by Amy Sumida
“What?” I stared at him dumbfounded.
“I called to her, to stop her from killing you and when I asked you for the same mercy, you took her head.”
“I would have shown mercy,” I held my hand out to him. “I would have done it for you, even though I knew she’d come back and try to kill me again. I’d have spared her for you but when I drew away, she used the distraction. She tore into my thigh wound. I tried to show mercy and she tried to kill me.”
“Her tearing into your leg would not have killed you,” he shook his head like he was disappointed I’d try to lie to him.
“Damn you, Thor!” I screamed and he narrowed his eyes on me. They flashed with lightning and it hurt me to see it was in anger instead of passion. “I’d been losing blood from that wound for awhile by the time she tore into it. If I’d gone without healing any longer, I’d have bled out. I’m not a goddess. I can’t heal myself.”
“No, you’re not a goddess,” he said it coldly, like my DNA explained all my traitorous shortcomings. It felt like a punch to the gut, low and breath-stealing.
I knew then that he needed someone to blame, someone to lay his guilt on because it was too much for him to carry. He’d chosen me for two reasons. First, I was the most obvious choice and second, by punishing me, he punished himself. Two birds, one stone. Two broken hearts, one shattered love.
Sif had won after all.
I felt my face go cold. The chill spread down through me and over my skin like a fever in reverse. My throat constricted around the screams of denial that tried to rise up as my exhausted body began to shake.
Deep inside, I heard the echoes of my doubts. I told myself I’d been right all along. How could I have expected this to work? Even after all we'd been through, I wasn’t good enough for him. I was so stupid to trust him, to believe he could love me completely. No one ever loved you more than they loved themselves. That’s just the way it is. I told myself all those horrible, hateful things I always tell myself when things don’t work out and then when I felt cold enough, strong enough, angry enough, I looked him in the eye.
“I want to be very clear with you, Thor. This is one of those moments you'll never be able to take back,” I swallowed hard and steeled myself even further. I already knew how this would end, knew the answer to my question, but I still had to ask. “If we end this here, we're over for good. You told me just days ago that you'd love me no matter what tried to hinder that love. If you turn that into a lie, I will never forgive you. No second chances this time, no dream visits, I will block my connection to you like I did with Blue. You and I will never be together again. So, I'm only going to ask you this once. Are we done?”
“Yes,” he whispered. A bare breath of sound over the thin slash of his lips, but it sounded loud and clear to my ears.
I nodded curtly and walked out. When I closed the door quietly, I closed my mind tightly against him along with it. For a second I thought I heard him crying but I closed my ears to him as well and went to find Nick. My chest felt cold, like the ice from my expression had spread down to my heart, and I rubbed at it distractedly. One tiny word had changed my life. How odd.
I found Nick sleeping in one of the spare rooms. He opened one eye when I picked him up, giving a soft mew of discontent when I laid him in his carrier. I headed for the door but my reflection in the mirror over the dresser caught my attention.
I walked over and looked the hard-faced stranger over. Even in my feminine white dress, my hair held up with my lightning hair-sticks, I looked like a stone-cold killer. What should have been frightening, was how much I liked it.
I reached up and pulled out the lightning bolts. My hair tumbled down around me like my life was, brisk and heavy. I ran my hand over the sharp point of a hair-stick and wondered if it would have been any worse if I'd killed Sif with Thor's gift instead of her own sword. No, I decided, things couldn't get much worse between us.
I’ve never been one to chuck things out just because I didn’t like the guy who gave them to me. By the same token, I wasn’t one to give things back out of spite either but when I looked in the mirror and saw the scar running down my neck, the lightning bolt Thor had given me to cover Blue's bite, I knew the matching thunderbolt sticks would hurt me more than any enemy I used them against. I couldn’t take them with me. It was bad enough I had to bear his mark. I left them sitting on the dresser.
If only I could have left the remains of my heart with them.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke up and for a few blessed moments, I was in a confused half-state where I didn't know my life had taken a terrible turn off the strange path I'd been stumbling down. Then I remembered.
I braced myself for the pain but there wasn't any. I'd started this road knowing it would be a lonely journey. It was hard to get close to a man when most of your time was taken up killing things he didn't believe existed. Then came Thor and although he was perfect for my lifestyle, he was immortal and I had no delusions of our relationship being permanent. I couldn't grow old with a man while he stayed young. It was just too depressing.
Thor always insisted that things could change. That even though you were one thing today, it didn't mean you'd be the same tomorrow. It implied too many things for me to consider and so I hadn't allowed myself to consider them. I wasn't sure I wanted to live forever, even if it was possible. There's a reason life is short.
And sometimes there's a reason relationships are short. Sometimes the best relationships aren't the longest ones. I needed to appreciate the time I had with Thor and treasure the good memories while I moved on to make some new ones with someone else.
So I pushed back the covers and got out of bed with a surprising lack of heartache. Partly because I'd been expecting me and Thor to end, and partly because I was just plain numb from the cold that had settled over my heart.
I pondered the cold as I wandered into my kitchen and started the coffee. I loved Thor, didn't I? The last time we broke up, I'd wallowed in my heartache until I finally became sick of it. Where was that heartache now? Why wasn't I wallowing? Maybe once was enough for me to wallow over a man. Or maybe it was because this time it wasn't my fault. It made things so much easier when you could blame someone else.
The only problem was, it made my view on relationships even worse than it had already been. Trevor had been saying all the right things to me the night before but under my current wave of cynicism, his words looked contrived. He was saying what I needed to hear so he could swoop in and snatch me up when I was vulnerable.
My inner wolf began a whining protest at these thoughts but I blocked her out, my Nahual snarling her into submission. The wolf was biased, coming as she did from Trevor. Everything male was suspect from this point on, as far as I was concerned. Well, everything male except Nick.
My cat crawled up into my lap when I curled up on the sofa with my coffee. He was the only safe boy in my world and I think that largely had to do with the fact that he couldn't talk. Who knows what kind of mischief he could get into with a vocabulary. I stroked him as I sipped my coffee but a knock at my front door disrupted his peace and Nick went scrambling away.
I leaned over and pulled back the white gauze lining my living room walls(my Moroccan themed living room was draped like a tent) and then peered out the crack between the panels of the black-out curtain covering my picture window. It was Trevor. I let the gauze fall back into place and continued to serenely sip my coffee.
The knock came again, louder. I got up and went into the kitchen. I just couldn't deal with Trevor. His earnest eyes and pretty words would be too much for me to take. I'd probably hurt his feelings within five minutes flat and then end up feeling bad about it.
Another knock.
“Vervain,” he called, “I know you're home, so just open the door.”
I shook my head as I rooted through my fridge for breakfast.
“Minn Elska, I can feel your pain. Let me comfort you.”
I was nearly mad enoug
h to open the door for that one. It was an obvious lie since I wasn't experiencing any pain. Here was solid proof that Trevor was just playing a part to get into my bed. What did he think, that I'd be so impressed by our link that I'd go running into his arms? Too bad he hadn't counted on me being completely frigid.
“I'm not leaving till you let me in,” Trevor persisted.
“Then you can rot there, for all I care,” I muttered as I headed back into my bedroom with a carton of spumoni ice cream and a spoon.
The last thing that was going to endear him to me was stubbornness. I needed to be alone. I needed to figure out what I was going to do next. I needed to decide if I still cared enough about mankind to keep fighting the fight. I needed to find out what the bottom of the ice cream carton looked like.
Chapter Eighteen
I was lying in my bed staring at the intricate carvings of its ceiling. Yes, my bed had its very own ceiling. The walls of my Chinese wedding bed were carved with dancing images of dragons and phoenixes, the carvings going straight through so the walls were more like lattice, allowing for air flow. It's like a tiny room unto itself and being in that lush space, smelling lightly of the sandalwood oil I used to polish it, made me feel safe. Normally. At the moment, I felt nothing. I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel unsafe either. I didn't feel anything.
How odd.
I stared at a particularly complex carving as I tried to work out my lack of emotion. Was this something I'd done consciously or had it happened all on its own, a response to overwhelming emotional stimulus? I didn't know and frankly, Scarlet, I didn't give a damn. I huffed and got myself out of bed.
I hadn't painted anything in weeks and I still had to make a living. Godhunting was a full-time business but it didn't pay the bills and I had a kitty mouth to feed. So I trudged into my art studio and put a canvas on the easel. Then I sat down and stared at it.
I scratched my nose.
I picked up a paintbrush.
I put it down.
I riffled through my tray of paint tubes.
I poured some turpentine.
Some linseed oil.
Even the familiar smell of the paint, turpentine, and oil didn't spark my creativity. I just continued to sit there like a useless shell of an artist. I would have panicked if I hadn't been so devoid of feeling. As it was, I just continued to sit there, wondering why I couldn't seem to get the paint onto my palette. much less the canvas. I was an uninspired artist and I was going to be homeless and starving if I didn't get my act together but I still didn't care.
I don't know how long I sat there staring at the white rectangle of limitless possibility without a single possibility entering my head but the light had changed in the room, the shadows darker and longer, when a soft sound invaded the quiet. Why was Bibbity Bobbity Boo playing through my house?
Oh right, my ringtone. My cell was ringing. Maybe I should get it. Hmmm, that would mean I'd have to stand up. I really didn't care who was calling me, so I just sat there and let it ring. After awhile, my butt started to get sore from the wood stool so I went back to bed. My bed may not hold the same secure sense of safety it had before but it was still more comfortable than the stool.
I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
“Vervain?”
“Hmmm?”
“Vervain.”
“What?” I groaned and rolled over in bed to squint at the crack of light shining from the door.
“Miss V, we've been calling you for days and you haven't picked up the phone,” a disembodied voice said.
“I'm busy, go away,” I burrowed back into the warm blankets.
“Uh-uh, shu-ug,” it persisted. “You're getting up.”
Something tore my blankets from me, so I opened my eyes and blinked till I was able to make out Jackson's face framed by the bed's opening. Tristan was standing behind him, peeping over his shoulder with a frown. Part of me thought I should be angry at the rude awakening but I couldn't muster up the feeling. I just huffed and closed my eyes. I could make do without the blankets.
“Vervain Lavine!” Jackson shouted and I sat upright in shock. “Get out of this bed, this instant!”
“Alright, alright,” I grumbled as I crawled out the opening. “You don't have to get so snappy about it.”
“What's wrong with her?” I heard Tristan whisper.
“I don't know,” Jackson looked me up and down critically.
“I think I might,” a gruff voice came from behind Tristan. The boys parted to let Trevor through. “I never thought of the consequences. I'm so sorry, Minn Elska,” he whispered as he touched my face with his fingertips. “All I wanted was to save you the pain.”
“What did you do?” I wasn't even curious, it just seemed to be my part of the script.
“I used our connection to take away your pain,” Trevor's perfect forehead was creased with thick lines. I poked at them distractedly and he took my hand. “But you're still human and I didn't realize it would have a different effect on you. Instead of me feeling your pain for you, I've been taking all your emotions. You don't feel anything, do you?”
“Nope,” I shrugged.
“Well you can just put them back then,” Tristan had a hand on his hip. “And how the hell did you do that anyway? Is this one of those god things?”
“Yes, and I will put them back but I'd like to try to prepare her first,” Trevor pushed me gently down on the edge of the bed. “Minn Elska, you've had three days of total emotional silence. When I give you back your feelings, it's going to be a shock. I want you to just focus on my face and hold onto me if you need to. Okay?”
“Okay,” I didn't see what the big deal was.
Then they hit.
It was like coming out of a coma in the middle of an amusement park. The world was suddenly a whirling, screaming, sticky-sweet, musky, kaleidoscope of colors, sounds, scents, and tastes. Without my feelings my senses had been dulled, so it was the physical things I noticed first. Everything was sharper, brighter. I could see flecks of green in Trevor's honey-eyes. I could hear his uneven breathing like a rushing wind. My nose filled with his spicy musk and my tongue curled in distaste over three days worth of bad breath. I really needed to brush my teeth.
Before I could get up to go to the bathroom, the emotions hit. The baddest of the bad hit first. I screamed and fell against Trevor. His arms were strong around me, his hands stroking my hair, and he was muttering soft things into my ear.
I could barely breathe, the pain was so intense. Could a heart explode from sorrow? Mine felt like it had but I knew it was still there, still beating, because I could hear the pounding in my ears. No wait, that was Trevor's heartbeat, maybe my heart really was just a pile of mush.
Another bout hit and I screamed again. There were more hands on me, more soothing voices, and slowly they seeped through. I let out a shaky breath as the pain receded and I was able to think again. But like the ocean against the shore, my emotions kept hitting me in waves.
Next was anger and my Nahual responded to it, if the snarl that came from my lips was any indication. Trevor went still against me but it wasn't him I was angry at. It wasn't for anyone really, it was just mine. Pent up in Trevor for so long, my anger had finally come home and it was reveling in the freedom. My muscles tensed, my teeth clenched, and my nails dug into my palms.
Thankfully, control came in right on its heels and I was able to wrestle my anger down to the floor. Didn't know control was an emotion? Think about how you feel when some idiot driver nearly hits you on the freeway and then speeds off without even realizing it. You control the urge to chase them down and run them off the road but it costs you. That rolling, sour, clenching is the feeling of control.
I welcomed it though. I needed it to get through the rest of the onslaught of emotions pouring from Trevor into me. Fear was next and I went from near murderous rage to cowering in a corner of the bed. Trevor held the boys back when they would have chased me. H
e knew on an instinctual level, to never approach the cornered victim. He let me have my space and just continued to coach me gently.
“Keep breathing, Minn Elska,” he urged. “It will pass. There's nothing to be afraid of. Your friends are here, your mate is here. We love you and we won't let anything bad happen to you.”
My breath was coming in fast pants and my attention shot from one man to the next rapidly as I tried to keep them each in my sight. Then my pulse started to slow and a faint glimmer of hope started to sparkle through. My heart still hurt but I knew it was mending. I knew I'd make it through this pain. There would be much more life for me to live and maybe someone wonderful to live it with. I looked at Trevor with new eyes.
I would have reached for him, crawled over to him, but the next emotion to come home was doubt and if there was one thing doubt was good at, it was smashing hope to bits. I shrank back into the corner but Trevor sensed the difference and pursued me this time. He took my face in his hands and met my suspicious gaze.
“Stay with me, Minn Elska,” his eyes were spilling tears. “I've lived with these emotions for three days now. I know how rough they are but you're stronger, you're tougher. You're going to be just fine.”
“You'll leave just like the rest,” I whispered the accusation but it cut the silence to the quick. “You might as well do it now. I don't need you and I don't want to.”
“No,” he smiled patiently. “I will never leave you. I'm your mate. You have a part of my soul inside you.” He held his hand over my chest and I felt the wolf rise inside me to greet him. “I will be your solace, your foundation, your safety net, anything you need me to be, and I will always be here for you. That's what it means to be a mate.”
Doubt fled under the light of conviction in Trevor's eyes and relief poured in. I crumpled into his arms and he caught me, my self-proclaimed safety net. I cried and he held me as the softer emotions returned and I became whole again. At some point, I heard the boys say goodbye and I mumbled a response back but the emotional journey didn't let up till the witching hour. By the time I could fully feel again, I was completely exhausted. Trevor and I slept curled around each other, like the true mates he wanted us to be.
