by Loki Renard
The Bad God Wins
Possessive Gods, Book Two
Loki Renard
Copyright © 2020 by Loki Renard
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
The Tied - Possessive Gods Book Three
More From Loki
1
Tanuk
There is something about innocence which just begs to be corrupted.
I’m not usually given to philosophical musings while on a mission of long awaited revenge, but the sight of my prey makes me stop and think and enjoy. I take a sip from my golden chalice and lean against a pillar as I stand among the swirling crowd and watch the pretty little princess make her way through the revelers. She thinks nobody is watching. She’s wrong. The other gods may be drunk on power and lust, awaiting the arrival of the golden girl heralded as the jewel of Okeanus, but I can’t take my eyes off the dark haired beauty. She goes out of her way not to be noticed, moving behind people, avoiding eye contact with them. She doesn’t want to be seen. But I see her. I see every bit of her.
She is a stunning study in shadows. I let my eye linger over her curvaceous form. She’s tried to hide it in the dark gown she has chosen, but that only makes her generous swelling all the more enticing. I want to tear that dress from her. I want her spread bare for me. But I must be patient. Even a house cat knows that there is a time to pounce, and a time to wait.
I happen to cast a glance into a reflective ice sculpture nearby. I am not quite myself this evening. They would never have let me in if I was. I smile and my image shimmers. Usually I have dark eyes and a suave smile, the appearance of a young, fit man. Tonight I am hiding in plain sight as a horned beast with cloven hooves and a pointed tail. They’d let the devil in before they allowed me to pass over their threshold. Of course, it doesn’t really matter what I look like to them. It only matters what I look like to her. To her, I will be every bit of myself. It is the only way to claim true vengeance.
They tried to keep me out with their walls and their single guardian. They have learned nothing from the human traditions they now seek to embrace. For thousands of years, storybook kings and queens have been scorning witches and various supernatural beings at birthday parties. The monarchs always think that you can keep ill will out simply by excluding it. They are always wrong, and yet they never learn.
I am no irritable fairy godmother, or vexed local witch. I am something much, much worse. I am a very bad god, and I have come with revenge in my heart. I have come with righteous anger. I have come to take what is theirs — and make it mine.
Just a few minutes earlier…
Helios
Swirling crowds, music, and merriment fill the halls of my home. None of them were here yesterday and none of them will be here tomorrow. I do not open my home to other gods, not without great cause, but tonight the combined demands of both my cherished daughters and their rather insistent mother have led to a ball in honor of their shared eighteenth birthdays.
I find myself smiling as I watch over the congregated gods in their finery. This is more than a mere birthday party. This is the first gathering of almost every single god on Okeanus in more than a hundred years. They have come to pay their respects, and no doubt, to marvel at the majesty of my palace. There are many fine works of art on display, but none so beautiful as my human lover, and our demigoddess daughters who turn eighteen this very night.
For many years we have watched them grow, loved them, and protected them viciously. Now we parents are spread throughout this gathering according to our character.
I am at the top of the staircase, looking out over the party from on high. Keeping a high vantage point is a habit I’ve developed over the years. It is where I am most comfortable, where I can see what is happening in the thick of the action.
Ragnar stands as sentinel at the gates. He shows no sign of excitement on his rough face. Not a single flicker of a smile dares break across his stony expression though I know he is as proud of our girls as we all are.
From my perch, I can hear our daughters bickering in their room. They have been arguing from the moment they learned to talk, before, if you believe their mother’s interpretation of their behavior. I had hoped they would grow out of it by now, but it may take more than merely turning eighteen to make them mature.
Their mother, Rael, the love of my eternal life, comes sweeping up the stairs. I can hardly believe it has been eighteen years since she gave birth to our babies. She is as fresh and radiant as ever, her bright mane of red hair marks her in any crowd as my queen.
“This,” Rael says. “Is a meat market.”
“What does that no-doubt delightful human expression mean?”
“It means these gods, and some goddesses too, no doubt, came to vie for marriage to our daughters.”
“That is not happening. They are far too young.”
She gives me a knowing look. “Eighteen is not too young. It is time the girls spread their wings. We cannot keep them locked up forever. They are just as interested in the potential suitors here tonight, you know.”
“I do not know. I make it my business not to know,” I declare. There are some things a father and a king does not want to think about, and the idea of some lustful god putting his paws on either of our daughters is one of them.
“Where are our daughters?”
“Getting dressed, I believe.”
“They’re still not ready?”
“Apparently not,” I say, dropping a kiss on her lips as she sweeps herself into my arms. She is radiant tonight, just as she is every night.
“I’ll see if I can hurry them along,” she says. “Though you know Lucy…”
Raine
I wish I didn’t know Lucy. I wish I hadn’t been born a twin at all. My life would have happened about ten times faster if I didn’t have to spend this much time waiting for her.
“Would you hurry up?”
The party started an eternity ago, and Lucy can’t decide on a dress. I’ve been ready since before the guests arrived, but I can’t go out on my own, because then I’d get all the glory, according to Lucy. So I’m trapped here in a never-ending sea of gowns, which all look more or less the same to me, until Lucy decides she looks the prettiest she has ever looked.
“You’re radiant,” I tell her. That’s her favorite compliment. It almost always gets her unstuck from her fashion crises. Almost.
“This is the most important night of our lives. We’re going to meet everybody for the first time. All the gods are here.”
“I don’t think all the gods are here. I think some of them are, and probably fewer all the time if we don’t leave this room.”
“They’ve waited eighteen years to meet us. They can wait another two hours.”
“It has been three hours,” I mutter, more to myself than to her. She’s not listening anyway.
Stuck waiting, I take some grapes from a dish and eat them. There is a pile of dresses of all colors and sheens,
styles and fabrics on the bed in front of Lucy. I am wearing a black dress. It is black, and it fits my body and that is about the limit of my interest in it.
We could not be more different, Lucy and I. We share the same mother, but different fathers. It’s not easy growing up with the daughter of the sun as your twin sister, especially when your own father insists on you being modest and Norse about everything.
If Ragnar were in charge of this party, it would be over already, but this is really Helios’ party. Lucy knows very well that there will be no consequences, no matter how late she makes us. Helios indulges her in her every whim.
Ragnar is nothing like Helios. He’s always so hard on me. Our mother says they both love us equally, but only one of us got a winged pony for our tenth birthday while only one of us was forced to climb Yggdrasil before being told that the reward was the journey.
Lucy smiles at me, her teeth glowing just like her eyes. Everything about her is incredible. She is tall, willowy, gorgeous. On her sixteenth birthday there was a contingent of centaurs who claim trying to mate with her. Helios has had to ban all four hooved creatures from the island, aside from the ones he bred himself.
I do not have that problem. I am much shorter than her, and what my mother calls ‘curvier’, though we both know she means heavier. Ragnar tells me it’s muscle, that his bloodline produces strong warriors, but no teenage girl wants the physical appearance of a brute force warrior.
“Come along, girls,” my mother says sweetly as she enters the room. I know why she’s here. She’s come to hurry us up, because contrary to what Lucy thinks, the whole world doesn’t actually revolve around her.
“I am along,” I sigh as Lucy disappears into the bathing chamber to get some part of her body wet.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” My mother is a great beauty in her own right. Both Helios and Ragnar are absolutely head over heels in love with her. I’m the only female in my family no man is interested in.
“Nothing.”
I can’t tell her. She’d just tell me that I’m beautiful when we both know that’s not true. If it wasn’t for tweezers I’d have brows to rival Ragnar.
“I shouldn’t be going to this party. It’s pointless. I won’t have a single suitor.”
“That’s because of your father.”
“Because I’m ugly like him.”
“No. You’re not ugly, and nor is he. It is because suitors are terrified he will rip them limb from limb.”
“Helios can be scary….” I can’t even finish the sentence. Helios is the nicest guy in the universe. That’s why Lucy has never gotten into trouble in her entire life.
“Don’t worry, Raine,” she says. “Your man will come when you are ready, and eighteen is not ready. You and Lucy should be having fun, going to see the world. Okeanus is a big place, and there is much for you to learn.”
“You had me when you were close to my age.”
“I was twenty-two,” she says. “That’s four years away. Plenty of time for you to find someone who isn’t afraid of your father.”
I laugh. I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t afraid of Ragnar. My father and Helios rule this island, and all of Okeanus. We are the princesses of the royal gods, titles which probably should have gotten us more attention than we’ve received over the years. To say we have been kept from the other gods is an understatement. We've been barely allowed to leave the golden palace. Occasionally we thought we’d left, only to find that Helios had opened up another wing for us to explore. This relatively small island has been the absolute limit of our explorations.
But now we are eighteen. And that, my mother says, is the age we get to start making decisions for ourselves. I have my doubts about that. I don’t see what difference a birthday makes. It won’t make Ragnar less unnecessarily protective, and it won’t stop Lucy from being the most beautiful goddess in all Okeanus.
“I’m going to help Lucy do whatever it is Lucy is attempting to do,” my mother says. “Perhaps the guests will be able to leave before morning.”
She disappears into the bathing chamber and a moment later, Helios taps on the door, then sticks his head in.
“Girls, are you still not ready?”
“I’m ready,” I say.
Helios doesn’t really hear me. He listens to Lucy more than he does me. He’d swear he doesn’t play favorites. That we are both his daughters, but we have always known which of my mother’s lovers is our particular father.
“I’ll be ready soon,” Lucy smiles brilliantly as she emerges from the bathing chamber. She and Helios share the same incredible smile, the same bright golden hair. Lucy has a glow about her which cannot be replicated by anyone who is not the daughter of Helios, god of the sun.
“Alright, sweetie,” Helios says, closing the door again.
My mother follows him out shortly thereafter.
The second we are alone, Lucy hurls the dress she is wearing off her body.
“I have absolutely nothing to wear.”
“Your ancestors were clad in the stars and the sky,” I say. “Maybe you could just go naked.”
She gasps, her eyes widening as if I just said something of such pure genius she can’t contain her excitement.
“You’re right! I’ll just go out there like this. In my birthday suit.”
I should stop her. I should, but I want to go to the party, and I know what Lucy wants: attention. She’ll get all of it by going out there stark nude, and I’ll get what I want: this whole thing over as quickly as possible.
I want to be at Yggdrasil, below the branches and leaves, catching the moon glow through their dappled leaves. It would be quiet there. I’d have peace, instead of going out to be stared at by strangers with dubious intentions.
“Let’s go!” Lucy sashays over to the doors, throws them open, and proceeds to step out onto the top of the stairs, presenting herself with a fanfare of trumpets which ring out at her appearance.
“OOOOH! AHHH!” The crowd reacts much as one might expect them to react at the sight of a beautiful virgin baring herself to them without shame. Lucy has always had the confidence her beauty imparts. She has never been afraid to go anywhere, or do anything.
Now she begins to descend toward a swarm of forgotten gods, taking the stairs one slow step at a time, twisting her body to make the most of the display. Her long hair covers some of her breasts and sex, but not all of it. The golden cascade sweeps back and forth, playing peekaboo with her privates until…
“NO!” A rough growl cuts through the noise of the crowd and the triumphant trumpets. Ragnar bursts through the gods, drops a cape over Lucy’s shoulders, and sends her upstairs with a swat to her behind.
Lucy’s yowl of annoyance is music to my ears.
“What are you doing!? Helios doesn’t care!” she screeches the appeal to her golden father, who has done absolutely nothing to intervene.
“Helios does care,” Ragnar growls. “Put a damn dress on.”
And there goes the Lucy show. Nobody is going to notice me for the next few hours at least. I’d thank her, but my eardrums would probably shatter from her indignation which is reaching levels high enough to make bats fall from the sky even though it is now contained behind stone walls.
I’m starving.
Nobody notices me as I slip downstairs and head to the tables decked with rich foods which most of the gods ignore because there are really only three people here who actually need to eat. Myself, my mother, and the nude wench upstairs who is complaining my father embarrassed her by making her wear clothes.
Lucy has never been comfortable with consequences. She floats through life being adored by everybody. Even Ragnar, who would flail me alive if I came downstairs naked, simply put a cape on her and hurried her back up.
Fortunately, the food is excellent. The shrimp in particular is very good, and the accompanying sauce is delicious. I make my way along the tables ringing the outside of the room, picking at various treats. Some of them I recogniz
e. Some of them I don’t. I overhear various snippets of conversation as I go by.
“Beautiful. Whoever gets that girl is going to be lucky.”
“Can you imagine trying to control that one? It would be a full time job.”
“I’d keep her busy in the bedroom. And the garden. And the ocean and the…”
“She’s eighteen! What’s wrong with you?” I break into a conversation between two gods of something or other. They are aggressively male, but otherwise unremarkable.
“Who are you?” They look down their noses at me, mildly intrigued but also immediately dismissive.
“Raine.” I could say Princess Raine, but that has never felt right to me.
“Oh. The other one.”
The other one. Three words which sum up the way I have felt my entire life.
They turn and walk away, leaving me standing there, seething. I don’t know why our parents allowed this. It seems to me a perfect invitation to trouble. They’ve kept us under wraps almost all our lives. They’ve been very careful as to who we come in contact with, and now, on our eighteenth birthdays, they invite lies and lechery into our sanctum. Why?
I know why, of course. Lucy wanted a party, and what Lucy wants, Lucy gets.
At that moment, Lucy re-emerges from the bedroom. She is wearing a golden gown and an even brighter smile. She descends the stairs for a second time, and I watch as she becomes a golden vortex around whom the universe spins. Everybody wants to dance with her. Everybody wishes to speak with her. I am left in the shadows cast by Helios’ brilliance as the golden child gets her due.
“Don’t pay them any mind. They are lesser gods, so minor they were forgotten within hours of their own creation.”
A dark eyed god is suddenly standing beside me, right where I was certain a demon of some kind was standing a moment ago. It seems to me as though I blinked and he was replaced, but that does not startle me. Helios has a habit of appearing where he wants to without any kind of warning. It’s not a trait I usually find endearing, but I might make exception for this new fellow.
