Arctic Dawn (The Norse Chronicles Book 2) by Karissa Laurel

sun visor.
    “What are you doing?” I crawled over the center console into the passenger seat. “What do you mean it’s gone to hell?”
    “Helen’s guards were waiting for us when we got there.” Val leaned down between his legs and rolled up the floor mat. Then he reached over and rolled up mine.
    Well, duh! I didn’t say. “What happened to Thorin and Baldur?”
    “They’ve been taken. I’m going to get you out of here if I can find the keys.”
    I had the keys but wasn’t going to give them to Val without getting the full story from him first. I scrutinized the darkness again, looking for signs of pursuit. “Are they chasing you?”
    “No, Thorin and Baldur got ahead of me. I stopped to take a piss. By the time I caught up, they were already out. Helen’s guards had used something on them. They were knocked out.”
    I threw open my door and jumped out. “So, you think they used a tranquilizer? Like they were wild animals or something? Is that even possible? It’s so, so… absurd .” The Valkyries had done the same to me, but I was mostly human, and they had wanted to take me alive. Helen would most likely prefer to dispose of Thorin. Baldur, however, she would keep, so maybe drugs made sense, for the time being. I had to get to Thorin before Helen changed her mind and utilized something deadlier, such as Odin’s spear.
    Val leaped from the truck and jogged around to my side, using his body to block my forward progress. “C’mon, Solina. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
    “We can’t leave them.” I shoved past Val, went to the Yukon’s back end, and opened the rear hatch to dig through stacks of luggage and a toolbox. Eventually, I found a tiny LED flashlight in a roadside emergency kit.
    “They’re big boys.” Val positioned himself in my way again. “They can handle themselves. They knew the risks. Thorin would want us to leave.”
    “If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t leave us behind.”
    Val stiffened, and his voice took on a harsh edge. “He wouldn’t leave you because any time you’re at risk, he’s at risk. He protects you out of pure self-interest. If you think he’ll love you for this…” Val didn’t finish the thought, but I got his meaning.
    Not for Val, but for my own sake, I paused and thought about my motives. If my softer feelings for Thorin, whatever they might have been, were inspiring my actions, then I had to stop. Val was right. I couldn’t risk my life on the expectation of receiving some future preference from Thorin. My motives had to be mine alone.
    I wouldn’t go out of my way to help Baldur find Nina, but I wouldn’t feed him to Helen, either—same for Thorin. My reason for going into the desert was no longer about participating in a simple treasure hunt for a pot of gold I had no desire to find. My motives were now about the lives and deaths of people I cared about—circumstances that did not tolerate apathy. “That’s not what this is about. It’s about right and wrong. If they die because of my indifference, that would be wrong.”
    Val shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a compound full of armed men up there. Thorin and Baldur took out a handful of them barehanded before someone put them down with a dart gun, as if they were beasts. How do you expect to do any better than them?”
    “I cannot stand by and let someone die simply to save my own hide,” I said. Losing Thorin meant losing my greatest ally against Helen. Val had demonstrated strength and fortitude when it suited him, but his chances of defeating Helen on his own inspired little confidence in me. He needed Thorin as much as I did.
    Val gritted his teeth. “You are the stubbornest, most pig-headed—”
    “I’m going, Val. Stay here or come with me and do your best to keep me safe.” I held up a flat palm in his direction. “So help me, if you stand in my way, I will char your ass.” As Val dithered, I went in for the kill. “I