by Evie Kent
Still she didn’t move, didn’t react. Playing dead. I smirked; how droll.
Sighing, I leaned in and poked her ass with the butt of my torch, which made her whimper and tighten up, her body curling in on itself as much as possible.
“You know, I’m starting to lose my newfound respect for your courage,” I drawled. Still nothing. “Really, this is getting dull. If I wanted to punish you, I could. Easily. So, get up. You need to eat.”
Gingerly, Nora’s hands lifted off her head, and she peeked up at me through bloodshot eyes. “Why?”
“Because if you waste away, we can’t have any fun.” None of them had ever died on me, and Nora Olsen, with all her spirit, certainly wouldn’t be the first.
She shuffled onto her side in the thin stony furrow. “No, why are you…?”
Not tearing her limb from limb? Stabbing her in the throat and then ripping the blade clean across? I crouched down, arms perched on my knees, and grinned. “I rather enjoy subverting expectations.”
Setting the still-steaming bowl of soup aside, my palm like a stove burner, I carefully positioned the torch so that it leaned over the dip and against the wall, flames licking along the grey slate.
“Come here. Let me help you out.”
She ignored my extended hand, instead squirming and wriggling upright, then attempting to clamber out herself—again, dull. I gave her a few struggling moments before I grabbed her arm and hauled her the rest of the way up, and the second I released her, she scrambled backward along the path, barely missing my perfectly seasoned stew in passing.
“I’m afraid I seldom respond how others want me to,” I insisted, as if that answered the question those wide green eyes demanded of me. Finally, she stilled, gulping hard enough that I caught the dip in her swanlike throat—and that wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye. Now that she was out, I noted the dust and dirt smeared across her cheeks, her hands, up her legs. Bruises dotted her arms and calves, her knees: the consequences of charging headlong into the black. My cage lacked much of its original rough edges, but rock was rock was rock, no matter how fucking smooth.
Beyond all that, she appeared exhausted. Heavy rings around her eyes. Slumped shoulders.
I certainly couldn’t have that.
A haggard companion was no fun to play with.
Exhaling softly, I crept closer—only to have her immediately scurry away again, her dress up to her knees, her chest rising and falling in panicked heaves. My expression hardened, and a curt snap of my fingers froze her in place.
“Be still, little human.” I put up with her surly attitude because I enjoyed it, because it was so wonderfully different from all the others. Eight centuries without a fight, surrounded by mewling worshippers and terrified consorts… It got old. Nora was new. I preferred new, shiny—undamaged.
Although I’d depleted most of my healing energy for the day on myself, I had enough left to wash away her bruises. Taking her firmly by the ankle, I worked my way up, smoothing the gathered blood under her skin, gifting her with a rush of energy that brought a vibrancy back to her eyes, the golden green catching in the torchlight. After I’d mended her flesh, I saw to her dress; one touch and it was clean again.
There. Much better.
Far more pleasing to the eye.
While she busied herself with her limbs, examining each one as if I hadn’t already demonstrated my godly capabilities before, I grabbed the bowl of stew and shoved it into her hands. “Eat.”
Nora sagged under the weight, her arms trembling as she raised it to her mouth and slurped down a gulp. Her tongue swept across her lips, pink and teasing, and I sat back on my heels, content to watch her relish my handiwork. From what I’d noted thus far, she preferred salt and aggressive seasoning, which once again gave me something new to strive for in the monotony of my life.
“Why?” she asked again after she’d gulped down half the bowl, having now moved on to fishing out the venison chunks with her fingers. I arched an eyebrow, my silence forcing her to look up at me a few times, embellishing the question with her expressions—the furrowing of her brow, the hollowing of her cheeks, the nervous gnawing at her lip.
“Why am I not furious with you?”
Face flushed, she nodded slowly. I pursed my lips, watching her pick through her first meal of the day, and then pushed back the mirth, the biting humor that always, always, always rubbed everyone the wrong way.
“Well, I can hardly blame you,” I remarked, my tone serious—possibly verging on depressing. I let it show, let it briefly ooze out of me, and this little creature could take it however she saw fit. “We’re both prisoners here.” Her eyes snapped to mine, and I shrugged one shoulder. “Aren’t we? Captives together. You’re mine, and I’m—”
“Hers,” Nora said swiftly, catching me off guard. “The one who looked like me… The one you… The witch?”
The witch? I chuckled coldly, Ravna’s vile face flashing before my eyes. Trust the villagers to have only told Nora of that pest. Did she think I loved her?
“No, little human, you look nothing like that shrew.”
She chewed a hunk of venison slowly, pocketing it in her cheek as she said, “The witch put you in here as a punishment… for starting the apocalypse.”
Hearing it now, centuries later, a crime I could hardly be held responsible for, still set my teeth on edge. My lips twitched, and I looked back to the torch, to the fire flicking at the stone. “Hmm. Apparently.”
“But there’s never been an apocalypse.”
I faced her again, my latest consort, my feisty companion. Looked her up and down. So young—but strong, resilient in the face of all this. A trait to be admired in her.
In all humans.
Another humorless chuckle escaped me as her face blurred, replaced by a broken Heimdallr at my side, a lifeless Sigyn in my arms. Fresh ocean spray on my cheeks as I helmed the great ship Naglfar, an army of giants at my back, the godly brethren who so despised me on the horizon. Blood. Blood. So much blood. My children, dead and hunted—
“The world has ended many times before,” I murmured, and the color drained from her cheeks, “but never solely by my hand. If you remember one thing here, little human, remember that. We are all responsible for the end of days…”
Me no more than the others, no matter what the ancient scripts had to say about it.
I mean, really. Everyone’s a fucking critic.
No longer in the mood to play, I stood, scowling, and left Nora with the stew, the torch.
“Scream if you get lost,” I called back to her, my boots clomping noisily down the path, before disappearing into the shadows…
Into a past I would give my life to forget.
9
Nora
“Look at that… Not a feather in sight.” After discarding the plastic wrap, Loki dropped the raw whole chicken on his favorite quartz cutting board with a shake of his head. “Honestly, do you modern humans actually do anything for your food? This thing doesn’t even come with a head. Nor those clawed little feet. I remember a time when—”
“I want to know about her,” I interjected, my voice loud and firm enough to stop a Loki-rant in its tracks. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest that this guy was a pro at ambling off into tangents: he loved the sound of his own voice and had been alone in here for hundreds of years—which meant he probably did ranting tirades all the time. Gotta keep that silky, husky, purring voice in working order, right? Gotta seduce the sex slaves somehow.
Still, after a ridiculously long week in here with him, I’d learned to cut him off and change the subject. Otherwise he would just go, eventually drifting into another language, talking about shit I wouldn’t understand anyway.
The god stilled, pinching a raw chicken leg in each hand, and then glanced over his shoulder at me. “Oh, do you?”
Seated on one of the dining benches, always sure to keep the huge table between us, I nodded. “I do.”
This her was the
reason I was here, and that meant I had a right to all the dirty details. Loki seemed to have fond memories of her, his expression either softening or twisting sinfully whenever she popped into our conversations, few and far between as they were.
“Yes, well—” Loki went back to the chicken. “—I’d like to shove you to your knees and fuck that pretty mouth of yours… We all want things.”
I stiffened, and my belly looped and squeezed pleasantly at his frankness—at the thought of him doing that. Because the guy was a smokeshow, eye candy to the nth degree. Stunning. But like always, the flutter of interest immediately flatlined to dread. Loki had spent the last week feeding me innuendos and flirtations, so much so that it was painfully apparent what he wanted. Not like it wasn’t clear from the second I clocked him in the throat on that first day, but he had upped his game and made his position obvious. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening anymore, couldn’t ignore it or play the comment off.
But I tried. Fuck, did I ever try.
While he’d spent the last seven days painting a vivid picture of all the wicked things he wanted to do to me, with me, on me, I had used the time to get the lay of the land. For the most part, I had the mountain’s interior mapped out, though occasionally I still lost my way in some of the more winding tunnels. What I tracked now was our routine—and, more specifically, the comings and goings of the other humans in this valley.
Groceries were delivered on Sundays. Loki placed the order on Saturday—somehow, maybe telepathically for all I knew—and then the food showed up in a crate the following morning. Just like me. Yesterday, bright and early Sunday morning, a group of eight men had hauled the box up to the cave, while another stood guard, holding me at gunpoint as they loaded the delivery into our cell.
At the time, I’d wanted to laugh and cry. I mean, there was no way out, but these assholes thought I was stupid enough to try my luck against all of them, a loaded gun, and a god who couldn’t die.
That was how fucking little they thought of me.
Beyond that, Loki cooked three square meals a day. He swam in the lake—and so did I, but at different times or I was getting the fuck out of there. We shared his bed, but I had a fortified pillow wall between us, something he thought was just so amusing. In the darkness of that room was a whole goddamn library of worn books he had collected over the years; I’d been reading a few of the English texts to kill the time, to block him out, but even a reader like me could only struggle through so many dry history books before needing something else to occupy their mind.
And, frankly, I almost wished I could just talk to the only other person in here. Really. I did. He had called us both prisoners in this scenario, which at the time had been fucking laughable. But the more I’d thought about it, the more I realized it was true—to an extent. There was no escape for him either. Once he was finished with me, whenever that time came, he was still stuck in here for the rest of his very long life.
While my fate after him remained undetermined, I seriously doubted Oskar and those other assholes just let Loki’s ladies go on living their best lives back home.
I generally tried very hard not to think about that.
About that woman with my eyes, my hair, screaming soundlessly at me in the village that first day.
So, yes, the fact that Loki acknowledged the similarity in our circumstances, that we were both captives—it changed things for me. Made me see him in a different light. Not all that much, mind you, because while we might have been stuck here together, we were far from equal.
Nothing reminded me of that more than the fact that the kitchen appliances were humming along without a power cord, feeding off him and nothing else.
Therefore, I needed to even things up.
And information was power.
“Okay, proposition,” I said, tucking one leg under me as I stared at his bare back, his rippling shoulders, his lightly freckled flesh—at the long ugly lines stretching from top to bottom, the faded scars reminiscent of a whip’s lash. “If you tell me about her, I’ll let you touch my boob. One boob. Left or right—totally your choice. Over the clothes.”
Loki burst out laughing as he meandered down the counter to the knife block, his head thrown back, his mouth open for big, belly-bursting howls that made my cheeks burn.
“Okay, it’s not that funny.” My boobs were smallish, which had worked out great for me over my dance career, but no other guy had laughed before. “I take that as a no, then? What, did all the others give up the whole cow on night one?”
Kind of a crude analogy, but I was operating under the impression that there had been plenty before me who gave him approximately zero trouble and no attitude. I seemed to strike Loki as an enigma, and I planned to work that angle to my advantage for as long as possible.
Men were all the same: they fucking loved the chase.
“If not the first night, then the second,” the god mused as he considered his knife choice, hesitating between two handles. “They all knew their place and their purpose.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from snapping at him, rolling my eyes instead. After all, my snark needed limits; outright aggression would get me nowhere. But seriously. Anytime we started to vibe together, he usually ruined it with some stupid comment—something to put me back in my place. Something fucked-up and unnecessary. Because we could get along. Loki had it in him to be charming and conversational. In fact, it was easy to put two and two together: with his good looks, his wit, his healing touch, I wasn’t even a little surprised that women from the past, from a time when my gender had no agency in the world, would give themselves over without much of a fight. I didn’t blame them or look down on them.
I understood.
If I had less of a backbone, I probably would have done the same thing.
“But, I have to say,” he carried on, whirling around and pointing a knife at me—the knife, the exact one I’d buried in his throat only a few days ago, “you are by far the most entertaining.”
Fear spider-walked down my back, made my heart beat just a little harder. I masked it as best I could, even as I felt the visceral chill inside me, the color bleeding out of my cheeks. That knife. It would have been poetic if he used it to kill me, to cut me up into little bitty pieces. At no point did I trust him not to retaliate for that night, no matter what he said.
He knew it. I knew it. And we both knew that he was pointing it at me now, even if he did plan to break down that whole chicken with it, so I wouldn’t forget what I had done.
How I’d failed.
I licked my lips and forced a prickly smile. “Okay. I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“As you should.” Back to me again, black slacks hung low on his hips, his perky ass outlined even in the loose material, he started to partition the chicken, slicing the blade clean through the thigh joint. “But be aware, my little human, that this game of yours has an expiration date.”
Fear hardened to dread in my gut, and with his back to me and no reflective surfaces around for him to watch me in, I let it show on my face. Another point to Loki: I couldn’t snark him off forever. My attitude—and whatever he liked about it—would eventually lose its sparkle, and then I would either have to switch up my tactics… or forfeit the game. The creature before me was breathtaking in his own right, handsome and ancient, all-knowing and unknowable. Hot as fuck. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just be his sex toy.
I had more self-respect than that.
What was more: as soon as he had me, the chase was over. Just like he would one day grow tired of my smart mouth, he would then grow tired of me, my body, everything. And where would that leave me? I had no fucking idea how to get out of this mountain, let alone escape the psycho humans in the village who fed the beast—who clearly profited from what limited power Loki had at his disposal.
“Yeah, well…” I rolled my shoulders back, then stood. “I guess everything expires, huh?”
“Everything but me,” Loki
drawled as he tossed a perfectly excised chicken breast onto the cutting board, the wet plop followed by one of his chuckles, the kind that was more batshit insane cackling than anything.
Yikes.
Glad you make yourself laugh, my man.
Taking that as my cue to get the hell out of his way, I power walked from the main hall straight to the lake for my predinner swim, mind awash with all the crap I had to solve if I ever wanted to breathe free air again in this lifetime.
All the while begrudgingly pushing my curiosity about her to the very bottom of the list.
For now.
10
Loki
“Look, if this turns out to be some fucked-up version of strip poker—”
“It is not,” I said smoothly, sliding onto the bench with a pair of shot glasses in hand and a frowning, hands-on-her-hips Nora glaring at me from the other side of the table. Strip poker. That certainly sounded like something we ought to play—but not tonight. “The game is Fact or Fiction.” I set one glass in front of me, then the other across the table, presumably where she would eventually settle if she stopped being such a boring little thing. “Truth or Falsehood. We each make a statement about the other. If the statement you make about me is correct, I take a shot. If it is false, you take a shot. Simple.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At no point are you required to remove a single item of clothing.”
“Right.”
I gestured to the spread between us, to the various bowls of potato chips and buttery popcorn, then lifted an expectant eyebrow and flashed what humans today had dubbed a, quote, shit-eater grin. Nora had been with me for fourteen long days, and still I knew very little about her besides her name, her origins in America, and the fact that she was a surly, fiery, defiant creature. I craved more—more details, more information, more history—and like everything else, she wouldn’t surrender it easily.
