by Linsey Hall
“What? Just like that?”
“Well, it’ll take some time. We’ll have to defeat the labyrinth first. But I could make it happen.”
From her expression, she clearly had no idea what to think of his offer. “Well, I don’t want it anymore.”
“Why?” He wanted to run his hands up and down her arms, but she was skittish. She’d pull away if he tried that.
She looked like she didn’t want to tell him, but eventually she spoke. “It took me hundreds of years—which no doubt would have been sped up with a little therapy—to finally figure out that godhood represented acceptance. You were right about me being an outcast. We were both outcasts. But unlike you, I didn’t want to be one.”
The way she said outcast made his heart ache. He wasn’t used to feeling this way for other people, but with her, he felt everything. Pain, hope, longing.
And she was right about being an outcast. He liked it. Thrived on it even. “But you’ve found what you’re looking for?”
She nodded. “At the university. I tried to find my way for nearly three hundred years before I found the university. I had friends, but none that lasted. The university finally gave me a home. A family. That’s why I can’t possibly believe that the entire university is behind the prison.”
“So you’re happy here, then?” If he convinced her to be with him, he’d probably have to live here. He wasn’t sure he liked that idea.
“Yeah. Why do you care?”
“I want you to be happy.”
She scowled. “You didn’t want me to be happy when you kicked me out of your life before.”
“I did want that, even if it didn’t seem like it at the time. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You’re smart, strong, funny, beautiful. I had my own shit going on back then and it put us in a bad situation. But as soon as the labyrinth is destroyed, I’m coming for you. I want you back, Sylvi.”
Her jaw dropped slightly and her eyes flashed in surprise. “Wait, what?”
He reached up and cupped her face, wanting to crush his mouth to hers. “Exactly what I said. You make me happy. I want that again. I want you again.” He wanted her so badly that he ached. Not just her body, but her mind and laughter and joy and sadness. He just wanted her.
“It’s over. What was between us has been dead for centuries. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She was shaking her head slowly.
It didn’t feel dead. “What if I don’t want it to be over?” He’d never wanted it to be over.
“It’s a bad idea.”
She hadn’t said I don’t want you. If she didn’t want him, she’d have said so and made him listen. He remembered the staff she’d thrust at his throat on several occasions. She’d have made him listen.
The way her pupils dilated, the way her pulse fluttered… she wanted him.
He leaned closer to her, drawing in her sweet scent. It made aching need coil within him.
“It’s not that bad of an idea,” he said. “I’d make it the best you’ve ever had.” He’d learned a lot in the time since they’d parted. He’d chased the high he’d felt with Sylvi with countless other women. The experiences had always fallen short, but he’d learned a lot.
“No. It’s a terrible idea. It will distract us from the labyrinth.”
“What if we used it to help us with the labyrinth?”
“What—” Her cheeks turned pink. “You mean, use the sex for my power so that I can access the knowledge in my staff?”
“Yes. Use me.”
A small breath whooshed out of her. “I don’t use that type of magic anymore.”
He leaned closer and whispered into her ear. “Start again. Use me.”
She shivered against him and he knew she was tempted.
He groaned, unable to hold himself back any longer. He pulled her to him and pressed his lips to hers. She was soft and sweet as she opened her lips and darted her tongue against his own. Fast and hard, he plundered her mouth as he ran his hands down her sides. She was soft and smooth and he couldn’t get enough of her. Pleasure rocked him, a grinding need that made his cock thrust hard against his pants.
Without warning, she pulled out of his arms.
“This is a bad idea,” she said, shaking her head and backing away. “We need to focus on the labyrinth.”
The edge of panic in her eyes made him back off. He could take this slow if that’s what she needed, but damn, it was hard. His cock ached and his palms itched to touch her. He clenched his fists and tried to focus on something else. “How will you access the knowledge in your staff?”
“I know I can do it on my own, but it will take a while. What I need is a faster way. There are several people at the university that I can ask and one of them is certain to know how to speed up the process. I won’t mention the prison. I’ll say it’s a problem with my magic. If there’s any way to access what’s trapped, they’ll know it.”
She sounded confident and it settled his worry a bit. “All right. On the condition that you bring me with you.”
“Why?”
“I want to get a feel for them myself. You trust them, but I don’t. You can’t go without me.”
“I need some space, all right? And I can handle this.”
“Not without me, you can’t.”
“You just love to make decisions for other people, don’t you? First, you leave Ian locked up and now you can’t get enough of bossing me around.”
“I simply know when I’m right about something.” His tone sounded perfectly reasonable to his own ears, but from Sylvi’s scowl, he could tell she didn’t agree.
“Fine. But when it really matters, I will be getting my way.”
“Fair enough. When will you start?”
Sylvi glanced at the old wooden clock in the corner. He followed her gaze. The clock read ten PM. They’d been awake since the night before.
“Tomorrow morning,” Sylvi said. “I’m exhausted. You can sleep on the couch. I’ll go get you a blanket.” She walked off toward the back of the house.
It was going to be a damned long night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next morning, Sylvi and Logan made their way across campus so that she could ask her colleagues about her problem accessing the knowledge within her staff. Logan had changed his appearance to that of a blond, blue-eyed man with a large nose. He’d chosen not to be Logan, but someone else entirely.
“Good look,” Sylvi had said when she’d seen him. “You look suitably boring, so at least you won’t distract my friends.”
“Distract them?”
“You know, with your usual…” She faltered. “Anyway, I’ll think up an identity for you. Just go with it.”
His usual what? His looks, he had to assume. Which meant she liked how he looked. He repressed a smile on his boring face.
It didn’t take long to walk to a pretty courtyard populated with half a dozen cottages surrounded by a profusion of flowers. Every color of the rainbow spilled from window boxes, hanging baskets, and raised beds. Rabbits hopped around the yard in unusual abundance.
“What’s with the rabbits?” he asked. He noticed some cats lounging on a sunny patio. Snakes and lizards dotted the perimeter. “And the cats and reptiles?”
“Witches. Some of them are animus witches. Animals like them.”
“Clearly.” A cat had come up to sniff at his leg and wind its warm body around his calf. A purr rumbled up.
“Likes you,” Sylvi said.
“Cats do.” They were tricky creatures, too.
They walked up a stone path to a cottage that sat in the middle and knocked on the wooden door.
“Hang on!” An American accent drifted through the door. A crash sounded from within.
The door swung open to reveal a sleepy-looking woman with mussed pink hair. A fat marmot rode on her shoulder, its short fur disheveled. “Any chance you brought donuts?” she asked.
“Shit, no. Sorry,” Sylvi said.
“Ugh, fine.�
� She closed her eyes and mumbled something under her breath. A plate of frosted pink donuts appeared in her palm. “Everything tastes better if someone else makes it.”
“True,” Sylvi said.
“Come on in. Want a donut?” She held out the plate. The marmot on the witch’s shoulder reached down and plucked one off the plate.
Logan grabbed one too and bit in as he followed her into the room. It was sticky and sweet, but as good as any from the shop. The marmot’s was already half gone.
The room they entered was open and bright, with bookshelves along the wall and tables and chairs scattered throughout. It was more of a workspace than a living cottage. Wine bottles were scattered around and witches were sitting up from where they’d fallen asleep on the floor.
“Cora, this is Kevin. My third cousin,” Sylvi said.
Third cousin? If she said so. Logan smiled and nodded.
“Hi, Kevin.” Cora shoved half a donut into her mouth and chewed. “What brings you to our humble abode? Well, workspace, really.”
The other witches staggered to their feet, scraped messy hair out of their faces, and zombie-walked to the donuts.
“Big spell night last night?” Sylvi asked.
“Huge,” Cora said around a mouthful of donut. “We wanted to see if Cary Grant would come back and hang out with us for the night. Almost made it, too.”
“And you didn’t invite me?”
“Check your phone, dummy. We totally did. But you’ve been ignoring us for days.”
“Shit, sorry,” Sylvi said. “I’ve been swamped and haven’t really been checking texts. But I’ve got a question for you all.”
Logan listened as she laid out the problem with the knowledge trapped inside her staff. She didn’t mention any pertinent details, but gave enough information to be relevant. Cora and the other witches asked her questions and joked around with her. Sylvi really did have a home here.
“Huh. Well I’ve got nothing,” Cora said. “Sounds complex.”
“Aye, I’m stumped,” a black-haired, Scottish witch said. “It sounds a bit like what Caleoden the Brave once did with the knowledge he trapped inside his tomb, but that was a specific place that he put a spell on. This is a spell inherent to the knowledge itself, which is above my pay grade.”
The other two witches, who’d had to drink three cups of conjured coffee to become truly sentient, offered their regrets.
“Damn,” Sylvi said. “I really thought you would know something.”
“Normally, we would. But you’ve got a real mystery there.”
“Thanks anyway,” Sylvi said.
He followed her out the door and down the garden path.
It took them the rest of the day to track down the other two people that Sylvi wanted to talk to. Lea, the Historian, wasn’t hard to find. But Aerten, the Celtic goddess of fate, was a tricky matter that required Vivienne to visit the Celtic afterworld to retrieve her.
Neither had known anything. It was unexpected and very, very bad. Sylvi had been fidgety all day, her anxiety clear through her movements. By the time Aerten had told them she knew nothing, Sylvi’s gaze showed the strain that Logan felt.
“I was convinced someone would have an idea,” Sylvi said as they walked back to her cottage. The worry that had been missing from her voice the night before was very evident now. She’d drawn her staff from the aether and was squeezing it with a white-knuckled grip.
“We’re running out of time,” he said as he held the door to her cottage open for her and she slipped through. As soon as he shut it behind them, he shed his false face and settled comfortably back into his original visage. He’d worn different identities for so long that resuming the face he’d been born with felt strange, but welcome.
“I know we are,” Sylvi said.
“And it became clear today, from the sheer size of this place, that there could be an enormous number of betrayers.”
“I know, all right?” She shoved a hand through her hair and paced the room. Tension radiated from her. “I’ll figure this out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet!” She continued to pace, a short back and forth line in front of the hearth.
“You could ask your mother. She would know.” He sure as hell didn’t like Freya, but as goddess of magic and the mother of all Vala, she was damned good with spells and enchantments.
“No! No way. Did I ask for her help when you kicked me out? When I was starving and freezing in Norway and had no idea how to survive on Midgard?” she asked, using the old Norse word for earth. “No, I did not. I didn’t then and I never have. I never will.” Her chest was heaving and her jaw was set.
“Have you even seen your mother since we left Asgard?”
“You mean, since we were kicked out of Asgard? No. She’s attempted to contact me a few times, but no, I have not.”
Though he liked the idea of Freya not getting what she wanted, he couldn’t help but think that contact with her mother might do Sylvi some good. “Perhaps she was trying to apologize?”
“For kicking me out of my home? She should have tried harder to keep me there. She’s one of the Aesir. Her power is rivaled by few. She could have overturned my eviction.” Behind the anger on her face, he could see pain. Whatever he had against Freya didn’t extend to him wanting Sylvi to hurt. And she did hurt. More than he’d realized. It was starting to make him feel ill, to think of what their past had done to her.
He’d made the right choice in rejecting her all those years ago, right?
Of course he had.
“She’s powerful, Sylvi, but no god is all-powerful. Your mother couldn’t overturn your fate once you’d been evicted from Asgard, not if all the other gods were against her.” He’d never met anyone as stubbornly unforgiving as Sylvi. It was hurting her more than protecting her.
“Fates, I can’t handle this right now.” Sylvi spun on her heel and stormed off.
Sylvi stomped into the kitchen and yanked open the pantry in the corner. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the light and dusk was already falling, so she had to poke around in the gloom until she found the slender glass bottle. She yanked it down and poured an inch of the whiskey into a chipped glass tumbler.
One sip revealed that it wasn’t what she was looking for. All the whiskey in the world wouldn’t help her at this point. She thrust it aside with a disgusted sigh.
Damn it, Logan was really getting to her. He was pointing out all the things she didn’t want to think about—her mother, the problem with the knowledge trapped in her staff, her attraction to him.
It shook her up. The first two were bad enough, but she kept thinking about what he’d said last night. He wanted her back. He wanted her to use him for her magic.
She’d been pushing it out of her mind as an unviable option. It was a truly terrible idea and staying away from Logan was the only smart thing to do. She knew that. No matter how badly she wanted him—and she did want him very badly, if she were honest with herself—it was a stupid idea.
Their past was proof that it was a dumb idea. He had hurt her too badly and could very well do it again. She was being smart in this lifetime—looking out for her own best interests in the long term, no matter what her hormones made her want to do in the present.
But her thoughts turned toward Logan at every spare moment. They had for centuries, anytime she was feeling weak or nostalgic.
They’d had some truly excellent times, as long as she didn’t think about how it had all ended. If she could just have the good times without the bad that would inevitably come…
“Are you all right?”
She spun at the sound of Logan’s voice. He stood in doorway, blocking out most of the light from the living room.
“I’m fine.”
“That whiskey says otherwise.”
She glanced down at her untouched glass. “What? Sometimes I like to sit in my dark kitchen and drink liquor alone.”
“How about you pour me one? That way
you’re not drinking alone.”
He wanted to keep her company while she was feeling shitty? She kind of liked that. She got up to grab another glass. He was sitting at the table when she returned. She pushed the glass and bottle across the table so that he could pour his own.
They sat in silence for a few moments before he spoke. “I meant it when I said I wanted you. I do.”
“Why?”
“You know why. You’re tough, beautiful, smart.”
“If I were so smart, I’d ignore you.” She sipped her whiskey. The tension in the air was so thick she swore it felt like waves lapping at the shore. It made heat coil low in her belly.
He leaned forward, his voice dark and deep. “You could be smart and use me to get the power necessary to access the knowledge in your staff. Use me for your magic.”
“So this is just for the knowledge then?”
He chuckled. “Oh, no. If you wanted to be with me, no magic included, I’d sign up in a heartbeat.”
“So you’re just trying to win me over by telling me how good it would be for my magic?”
“I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
She liked that idea. More than that, she liked the heat in his gaze. She wanted to ignore all her misgivings.
Perhaps she could be with him if there were firm expectations and restrictions on what went on between them. Using him for her magic was the perfect excuse.
She’d found a pretty good loophole. And she really did have no idea how to access the knowledge within the staff. Being with him under these pretenses was a bit of a lie to herself and a lie to him—that she was only being intimate with him for the magic—but she could believe it as long as she put in a little effort. She was already believing it, in fact.
She’d just have a taste of him and stop herself before she went too far. She didn’t need to actually have sex with him to get the benefit. As long as she made him come, it would work. No emotional involvement. Her heart would stay her own.
If they didn’t have full sex, she wouldn’t even need birth control since Mytheans couldn’t carry disease.
“Are you all right?” Logan asked.
