THREE
ANNABEL
The sky was as gray as the rest of the world when the nothingness of dreamless sleep released its grip on me.
I didn’t know when I’d fallen asleep. All I remembered from before I’d lost consciousness was crying and screaming at Grim, and his granite features as he took in my despair. Possibly he’d magicked me to sleep when he got tired of listening to me curse his miserable name into the ground.
I stared blankly into the colorless swirl high above. Even in Jotunheim and Asgard, the sky had seemed familiar, as though those realms still inhabited the same plane of existence as Earth, despite all that set them apart. Hel? Hel was very clearly another thing entirely. The gray sky above should have been filled with clouds, but instead it looked like swirls of mist scored throu
