Reginleif hesitated, but Lorelei—who was, in truth, just another part of Reginleif, herself—leaped forwards. Female harpies and sirens were far more aggressive than their males. The social disruption was intense, as men who remembered being human, and part of a male-dominant culture, found themselves, if not gelded, at least seen as less necessary by their female counterparts. Female harpies were every bit as strong, if not stronger than their males, a question of muscle density, not size They were faster in the air and much more mobile—there was not a single male harpy in the landsknechten so far, Lorelei knew. Females had a month or two of gestation, and then laid eggs . . . which could, in this modern era, be marked with a family’s name and an identification code, and left in an incubator at a hospital. Male harpies, however, had found an instinctive concern, bordering on obsession, with the eggs. These were their genetic legacy. And given that the women weren’t necessarily tied to the eggs, the males felt impelled to protect the eggs when the females weren’t available.
As such, female harpies and sirens tended to be aggressive in courtship, as well. “Get back over here,” Lorelei told him, and let her voice carry everything she felt right now. Desire. Frustration. Uncertainty. Anger. She stood and moved towards him, her wings mantling behind her, and caught his arm. She was god-born of Loki. She didn’t have the physical power of someone born of Thor or Tyr . . . but under her siren’s exterior, there was still a valkyrie. She put a foot behind one of his, as if to sweep him if he took another step towards the door, and stared up at him. “Come back to bed.” All the harmonics were desire now, as she did her best to suppress her uncertainty.
“Only if y-you w-want m-me,” he told her, flatly. “N-not at-atonem-ment.”
She blinked, but the only thing she could think of was that she’d long admitted to being a bad sort of person before her transformation. Which was true. “Not an atonement,” she told him, after a moment, swallowing. I just want to see you happy.
She couldn’t hover in air like a valkyrie anymore, so she couldn’t raise herself to his lips and kiss him. She settled for sliding the length of her body against his, feeling the rough weave of his shirt against her skin, and slid her hands down to the laces of his trews. And inhaled sharply. She hadn’t expected his arousal to be this emphatic. And she could feel him twitch as her hand made contact with him through the fabric, and she felt another tide of warmth slide through her, as her body loosened internally. Oh, gods. I do want this.
“F-fair warning,” Brandr told her, his voice lowering a little as she began to stroke him through his trews, “once I st-start, I’m not going to s-stop. W-we’re noted for our stamina.” Rueful self-awareness in his voice. Her hands felt so gods-be-damned good on him. Stamina was something of a mixed blessing in bed. The way in which he regenerated was akin to how the jotun and fenris healed. It was steady and constant, and exhaustion took a long time to settle in. Eighteen hours of combat, or a full day of running in waist-deep snow, and he’d feel run-down, but a good meal and a nap would deal with the issue. Muscle cramping and lactic acid build-up didn’t occur. Muscle tears healed instantly, making the muscle itself stronger. It had taken him two or three mortal lovers to understand that humans tired out after a couple of bouts of passion. That chafing and discomfort were very real for them, and not some sort of a joke. And while he’d had his full height and weight by the age of twenty-two, it had, again, taken him a few tries to comprehend that his build really didn’t suit most women. Oh, women drooled over bear-warriors. They fantasized about them. But when confronted with reality, reality palled rapidly. He was built, unfortunately, with a valkyrie in mind.
So he went slowly, again. Let her push him back towards the bed. Pulled off his shirt and trousers, willingly enough, and laid back on the mattresses, and let her explore. Touch. Caress. Closed his eyes, and tried not to picture rolling her to her back, lifting her legs to his shoulders, and seeing just how much of him she could take. He’d have to stay on his knees to keep his weight off her, lift her up to him, with her wings spread and her back arched . . . and then reality replaced fantasy as he felt the delicate caress of her lips as she kissed each of his scars, working her way down his torso. A shift on the mattress, as she moved a leg over him, sliding atop him. The delicate caress of her soft feathers. The slick heat of her. “Condom,” he told her, opening his eyes, and trying to reach for his trews. He had a wax paper packet of them in his poke. “D-don’t know how t-to s-sit on eggs.”
She pulled back, gave him a look, and then gave him her mouth, and then Brandr couldn’t have moved or spoken if his life depended on it. A few minutes later, she found his poke, and dug out the condoms, staring at them as curiously as if she’d never seen one used before . . . and perhaps she hadn’t. And then she climbed back on top, positioned him methodically, and sank down.
Regin exhaled in shock, and she couldn’t hold back the moan that again crawled along the walls. She’d never been this full before, and the sensation of him inside of her was bliss. She’d never been with another god-born before. There were only a handful born to Loki, and they were usually seiðmann, not bear-warriors. And she’d ignored the clumsy overtures of boastful young bear-warriors her entire life. This was something else entirely. She braced herself on his offered palms, and heard him chuckle, probably at the expression on her face, and murmured, without a stutter, “Let yourself open inside. Relax. Don’t rush.” And she watched his expression as she sank all the way down, his eyes going dazed and unfocused.
Movement. She rocked on him, barely aware of the sounds coming from her own throat now. Felt his hands slip out of hers to close on her hips and move her faster, as if she weighed absolutely nothing at all. And when her legs began to ache at being spread across his hips too long, he lifted her off of him, and rolled her over to her stomach. A whispered word or two of concern, and then he’d pulled her up and to him, by her hips. Her knees didn’t touch the mattress, and she laughed at the incongruity of it, and then her wings tensed as her back arched.
Some time later, Lorelei lay in her lover’s arms, relaxed and more or less at peace, though she was somewhat embarrassed by the broken window.
And broken streetlight.
And the fact that a couple of her single neighbors in this largely Hellene area had called the gardia, who’d tapped on her door to ask if she was all right. That there had been reports of an altercation, and the apparent deployment of some sort of love philter in the area, possibly as some sort of practical joke. She’d answered the door with the illusion of clothing wrapped around her, which had made Brandr chuckle quietly from the mattress, where he lay, his legs and feet well over the edge, with her sheet over him. “There’s no such thing as a love philter,” Lorelei had told the young officers, irritably. “I certainly haven’t been involved in any sort of altercation. No, I’m not aware of any such thing.” Under her illusions, she was all too aware of the fact that she was completely naked. And when the officers had tried to peer past the door, she’d quickly swathed the apartment in an illusion that showed all of her furniture back in its proper place. She’d have concealed Brandr, too, but he’d moved from the bed as she was dealing with the officers to stand behind her. His hair had come loose from its braid, and he’d been lacing his trews as he walked to the door . . . and now loomed in the entryway behind her.
Lorelei’s mouth went dry at the sight of him, and she thought he looked like a god. Reginleif tried to suppress that errant train of thought, as the officers at the door looked up at Brandr in surprised recognition. He’d become the area’s de facto gang squad. Of course they knew him.
She saw the young officers look from her to the huge, bare-chested bear-warrior behind her, and could see the connection snap into place in their minds. “We’re going to have to cite you for the property damage, domina,” one of them noted, trying not let his grin get away from him. “You can either pay the damages, or the fine.” He began working industriously away at his clipboard, while Lorelei’s heart
sank. She didn’t have the money for that. “Whichever is less,” she said, and stared at a wall until they’d finished writing her citation, and handed her the carbon copy, before walking off, chuckling to themselves. Long practice ensured that she didn’t flush in front of these younglings.
Brandr took the paper out of her nerveless fingers as he stepped back into the apartment, and she closed the door. “F-full aureus for the f-fine.” His eyebrows went up. “St-steep.”
“It’ll take me a month or two to put that together,” she said, quietly.
He glanced around the apartment, and shook his head, looking irritated. “Y-you g-get p-paid. You r-rent th-this place.”
“I receive a stipend from the refugee office run by Frittigil Chatti, for flight training for the harpies and community outreach work. I receive another sum from Vidarr’s Lindworms for training the harpies in battle tactics, and my willingness to fight alongside them. I have not technically joined their organization.” Her tone was colorless.
He gestured around the apartment, and then spread his hands, in exasperated, silent query. Lorelei interpreted the gesture, sighed, and answered, “Before Æðelinga Chatti required me to leave the refugee center, I donated my pay back to the center. Now, I donate whatever is left after rent, food, and utilities.” At his expression, Lorelei added, hastily, “It’s not a virtue. I don’t require much. Though the cost of fish keeps going up. I’ll get the money together. Perhaps a loan from a bank—”
“F-fikketh that! I’ll p-pay it. It w-was m-my f-fault, t-too.” He tossed the paper on the counter. “M-more ill-lusions. Ash-ashamed of m-me?” He nodded towards the now-vanished gardia.
She shook her head vehemently. “No. It’s no one’s business who’s in my bed.”
He snorted and picked her up to kiss her, thoroughly, though he still frowned as he walked her back to her mattress, and tried to work out the logistics of curling up with her there. Her wings made it difficult for him to spoon behind her, and their height difference would have made it difficult to be perfectly comfortable, anyway. They eventually found a compromise position with her wings tucked between their bodies, and his arm draped around her, elbow resting on her hip.
Lorelei relaxed, feeling Brandr’s body grow heavier as he drifted towards sleep. Let her fingers trace the scars under the hair on his arm. But Reginleif-within worried and fretted. She wasn’t supposed to feel peace, pleasure, or joy.
She wasn’t aware that her body had tensed, but Brandr eventually sighed and groped at the side of the mattress, finally coming up with a piece of paper and a pen from his poke. “L-light,” he told her, and began to scratch at the paper as she conjured a dim ball of illumination.
The message there, in stark Gothic runes, made her blink. You’re keeping us both awake with your guilt, you know.
“You don’t understand.”
Scritch-scratch. No, I probably don’t.
“The harpies and fenris who don’t remember their pasts . . . .” She swallowed, hard. “I would trade places with them in an instant. It would be easier to have myself erased. To not be who I am, and remember what I’ve done.”
Scratch, scritch. The pen paused. You think memory is part of the punishment, but if you weren’t who you are, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.
She sighed. “In bed?” A shrug. “It’s possible that we would.”
Scratch, scratch, scritch. No. Lorelei is a very nice girl, but I like you. I always have. Always keeping everyone at bay. The sharp tongue. All of it.
She went completely rigid, though his arm was loose around her, as she watched the words flow from the pen guided by his large, blunt fingers. I see you were reading Electra before I came in.
“What of it?” she managed, through numb lips.
You wouldn’t have done any of it, if Hel hadn’t pushed you into it. You were bound to her, and to Loki. And being bound to her had an effect on your mind, didn’t it? You began to make less and less rational choices. Additionally, you were infiltrating Potentia at the time, so you had to adopt some of their mentality. Their hatred for the gods. Undercover work is only possible if you have a very strong mental state to begin with, and yours was compromised by anger at Loki, and the bond with Hel. You were being torn apart already . . . and then she put you into a position where your only options were complete capitulation to her will, or resistance. She forged Niðhoggr into her personal weapon, and thought she could do the same with you. She forgot about free will.
He knew. He’d always known. She shook with it. “Doesn’t excuse any of it,” she finally said, her voice dull. “I betrayed everyone I knew. Everyone I loved. My entire people.”
He nodded against her shoulder, his short-cropped beard scratching her skin. Yes. You did. I’ve had a long time to think about it, though. There was a pause, and then he went on, in very small runes, But I am not sure any valkyrie would let the death of her beloved go unavenged. Joris was a lucky man. While I don’t require that half the world be set ablaze as my pyre . . . it would be nice to know that someone cared enough about me to want to do so. He exhaled against her shoulder. Hel forgot what valkyrie are for. She forgot many things, it seems.
She swallowed, her stomach churning. “We’re given great power. And with that power, there must be control. I lost mine. I never intended for you to be hurt. And I’m so s—”
“D-don’t.”
His first word spoken out loud in many minutes silenced her completely.
Another pause, as he turned the piece of paper over—some sort of a pamphlet, apparently—and found an unused corner to write on. Loki punished you?
She nodded, staring at the wall. “The Veil punished me. The Veil, and everything in it. I died . . . more times than I can count before I hid myself in swan form. Lost myself in it. If I could have unmade myself, I would have.”
She watched the pen trace out the next words. Justice has already been done.
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
Loki is satisfied?
“I wouldn’t have expected you to defer to his judgment.” A little snap, a little spark.
You could ask Tyr to render judgment, if it would make you feel better.
She shrugged. “It wouldn’t. Either he’d give me more punishment, which I’d accept, or he’d say I’d endured appropriate punishment. Either way, I’d still remember. I’d still . . . be me.”
How do you know when you’ve been punished enough?
She shrugged again. “I wouldn’t remember anything. Or I would no longer exist.”
His arms tightened around her, briefly, and he wrote, carefully, Frittigil often speaks of Loki’s central lesson to her. That the god-born crystallize themselves around one moment in time, one tragedy in their lives, and freeze there, forever. His lips brushed her shoulder, and, out of room on the paper now, he added, out loud, “Wh-which is wh-what you’re d-doing n-now. Y-you w-were wrong. Y-you’ve p-paid. M-move on, R—”
“Don’t say it! Don’t say it!” She didn’t want to hear that name on his lips, and put her hands over her ears.
He paused, and said, enunciating the syllables with exquisite care, “Shadowweaver.” Her Name. She went still at the sound of it. He could do absolutely anything to her, with her Name. He could track her anywhere in the world with that, wrack her spirit. But she knew he wouldn’t. Because he had the kind of control she’d helped train him to have. The kind she’d lost, once upon a time. “If you d-don’t l-like your N-name, m-make it m-mean s-something else.”
Her lips curled downwards. “The only way to wash it clean is in blood. My own. And I have been forbidden to kill myself. Loki told me he’d just stuff my spirit back into this body like a ghul if he had to.” She shrugged. “Joris couldn’t kill himself either. Hel wouldn’t let him end his life any sooner than she wished it to last.” A sigh. So much for free-will. “I know that every day in this world is a gift, Brandr. Taste, touch, sight, all the senses. Having a body. People don’t understand how wonderful
it truly is. But I also know that my awareness of this is another kind of remonstrance.”
There was a pause as his arms tightened around her once more. “D-don’t s-sell y-your l-life f-for anything s-short of v-victory. Damn my t-tongue.”
She shifted slightly, not daring to look at him directly, and deliberately changed the subject. “You didn’t stutter at all once you were, well . . . in.”
“D-didn’t n-notice. H-hard to h-hold a c-conversation, then.” He sighed, and capped the pen. “N-need m-more p-paper if I’m g-going to t-talk t-to you p-properly.”
“I . . . thought you wanted an arrangement where you wouldn’t have to talk.” A tiny spark of humor.
He pulled away just far enough to roll her over, and kissed her. And leaned over to whisper a word in her ear. His own Name. “No, don’t tell me! I don’t want to have that kind of power over you!”
“Only s-seems f-fair. And y-you n-need t-to f-feel t-trusted ag-again. And I n-need t-to be able to f-feel trust. S-so . . .” He paused. “If w-we’re already p-paying a f-fine, we m-might as w-well g-get our m-money’s w-worth. D-don’t you think?” And he kissed her answering words away from her lips.
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 66
