Freya blowing fire into a black stone, pressing it into a woman’s chest. “Yes. That Freya and the elves created the trolls by putting the power of the earth’s fire into a woman.”

  “It was true—or, at least, enough true that when Signy killed her troll mother and took the heart, the loss affected the trolls everywhere.”

  “You knew? They’re all dying because of it. Not affected. Dead.”

  Soren faces me and flinches. “Don’t look at me like that, Astrid.”

  “Like what?” I whisper, though I feel it. I feel the disgust wrinkling my brow, pursing my lips.

  He gets up, leaving me on the hard bed, and snatches his pants. “They’re trolls. They’re dangerous. They eat people. They’ve been our enemies since they were created.”

  I draw the blankets up against my chest like a shield. “So they deserve to die? Wiped out with a plague? Without a chance to defend themselves? Without a chance for honor?”

  We stare at each other. I twist the top of the blanket the way my heart is twisting.

  “It isn’t fair,” Soren admits softly, “but I doubt it can be stopped.”

  I recall my seething visions of Signy struggling with the heart somehow, growing older, her hands turning to black stone. “Is it still alive? The heart?”

  “I think so. I think it calls to Signy to let it consume her, to let it make her into a new troll mother.”

  “If she did, maybe the plague would end.”

  Soren stops moving. “That didn’t occur to me.”

  “Maybe…” I chew my lip. “Maybe without actually being a heart or part of a living heart, its power is weak and so the troll mothers are weak.”

  “If she consumes it, she’ll turn into a monster, though. That’s what it does to human women, even Valkyrie. It’s how that very first troll mother was created.”

  I nod slowly, rolling my heavy, gold-laden shoulder. The bones move smoothly; the skin is only a little bit tight. Here’s an answer I can give Eirfinna, that someone needs to swallow the
heart.

  “What’s that?” he says suddenly, then takes two long steps to me, fingers hovering over the spidery golden scar lining my collarbone.

  “It’s…” I take his hand and touch it to my bare shoulder, to the heavy, strange gold threads. His fingers creep over to my back, and he nudges me so he can have access to my shoulder blade.

  “I did this,” he breathes. “I remember.”

  “I chose to go in there with you. I’m fine, Soren,” I add impatiently and tug away from him.

  He’s frozen, his hand a claw in the air where my shoulder was.

  “Stop,” I say. “It’s over and done and nothing can change it. You were poisoned and I was desperate to break you free, and it happened.”

  He doesn’t move but to close his eyes. I grab his face. “I’m not broken. I’m not fragile, stop thinking it. Blame them, Soren. They poisoned you and hurt you, they imprisoned you, not…”

  I trail away because he’s nodding, eyes squeezed shut. I loosen my grip, gently running my thumbs against his temples.

  Soren takes my waist and pulls me closer. He buries his face in the crook of my neck. I hold him, cheek on his hair, hands making spirals on his back, and have the shocking thought that we hardly know each other sometimes. But his fears are the same; it’s mine that are changed. Mine I’m only now discovering.

  • • •

  Like the suite, this room has a toilet alcove disguised along the wall, the recess hidden unless you stand just before it. There’s a bathtub and sink, though it takes me several minutes to discover how to turn on the water and more to warm it. I wash, and while Soren takes his turn, an elf opens the invisible door. It’s Neri, the one who healed my shoulder, with his long curls of amethyst whiskers arcing up from his cheeks. In his arms he holds clothing and boots, my battered coat, and Sleipnir’s Tooth.

  “Come,” he says very softly, like water poured into a crystal glass, “I will take you to Eir.” His teeth are sharp purple amethyst, too.

  I accept the stack of belongings, and he bows, edging out to wait in the corridor. They’ve laundered pieces of Gunn-Elin’s dress for me and replaced what was too torn or bloody with their own elfin silk. I take soft leather pants and a large tunic to Soren. The pants fit remarkably well, and I help him wrap the tunic, lacing it at his wrists. There’s something soothing about dressing him, as he allows me to maneuver under his arm or holds his hand up for me so I can tie the leather pants closed and tuck the hems into the boots. I comb his hair with my fingers, standing on tiptoe, and back up to take him all in. Sweet gods, he’s handsome in this fawn and cream leather, like a hero from a viker movie. Even if he won’t smile.

  In turn, he ties up my bodice. His fingers hesitate over the horn bead necklace he gave me, and then he kisses me, warm and deep. We go to the stone table where I put the sword. I lift the blade by the sheath and offer it to him, hilt-first. His lips part, and he takes it, almost desperately.

  The sight of him, holding the sword in both hands against the new creamy leather strikes me like a blow: this is what he wore in my dream of his funeral pyre.

  I cannot move, staring in horror. Soren doesn’t notice as he slides his father’s sword free of the scabbard with a settling sigh. Eirfinna has promised Soren will be safe from her once I give her my seething answers, but how can I know that is the danger all Freya saw?

  Neri leans into the doorway, his white hair loose like a veil sliding over his shoulder. “Come,” he repeats.

  I hold my hand out and say without shaking, “One more moment.”

  I take up my coat and dig for the two remaining apples of immortality. “Soren,” I whisper. He joins me, hovering near with his shoulders hunched to keep the elf at the door from seeing. There’s no way Soren knows what I’m about to do, but he can tell I want privacy for it. I hold up one wrinkled yellow apple. “Eat this.”

  “Astrid,” he says, shock lowering his tone nearly sub-sonic.

  “I want you to have it now.”

  “Those are for the gods.” He stares earnestly, with a tiny line between his brows.

  “These—” I hold it near his mouth. “—are for me to gift. An apple freely given, from the lady of the orchard.”

  His head shakes almost imperceptibly.

  I touch the fruit to his bottom lip. “For me.”

  Soren opens his mouth, and I slip it in. He bites down, and winces. I lift my eyebrows in a question. “Powdery,” he mutters after he swallows it.

  I slide my arms around his ribs. He settles his hand on the back of my head.

  It feels like the last moments before he leaves at every quarter holiday—when there’s nothing left to say, we’ve kissed each other raw, we’ve told all the stories there are to tell in such a brief span. My heart thuds slowly in my chest, and I can hear his with my ear pressed to him. But we’re not parting today. He’s coming with me; it’s not an ending. I don’t know why it feels so final.

  I pull away, and together we follow Neri back into the mountain.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Eirfinna and a handful of her people await us in a throne room, a chamber of quartz built smooth and sleek in a pyramid. Chandeliers of glowing amethyst dangle at its pinnacle. The angled walls are hung with silk tapestries depicting trees and flowering vines. They sway softly though I feel no breeze. In the center of the milky quartz floor, a throne rises on a narrow stage. It is formed of solid gold, and I hear the hum of it the moment I step foot inside. It buzzes in my ears and reaches tingling fingers for my heart. My golden shoulder heats in a flash. I cup my right hand to my breast.

  Sune and Amon are there as well. Amon waits with his arms crossed disconsolately over his chest, glowering with his lightning eyes and a gray hoodie pulled up over his head. Sune appears calmer, his uniform clean and sharp, the high collar buttoned under his chin, gloves on as he stands with hands folded in front of him and those double axes gleaming over his shoulders. His scalp is freshly shaved, and in the shadowed glow of crystal, the curling horn tattoos make him almost seem one of the goblins.

  Eirfinna herself stands atop the dais, before the golden throne, in a formal black dress that falls from her shoulders and puddles around her feet. Her black diamond cheeks and her abyss-black eyes erase every human-seeming thing about her, and the moon-glow of her marble skin makes her the perfect ancient statue: elegant and cold, untouchable. There are white-gold rings at her fingers and a diamond circlet holding back her gleaming hair.

  This is a goddess, I think as I stop below her, Soren a warm presence at my back.

  “Teach us the answer you dreamed, Idun the Young.” Eirfinna’s voice rings like the long tolling of funeral bells.

  I glance about the hall, meeting the gazes of various elves and goblins. Loudly I say, “The Stone Plague was caused when the trolls lost the first heart, the heart of fire Freya the Witch put into the original mother.”

  Eirfinna’s little black teeth gleam. Around us the elves and goblins shift and hiss and blink their solid eyes.

  “The heart,” says one crouched near the foot of the dais, all bent limbs like a spider.

  “The Mother died and so they all die?” hisses another, her arms out plaintively, dripping silk from her wrists and elbows like wings.

  Soren puts his hand on my shoulder. It is no heavier than the gold embedded in my bones. I touch his fingers with mine as Eirfinna slinks down the dais toward me, black eyes narrow, miraculously not tripping on the layers of skirt at her feet. She carefully cups my face with her hands. Her thumbs graze my cheeks, where my crystal ridges would run if I were an elf like her.

  She says, “That heart was a story my grandmother told me. Meant to be comforting in that it united the trolls, it made them one family, connected in destiny by that center point. Gave them strength in each other, a shared vitality. But you make it into their greatest vulnerability, not a strength.”

  Her skin is cold on my jaw, and I feel a vibration in the gold scar that ripples down to the golden ring
on my finger. I say, “Often our strengths and vulnerabilities are born together.”

  “And so when the Mother died—when the Valkyrie killed her—the heart was destroyed and the trolls languish without it.” She sighs so softly, so sadly. Her breath smells like spring flowers.

  “Eirfinna,” I say quietly. “I did not say the heart was destroyed.”

  The elf stops breathing.

  I gently touch her elbows to transform her gesture into an embrace.

  “The Valkyrie has it?” Eirfinna hisses. “Or did she give it to her god of sacrifices?”

  Leaning in, so near her black eyes encompass my whole vision, I whisper back, “She has it still.”

  Her fingers tighten on my face.

  Soren says, “Mind yourself.”

  “You would do better to be silent, etin-killer,” Eirfinna says, never looking away from me.

  The crowd ripples uncomfortably.

  “Eirfinna,” I say. Her liquid black eyes are impossible, chilling to stare into, for there is no center, no pupil to indicate whether she sees me or is blind. It is so hard to read her emotions without the window of her eyes. “The Valkyrie wears the heart on a pendant, and it lives, Eirfinna, it hurts her. Burns her and is…”

  Soren says darkly, “Trying to make her into a monster.”

  Eirfinna’s claws dig into my skin. “It wants to make her into the new mother.”

  Blood seeps from the tiny cuts. Soren makes a dark noise, and Amon says, “Fin.”

  She lets me go.

  I swallow the stinging pain as she walks away. The small crowd shifts for her, but five androgynous elves wearing similar willowy pale clothes stick close to her. They carry elegant spears with long, sharp blades. Eirfinna whirls back to face me and nods to her guard once.

  Sune tenses beside me. But nothing happens.

  “Let us go,” Amon says. “You’ve your answer, and she’s won Soren’s freedom.”

  Eirfinna says, lofty and bold, “I shall take the heart from the Valkyrie of the Tree and feed it to one of the last living troll mothers.”