Almost at the end of my prayer and I’m not dead. I crack my eye and try to see through a haze of pain.
Helreginn morphs again, shuddering. Freya is fighting her! I try to cheer and rasp. My throat fills with the hot copper taste of pennies. I’m drowning.
Freya and Helreginn struggle for seconds that feel like forever. Freya’s face appears inside the mask.
Helreginn drops to her knees, and her arm moves toward me haltingly, clearly against her will. Her touch wracks me with agony before golden light swells.
I’m whole. My agility and my wits snap into place.
I roll away, not sure how long Freya has.
Not long. Helreginn groans like ancient stones moving over each other.
I’m not giving her a chance to recover this time. I know what I have to do.
Duck, roll, dodge, to the faint wings on her back. She sways, not quite recovered. I close in.
Her spear comes up, moving to intercept, but she’s too slow. I rake my cold iron blade along her back as I pass, across the base of her wings.
Helreginn screams and folds. My blade tears something from her. I’m so relieved I almost sob.
Freya’s golden fragments rip from Helreginn, coalescing. She’s back, with me, panting on the ground.
“Freya!” I fall to my knees, one eye on Helreginn. Her back is to us while she shrieks fury into the heavens.
“Forbidden…forbidden...” Freya coughs, pale and shivering.
Helreginn lashes around. “I conscripted the trial by right of strength. Give her back.”
On my feet, sword leveled, I stand over Freya. How can I protect her? I have to try.
Helreginn steps forward and zips her spear.
I dodge, barely.
“No matter. I’ll remove you and claim my prize.”
Her spear swings again.
My blade clangs against its head. A shriek of metal and magic splits my mind and numbs my arms. I can’t keep this up. One more stab, two...
Her spear thrusts, not at me but angled for Freya. Aimed to pin her.
I can’t block Helreginn’s strike.
My body absorbs its inertia. It takes me through the stomach, devouring my flank.
But it misses Freya.
My screams deafen me. She withdraws for another stab, taking my guts with her.
Yield. It echoes from the mountains, from everywhere and nowhere. Freya’s risen behind me, eyes blazing. “You will not take me, Helreginn. You will not kill the aspirant.”
Helreginn strides a menacing step. “You cannot interfere with the trial. Those rules are older than the Temple.”
Freya touches me, eyes defiant and fixed on Helreginn.
“You broke those rules when you violated my realm, and the trial. I think our sins are equal.”
She pauses; nothing happens. “And it appears Cocidius agrees.”
Helreginn seems unfazed. “You are my prize, and I will have you.” Her spear stabs out so quickly I’m not ready to deflect.
I don’t need to. Freya flows around the spear somehow and grips Helreginn, fingers hardly wrapping around Helreginn’s wrist.
What is she doing?
They struggle in a silent dance of two impossibly powerful creatures. “You broke the rules,” Freya says again. “This is justice.”
Helreginn twists, her entire frame creaking with the effort. I’m rooted, wondering if I should help or run from the impending fallout. Freya struggles too, sweat clinging to her forehead, her teeth grit.
Her body shakes, and she looks to the sky and screams.
Wings, golden and ethereal, erupt from her back, ripping her mantle apart. They sweep skyward, sable feathers and delicate lines that somehow radiate power.
Helreginn shrieks, bucking and failing.
Freya‘s fingers are blanched; she strangles Helreginn’s arm.
It shatters. Her spear drops to the snow.
Freya crumples.
I fall to my knees and gather her. Her wings dim against the snow and disappear.
“Now, Lir. Now.”
Helreginn has recovered. I have seconds. Even with a single arm, and no spear she’s terrifying. A goddess made of rock and blood.
My blood.
Her arm is a piston, so fast I can barely react. She strikes my sword away. It spins and splits my belly as it whirls away.
My knees buckle.
The game was always rigged. Helreginn is a goddess, and I’m a mortal bag of meat. She was never my challenge, wasn’t supposed to be here, and I’ll die because she broke the rules.
Where are you, Cocidius? Rage twists my last coherent thoughts. Why did you allow this?
I clutch my guts. The ropes of my entrails paint crimson swaths over the snow. Helreginn looms, her iron sandals at the edge of my blurring vision. She bends, and her cold fingers circle my throat. My hand smacks against the smooth mouth of her mask and pushes with all I have. It won’t be enough, but I have to try.
White hair strands of the fur at my elbow rustles. Why do I notice the movement? As my life ebbs away, small things enlarge. Even as I grit my teeth and struggle against Helreginn, I watch the fur. Two elegant legs flick out, then four, and eight.
The black velvet spider crawls from my furs, skittering the length of my arm. She’s nearly invisible against the black mask as she crawls.
She disappears into the eye socket.
It’s such a surreal last moment. Helreginn begins to crush me down.
I can’t get my blade in hand. It’s just out of reach; I claw with desperate fingers but that only pushes it away. I hold my breath and can’t form any coherent last thoughts. My bones have begun to crack.
Helreginn bellows. A battle cry. Victory.
But her grip loosens and some of the pressure leaves me. She lets go entirely. Another roar scrapes from her stone chest. She shudders, stumbles to her feet, making metallic animal sounds, and flings her head side to side.
I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter. I grab up her spear and with all I have, throw my weight forward. Its tip slips through silver like she’s made of water. Her sheen dulls. Helreginn moans from the depths of her soul. Cracks run like webs over her tarnish, and she shatters into countless pieces. A wind roars up from the valley and carries them away.
I collapse in Helreginn’s wake. A small black spider trundles over the ice, looking as though she’d rather not touch it. I flop out my hand. My last view of the mountain is her climbing onto me, nestling back into my furs.
Thank you.
The longhouse is beyond the edge of the steppe. I haven’t moved, but it sits where the mountain peak was before. My mind can’t accept this. I close my eyes.
Are there hands on me? No. Yes. Freya keeps a portion of the dead.
Heat suffuses my flesh, and strength. It’s almost too much.
Freya strokes my cheek until I can bear the change and open my eyes.
She shakes her head, eyes shining. “One hundred years. No one ever saves the spider. No one ever believes her life worth more than the bird’s.”
-Gardar-
We walk in silence back to the longhouse. I don’t know what to say, and I wonder if Freya is afraid of whatever it might be. In truth, I have nothing, right now. Need some time. What I’ve just been through is so far beyond the scope of anything I’d prepared for, was so much worse than I’d ever imagined...Thoughts are like dew on a leaf, and I trudge in silence, just existing.
I gather my pack while Freya gets me ale from the larder and fills a massive copper tub in a room beneath the stairs.
She leaves me to undress. My furs are so crusted with blood, in layers of black and crimson, that they hardly flex. My body beneath is no different than before I came to the temple. Childhood scars, battle scars, dodging my sword master with slow feet on a sleepy morning. I recognize them all, but they seem naked. I know how I should look now - I’ve seen enough corpses on the field - and it feels unnatural to look as unscathed as I do. My hands start t
o shake, and I close my thoughts.
Heat soothes away tension and ale numbs the memories just enough that sweat stops beading in my hair.
Freya comes back with a bath sheet and drapes it on a stool inside the door. Her mantle is gone. She’s dressed in that gauzy white robe again. My brother used to jest that nothing made a man want to fuck like battle – beforehand because he might die, and after because he’d won. I used to think he was an idiot half the time but, in this case…Despite everything else, she’s incredible, and after the steppes, there’s a connection between us. Not mental, like I feel with Meridiana. Something deeper, almost.
Self-conscious under her gaze, I tuck my knees to my chest. “Join me?”
Okay, I’m not that self-conscious.
“Oh, no. I don’t really...I don’t have a need for water. To drink it but–” Freya shakes her head.
“You don’t bathe?”
“I’m alicorn,” she laughs. “So, no. I have a lot of mortal flaws, but that’s not one of them.”
“No bathing. Huh.”
“Well, occasionally for pleasure, for relaxation. Just not for cleanliness.”
“This could be for pleasure.” I unfold my knees a little. Water laps over my cock like a tongue. Freya licks her lips, weighing my invitation and I start to harden. She’s so ethereal, so beautiful. I have no business even looking at her, but since this is what we’re supposed to do, I cut myself a break.
Her hand reaches back for the ties behind her neck. Then she stops. “On second thought, I’ll see you when you’re done.”
Her rejection hits me in the gut.
Freya stops in the doorway and turns back, looking like something occurred to her. “I’ll see you in my chamber.”
I’m out of the tub so fast it creates a small tidal wave that soaks the tail of my bath sheet.
She’s laughing when I slip in behind her. “I’m sorry. Making love in a bathtub is maybe lovely for mortals, who I assume do it from time to time. To me it sounds like making love stuck in a barrel.”
“That’s–” I nearly defend my position. But for one thing, I don’t want to admit to this gorgeous woman that I’ve had a fair share of bathtub sex, and on hearing her description I can’t say she’s wrong. It’s not the most accommodating arrangement. I like the look of her massive bed a whole lot more. “That’s a really good analogy.”
She unties her robe, eyes hot and hungry. “I’ve never seen a man who looks like you. Eyes so blue and hair so black.”
“You like that combination?” I’m a bit surprised. In my lands it’s nothing special. Women like my titles as much as my looks. Maybe more.
“I like a lot of things about you,” Freya admits almost shyly. “But after the trial…”
“It was true. You can heal during the fight.”
She nods. “But it’s against Cocidius’ rules. But when Helreginn broke them....”
“Are you the same being?”
“No! No. Helreginn keeps the corrupt dead. Alicorn are charged with tending the purer souls. She hunts us. Skillfully. I’m one of the last four.”
“She wasn’t possessing you.” I start to understand.
“No.” She shudders, and my hand is on her shoulder. “She was trapping me, to strip my soul. In the realms of the pantheon it’s worth a fortune unimaginable. When I was inside of her...” Her eyes deepen to cerulean and her face looks haunted when she says this. “What she tried to do was worse than rape, worse than death.” Her eyes are shining.
I want to comfort her, to take her pain. After she healed me, over and over, I want to do everything I can to care for her. And something about our shared pain, the misery of what we’ve been through, softens the horror I feel inside. Makes it manageable. “Hey. We stopped her.”
She looks up from beneath golden strands. “We did.”
“And now…”
She laughs, low, throaty, moves away from me. “Yes.”
She stands naked on the opposite side of the bed, vulnerable. Gods damn everything, she’s so beautiful. Her hair spills over her shoulders and parts to reveal the peaks of her breasts, high and mounded with firm, dusky nipples. Her belly is soft, hips full and taut. Every inch of her skin is gossamer. White-gold hair forms a delicate arrow between her thighs.
Freya arches one winged brow.
My cock is rock hard and obvious beneath the sheet. Her eyes follow mine and she bites down on a smile.
“I like a lot of things about you, too,” I admit, sounding so awkward.
“You have some unnatural tastes?”
She’s teasing me, but only a little. “Meaning?” I come around the bed slowly, savoring the hesitation in her eyes. I already know where it comes from, and that I can make it disappear.
“Four or so have passed through. Three perished in the garden after. But each of them found what I am...repulsive.” She seems to shimmer a moment, as if she exists in two places at once, and I see something else. A beast, magnificent, pure white, like a horse, but with glorious golden wings and a twined horn extending from her head.
It lasts a beat of my heart, and then it’s Freya again. Her face is pensive, waiting for my rejection. “As I said.”
“Repulsive? This?” I fit my palms to her hips. Her skin is so warm, smooth.
Her eyes close and she nods.
I slide my hands up her waist, cup her breasts and knead them. “This.”
Her lips part around a small gasp. “Mmm.”
Freya softens. I bury my fingers in the thick hair at her neck and taste the skin below her ear. Her slender fingers work between our bodies, brushing my chest. She undoes the tuck in my sheet and it drops.
I bend and draw a perfect nipple into my mouth. Freya flinches, and moans. “This?” I murmur between breasts.
Before she can answer, I thread my arms beneath hers and turn her to the bed. She falls to the furs, arms above her head and hair tumbling wildly. I drop to my knees between parted legs and caress her hips.
When I lean between her thighs, she presses a hand to my forehead, pushing. “No!”
“Yes.” I cradle her wrist and brush my lips over the soft skin of her inner thigh.
“Mortals have some vulgar habits I don’t understand.”
“You’ve never…?”
“No!”
I part her knees a little further. Freya wriggles up onto her elbows and peers down, watching. Despite her words, she’s excited, breath coming in little hitches. No pressure. Only the first time she’s ever done this.
Her pussy is long and slender beneath the snowy thatch. When I part her with my thumbs, her inner lips run like a dark pink ribbon between her thighs. Every part of her is incredible. Any man who doesn’t see that is a idiot who doesn’t deserve to touch her.
She tenses when I dip my head, and her thighs strangle my shoulders at the first flick of my tongue.
“Lir, I think–”
“I trusted you. Now trust me.”
She tries to wriggle further onto the bed. I clutch her hips, hold her and devour her with lips, tongue, even a gentle grazing with my teeth. Freya arches, tension enough to snap, and her fingers twist the short length of my hair. I don’t understand the words she pants, some long-forgotten language, but it sounds beautiful and vulgar, words breathless or staccato with each press or lick.
I want to feel her cum, do what no man ever has. I bury my tongue in her sweet soft folds and thrust. Working her clit with my thumb, I can feel the change, when Freya stops half-fighting me, half straining to orgasm. Her body goes limp in surrender and her heel kneads the muscles of my back.
She lashes me by the hair, my face buried in her pussy, and her cries reach fever pitch. She cums hot and wet on my face, sweet and musky, and I’ve never felt anything so good.
She tries to rise, but I’m not done. “Lir…” Her words end in a strangled moan as I suck her tiny clit, gently pulling it further and further from its protection. I give it a long, slow, lick. “Lir, Lir, LIRRRR,
” she breathes as I bring my tongue up slowly, again and again. Then I hear nothing, because her thighs clamp my head, as she loses control, body going rigid. As I bring her closer, I close my eyes, and my entire world is her pussy. I cannot hear, see, and all I smell and taste, feel, is her. My tongue, and her body.
I push deep inside right as she cums again, harder than before, drumming her heels into my back so hard I know they’ll leave bruises. I can hear her cries even through the flesh of her legs before she goes limp, trembling.
She gets onto her hands when I stand, flushed and breathless, tits bobbing softly. Her eyes are wide. “That was…”
I feel exactly the same way. “Yeah.”
“I think I’m starting to understand the appeal of such...vulgarity.” Freya brushes her hand up my chest and tips her face, inviting a kiss.
My lips are still wet from her pussy; she’s hesitant at first, tentative when she takes my bottom lip between her teeth and sucks. My cock aches on the edge of pleasure pain.
“Mmm.” Freya cups my face in her hands and kisses me hard. “There are still some things to learn about my mortal form.”
“You probably have no idea,” I promise, urging her onto the bed.
“I never coupled until I was human,” she admits, scooting to make room for me. “It was hideous. Like being trapped and savaged.” She shivers. “I’ve grown used to it.”
“That’s not enough. You shouldn’t just be used to it.” I settle on my back in the plush furs and tug her arm gently.
Freya looks at me with open confusion.
“Up. Sit here.” I pat my thighs.
She looks unconvinced. “I’ve never...is it pleasurable?”
“Definitely.” I tug her up to straddle my legs. “Whatever you want. You can touch, lick, take me inside. You have all the power.”
Her delicate fingers circle my cock. She’s slow but not hesitant; Freya has a good idea what she’s doing. I throb in her hand.
“Do you pleasure yourself?” I whisper, cupping one of her breasts while her hand drags a line of absolute pleasure up my shaft.
“In true form, we only feel the coupling urge for procreation. Sex for pleasure or pleasuring outside of sex...that’s a mortal impulse.”
Temple of Cocidius Page 7
