The Apple Throne by Tessa Gratton

pet out of jail.”
    I cross my arms and go silent.
    The godling narrows his eyes. “They don’t know about your relationship. That’s why you won’t call in a favor. They don’t know of your relationship with Bearstar.”
    “They do!”
    “They don’t approve.”
    I flick my fingers dismissively. He’s not wrong.
    Amon says, “I’m not a huge fan of gods having affairs with mortals, myself. Doesn’t end well.”
    Fighting another furious blush, I say, “I am not having an affair. That isn’t what this is.”
    “It’s platonic, jill?” he drawls.
    “Don’t call me that.”
    “I can’t go around calling you Lady of Youth—people will talk. Though you blend in better than the rest of the cousins.” He nods his chin at my coat and chaotic curls. “Not just your dress, but you don’t care when I grab you. You’re easily embarrassed and quick to worry. You’re nothing like them.”
    “Perhaps that’s how I want it to be,” I suggest.
    He tugs his eyebrow ring. “Sure. Sandra?”
    My mouth falls open.
    “Petra? Elizabeth? Florence?”
    I take a deep breath, my name caught in the back of my throat. I swallow and softly say, “Just call me Astrid.”
    “Astrid.”
    A shiver snakes down my back. No one—
no one
—has called me that except for Soren in six-hundred-and thirty-three days. I say, “Let’s get one of these stupid toys and be on our way. I am needed elsewhere.”
    • • •
    The sixth bobblehead is now stuck to the dash with some tackytape right in front of me. He’s the brightest of them all: Thor’s happy, nodding face over a sky-blue gown with painted feathers and a girdle of gold. He’s called Thrym’s Wife, and Amon gleefully explained it’s a new addition to the toy line or it would’ve been the first one he bought.
    It
is
funny, despite myself, and based on the story of the time a giant named Thrym stole Thor’s hammer. To retrieve it, Loki dressed the god of thunder up as Freya in order to pretend to marry the giant.
    Amon promises we’ll get to Soren tomorrow at the latest. There’s nothing I can do for the time being, though I’m unsure if he’ll be transferred or if there will be a bail hearing. Will his friends come for that? Rathi, the rich preacher, or Signy, the Valkyrie of the Tree? He’ll have a chance to contact them, surely, and perhaps already has. He couldn’t have called me.
    If this hadn’t happened just in time for him to miss our day together, I still would not know anything went wrong. I might’ve never found out until it was all over, or too late.
    Leaning my head back, I stare through the windshield at the mountain pass. My stomach is an aching hole, hungry and swimming with nausea at the same time. I close my eyes. Count the hours since I slept. Since the morning after the Yule feast, when I so greatly looked forward to Soren’s arrival. Twenty-nine or thirty hours. Hot air blows dry against my mouth from the dash, loud enough to hide the roar of the engine, the rush of wind. It ruffles my hair, tickles my temples. My head lolls to the side.
    I imagine Soren driving, imagine he’s the source of this warmth.
    I drift to sleep.
    • • •
    I slam awake, toes knocking the dash, hands flinging to either side.
    There were eyes in my dream.
    I dreamed.
I dreamed.
    “What the skit?” Amon demands.
    My heartbeat thumps inside my skull, and my fingertips tingle. I saw something in the deep darkness, in the chaos. An image. Two moon-gray eyes watching me from a face half-swathed in stretched black skin.
    Freya, my Feather-Flying Goddess. She sees me.
And I saw her
.
    “Pull over,” I say.
    “Huh?”
    “Pull. Over.” My hands ache for the smooth leather of my seething kit. But it’s ashes. “Do it now, Amon. There’s no time to lose.”
    “To lose for what?”
    I say, “I have to seeth, right now, because I
dreamed
.”
    “What?” The tires crunch against gravel as he obeys.
    I swivel in my seat for the plastic Walton’s bag and dig