There was a smell, I realized numbly, a sharp, coppery tang which overlaid the omnipresent brine of the ocean and the sweet beeswax of the candles. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
Loki slumped forward, falling to his knees. His head tilted upward, almost pleadingly, but his eyes were strange, soft and unfocused. A thin red tendril of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, streaking across his pale skin. I had an absurdly strong urge to wipe it away.
I tore my eyes away from Loki’s face. Backcountry first aid lesson one, my stunned brain chimed. Assess the situation.
A thick, red pole rose from the center of Loki’s back. No, it wasn’t red. It was wood. It only looked red, and shiny, because it was so covered with blood. The coppery tang in the air thickened, and my stomach clenched.
The slick, red stain vanished and the pole became wood just below the two strong hands. I forced myself to look at the person behind those hands, although I knew who it was. Who it had to be.
Óðinn did not meet my eyes. He stared at Loki’s crumpled body as if he expected it to run away, as if he was pinning it to ground instead of twisting a weapon in what was clearly already a fatal wound.
“No,” I said.
I meant it to come out as a shout, but it was little more than a whisper. The whole scene felt like a nightmare, one where you can’t find your voice to scream. Blood poured from Loki’s chest, just about where his heart should be. It coursed down the shaft of Óðinn’s spear in thich red ribbons of blood and pooled on the tiles of my kitchen. Some of his blood was soaking into my embroidery hoops. Damn, I thought. I’ll never get that out.
Something flashed in the corner of my vision. I looked up. A bright line of electric blue was shivering in the air, almost level with my face. I watched with a numb, detached interest as the hissing blue line pressed against Óðinn’s exposed neck. Óðinn’s hands relaxed around the shaft of his spear as he stood straight.
I knew that blue. I’d seen that exact shade before. For some reason it was deeply comforting. It even had a name, didn’t it? A nice name.
“Hrotti,” I whispered.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Óðinn took a step backward, almost hitting the closed front door. I blinked, following the buzzing glow of Hrotti’s length. Someone was holding that blade. Someone I knew, or someone I should have known. I frowned as my mind struggled to process what I was seeing.
It couldn’t be him. Loki was lying at my feet, silent and still in a pool of his own blood. But the man holding Hrotti against Óðinn’s neck was—
“Loki,” Óðinn growled.
Loki’s eyes narrowed. His grip on Hrotti’s hilt was so tight his knuckles were turning white.
“Bullshit,” Loki spat.
I jumped at the sound of his voice, glancing at the crumpled body on the floor. Blood still flowed down the shaft of Óðinn’s spear, although it now was a slow trickle, not the gushing flood it had been at first. The pool of blood surrounding Loki’s lifeless body had devoured all my embroidery, and was now seeping around my feet.
“Never, not even on your worst day, would you have fallen for that trick,” Loki hissed.
Óðinn’s lone eye twinkled cheerfully as if Loki wasn’t holding a blade against his Adam’s apple. “I guess you got me,” he said.
Loki sheathed Hrotti on his back and stood straight. With a smooth twist, Óðinn pulled his spear free from the body on the floor, hefting it toward the ceiling. The corpse collapsed against the stone floor with a disturbing wet thwack, and the scent of blood grew thicker.
“No.” Loki frowned. “You got exactly what you wanted, as always. But what the hell is that?”
Óðinn raised a bushy eyebrow over his black, empty eye socket and tilted his head in my direction. “She’s pregnant.”
My cheeks burned with a rush of shame. I felt tears, my constant companions for the last month, simmering just behind my eyelids.
“I can smell that,” Loki said.
I flinched as my numb brain processed his words. It was like I was an exhibit in a museum.
“Naturally. But who’s the father?” Óðinn asked. He looked pretty damn cheerful for a man who just killed someone.
Loki closed his eyes and tilted his head back, taking a deep breath. The pale flash of his neck looked hopelessly vulnerable. The room was so quiet I could hear the distant rumble of breakers crashing against the shore. It couldn’t have taken longer than a few seconds, but it felt like a very long time.
“Oh,” Loki finally said. “I see. Interesting.”
I choked out a sob as the tears broke free. Too humiliated to make eye contact, I turned to the floor. Where I found an ocean of blood climbing the skirts of my long, blue dress. I screamed and jumped backward.
Loki made a strange sound. It was so horribly out of place that my shocked brain couldn’t make sense of the noise. Then Óðinn made the same sound, and it clicked into place.
Laughter. Loki and Óðinn were laughing at me.
I balled my hands into fists. “What. The. Fuck!” I snarled, glaring at both of them.
My fury seemed to make them laugh harder. The fucking bastards, both of them. For a moment they were almost indistinguishable, with the same bright blue eyes, and the same nasty low chuckle.
“Get the hell out of my kitchen!” I yelled. “And take that fucking body with you!”
Óðinn shook his head, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “They are entertaining, these mortal women. I’ll give you that.”
Loki finally caught his breath, although he still wore a shit-eating grin. I wanted to smack it off his face.
“But you don’t want her here,” Loki said. “You’re rebuilding Asgard, you old fool. You can’t have Níðhöggr’s spawn here.”
“And I can tell Níðhöggr that I did try to stop you,” Óðinn said. “You know, that was actually fairly convincing.” He gestured at the broken body at my feet.
Loki sighed. “Another mess for me to clean up, then?”
Óðinn gave him an odd sort of smile. “We each do what we’re good at, no?” He glanced at me, then back at Loki. “I’ll give you an hour.”
Óðinn vanished, making the air swirl around my kitchen. It was enough to extinguish the flicker of the remaining candles. The room plunged into darkness, with only a glimmer of starlight from the windows.
“Amateur,” Loki muttered.
All the candles suddenly flared back to life. I staggered backward, trying not to notice the way my feet squelched in the pool of blood congealing on the stones of my kitchen floor.
“Well,” Loki said, bringing his hands together in front of him. “Let’s go home, shall we, daughter?”
There were so many things wrong with that sentence I hardly knew where to begin. Trying to avoid the rapidly congealing pool of blood on the floor, I walked to the kitchen table and sank into a chair, my eyes still fixed on Loki.
“Back up for a second,” I said. “How about you tell me who you just killed?”
Loki’s smile widened. He looked at the crumpled body on the floor and raised his eyebrows, as if he were just noticing it. “Oh, this?”
“Yes, this,” I spat. “What the hell?”
He met my eyes and a shiver danced along the length of my spine. The first two people I’d seen in over a month had to be the fucking creeps Loki and Óðinn.
“You didn’t think this was real, did you?” Loki asked.
I frowned. “Loki, there’s a dead body on the fucking floor. I can see it. I can even smell the thing.”
Loki pulled a chair back and sat down across from me, resting his chin in his hands. “Yes. Yes, there is a smell. I’m quite proud of that, incidentally.”
A slow shudder rippled up from my gut. “You’re...proud? Of killing someone?”
Loki appeared to be examining his fingertips. “Occasionally.”
My mouth went dry. For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder what exactly the Norse go
d of lies was doing here. And what the hell had just happened between Loki and Óðinn? It sounded worryingly like an agreement, but I had no idea what had just been resolved.
“Fine,” Loki sighed. “I’ll clean it up, and we can talk.”
“How—“
The words died in my mouth. A gust of wind swept through the room, sending the candles dancing, and the body vanished as suddenly as Óðinn had disappeared. I blinked at the pool of blood on the floor.
“Now,” Loki said, leaning back in his chair. “Time to go home."
“There’s...There’s still blood. On my floor.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“It’s right there!” I pointed, as if Loki couldn’t see the dark puddle that had ruined my embroidery.
Loki grinned. “This is not your floor, daughter.”
“Stop calling me that!” I snapped.
He ignored me. “Your floor happens to be in Bozeman, Montana. And it’s hardwood, not slate.”
“Shut up!” I pushed back from the table, rocketing to my feet. “Just shut up! And get the fuck out of my house!”
Loki didn’t move.
“Or...the house! Get the fuck out of the house where I am currently living, okay?”
The air in the kitchen gusted again, rustling the hem of my dress. My embroidery hoops clattered as the pool of blood vanished. I had the surprisingly strong urge to pick them up and examine them for any stray rust-colored stains, followed by the urge to thank Loki. I resisted both of them.
“So, we’re good,” I said. “You can leave now. Just, out the way you came in.”
“Daughter...”
“I am not your daughter,” I growled.
Loki’s smile vanished. His eyes were cold, and his lips pressed together to form a tight, pale line. “You married my son. Or have you forgotten?”
He may as well have punched me in the gut. My stomach clenched so tightly I doubled over. A soft, terrible whimper slipped from my lips. Horrified, I clamped my hands over my mouth.
“But I apologize,” Loki continued. “I should have said, daughter-in-law.”
I opened my mouth, but the words refused to come. All those weeks by myself, longing for someone to talk with, and now my speech had fled. Silently, I shook my head back and forth.
“Vali misses you,” Loki said. “It’s time to come back.”
For a second, I felt like my legs really would collapse beneath me. Trembling, I sank into the kitchen chair before my treacherous body could spill me over the slate floor.
“No,” I said.
Loki shifted in his chair, crossing his legs. He said nothing.
“I mean, are you deaf?” I asked. “Did you not hear what Óðinn just said?”
He raised an eyebrow over his disturbingly pale eyes.
“I’m—“ My throat narrowed. The flickering candles blurred as I tried to blink back the tears. “I’m pregnant.”
“Yes. Interesting, that. We all assumed Níðhöggr wanted death. Yet, the dragon longed for life instead.”
“It’s...what?”
Loki raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. Níðhöggr surprised me. And I’m not easy to surprise.”
“Interesting?” Anger flickered somewhere deep inside my chest. “I betrayed your son, and you think it’s interesting?”
“Yes,” he said, as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. “It’s interesting. And now, it’s time to go home.”
“I can’t go home,” I said, spitting the word home as if it were a curse.
“I don’t see why not.” Loki fixed me with his intense, pale eyes.
“B-because...” My voice trailed off.
I’d done my best not to think about what happened in the cave with Níðhöggr. Or what I’d done to my husband. But here it was, laid out before me in black and white, as stark as blood spilled across the stones of the floor.
“I slept with Níðhöggr,” I said. My voice wavered, flickering like a candle flame.
“Yes. That much I figured out on my own.”
I shivered, then wrapped my arms around my chest. For a heartbeat, I tried to think of someone more unsympathetic and asshole-ish than Loki. Just Óðinn, I supposed.
“But, I—“ I lowered my voice, trying to force the words out. “I enjoyed it.”
Loki’s expression didn’t change. His hand twitched, as though he were considering reaching for me, then settled back on his knee.
“Of course you did,” he said. “I don’t think any of our species would have survived if the act of reproduction wasn’t enjoyable.”
I balled my fists in frustration. Damn it, this wasn’t complicated. Was he just trying to piss me off?
“But I’m...” I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word married. “To Vali,” I whispered.
“And he’s the reason I’m here,” Loki said, taking a deep breath. The candles surged. “I assumed you died. Everyone assumed you died. That irritating Southerner—“
“Zeke?”
He nodded. “He’s the one. He was especially broken up about it. He wanted to hold a funeral. Wouldn’t shut up about it, actually.”
I smiled in spite of myself. Zeke was broken up about my death? Who would have guessed?
“Vali stopped me,” Loki continued. “He wouldn’t let me contact your parents. He swore on all Nine Realms you were still alive, and he begged me to do something.”
“So, here you are,” I sniffed and wiped my hand across my cheeks.
“Yes. Here I am.”
Our eyes met over the candles. In this light, he looked oddly tired. The candles threw strange shadows over his face, making it look scarred and distorted.
“This is the fourth realm I’ve searched,” Loki said. “I thought you’d be in Múspell, if you were anywhere. Finding you here, on Asgard. Well, that’s interesting.”
Something Loki said came back to me, tugging at the edge of my mind. “My parents? Did... did someone contact them, eventually?”
He shrugged. “Taken care of. They think you’re in a coma.”
“They what?”
“Everyone thinks you’re in a coma. Vali insisted. He said you’d want to come back to your old life, once I found you. So, there’s now an illusion in the Bozeman Memorial Hospital who looks quite a bit like you, if I do say so myself. It convinced everyone but the Southerner.”
“Zeke,” I croaked, too shocked to say anything else.
“The doctors are a bit suspicious, but I visit them frequently enough to refresh the illusion.” He fixed me with a level stare. “It won’t last forever, though.”
“Damn.” I dropped my head to my hands.
“Indeed.” Loki stared out of the windows as if there were something to see other than darkness and the faint glimmers of the rising moon, casting a weak illumination over the undulating sea.
“You have to get rid of it.” My voice cracked. “Me, I mean. You have to get rid of that illusion. Let everyone think I died.”
Loki brought his fingers together in front of his lips. “And what exactly would that accomplish?”
“They could...They could all move on. Get over it.”
“Your parents? Get over the death of their only child?”
I shook my head. “No. Okay, maybe not them. The others. Everyone else, I mean.”
“Vali, you mean.”
I moaned before I could stop myself. Even hearing his name hurt.
“You expect him to get over the loss of his wife?” Loki said. “I’ve lost a great many people in my long life, daughter. I haven’t yet gotten over one of them.”
I clenched my hands in my lap, forming fists. “I’m no kind of wife.”
“Surely that’s for him to decide.”
Staring at Loki’s calm face, my loneliness and fear crystallized into rage. Who the hell did he think he was, barging into Asgard to make me feel like shit? To slap me in the face with all the horrible things I’d done to his son? I slammed my fist into the table.
“I betrayed him, damn it! Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand? I promised to be faithful, and then boom, I turned around and fucked someone else!”
“Yes,” Loki hissed. “You fucked someone else. So what? You stopped Níðhöggr. You did what you had to do to save your realm.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” I growled through gritted teeth. “I’m not a good wife! Vali deserves better! He deserves... Shit, he deserves someone like his mother.”
For once, Loki reacted to something I’d said. His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed again in a surprisingly predatory expression. “Are you talking about Sigyn?”
“Níðhöggr told me all about her. She was faithful. She stayed with you in that cave for, what? A thousand years? And look at me. I was his wife for less than a day before I agreed to have someone else’s baby.”
Loki’s laugh echoed through the kitchen, sharp as a cold knife. “You think Sigyn stayed with me out of love? Because she was faithful?”
My body felt numb. I couldn’t even force myself to speak; I only nodded miserably.
“Karen, Sigyn was trapped!”
“She wanted to leave?” My voice trembled as I asked.
“Yes, damn it. She tried to leave. She tried every way we could imagine. I used so much magic trying to break those wards that the earth shook, but the cave was impenetrable.”
I stared at my hands. “That’s not what I heard,” I whispered.
“Of course not. My wife was innocent. Óðinn couldn’t very well say he’d imprisoned one of the Æsir for no reason, so he told everyone it was her decision.” He laughed again, a hollow ring that bounced uncomfortably off the kitchen walls. “As if anyone would make that decision.”
We sat in silence as the echoes of that strange, pained laugh faded. In the distance, I heard the constant thrum of the waves smashing themselves against the stony shore. I tried not to think about how empty and strange this place must feel to Loki, the home he once shared with Sigyn. Who was trapped, not faithful.
But she didn’t choose to betray him, either.
I shook my head as if I were waking up from a spell. “I can’t,” I said. “Not with...”
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