Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 121534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 608(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 608(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
I settle back on my bed and leaf through the journal again.
I turn to the page depicting Mjölnir and trace the drawing with my fingertip. Rowen told me stories of how the hammer had runes sketched all along the handle where Thor held it firm in his hand before thrusting it toward the sky.
Was Thurisaz one of them?
Lightning would illuminate the hammer as well as his eyes, turning them a terrifying silver before he’d let out the battle cry of the Berserkers. His warriors would rally around him as they emerged from the trees, wearing animals they’d sacrificed to the Gods. The Berserkers were so crazed, they would bite down on their own shields to prove they didn’t need them in the first place.
But that was before everything shattered. Before the Gods fell. Before lives were lost and history was rewritten. Before everything humanity had once known was either erased or twisted into something unrecognizable.
The Gods and Giants—both betrayed and betraying—had become legends warped by time, half-truths, and propaganda.
What if the runes on the hammer match the ones on the note from Laufey? Is the note a map of how to find Mjölnir? Of course, that would be too easy, and yet, it would make the most sense. She might not be my birth mother, but she raised me, and the one thing I know down to my bones is that Laufey would die to protect me.
I take her note and slide it into the dossier, then turn another page on the many lives of Mjölnir. Apparently, before its theft, it was a simple-looking hammer, just metal and wood. But because Mjölnir is a living, breathing artifact, it continued to shift and change from battle to battle.
As Thor destroyed worlds and defeated his enemies, Mjölnir not only took on different shapes and sizes—it took on the knowledge and history of Asgard. Of every bloodline that had wielded it. Rowen told me once that the hammer was forged to answer to only one bloodline, Odin’s, but if that’s true, then how did a Giant use it to destroy the Bifrost? Half-truths and more half-truths.
I continue flipping through the notebook. The images quickly shift from ancient weapons and realms to my target.
Aric.
The pictures on this page make me pause. He’s young, grass stains on his jeans. In one, he’s playing football.
I don’t know why I fixate on that, other than it’s odd to think of him as a normal little boy. In another, he’s holding up a fish in his hand. It’s so small it probably has no meat on it, but he’s proud.
His smile is wide. Bright. Anyone looking at that picture would think Aric was the happiest boy in the world. There’s absolutely no trace of that boy in the man he is today.
In the next picture, he’s standing with Reeve, who’s wearing his high school graduation cap and gown. Aric’s smile is less bright now, his posture tense. I compare the photo with those taken earlier. He doesn’t even look like the same person.
What happened to change him?
His parents’ deaths, no doubt. The thought makes my stomach sink.
I flip through the next few pages. They show his schedule, information about his hobbies, current favorite books and movies, and so on. All the usual intel. I’m sure Sigurd Erikson, being the mob boss he is, has a similar file on me—probably thicker. I pause a moment, my mind wondering what else Aric and his family might know about me.
Nope, don’t need to go there.
Shaking my head, I keep reading. Aric suffers from insomnia. That makes two of us.
I skim a newspaper clipping of the time he was struck with lightning. I remember this. Odin denies any involvement, though it’s not like he’d tell me either way.
I flip the page. An allergy to kiwi?
Hmm. That, I didn’t know.
I flip back to the pictures of Aric, of his dorm room, schematics of the house he shares with his grandfather. There’s a picture of his SUV and another of the gym he works out at.
My chest tightens. The dossier is thick with endless information about Endir and Aric, and even Reeve has a few pages in here. No detail was too small to include. And yet, other than a crude drawing and a couple of scribbled notes, almost nothing about Mjölnir’s potential location is included.
It’s like my father wants me to struggle, then fail spectacularly.
Why would he not include more information about the object I’m meant to find? To steal? I understand it’s not been seen in ages, but Odinfather is as old as time. Older than the hammer, in fact. So why wouldn’t he have shared everything that might help me succeed?
I start frantically flipping through the notebook again, searching my father’s notes. Page after page after page on the Erikson family.
But no sign of Mjölnir being used since the destruction of the Bifrost. Of course, Father already knew that. He prepared this dossier. He threatened everyone I love if I don’t find the hammer.