Page 5 of The Goddess is Fierce
. . .
Seriously, where was Azren? Baldur didn’t know any of us and he didn’t remember Freya. I was eighteen and in college now, but sometimes, I just really needed my mom and my dads. I probably always would. I didn’t know if Odin was going to trigger some mass influx of memories, but I knew the two of them needed to see each other.
My mom was smart. She had an entire library of knowledge at her fingertips. So were my dads. Azren was a scholar who was older than the universe, and Odin sacrificed an eye for knowledge. Ifanyonecould figure out how to help Baldur, it was those two.
I trusted Mags. We grew up together, and she taught me a lot of magic and wisdom from the first time she was alive. Freya had also mentored me a lot when she was Minerva Krauss. I believed Freya when she said Baldur wasn’t capable of slaughtering witches. I got vibes from him that he was a big teddy bear who had been beaten down since he got back.
I also wasn’t discounting Mags’s suspicions. She also made a damned good point about him hiding clothes. I hadn’t brought this up, but gods were only vulnerable when we wanted to be. If he didn’t remember he was supposed to be a god, then yeah, he might get cut and need stitches. If Baldur was remembering he was a god during his blackouts, then he could just choose for the knife not to cut him if his hand slipped.
“Where the fuck are Azren and Odin?” I muttered.
“Probably getting what they need to help Baldur,” Freya said. “It was different for me because Azren put me in a mortal vessel and Ichoseto leave my primary one, but I do have a little experience with this. I didn’t have my memories either. I didn’t start getting flashes of them until the magic in my mortal body had been awakened. I needed some extra help because my body was mortal. We need to get Baldur his magic back and his memories will come.”
“I’m just a stupid lion, but maybe it’s different for him since he’s not in a mortal body. Maybe he won’t get his magic back until he remembers he’s supposed to have it.”
Ihatedwhen West tried to say he wasn’t smart because he was quite intelligent. West was goofy and loveable, but he often said things that were spot on. Honestly, he could be completely right about this. Freya gave him an appraising look.
“You’re definitely all lion, but not even remotely stupid. Maybe a little choosy with how you applied yourself in school and you didn’t have the right teacher to motivate you, but youand stupid don’t belong in the same sentence. I like you for George and you could be perfectly right about this.”
West puffed up his chest and tossed his mane over his shoulder. He didn’t know all of Freya’s mortal iterations, but he knew she was my mentor when I was younger, and everyone knew she taught Odin magic. When I talked about her with them, I talked about what an amazing teacher she was and how much she loved it.
We could all tell West he wasn’t stupid, but it meant alotmore coming from Freya because she had a long history of being a teacher. I knew how Freya got her memories back and West’s suggestion made a lot of sense. Gods had our main power and a lot of powers we all shared. Honestly, we hadn’t even scratched the surface of what all we could do with our shared powers. A lot of us could do more with our main powers, too.
Baldur’s magic being missing because he didn’t know he was supposed to have it made a ton of sense. Just telling him wasn’t going to do it. He had tofeelit.
“How do you give a god his memories back?” Drake asked. “It would fix a ton of problems and maybe answer some questions in the now if I could remember who killed my parents. I was there, but I was just a baby. I’m pretty sure whoever killed my parents is doing this.”
Baldur’s face fell and his shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”
“I honestly don’t think it was you. I don’t think it’s you doing this. The reaper that came for my parents adopted me. She spoke to my parents before she reaped them. They didn’t see who did it, but they felt how powerful they were. My parents were Basilisks.
“No offense, but you don’tfeellike the other gods I know. My parents wouldn’t have said they felt someone insanely powerful. They would have said they felt someone with a hole where theirmagic should be. And if you’ve had stitches before, then my parents could have bitten you. Basilisk venom might not kill you, but if it got in your bloodstream, it would have hurt enough for them to get us away.”
“Basilisk venom hurts like a bitch,” Oscar said.
“I watched it eat away at Oscar’s skin, and that was just a potion made from Drake’s hair. Directly from their fangs is supposed to be even worse,” Ren said.
It was. And I didn’t know enough about the state of Baldur now to know if Basilisk venom would hurt him. It wouldn’t kill this vessel. Only mistletoe could do that, but without his magic, it might hurt like fuck.
“There’s an easy way to get Baldur’s memories back, but locating her is tricky. Odin created two ravens—Huginn and Muninn. They represented thought and memory. Azren would visit Odin and give him my new name and where they dropped my essence. Odin would find Muninn and tell her. Around my eighteenth birthday, she’d always find me and help me remember who I was.
“Muninn is a raven shifter, so she’s tricky. She always made me work for it and gave me all these riddles. Everyone’s sexuality was a little fluid back then, even if we weren’t as fluid as Loki. Sometimes, I ended up in some pretty repressed families in an era where humans wereveryprudish and she would only give me my memories back by kissing me.”
Freya meant when she was Minerva Krauss. Her father was a misogynistic racist who was upset about the fact that his wife never gave him a son and disowned her for getting an independent study at the Academy of the Profane because he thought it made him look bad. She was also mated to three werewolves that she had to keep a secret because the color of their skin was darker than hers.
I’d never kissed Baldur. I didn’t even know if he wanted me to. Ren and Oscar seemed into the idea, but I hadn’t talked to West and I wasn’t all that sure if Church had broken up with me or not. I really needed to talk to him, but I needed to be doing this before any other witches died. I didn’t know if Baldur came back from the Aether a little crazy and was slaughtering witches, but I didn’t really like the idea of another woman kissing him.
Which was stupid because I hardly knew anything about him. It was just thisfeeling.
“So, we just need to get a kinky, tricky raven to kiss him, and that’ll fix him?” West asked.
“In theory. This is more Azren’s domain, and Muninn is Odin’s creation. Odin is an animal lover. He used to have this huge sanctuary on Asgard. When Loki and Odinreallysat down and talked after everything went down with Baldur and Odin heard out all of Loki’s grievances, he gave his pets free range to come and go from the sanctuary.
“Odin saw an eight-legged horse who could travel between realms and run that fast and he wanted it, but Sleipnir was more than a horse and Loki’s son. Huginn and Muninn can also travel between realms, but they used to only be able to do that under Odin’s orders.
“Huginn and Muninn are more similar to Sleipnir than his other animals. When Loki made him see what he did to Sleipnir, he let the ravens come and go as they please. He can contact them when he needs to, but they are harder to locate when they are off realm. If I had to guess, Odin wants his son to remember him, so he’s trying to find Muninn.”
