Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

of gunshots rings out and Chloe throws herself over me while the giantess screeches, “Get down!”

“They can’t have found us this fast,” I say as the sedan fishtails as Angrboda takes it off-road to avoid the hostiles. “There’s no way.”

“Unless they were tipped off,” Chloe’s tone is grim, her scent shifting to licorice.

“Tipped off? Gretchen, er…that is Fenrir didn’t know about our escape plan, did he?”

“Not now,” the giantess agrees. “Chloe, can you take over here? I might be able to work a little magic now.”

Chloe scrambles over the seat, but not before pressing a revolver into my clenched hands. “I promise I won’t let them take you, not again.”

I swallow. A handgun. I’ve never fired one, never needed to. But with no magic and the people trying to kill me too far away for my goodnight kiss, it’s the only option left.

Angrboda shifts so that Chloe can take over driving duties, even as the car careens down an embankment. Luckily the slope is treeless, though we jounce over the uneven terrain.

Ping. Something hits the metal by the left rear door. “They’re gaining on us,” I call when I dare to look back.

“Keep your head down,” Angrboda barks.

My eyes go wide when I see what looks like a ball of blue and purple cobwebs in her hands. That is if cobwebs pulsed with magic.

Giants wield magic better than any other species, including the gods. They are born from magic and can channel it more deeply, unless a god has a tool, like Thor’s great hammer or Aiden’s flaming sword. The raw talent is why the giants are so feared by the gods. From what Aiden had said, Angrboda’s more powerful than most. It was why Loki had sired children on her, so that his monstrous spawn would be the sort to make the Asgardians tremble.

The hand not holding the revolver slips over my abdomen, where my baby is growing. It’s too soon to feel movement, yet for the first time, I sense something different. An otherness, wholly apart from myself. Part me, part Aiden, all magic. Am I also destined to be the mother of a monster?

“Hang on,” Angrboda says and then tosses her magic out the passenger’s side window. Snow erupts like a giant volcano, freezing immediately into a glacier. The wall grows out, curving around the car.

“Ha,” Chloe says as she fights yet another skid. “That ought to hold them.”

“I can’t have them following us back to Jedda,” Angrboda says. She turns to look at me. “He is Wardon’s heir. Váli freed him before Underhill destroyed the ocean city.”

My breath hitches. “She killed them all?”

Chloe’s tone is grim. “More meat for her army.”

My mother commanded the dead. Every soldier that had ever been cut down beyond the Veil was another in her swelling ranks.

“And Aiden?” I ask.

The giantess shakes her head. “No word.”

“Where is he?”

Chloe catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know, Nic. I really don’t.”

The dwarf drops Aiden and Harmony off with a thump in the middle of a busy highway. Headlights blind him and horns blare out in protest of their sudden appearance. Aiden leaps, still hanging on to the unconscious seer and vaults up over the hood of a car. Brakes squeal but there is a copse of trees not too far off. He shifts into sparks, praying none of the motorists have their cell phones out to capture his transition and post it online.

Curse social media and smartphones for their very existence.

He lands at the base of a tree and puts Harmony down beneath the shelter of some pine boughs. She looks pale, her vivid purple hue faded to lavender. He regrets having hurt her.

Had the dwarf been telling the truth? Could the seer really be his full-blood sister? He scrutinizes her every feature looking for something familiar. They both have dark hair, but that hardly proves anything. Maybe right around the eyes is the same. But her nose is more delicate than his own, her lips fuller.

Like his mother’s had been.

Like Nari’s had been.

Blood pounds in his ears. He knows it’s true. Deep in his bones, he can feel the connection.

“Why did you never say anything?” he asks her.

She doesn’t respond. Still out for the count.

Aiden scents the air, searching for any hint of Nic’s scent. He can track her across the globe if necessary. The people cursing at him from the vehicles had been doing so in German.

There. He catches the faintest hint of her unique perfume on the wind. Hers is tangled up with several humans. Only it’s...different somehow. More complicated than he remembers. Sex could alter a female’s scent for a short time.

Had she been with another? Gods, what if she had been raped…?

He’d kill them all. Slowly.

A growl rips from his wolf. The beast is finally shaking off the effects of Asgard.

“Calm yourself, wolf,” Harmony’s voice grounds him back in the here and now. “She hasn’t been violated.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?” He stands and uses his height advantage to tower over her.

“Because you’re sniffing the air and clenching your fists as though you’re about to do murder.”

He makes a conscious effort to relax. “You know for certain no one has used her?”

She nods and then puts a hand to her head and glares at him. “I can’t believe you kidnapped me.”

“It only seems fair since you helped the goddess abduct me first,” he shoots back. “What I can’t believe is you didn’t tell me that you’re my sister.”

Her chin juts up and she doesn’t look away from him. “You couldn’t handle it.”

“And what makes you so certain I can now? You do know what my wolf did to my last full-blooded sibling?”

She struggles to her feet. “So now you know. If you think you’re such a danger to me, then why drag me along?”

“I couldn’t leave you there to tell Freya about the dwarf.”

She shakes her head. “Aiden, you never think of anything beyond your mate but do you even know