To Love a God

by Evie Kent

  My first response was to scream fiction in her face and laugh while she drank, but I hesitated, the word clawing up my throat and dying on the tip of my tongue. Because it wasn’t fiction. I did feel guilty—always had. Hadn’t been there to defend her. So occupied in the war, didn’t consider the marauders. Wrongly estimated old enemies seeking revenge. Fucking fool—

  So I drank, swallowing down the bourbon with a grimace, my own bitterness making the drink foul.

  “What was her name, Loki?” Nora asked—softly, sweetly. She sensed vulnerability in me and had seized it, but as I uncapped the bourbon bottle, I realized I couldn’t fault her. Couldn’t blame her. Curiosity was a familiar bedfellow of mine, too.

  And…

  This was the first time she had said my name in conversation. Loki. Out loud. Not a part of this game, not an easy fact to give her a leg up on me. Without malice or hate. It came so… naturally. I choked a little on this unprompted shot; when was the last time anyone had said my name without fear?

  Without wanting something from me in return?

  I licked my lips, studying her, one eye narrowed. She wanted something, too, but not the usual—not riches or good health or luck.

  Only clarity.

  Understanding.

  I coughed, stabbing a fist at my chest as the liquor swirled down to my gut. When I was through, the old familiar lump was gone—all because Nora had finally said my name?

  No. That’s absurd, you old fuck.

  “Her name was Sigyn,” I rasped, struggling for words—like I had just stumbled forth from a month of solitude. “She stayed with me in the first cave. Protected me. Cared for me. Loved me unconditionally—as no one had before, and no one has again. She was devoted to her duty… and she died a gruesome death. Alone.”

  Nora nibbled her lower lip for a moment, and I frowned when her fingers twitched toward me.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured before retracting her hand and hiding it under the table again. I cocked my head to the side, hardening to stone before her, steel in my words and up my spine.

  “Why?” I demanded, my tone unnecessarily cruel. “Did you disembowel her?”

  “Because that’s what people say, don’t they?” She stared back, unmoved by my attempt to rattle her, even as her eyes turned glossy, the swell of emotion glittering like diamonds under the artificial lights. “It’s just what people say when you lose everything, like that somehow makes it better.”

  Ah. Another fact gleaned from words unsaid. I continued to harden against her, to sprout thorns like I always did. Weakness was unacceptable—so I would pick at her instead, peel off her scabs and watch the wound weep. “You’re orphaned… recently.”

  “Fiction,” Nora snapped, her softness hollow now, that flash of empathy gone. “Drink. I was orphaned a long time ago, but…” She swallowed hard again as I drank, her eyes on the table, and she swiped both hands under them with a sniff. “But Opa died this past December.”

  “And how—”

  “You’re lonely in here,” she bit out, raising her voice above mine. I smirked.

  “Well, that’s an obvious one.” My laughter sounded forced, even to my own ears, and my usual thin-lipped grin didn’t reach my eyes. The second bourbon shot in under a minute made my vision swim, and I blinked hard to bring Nora’s glaring expression into a single image rather than the double I was currently seeing.

  “Your grandfather died a horrible death.”

  She spit out a bitter laugh of her own, at no point reaching for her glass as she said, “Is there any other kind?”

  “Yes. Some deaths are quiet and dignified.” Not many in my experience, but I had witnessed enough over the stretch of my existence to know it was possible. Nora sniffed again, harder this time, and rolled her shoulders back.

  “Drink.”

  I missed the shot glass when I went for it, my hand snapping around nothing. “Liar.”

  “It was quiet and fucking dignified,” she hissed, eyes teary again. “The stroke didn’t fully kill him… I stopped his heart at the hospital when I signed the order—and he went quietly. Drink your fucking scotch.”

  “Technically it’s bourbon—”

  “Fuck you.” She stabbed her hands through her obsidian mane, trembling. “You want to break the curse around this mountain.” Before I could get anything out, she shoved the bottle at me. “Fucking drink.”

  “Yes, well, another rather obvious one, eh?” The amber liquid spilled over the top of the glass as I poured a fresh shot, and she wrinkled her nose when I licked the puddle off the table. I then sat up with a sharp smile, bourbon dribbling down my chin. “I’ve tracked that witch’s line through the years—matrilineally, of course. She’s spawned hundreds of witches, and one of them could break this curse. Not that they ever would…”

  As far as they were concerned, I was a beast who belonged in a cage. Who in their right mind would ever set me free?

  “You don’t drink,” I crooned, tapping at the juice carton with one finger—harder than I meant to, the plastic jug nearly toppling over the side of the table until Nora caught it. Shaking her head, she threw back her shot, and I struggled to focus on her as the edges of my vision blurred. “Why?”

  “I ask a question now,” she muttered, her glass still empty, and I snatched the jug, ripped off the topper, and spilled more than enough juice into it.

  “No, tell me why, little human,” I ordered, suddenly desperate for an answer, “because it doesn’t strike me as a choice, more like a moral obligation.”

  Tears cut down her cheeks, falling hot and heavy, and Nora threw her hands up. “Okay, I’m done.”

  “No, no,” I growled as she stood, far steadier on her feet than I would have been, “the game isn’t over.”

  “Yeah, it is,” she muttered, wiping at her face as she climbed off the bench.

  I slapped my palms to the table, the force knocking over my next shot and making her jump. “The game isn’t over until I say it’s over.”

  For some reason, I needed to know—now, more than ever—why she refused a drop of liquor. The others had been such good little darlings, so sweet and pliant, so willing… so tediously similar. But even they had accepted a glass of wine or mead or ale at my request, hastily gulping it down and watching me through glazed-over stares that had made me so fucking furious at the time. I certainly didn’t desire a glazed-over Nora, glossy eyes that couldn’t focus, a tongue that couldn’t hurl those foul words, call me names, be so mean, but before the night was through, I needed a fucking answer.

  Only she ignored me, arms crossed, shoulders slumped as she blitzed for the doorway—off to hide again, probably for hours. Hours alone, Loki. All alone again. Always alone.

  Snarling, I shot up and cleared everything clean off the table in a single sweep, bowls of chips and popcorn, countless bottles of alcohol all crashing to the ground. Calamitous, my temper tantrums. So childish. Sometimes they shook the mountain; tonight, this one made Nora shriek and stumble into the wall as she staggered around.

  “I gave you the horrors of my past, Nora Olsen,” I bellowed, pointing a shaky finger at her, the other hand planted on the table to steady myself. Compromised after all those shots taken in such rapid succession, I had divulged far more in this game than I’d intended. And it had started as just that: a game. I’d wanted basic details on my consort, tidbits to use against her later—but only to make her blush or laugh or soften. Yet Nora had gone straight for the fucking jugular, pushing for details on Sigyn when I so clearly preferred those memories stay dead and buried. I dreamed of her enough, her swollen face, her exposed bowels, her bloody thighs, her broken body. For all her prying, I would take a new memory in Sigyn’s stead—one from Nora’s past, something gruesome, whatever made her weep. “You owe me that same courtesy.”

  The color drained from her face, but her jaw hardened, her eyes narrowed, and she pushed off the wall with a scoff.

  “I am living the horrors of your present,
you fucking asshole!” Nora shouted back, our rising voices charging forth like two braying armies, colliding hard and tangling, thickening the air. More tears fell down her hollowed cheeks, her eyes bloodshot. “Cut me a little slack.”

  And with that, she was gone, disappearing into the shadows. I lurched to the right, but my feet immediately tangled over one another, and I plopped back on the bench with the realization that, ah, yes, I was rather drunk. Terrible tolerance these days, for I seldom drank alone.

  Not this century, anyway.

  Blinking the blur away, I scanned the mess around me, the shattered glass and scattered snacks. Typical. Always fuck it up, don’t you, Laufeyjarson? Always ruin the night—

  One bottle hadn’t broken, but rather bounced off the stone and rolled under the table. Without an ounce of grace, I retrieved it, swaying in my seat, and cracked open the seal. Tossed the cap aside. Gulped it all down in a single go.

  The room swam when I hurled the empty over my shoulder.

  My anger had vanished at some point, perhaps in the absence of my consort, the desolate loneliness creeping back in.

  And in its place—emptiness.

  Forever hollow.

  Always alone.

  My eyes blinked in uneven beats until they finally refused to open again, and after fighting it for as long as I could, I face-planted onto the table, dead to the world.

  11

  Nora

  Three weeks inside this fucking cave and I—

  Thwack.

  A playing card hit me square in the forehead, corner first, and then fluttered down onto my one-hour-deep game of solitaire. Sighing, biting hard on the insides of my cheeks, I picked it up—oh, look at that, queen of hearts. How fucking obvious. Refusing to give the toddler across the coffee table a smidgen of attention when he had been acting like an absolute child all goddamn day, I tossed the card aside, then picked another up from my stack. Eight of clubs. Could that fit somewhere in my rows—

  “Play with me, little human.”

  “It’s solitaire,” I muttered, then flinched when another card smacked me in the forehead. Fire raged in my chest, and I looked up, huffing my hair out of my face. “The name implies that it isn’t a two-person game.”

  Shirtless, gorgeous, Loki tipped his head to the side, sprawled out on the floor like some Roman emperor. “Well, let’s play a different game, then.”

  “No,” I said flatly, shifting between cheeks to get some feeling back in my ass. I’d been sitting here, on the floor, for ages, pointedly ignoring him and his request to play our thousandth game of cards.

  Three weeks in, we had played every two-person game imaginable.

  None had devolved into the screaming match of Fact or Fiction, which we had gone out of our way not to discuss in the aftermath. I played cards because when we were competing against each other, Loki hit on me less. So far, he had beat me at nearly every game, that calculating mind above and beyond the capabilities of mine, but I didn’t care about that. Cards were safe. Easy. I taught him a few from my high school days, he showed me a handful from centuries ago—it was a bonding experience I hadn’t expected going into this, and when he had something to concentrate on that wasn’t me, or about how best to get in my pants, he was tolerable.

  More than tolerable.

  Charming, even—and not in a sleezy, creepy, let-me-play-with-your-hair-because-it-reminds-me-of-my-dead-wife sort of way. He laughed more freely, shared pieces of his past more willingly; the guy had serious gambling issues whenever elves entered the equation, apparently. Since that night where we had both divulged more than either of us probably meant to, his playful side had grown on me. I’d… warmed to him. A little.

  I mean, come on.

  A hot god who can cook and occasionally let me win at cards?

  What more could a girl ask for?

  But he was still moody, unpredictable. Sometimes I walked into the main hall and found him just sitting at the table and staring at nothing—but I could tell from the tightness around his mouth, the rigidity of his shoulders, the white knuckles of his fists, that he was pissed. Seething. Alone, inside his head, just fucking enraged.

  Those days I steered clear of him until he found me with a new game in mind, or a recipe he wanted an opinion on. Safe topics. Non-pervy, gropey, leering instances where we could, fleetingly, get along.

  Still. None of that changed the fact that it had been three weeks. Three fucking weeks in here with no end in sight.

  And I was starting to get antsy. Anxious. Cooped up and confined. Even a little claustrophobic some days.

  How Loki had managed eight centuries in here—eight hundred years, 2,920 days—was beyond me.

  He should have been way more fucked-up.

  Mood swings and tantrums were to be expected after this long in solitary, but that didn’t make them any more tolerable on my end. Today, when I had turned down his game suggestion for solitaire after dinner, he had collapsed across the coffee table in a full-blown pout.

  And now he was flinging cards from his deck at me because I wasn’t paying him enough attention.

  Fucking seriously.

  I needed a break.

  Only every break I took was the same. Dark corridors and unclimbable walls, freezing mountain runoff in a lake to nowhere, cavernous pits that promised death if I bothered exploring.

  There was no break—not from him, not from the solitude, not from the anxiety of being trapped in here.

  Kidnapped. Trafficked.

  He called me his consort—like a fancy title made it better.

  Another card struck, this time in the middle of my chin.

  “Nora, Nora, Nora…”

  Loki only deigned to say my name when he was annoyed with me—or when he wanted to be a fucking nuisance. There was rarely an in-between, and the rest of the time it was all little human this, and little human that. To a primordial being, half-giant, half-god, I figured I was a little human, something infinitely smaller and less powerful, which meant I still had no clue if the name, in his mind, was supposed to be degrading or affectionate in its own warped way.

  I didn’t like it.

  But I didn’t like it when he said my actual name either.

  “Oh my god.” I grabbed the king of spades and flung it over the side of the coffee table. “Stop. Find something else to do.”

  “Boring, boring, boring,” he warbled back before slamming his full deck on the table.

  “Yeah, well, this isn’t boring for me yet, so go away.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted those elegant, dangerous fingers stroke the top of his deck, then snatch a card and flick it at me. The three of diamonds hit me at the dip of my throat, a little harder than the last few, and I hissed out an irritable breath, finally looking up at him again. Already I had started to shake, so much pent-up feeling pulsing inside me that it didn’t take much anymore.

  Head resting on his shoulder, neck long and exposed, unscarred from my attack weeks ago, Loki smiled. It was one of his more attractive expressions, a smolder that I felt between my thighs—because I was a living, breathing, heterosexual woman, not because it was Loki, trickster god of lies, who was smiling at me. Anyone who looked like him would make me blush.

  But it was Loki, trickster god of lies, who drove me up the fucking wall when he didn’t get his way, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take without cracking.

  “I know something we can do to pass the time,” he rasped, his brilliant green eyes roving my face, hitting every point a card had landed in the last half-hour, then plunging to my throat. “It’s a new game, one we haven’t played yet… Just for the two of us—”

  “For fuck’s sake,” I grumbled, my face on fire as I set down my deck and braced myself on the coffee table. Over the last week or so, the lone butterfly in my chest with its broken wing had acquired a friend—totally unwelcome, of course. The two of them liked to flitter about whenever Loki looked at me like that, like he wanted to fuck me,
or eat me, or both.

  Whatever was going on inside that twisted head of his, I wanted no part in it, but as I stood, I had no idea what else I could do tonight to waste away the hours. Walk around? Swim? Try desperately to sleep? A storm had battered the mountain all day and had yet to show any signs of slowing; maybe that would lull me to sleep, even if my heart pounded and my belly somersaulted when he gave me that fucking look.

  With one foot asleep, I limped around the coffee table, once again pointedly ignoring the god leering at me—and then yelped when his hand snapped at my ankle. It coiled all the way around, his skin cool to the touch, his grip tight as a shackle, and I stumbled forward, catching myself on the armchair. Panic fired on every cylinder, fight or flight taking over, and since I couldn’t fly away, I had to fight.

  Only he didn’t give me the chance to twist out of his hold, to kick back, to flail and scream and stomp. One hard yank toward him and I was down, crashing to the ground with a grunt, my hands and elbows taking the brunt of the fall. I tried to shoot up, hands scrambling over the smooth stone, dress hitched up around my thighs, but he was just—stronger. More powerful. Loki dragged me toward him with ease, sprawled on his back, head tipped up and gaze pinned squarely on me.

  “Loki, stop!” I cried, wishing I had just agreed to play fucking cards with him. His touch might have been cool, his skin frost-kissed, but it ignited a fire in me that scorched up my leg and lost itself between my thighs, in my core. The pair of butterflies in my chest slammed into each other in their haste, shooting about, careening into the cage around my heart—all this lovely imagery for what was probably a panic attack. Great.

  “No,” the god drawled, yanking me to him a few inches at a time. He dodged my kick with ease and then hauled me a full foot toward him and his cruel smile. “You keep losing, little human, all our games… I think you deserve a win.”

  “No, s-stop,” I whined, nails raking across the ground as I scrambled in the opposite direction, my efforts futile. My calves collided with his shoulders first, then my knees, and I squealed when he let go of my ankle—only to grab my hips and arrange me like I was light as a feather, a doll for his amusement.