Loki stood next to me, his chin high and his back straight. I shifted uncomfortably against the polished stones of the castle floor. We stood in an enormous room whose great, tall windows were flooded with thick evening light. Angrboða lay in the midst of an ocean of attendants, all young, beautiful, and wearing white robes, who stood around her couch bearing food, drinks, and weapons.
Angrboða herself, the Dutchess of the Black Isles, lay before us in a resplendent gown whose billowing waves tumbled almost to our feet, yet whose fabric barely covered her impressive décolletage. Somehow, she seemed even more sexual and predatory than when I’d seen her in Nøkkyn’s throne room.
“Angrboða,” Loki said. It was unclear to me if that had been intended as a greeting or a threat. “We need to talk.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. She pulled herself up to sitting and blinked innocently. “After all this time, son of Laufeyiar. I expected a bit more sweet talk.”
“Alone,” Loki added.
Angrboða’s eyebrows raised. “Perhaps my memory fails me. It’s been a very long time since our last little visit, Loki, my dear, but I remember you having just a touch more subtlety.”
Loki raised his hand, his palm facing Angrboða. “Just talk. And just the three of us.”
Angrboða’s face contorted into a sensual pout. “Anything you have to say to me can certainly be said in front of my very best friends here.”
She waved her hand at the crowd of attendants, none of whom responded.
“No.” I saw a muscle in Loki’s jaw twitch. “It’s about our son.”
A look of genuine surprise flickered across Angrboða’s statuesque features before being quickly buried beneath another sensual smirk. “Oh. That.”
Loki said nothing. I felt like there was a battle taking place in the space between them. Loki’s hand twitched at his side, and the air in the room felt thicker.
“It’s...important,” Loki growled.
Angrboða’s eyes narrowed. Then she flung her head back and sighed dramatically.
“Fine,” she said. “After all these years, I suppose I can indulge one of your ridiculous requests.”
Angrboða clapped her hands. All the white-clad servants in the room suddenly stood at attention.
“Bring a table,” she said. “Then leave us.”
A storm of activity swept through the room. Four men placed a table in front of Loki and me the space of time it took me to draw a breath. A group of women covered the table with a thick, white cloth and placed three goblets upon it, followed by three bottles of wine. I tried to keep my mouth from falling open; that seemed like an extravagant amount of wine.
The men brought chairs next, edging them so close to me they hit my calves. Loki remained standing, so I ignored the furniture. Angrboða seemed to be completely immersed in examining her fingernails while her servants boxed Loki and me in with tables, chairs, and wine. But, as soon as the last attendant closed the door softly behind me, Angrboða came to her feet. She prowled around the two of us like a great panther. I tried to ignore the creeping, sinking feeling that she was measuring me, evaluating my worth.
“So,” Angrboða finally said. “You’ve brought the woman.”
“Her name is Sol,” Loki said, waving his hand casually in my direction. “She carries your grandchild.”
“Is that so?” Angrboða turned to me, and I had to suppress a shudder. I didn’t care for the look of hungry appraisal that suddenly flared in her eyes. “My, my,” she continued. “You certainly don’t waste much time.”
Her gaze lingered on the tight swell of my stomach. I wanted to wrap my arms around my waist, to hide what was growing beneath the soft fabric of the dress. But that was a ridiculous urge, surely?
Angrboða laughed suddenly, a high, silver peal, as though we’d just shared a great joke. She walked over to Loki and ran her fingers lightly across his chest. The muscle in his jaw twitched again.
“Our Fenris, a father? You know, I was never certain he even liked women,” Angrboða purred. Her hand lingered on Loki’s shoulder.
“Did you ask him?” Loki growled.
She laughed again, the high, carefree laugh of someone who has absolutely no worries in all the Nine Realms. “Ask him? My dear, how deliciously crude of you.”
Angrboða swept her billowing skirts away from Loki’s legs and rounded the table. With great care, she lowered herself to a seat and poured three very full glasses of wine, serving Loki first. Her pale chest flashed as she leaned across the table, and I found myself staring, wondering just how her incredibly low-cut, tight bodice managed to hide the dark skin of her nipples as she shifted positions. Angrboða finished pouring the glasses, cleared her throat, and gestured impatiently at the empty seats.
Loki lowered himself stiffly into the seat across the table from Angrboða. I followed his lead. Angrboða brought her wine glass to her lips and drank deeply, then raised an eyebrow at Loki, who hadn’t moved to touch his glass.
“Are you abstaining?” She made the word sound like a curse. “Marriage has made you right fucking boring, I see.”
Loki folded his hands on the table. “Óðinn has captured our son.”
A strange mixture of expressions gusted across Angrboða’s face, furrowing her brow.
“Damn,” she finally said.
“Indeed,” Loki answered.
Angrboða leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms over the swell of her breasts. “What do you want?”
Loki sighed with what sounded like frustration. “I want to rescue him, of course. And I assume you don’t want to leave your only son suffering in chains until the Realms crumble around him?”
Angrboða did not reply. The room suddenly felt colder. Much colder.
“I need your help,” Loki said, and there was a ragged edge to his voice this time. “I have an idea, but I need help with it.”
Still nothing. If it weren’t for the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders, I would have thought Angrboða had turned to ice.
“I hardly know Fenris,” Loki admitted. “I didn’t raise him. I didn’t see him as a child. Shit, I’ve only met the man a handful of times. And this is... I don’t even know if it’s possible.”
He fell silent. Angrboða reached forward, grabbed her wine glass, and drained it. Beside me, Loki took a measured sip from his. His act felt like a truce.
“Go on,” Angrboða said. “What else?”
“An illusion,” Loki answered. “If I can even do this, I’ll need someone to hide it while I’m working. Someone very powerful.” He took a deep breath, then continued. “I’ll need you.”
Angrboða’s upper lip twitched with the faintest hint of a smile. “My. Those are considerable demands.”
“He’s our son,” Loki said, weakly.
Angrboða leaned forward. The cleft between her breasts deepened until it looked like a canyon. “You haven’t said one word about payment.”
“Payment?”
“As you say, I’m powerful,” Angrboða responded. “Power doesn’t come cheap. You should know that better than anyone.”
Loki drew a deep breath, ran his hand through his hair, and gave Angrboða a smile so forced it almost hurt to witness. “What did you have in mind?”
Angrboða’s grin widened. She turned to me, and my heart staggered in my chest.
“I want the baby,” she said.
THE MONSTER FREED: CHAPTER FIVE
I felt as though my chair had just fallen over backward. My entire body froze as Angrboða’s words penetrated my dazed consciousness.
The baby? My baby? Numbly, my hands crept across my stomach, as though I could protect the tiny life Fenris and I had kindled with my own weak arms. Loki slammed his hand down on the table. I jumped.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Loki cried.
He pushed back from the table so violently the wine glasses shook, spilling their blood red liquid onto the white tablecloth. Loki’s hand clenched around my shoulder.
/>
“Come on, Sol,” he growled. “Let’s go.”
“Wait.”
Angrboða’s voice was high and delicate, with an undertone of steel. Loki’s hand loosened on my shoulder.
“I need an heir, Loki.”
For the first time, Angrboða’s expression wavered. It was almost as though a mask had slipped, and I’d been given a glimpse of the raw, wild soul beneath it.
“Fuck,” Loki muttered so softly I barely heard him. “Of course you do.”
Angrboða leaned across the table again, flashing her impressive cleavage. She filled the wine glasses, replacing what had spilled across the table. Then she took another very long sip from her own glass.
“My beloved husband King Agnrr is...losing patience,” she said, very delicately, as if she were discussing the weather.
Loki snorted. “Then why don’t you just fuck your husband? Surely he’s still got some seed in him.”
Angrboða waved her hand dismissively. “He’d be a terrible sire. He’s got no talent with magic. And you know it takes both magic and bloodline to rule Jötunheimr.”
A low, throbbing growl surged in the air around us. It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from Loki.
“Tell me you’re not asking for—” he began.
“I’m not,” Angrboða responded primly. “In fact, I very clearly asked for this woman’s child.”
She fluttered her fingers at me. I felt like a piece of furniture, slightly less important than the wine bottles spread across the table. Something hot and bitter rose inside me. This woman, with her elegant dress and perfect body, was Fenris’s mother. She had made his childhood miserable.
Fenris would never, in all the Nine Realms, want Angrboða to raise our child.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Loki cried out loud, interrupting my thoughts.
“Stars damn it, Angrboða!” he spat, rocking backward. “You crazy, manipulative, daughter of a bitch!”
Angrboða grinned. “You’ve always had such a talent for flattery.”
“And you have lost whatever tiny, tenuous grip you once had on reality! What the fuck kind of plan do you have? You’ll just show up one morning with an infant and say, surprise, dear husband! It’s yours, I swear!”
“Oh, please.” Angrboða waved her hand as if dismissing a servant, then took another sip of wine. “Men know nothing of childbirth and pregnancy. I could tell King Agnrr his son grew in a mushroom, and I think he’d thank me for sparing him the bloody details.”
“No.”
My own voice sounded strange to me. It wasn’t nearly as full and rich as Loki or Angrboða’s. In fact, it sounded like a weak echo that had lost its way among the polished halls and thick tapestries of this dark castle.
“You can’t,” I forced myself to say. “You can’t have our baby.”
I realized my hands were clenching the fabric of my dress so tightly they’d begun to tremble. Angrboða was silent. Her eyes burned. I’d expected anger, but the expression smoldering in those dark depths was something harder to judge. Under other circumstances, I’d almost call it amusement.
“Well, then. That brings us to option number two,” Angrboða said. She brought her hands to the table and folded her fingers neatly before us.
“No,” Loki said. “Not a chance in Niflhel.”
Angrboða responded with a broad, flashing smile. It looked like the kind of smile she’d wear before a crowd, no matter if it was a coronation or an execution.
“Magical talent,” she said, “and bloodline. There’s no one in Jötunheimr who matches that description quite like you, son of Laufeyiar. To raise someone with the power to rule—”
“No!” Loki spat, his voice rising in the fading light which spilled from Angrboða’s enormous windows. “You can’t rule Jötunheimr, woman! You want to rule an entire stars-damned Realm, fine. Go conquer Álfheim! Go ride Surtr’s fiery cock and then claim Múspell for your own! But this—” Loki staggered backward, shaking his head. “This is not happening, Angrboða. It’s not happening.”
Angrboða shook her head and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “A pity. We’ve had such good luck with our offspring.”
Loki laughed, but it sounded almost like a cry. “We’ve had terrible luck with our offspring! That’s why I’m here, damn it! Because we’ve managed to birth two children who are—”
“Enormously powerful,” Angrboða said.
“Miserable!” Loki finished. “Hel literally hides her body in a corpse. And everyone thought Fenris would drink himself to death before he reached his twentieth birthday!”
“Liar.” Angrboða’s dark eyes gleamed above her blood red lips. “Hel seems quite content building castles for the dead, or whatever it is she’s doing in Niflhel. And Fenris, as you may have noticed, did manage to survive past his twentieth birthday.”
She turned to me, her eyes still bright in her mask-white face. “Apparently, he’s even functional enough to impregnate a woman. And to steal her from a king. Twice.”
“Fuck you!” Loki cried. “This is your son we’re discussing, not some bargaining chip in your twisted schemes.”
Angrboða’s face clouded with a scowl. She leaned back, and I had the sense that a door had just slammed closed. “I need an heir, Lie-smith.”
“So, make an heir!” Loki cried. “You just had thirty men in this room. Pick one!”
Angrboða raised an elegantly curved eyebrow. “I did.”
Understanding dawned slowly, and my gut shifted inside me. I sank my fingers deeper into the plush fabric of my dress, pressing my arms tight over my womb.
Loki growled again, spun on his heels, and sank his hands into his hair. He turned back to Angrboða and kicked the empty chair he’d just left so hard it flew across the room. It hit the wall with a loud crash, smashing into a cloud of splinters.
“Good,” Angrboða said. She rose very slowly, smoothing the front of her very tight dress. “Now that’s settled, shall I call for someone to take the girl away? Or would you prefer she stays to watch?”
Loki’s lips curled in a way that reminded me violently of Fenris’s wolf shape. “You’re not fertile right now,” he growled.
Angrboða pouted. “Good stars above, you’re a disappointment. Did that little wife of yours castrate you?”
Loki tilted his head toward the ceiling. For just a moment, his entire body flickered, as though a pane of water had fallen between us. Then he sighed deeply and met Angrboða’s gaze. Somehow, he looked older.
“We have an agreement?” he said.
Angrboða nodded primly.
“When?” he asked.
“I’ll be fertile in about eleven days,” she said. “Bring your ideas. We’ll talk. After.”
Her last word sank like a stone between them. I shivered, despite the warmth of my dress and the tight press of my own arms around my waist. I’d seen brutality in Nøkkyn’s castle, and again on the training fields of Val-hall, but this level of ruthless manipulation was something new. I felt sick as I watched Loki nod in agreement.
“And you’ll cast your illusion over Amsvartnir lake?” he said in a voice as steady and casual as hers.
“Ah, is that where they’re holding him?” Angrboða seemed to brighten. “The fools.”
Loki’s gaze shifted to me. His face was as blank and expressionless as a field of freshly fallen snow. “Sol?”
Somehow, I managed to push myself to my feet and cross the cold floor. He grabbed my arm.
“See you in eleven days, my dear!” Angrboða called. She gave us a suggestive wink as the room began to blur and spin around us—
THE SMOOTH WOODEN FLOOR of the little cottage on Asgard rose to meet my feet, and the warmth of baking bread enveloped us. Loki let go of my hand and collapsed to his knees. A woman gasped and, as the room slowly took shape around us, Sigyn rushed to kneel beside Loki. He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair.
“I can’t,” he
whispered.
Something hot rose in the back of my throat. Suddenly, I wanted to be anywhere but here. I backed away from Loki, whose shoulders trembled in his wife’s arms, and walked toward the door. Thick evening light slanted in through the partially open doorway; it must have been almost dusk here on Asgard. The perfect time to walk along the beach.
“Stop!” Loki yelled.
I froze, my hand hovering just above the doorknob.
“Don’t. Go. Outside,” Loki panted. “Óðinn’s spies can’t see inside the house but, fuck, everywhere else on Asgard is fair game.”
I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the spike of fear that had just pierced my chest.
“Please, Sol, come have a seat,” Sigyn said. “Have something to eat. The bread’s just finishing.”
Numbly, I sat at the table as Sigyn placed a wooden platter with a steaming, golden loaf of bread resting in the middle in front of me. It was followed by a bowl of thick, red jam and a platter of butter. Silently, she cut three slices of bread.
“Angrboða,” Loki began. He took a deep breath. “She—”
Sigyn’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I can guess.”
Loki blinked.
“She’s only ever wanted one thing from you, really,” Sigyn said. She reached for the bowl of jam, plunged a knife into its red depths and spread a thick layer of the viscous, jewel-colored liquid over her bread.
“Well... Yes, I suppose,” Loki said.
Sigyn took a bite of her bread and chewed contemplatively. “Jötunheimr must be terrible,” she said. “Imagine. All that ambition, and the only way a woman can actually accomplish anything is through her husband or her sons.”
Loki’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Yes. It’s quite the shit hole, really.”
“I don’t know why she doesn’t just leave. Even Skaði had the sense to turn her invasion toward Asgard, not stay on Jötunheimr.”
“Exactly!” Loki said.
Sigyn finished her slice of bread and wiped her mouth delicately on a bright yellow napkin. “Angrboða has to rule through her husband, or her son. Her husband must not be particularly interested in serving as her pawn, otherwise she’d be perfectly happy conquering Jötunheimr in his name. So, she must want another son. From someone with magical talent.” She paused. “From you.”
The Complete Fenris Series Page 53
