Page 78 of Thorulf
“Do you think it waseasy?” He shook his head, pained. “Nothing was harder.”
He narrowed his eyes at young Jade striding for the exit, cursing him. She threw back one last time that she was going. This was it. They were done. Finished. Over.
“I’m not going to let you go,” he murmured.
Young Jade had nearly reached the entrance when young Thorulf shook his head and started after her. Meanwhile, she called out words she had no idea would have so much impact.
“Do me a favor, Thorulf,” she shot without glancing back. “Forget you ever met me because I intend to forget you!”
“My God,” Jade whispered as young Thorulf hit an invisible wall made of Jade’s godliness, and his expression went blank. “My magic wasn’t just responsible formeforgetting everything, butyouforgetting everything too.” She frowned at him. “My anger and hurt ignited it.” She shook her head. “And I had no idea.”
The thought that she was single-handedly responsible for everything that had happened, them sleeping with countless others, sickened her.
“You had no control over your magic at that age, Jade.” Thorulf pulled her closer, trying to offer comfort, clearly glad she was here rather than that young fool walking out on him. “It fed on your emotions.” He shook his head. “And you didn’t single-handedly do anything. This was all Evil’s work.Itgot us to that point. Nothing else.” He pressed her hand to his tat, reminding her. “Andwegot us back.”
She nodded, knowing he was right, but that didn’t make it any easier. Because one way or another, she went tooling after the purple dragon to begin with when she was little. She got the ball rolling. Then, in the end, she ensured she and Thorulf forgot everything.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” she said softly. “Ididhave some control over my magic. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to keep you a secret from my sisters.”
“I get the sense that wasn’t so much control as your magic following your will,” he replied. “And most likely, Thor’s, who would have been able to direct things all the more.”
“True.” She frowned, thinking about it. “You never let it bother you like I did.” She looked at him. “You always wondered why I didn’t tell my family about you or why you couldn’t travel to the future with me, but you didn’t obsess about it like I did about going to the Fortress.”
“You said you’d take me to the future eventually,” he replied, remembering as well. “That you wanted to keep me to yourself for just a while longer. And you said it year after year.”
“You should have been just as eager and sad as me, but you weren’t,” she murmured. “You were accepting and patient.”
“Because, even then,” he realized, “you were filtering my negativity. Making it easier for me.”
“And Thor was doing what he had to do to keep my family as safe from the enemy as your family,” she said, understanding. “Trying his best to keep us together even as Evil wedged us apart.”
“And I was successful,”came a dark voice in their minds. A chill raced up her spine. “From the moment I locked onto you in Ireland, Jade, I have been successful.”
Ireland. Just as Thor had suspected.
There were things that still didn’t make sense in all this. Things she needed to remember. Focus on. And soon. Because Evil was heading their way. Closing in fast. Which meant she would finally get the chance to confront the purple dragon in this lair again.
“In this lair,” she whispered, glancing around, seeing it as it had always been. Just as it was at the beginning in a cave back home in New Hampshire. A cave manifested from her memory. A memory that they had yet to witness and made no sense.
Or did it?
She stepped close to Thorulf, put her hand over his tat, and spoke telepathically, certain it gave them a direct line to each other that Evil couldn’t tap into. A direct line she instinctually knew would help her see more clearly. To understand the missing pieces.
“Because there are.”She saw the power of her godliness reflected in his eyes. The green of the clover patch that set her on the path to him.“We know my magic, and Thor kept Evil away from me in the twenty-first century, but what about you here in Norway?”She shook her head and looked deeper, hoped she was right.“Because I don’t think it was Thor...”
“No,”he murmured, following her thoughts. Seeing what she saw moments before they didn’t travel through time, but a memory of the future followed them here. How the cave really looked before she time-traveled to this one.
“That was where I traveled back and forth from,”she said, amazed she hadn’t figured it out sooner.“The cave from my nightmare, the one back home, was where I came and went when traveling to come see you. Somewhere out of the way, I knew my aunt and sisters didn’t know about. And I started traveling young. Really young based on my age when we first met after you were born.”
No sooner did she think it than her young self, having just broken it off with Thorulf, appeared there in tears. She sat on a rock, braced her head in her hands, and sobbed.
“I’d never felt so lost,”she said.“Broken.”
“My younger self’s expression might have been blank after he touched your magical barrier,”he murmured,“but you haven’t completely wiped away our memory of each other yet, have you? Our dragons are still connected.”
She felt his dragon reaching out to hers. Trying to lend comfort.
“No, not entirely,”Jade said softly.“Not yet.”She shook her head.“What we saw back there was my broken heart ruling my errant godliness.”She swallowed hard, sensing what was coming.“Godliness that went on to finish the job without me knowing.”
