by Evie Kent
Thoughts I had locked away alongside feelings that shouldn’t be there, should never touch my heart. Feelings for a human, rooted and coarse, nestled into my bones. I had never feared loss before, yet I feared the loss of her—and not just when we eventually discovered Nora’s way out of here, something that still eluded me for all my talk, but also the loss of her in, what, eighty years? Eventually Nora Olsen would leave me, temporarily or forever, and it was better—wiser—to cut the tether now than then, when my heart couldn’t stand it, when I would destroy whole worlds just for her.
You know.
From inside this fucking mountain.
That kiss inside her studio, inside our bonded minds, had shattered me.
Because it was so fucking sweet, so perfect, so intimate…
No one had ever kissed me like that before. Not Sigyn. Not Angrboða. Not any of my past consorts—and none of those to come, surely. That kiss had sparked longing, desire, need, which was nothing out of the ordinary for us. Fucking her was nothing new. Nora had become my fine wine, my golden apple, and I craved her taste. But this time, there was a strange kindling in my chest for something more. To protect her. To cultivate us. To entwine and grow roots as one.
Pathetic.
Weak, a god succumbing to the whims of a mortal.
But I had always been pathetic, always been weak. Hiding behind tricks, behind cruel jokes and pranks that went too far. Taking the rejection of the Aesir to heart, letting it affect me, hurt me, rile me up so that when I lashed out, I was the one to suffer in the end.
Weakness had been in my nature for so long—but Nora made me weaker than all the rest.
She made me feel deeper than all the rest.
She made me… yearn.
Yet she desperately needed to escape this hellhole, go home, don her own pointe shoes again for an adoring crowd consisting of more than one lonely god, and I, a smitten fool, would do whatever I could to give that to her.
So, I couldn’t feel anymore.
Couldn’t take root in her.
Needed… space. Break the romantic connection growing, strengthening, hardening between us, the cord tying her to me turning to steel as the days crept by. Go back to just fucking her, teasing her, riling her up, using her to vent my frustrations as I did to all who dared drift into my orbit. Become the whiny child again who enjoyed plucking the wings off flies: a god with no regard for the lives of human beings.
It would hurt her.
Make me ache.
But in the end, it would be better for both of us—or, at the very least, better than wherever we were headed now.
If it’s not real, then I don’t want it anymore.
I had taken her words and flung them back, almost perfectly, because I sensed she would take it and run. Nora couldn’t possibly feel for me as I did for her; humans paled in comparison to their godly counterparts. Their emotions were fleeting, their relationships stunted by mortality. My firebird had made a physical connection with me, but I was just her security blanket, something to keep her warm and safe, to provide comfort on the long, lonely nights. She didn’t—love—me.
Not that I loved her.
But…
If I hinted at it, I knew that would scare her off, make her backpedal fast.
And with space between us, I could whittle down my feelings to shells of their former selves.
Encompassed in the bitter chill of mountain run off, the thundering waterfall reduced to a dull roar, I gazed into the murky depths of my lake. Facedown in the water, I floated there, spread-eagle and staring, capable of holding my breath for almost an hour if necessary. This prison of mine offered countless hiding places, but Nora had discovered them all these last three months, and my body—my mind, my heart—had needed a good splash of cold water to get out of the moment.
Pathetic, weak, and dramatic, wearing my clothes, floating back-up in the middle of the lake.
But alas. Here I was. And here I would stay until my racing heart settled, until the water washed away the remnants of that kiss, until I was numb again.
A disruption in the calm lake’s surface erupted to my right, the splash, the intense impact, hinting at one of Nora’s famous cannonballs; she had never learned how to dive and rebuked my offer to teach her. Seconds later, familiar hands found my back, my shoulders, ineffectual in their efforts to yank me upright. I exhaled, bubbles pluming from my nose, the bleak darkness of the lake going in and out of focus, then shot up—if only to quell her frantic scrabbling, not because I needed the breath.
I gasped anyway—dramatic fucker—and dragged the same old thick, heavy air into my lungs, soaked to the bone and in no mood to change that.
Nora bobbed in the water next to me, black hair slicked down her neck and fanning around her, those bony shoulders bare—oh hello, tits, good evening, dusky-rose nipples. Naked. She’d had the sense to strip down before she dove in, her clothes in a messy pile at the water’s edge. Eyes wide and searching, a touch fearful—did she think I’d tried to drown myself? Something inside me balked at that, for I’d already told her I lacked the conviction to end my own life.
I kicked my legs in slow, even beats, effortlessly floating in front of her, a sneer on the tip of my tongue, a few forced words prepared to scare her off for the night. Before I could get them out, Nora grabbed my face and sunk her little claws in. I jolted, water splashing up between us.
“What are you—”
“Shut up, Loki,” she growled, scrambling up my body, scaling me, using me to support her in the middle of a lake I so rarely ventured into with another. Nora’s fingers twined through my hair, ripping my head back, her eyes no longer wide and panicked but totally and utterly consumed by flame. “Just… shut the fuck up.”
Her kiss was brutal, nothing like our last, her lips a desperate punishment meant to brand me. Little did she realize, my mouth had been scarred long ago—but until this moment, I’d thought nothing could top that, when Odin All-father had sewn my lips shut for orchestrating the death of his son. My blood brother had silenced me for centuries, the twine thick and steadfast, the needle scarring my flesh as no blade ever had.
And then here was Nora and her fucking kiss, her mouth so firm, so strangely powerful, intoxicating in its control over me. She was nothing in the grand scheme of the universe, yet she possessed me as though she were the almighty. Our mouths parted, tongues tangled, teeth gnashed. No whiff of romance. No hint of sweetness. Yet intimacy shone brighter than the dawn, connection humming between us.
I kissed her back because I was weak, pathetic, wrapped around my firebird’s little finger without ever realizing the walls had been closing in.
But we couldn’t—
It had to stop.
I cupped her chin as I tore my mouth away, holding her in place even when she tried to follow me, chase me, hands in my hair wrenching me back to her. Treading water, bruising her jaw while my other arm snaked around her naked body, I shook my head.
“Firebird, stop this—”
“It’s real, you fucking idiot,” she rasped, her voice a perfect match for mine in the moment—strained, wary, uncertain, pained. Nora coiled her hands around my wrist, gently breaking the hold I had on her chin, then cupped my cheeks. My miserable heart skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat. “It’s real, so just… shut up.”
Her lips found mine again, claimed them most ardently, and I let her. Fire blazed between us, scorching down my body as she wrapped herself around me, kissed me like she meant it. No, no, no. A very stubborn part of me refused to believe it—that any of it was real, that I was more to her than the god who pleasured her, comforted her, fed her each and every day. But she tasted so fucking authentic, needy in the way she held me, that same spark from the ballet studio flickering in my chest.
No. She wasn’t needy—Nora was passion and sincerity. For I, the father of lies, had always been so adept at sniffing out falsehoods, even inside this cage. My mind refused to believe it, but that gut
feeling seldom steered me wrong. To her, it was real. To me, it was…
Horrible.
As I kissed her, stabbed a hand into her hair, hiked her up my body, nipped at her lower lip hard enough to make her squeal, I felt the walls closing in around us again. What was real to her resonated in me, yet it damned us both. For now that she was mine, I longed to keep her. Only this place suffocated all who dwelled within. The mountain would kill her—and being without her would be a slow, painful death for me. The longer she stayed, the more real it would become for both of us… and the more depressed she would get.
Misery loved company, sure, but I couldn’t watch her suffer forever.
Eventually, I would find an out.
And by then, we would be so deep in real that parting would be akin to Ragnarok. It would scar us, torment us, possibly even break us.
In the end, this was a lose-lose situation, and if I were a stronger man, a better man, I’d put a stop to it now while I had the chance.
No one had ever called me strong before—or good, for that matter. So I kissed her back, matching her ferocity and running with it. Overpowering her. Consuming her. Holding tight, keeping her head above water, I kicked us over to the side of the lake and pressed Nora up against the smooth stone at its edge. Pinned there, she writhed against me, gloriously bare, her mouth hungry and her hands brutal in my hair, along my neck. Nails dug into my shoulders. Fingers ripped at my soaked shirt. Together, we wrenched down my trousers, her hands teasing my engorged cock, and when I pushed into her, driving all the way home in a single thrust, my firebird sang.
Her moans soared over the roaring water, the trundling falls, and I braced myself as best I could on the stone, toes clutching, hands gripping the dry shoreline. The first rock of my hips had her whimpering, just as the first clench of her cunt had me seeing stars. Nora clung to me so tight, her arms cuffed around my neck, that she choked me; I pumped harder, faster, driving her into the stone with a savagery that should have frightened her.
Should have sent her running.
Nora endured, arching up to meet me, stabbing her heels into my lower back. She cried my name against my skin, poured all her little noises into my mouth. Her teeth sunk into my shoulder, into the wiry tendon that flickered in my neck. She was ferocious and beautiful. A mere flash in the passage of time, her life fleeting, but somehow in my arms, she felt ancient, eternal…
Mine.
Completely, wholly, thoroughly mine.
She came shortly after I stopped pounding into her and ground my hips to her molten center instead, working her inside and out just how I knew she liked. Months ago, she had fought this—oblivion, the pleasurable abyss my touch offered. Now, she chased it, shuddering and trembling, writhing her hips as she crested another climax.
“It’s real for me,” she hissed, eyes shut, body shaking and on the verge of snapping. “I-is it real for y-you?”
I twisted my fist in her hair, yanked her head back and bared her neck, unable to look her in the eye as I muttered, “Yes, firebird.”
“Louder.”
“You don’t order a god—”
“Louder!” Her voice struck me with the might of a hurricane. Splayed out before me, my sacrificial lamb, Nora proved herself a lioness—not for the first time, most assuredly not for the last…
And that only made me crave her more.
I’d spent centuries with lovers who never challenged me, never defied me. Sweet and meek, loyal and earnest and quiet. Docile. Obliging. I had love for them in my own ways; Sigyn had been my closest ally until the end, but perhaps I had never been in love before. Not like this. Not until her.
Nora dared to command me. Shamelessly, she set the tone—pushed my boundaries, thrilled me to my core. As much as I dominated her body when we fucked, bent her over tables, tied her to the bed, roughly collared her throat as she came with me laughing in her ear… She was in control. She let me do it, all that I wanted, all that I needed to with her.
No one had ever given me that before.
Trust.
Warped, fucked-up, unfettered trust born from tragedy.
I gritted my teeth, driving into her furiously, mountain runoff splashing around us. Why did the thought of trust set me on the edge? The realization nearly made me explode inside her, but I fucked her through another climax that made her eyes roll back in her head.
“Yes,” I snarled. Yes, you relentless creature—it was real to me. And it would destroy us.
Nora smiled, the stretch of her mouth victorious. “Loki, I can’t h-hear you—”
“Yes, it’s real,” I bellowed, pumping harder and harder until I shattered. Pleasure hit me like a falling star, and I splintered apart in her arms. Releasing her hair, I buried my face in her neck, shuddering and jerking into her embrace.
And Nora Olsen, my firebird, readily welcomed me home.
In the aftermath, the mountain water cooled me, its chill a constant in my world. But she was warm. And soft. And mine.
So I held her just as she held me. I propped her up against the lake’s edge, making a mental note in my pleasure-addled brain to heal her as soon as we climbed out. Her back and hips had taken the brunt of brutal lovemaking, our first true union as lovers, everything out in the open now.
Through the haze, a wretched, sneering little voice reminded me that I had damned us to heartache. This could only end badly, whether she ever escaped this awful place or not.
But I just held her closer and breathed her in. Eyes closed, I cradled the back of her head in my hand, and my skin prickled as she dragged a lazy finger up and down my neck. Fear could wait until tomorrow. For the moment, this was real to both of us—and I intended to make the most of it before everything went to shit.
25
Nora
Four months in here. September loomed on the horizon, and there was no end in sight.
Even with the laptop to connect me to the outside world, even with Loki’s company, our relationship strengthening, deepening, the longer we relied on each other in here—it wasn’t enough. I was drowning every fucking day. Stir-crazy. Bored. Frustrated. Angry. Depressed. Isolated. Solitary confinement was a goddamn death sentence, and Loki had to sit here waiting for a death that would never come. It wasn’t fair. None of it. Not the way I felt about him, that I cared for him, ached for him—all the while knowing that this place would eventually break us.
Knowing that my life was fucked from here on out, whether I was stuck inside his cage or not.
And it just…
It hurt.
A lot.
Waking up each morning, even with the varied routines we had in place to keep things fresh, to allow us both some personal space throughout the week before falling back into bed together… Torture. Ongoing torture, day in and day out.
Today was a Wednesday. After marking my little line on the ground in the calendar corridor, I had set off for my midweek hike of the mountain’s innards. Loki occasionally accompanied me, but I’d left him with one of his latest hobbies: sourdough bread. He liked to bake it from scratch, nursing the cheesy-vinegar-smelling base throughout the week so that he could whip up an exquisite loaf from scratch. Baking had been considered women’s work back in his day, but Loki had done just about everything else in here; confinement certainly expanded one’s horizons, especially when there was nothing else to do, when you had literally done everything else under the sun.
So, this morning, I hiked alone, hair damp from my quick dip in the lake after breakfast, thighs aching from last night’s bout of punishing, perfect sex with a god who played my body like he had a PhD in it. Feet bare, wearing a pair of slouchy olive yoga pants and a shapeless white tee, I padded along the familiar paths, used to the darkness now. Four months later, one hundred and twenty-two days inside, I knew the twists and turns like the back of my hand. I knew what to avoid, what would support me if I felt adventurous enough to climb and inspect the nooks higher up the walls. I knew where the path dropped off and wh
ich steep corridors made my thighs burn if I bothered to walk them.
It was always the same, but occasionally there was comfort in routine.
Only life had become much, much too routine for my liking.
For Loki’s, too.
He kept his shit together better than me, but he also had way more practice at surviving in here—alone, forgotten, the world spinning on without you.
Had anyone started looking for me yet? Did they even notice I was gone?
My fleeting glimpses of social media suggested not. Everyone had their own lives, their own problems—and I factored into neither.
Stupid Scandinavia trip. I’d told the few friends I considered near and dear these days that I’d be off the grid, mending my broken heart and grieving for Opa. My Danish cousins had insisted I just let them know whenever I was ready to visit; enjoy your trip, see you when we see you. Of course they weren’t worried about me… I was off backpacking and living the good life, right?
Teeth gritted, I tried not to think about that, just one of many invasive thoughts that were always such fucking downers if I stayed on them for too long. Instead, I took a tunnel that dipped down and around, bringing me along the base of the mountain, one that would eventually lead me to pools full of black, glittering water that I’d never dipped so much as a toe in. Loki had suggested not to, and even without all the information, who was I to doubt him? But the pools were weirdly pretty, and the air was always cooler down there. Trailing my fingers along the smooth stone wall, I drifted along, in no hurry to get anywhere fast, and then—
“Ow, ow, ow—god fucking damn it,” I snapped, pain blooming in my pinky toe when it snagged on the little bit of rock that jutted out into the shadowy corridor. This wasn’t the first time it’d nearly torn my toe off, and it probably wouldn’t be the last; I always underestimated how deep into the tunnel it was situated, so every motherfucking time, it caught me by surprise.
Hopping a few paces forward on one foot, I braced myself on the wall and gripped my screaming toe. It would settle in a few minutes, like always, but I still whipped around to glare at the offending rock—like always…
