The Lost Sun Read Online Free Page B

her.
    The hill below us is used to bury princes and jarls, the illustrious alumni of Sanctus Sigurd Academy. When Astrid stomps on the yellow grass, I imagine I can feel their bones stomping back.
    Our small fire flares orange and red. Astrid spins, her eyes blind and mouth open in wonder.
    And when her feet stop but her body continues and she topples down—I’m there. I wrap my arms around her and cradle her against the crown of the burial hill. Her heartbeat pounds against her skin, and I feel it. So do the bones below.
    I hold her there. The fire grabs at my back.
    Her eyes are closed, but shivering with dreams. She curls her fingers into my shirt and a dark twist of hair falls over her face as she turns into me. I hardly remember how to breathe, but her own breath has a slow rhythm, and I match mine to it. All through the night I anchor her in my arms, against the earth, while her spirit flies through death.
    The dawning sun paints golden waves into the Missoura River at the edge of Sanctus Sigurd land, and Astrid wakes up. I’ve been waiting, focused on smoothing my thoughts. Her passion and the bright lights of the school and my own fever kept me company all night, but as the sun rises, I’m calm.
    “Soren,” she says.
    Her open eyes are some sort of trigger, and I release her. She stretches and rolls out of my lap. My legs tingle fiercely as blood rushes into my calves again. “It’s dawn,” I say.
    Astrid stands on unsteady legs, scanning the rolling hills, the thin spring woods, us and the silent buildings of the academy. “No movement?”
    “Not yet.” My body feels hollow and light without her weight, as if she anchored me as much as I did her. I want to touch her shoulders, grasp her gently against me again.
    “Then we have a few minutes.”
    Inside the Great Hall, and in the dormitory common rooms, the students and faculty must be gathered in front of televisions to see Baldur rise. Everyone across the United States of Asgard will be watching the ritual in Philadelphia as his priests spread the ashes from his death pyre into the roots of the giant New World Tree. Cameras will flash, the seethers will sing, and everyone will wait as—slowly, slowly—Baldur the Beautiful climbs hale and whole out of his own ashes: new, golden, and alive. He’ll stand, bewildered and smiling, and the crowd will cheer. The gods will sweep their favored son away, until he appears at Bright Home, in Colorada, for a massive feast.
    My stomach growls. There will be a feast at the academy, too. Candied plums and turkey and a whole roasted pig. Everyone but me will drink blessed honey mead.
    “I didn’t see her,” Astrid says, sinking to sit in front of me, blocking my view of the sunrise so that she’s a silhouette, with the golden aura behind her. It’s the first time her voice sounds like the voice of a girl, not a legend. As if overnight that otherworldly aura popped.
    “I’m sorry.” Instead of watching Astrid’s eyes, I focus on her fingers. People give away so much with their hands.
    Astrid says, “My uncle went to identify her body, and wouldn’t take me. But I’ve dreamed of her alive, Soren, and that’s all I need. Besides, if she were dead, she would be easy to find.” Astrid’s mouth presses into a thin line. “I could summon her spirit then, as I could summon your father.”
    I don’t need the reminder that my father is definitely dead, shot twenty-three times by police bullets. I watched his body burn.
    Astrid seems to regret her words immediately, and scoots closer to me. “This is what I saw tonight: Baldur sitting in a desert. Faraway cities and people with mournful faces. I saw the New World Tree with ashes at its base, and the ashes blew away in a violent burst of wind. They scattered and became hundreds of people reaching out toward me. I saw an orchard of apple trees, stretching to the horizon, as far as I could ever run or fly. The apples were every color of the rainbow and together