Destined (Desolation #3) by Ali Cross Page B

li’Morl’s face. “Michael and Desolation are lucky to have such devoted friends. It’s fascinating, really. One day, I’d be most interested in speaking with you.” He took a breath and straightened his shoulders while I felt like maybe I’d be sick to my stomach. “You are entitled to say no, young James. You have Miri. I can see what you mean to each other. And you may feel differently about your offer to help once you know what needs to be done.”
    “Dude, you’re making me nervous. Just tell me.”
    li’Morl read my eyes, maybe read my mind for a second, before he nodded. “Desolation is being held in the darkest, most unreachable and dangerous place in all the worlds. No one knows of this place except for Loki, Helena, Desolation and the Hounds. Or, Horonius, rather.”
    I glanced at Horonius, but his expression—his whole body—remained unmoving, unchanged.
    “I suspect she’s shackled to the bottom of the rocks upon which Ygdrasyll was built, and that she hangs beneath all the worlds, her body suspended over space.”
    “Oh my gosh,” Miri said, covering her mouth with a trembling hand. I touched her knee, hoping to share some comfort with her, though my own stomach had flipped over and I’d become less confident about avoiding throwing up. 
    I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. “Okay. So Horonius knows where this is, right? So why can’t you go get her?” Notice how I said you . I wasn’t stupid. Hell was the last place I wanted to go.
    “That is why we’re here, I’m afraid,” li’Morl said. I so did not like where this was going. “Where Desolation is, I cannot go. I am a being of Light, a creature of Alfheim—my kind cannot exist where there is no Light. I’m sure you understand.”
    I didn’t understand the whole Light creatures and bottom-of-the-worlds bit, but I got the gist of it. I’d be going to Hell. Literally. I always thought I’d go there—before Miri, anyway. Before her, I thought Hell was my inevitable destination. But since Miri, I pretty much figured I’d do everything to avoid going there. 
    “Heimdall, the god of the Bifrost, can get you into Helheimer, but not to the bottom of Ygdrasyll, not to the roots of the world tree. Horonius could go alone, but he cannot break the shackles around Desolation’s wrists. Loki created them to resist the Hounds’ abilities—else they would have released Helena when he imprisoned her there. That is why the goddess remained trapped until Desolation released her.”
    I suddenly felt like an insect trapped beneath glass. My legs and wings pinned aside, my guts exposed. I tore my eyes away from li’Morl to look at Miri. Would she want me to go? And maybe never come back?
    But she kept her eyes on her hands in her lap, giving up none of her secret thoughts to me. 
    “Heimdall will get you in as close as he can. Horonius will be with you every step of the way. I’m sure he knows every nook and cranny of Helheimer, including how to cross the river without the soul eaters getting you.”
    “Soul eaters? What?” My hands felt as if I’d stuck them in a bucket of ice water.
    “Do not fear. He will get you to Desolation. All you have to do is release her, and get her out. As I said, Horonius will be with you.”
    I glanced at Horonius. His stony expression did not comfort me. “But what if she . . . what if she’s, you know, the bad Desi? What if she doesn’t want to escape? What if she kills me the second I release her?”
    “She’s not bad,” Miri said at the exact moment li’Morl said,
    “She is not bad .” 
    “I felt it in my dream, Jamie,” Miri said, using her nickname for me that I claimed to hate but secretly loved. “She was full of remorse. Full of regret. That’s partly why the dream was so awful—because I felt so, so sad.”
    “But what about those rock-creatures you saw? If Desi’s scared of them, I sure as heck don’t want to run into any.”
    “They are the genii,” li’Morl said.