The Hanged Maiden: A Reverse Harem Romance (Rise of the Ash Gods Book 1)

by Cara Wylde

  “What the...” She’d left him five minutes ago, at a fast food truck, when he’d wanted a burger and she’d wanted personal space and some sleep before the next hurdle. “How did you get here?” They’d established to have dinner together, not suffocate each other every minute of the day. “The door was locked... Did you just fly in through the window?”

  “Please, I’m not Batman. I have my ways, and a locked door means nothing to a street illusionist.” He winked at her.

  “You have to go. Now. You have no business being in my hotel room.”

  He rolled off the bed and approached her slowly, carefully, as if he was a hunter, and she was the deer that could have bolted at any moment.

  “I figured... why wait? Let’s find the Magician and get this over with today.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I want to wait for Piper. And I need rest, too.”

  “Oh, my poor, poor love. You’re not ready to accept that you just lost Pipes?”

  “Shut up.” She pushed past him and closed the windows.

  “You need my help.”

  “I don’t.”

  “And how do you intend to find your Magician?”

  “Through simple elimination. I remember most of the gods I saw during the Test.”

  “But you tried that already, and you just can’t remember enough.”

  Valentina rubbed her temples. He was giving her a headache. When he stepped closer to her and pinned her between the window and his body, she didn’t protest. She’d gotten so, so tired of constantly fighting him, constantly pushing him away. She bet he’d been counting on it, too.

  “What do you want from me, Loki?” She looked up into his green eyes. Her nose picked his unique scent, and she cursed herself for wanting to lean in and press her cheek to the side of his neck. She wanted to feel the warmth of his skin, not just the scent of it.

  He cupped her face with a gentle hand. “I want you to try a new perspective, love. I want you to hang upside down, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t, Loki. I really don’t.” He caressed her jaw, and she sighed. “You keep saying that...”

  “You have to see things from my perspective. Be a Trickster. Be a Hanged... Maiden.”

  She chuckled, rather coquettishly. “How do you know I’m still a maiden?”

  He leaned in, and she didn’t pull back this time. She closed her eyes and waited for his lips to touch hers, but instead, he left a tiny kiss right on the tip of her nose.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Never.”

  “Clever girl.”

  He took a step back, and Valentina thought it was over, he’d given up. Before she even opened her eyes, she found herself being flung in the air, feet up, head down, hands flailing hopelessly in search of something to hold on to. There was nothing.

  “What are you doing? Loki, what the fuck are you doing?” Oh, this was bad. Valentina De Rossi rarely used the F-word.

  “Relax. I’m just showing you my perspective. See, love? You can hang upside down if you want to.”

  “You’re insane!”

  The thing with old British buildings turned into hotels was that they had pretty high ceilings. So, Valentina’s head was hanging somewhere around the level of Loki’s chin, while her feet didn’t even touch the ceiling. Putting on a pair of leather pants that morning had been the best decision of her life.

  “Now, listen.” The god caught her face between his palms. He shrugged her hands off his shoulders when she tried to grab on to him. “Stop fighting. Relax.”

  “You jerk. Blood is flowing down to my head. I can’t relax.”

  “Shh...”

  “My ears are pounding.”

  “Keeper.” That got her attention. “Just let your body feel its way through it.”

  “Oh God...”

  He smirked. “Yes, I am one.”

  “Not you. You’re not a god, you’re the bane of my existence.”

  There was no use struggling, though. She didn’t know through what kind of magic he’d suspended her like that, upside down, and she had no way of escaping her odd position. She’d tried thinking of a spell, but her thoughts were jumbled. It was as if he was in her head, too, not only in her personal space. His warm hands on her face, his breath against her lips... What if she did allow her body to feel its way through it? What if she allowed her body to respond to him just like it wanted to, no restraint and no second guessing? Would she be doomed then? Most likely. She relaxed her muscles one by one. He stepped away, but his eyes never left hers. One minute, two minutes, three. It wasn’t that bad. Her vision went blurry for a moment, but she blinked the blur away, and now she could see even more clearly than before. Loki looked even more handsome from that angle. How was it possible? No, she didn’t think that was what she was supposed to see from her new perspective.

  “Catch.”

  “What?”

  Before she knew it, he threw her deck of cards at her, and the cards flew in a wide arch before starting their descent toward the floor. Without thinking, she caught them in a wave of energy between her hands, keeping them there, floating in the air, like a juggler who’d discovered a way to defy the law of gravity. She didn’t particularly appreciate that he’d stolen her cards without her noticing. It was time to accept it: as a Keeper, she sucked. The future of the world was not in good hands.

  “So, what is the point of this?”

  Loki took a seat on the couch, pushing her backpack aside. He had the air of a therapist who was just about to guide his patient on a life-changing healing journey. He chuckled at his own ridiculous thought.

  “Focus. You’re not a Keeper of the Spades anymore. You’re a Keeper of the entire Tarot. I misteri degli Arcani are in your hands. Literally. Let the cards ground you and guide you at the same time. Find the Magician. The card, I mean.”

  Valentina furrowed her brows and focused. Maybe Loki knew what he was doing, after all. Mentally, she felt her way through the deck she knew so well, and when she found the card she was looking for, she willed it to pop out of the floating arch. She envisioned it in her mind’s eye.

  “Now what?”

  “Go through the places you visited during the Test again. Slower, this time. Pay attention to every detail. One of those gods is the Magician.”

  Val nodded. There was a dragon, then Gideon Jove, who she knew was Jupiter. The beggar who didn’t know he was a blue god, then the man in the wood cabin. Loki, Death, the Devil with his mighty horns. The Sun, and Osiris, who had told her he was Judgement.

  “I know who he is. The Magician is the first one. The dragon. I remember now. I felt it the very first time I saw him in his cave. I felt him, his magic. The dragon is the Magician.”

  “Good. See? This is progress. Now, how do we actually find him?”

  Val opened her eyes, a triumphant smile on her face. “Astral projection. I was in that cave twice already, once in my etheric body, and then in that lucid dream... with you. I can find it again. Now, if you could just put me down...”

  “What? You don’t need to lie down to astral project. You can do it standing up. Or hanging upside down. Try it.”

  “Seriously, it would be easier if...”

  “Love, we don’t want to make this easy. We want to make it hard. You need to start pushing your limits. This journey you’ve set on... it’s hard, and it’s only going to get harder. You have to step out of your comfort zone, try new techniques, push yourself.”

  “Okay, okay... Be quiet!”

  She relaxed her shoulders and did her best to ignore the pounding in her ears and temples. This couldn’t be healthy. The quicker she got it over with, the sooner she’d get to stand on her own two feet again. Focusing on her breathing, and never letting the energy between her palms falter, she deepened it on each exhale. Five minutes later, her body was succumbing to the familiar sensation of being swept inside a vortex of vibrations. It felt like her very cells
were vibrating faster and faster, louder and louder, until she pushed herself out of her physical body. She saw herself hanging from the ceiling, as if her legs had been tied up with an invisible cord or rope. So strange. She turned to Loki and rolled her eyes when she saw he’d been watching her every move.

  “You can see me.”

  “Sure I can. Always.”

  “So, now you see two versions of me.”

  “Can you guess which one I like more?”

  She shook her head and floated closer to her physical body. Her hand went through the Magician card when she tried to grab it. Of course. She couldn’t. As long as she was etheric, she couldn’t touch anything, and nothing could touch her. Well, unless it was a god or a goddess. Apparently, they had no regard for etheric bodies. She remembered what she was supposed to do. Find the dragon. She pictured the cave with all the tiny details she could remember. The tall arch of the rock ceiling, the sun pouring through it, the winding tunnels inside the mountain, the huge dragon sleeping there. On her next breath, she was there, her etheric hair barely moving at the whoosh of traveling through the astral plane. That was the magic of astral projection. All she needed to do was to envision the place she wanted to visit. There was no time or space on this plane. Not like they were understood in the third dimension. One could spend years exploring the world like this, and only a couple of hours would pass on the plane of one’s physical body.

  Valentina saw the beast. The dragon’s body was covered in black scales and leathery skin. Six short, strong legs, and no wings on his back. He was an earth dragon, a humongous reptile that lived underground and never needed to see the surface. He was sleeping soundly, his body moving up and down with each long, heavy breath, the air around him humid and sticky. Valentina floated closer to him, her feet a few inches above the ground. She reached out and touched the beast’s claw, and when she felt his leathery skin under her slightly trembling palm, she knew. The dragon was a god, indeed. He didn’t flinch. Her touch was so gentle that he probably didn’t even feel it. No matter. The idea wasn’t to wake him up, but to figure out where he was, so she could later find him in the real world.

  She looked around. Nothing but rock, dripping water here and there, dust, and dirt. A few small, obscure insects were scurrying along the walls, away from the dragon and the etheric energy they couldn’t see but felt was present in their underground haven. She sighed and figured there was no other way but to pick one of the opening tunnels surrounding the main cavern and try her luck. At least one of them had to lead somewhere. She picked the closest one, floated through it, and when she reached a dead end, she closed her eyes and zapped herself back in the dragon’s lair. Next. It wasn’t the second one, nor the third one. The fourth, however, looked promising. It went up, up, up, and she soon reached the surface. The landscape intrigued her even more than the inside of the cave. She found herself between the walls of what looked like an abandoned, half in ruin fortress. Not a single soul in sight.

  “What happened here?”

  The sharp pinch in her left side took her by surprise. She yelped, then let out a deep sigh of resignation.

  “Missed me?”

  “Actually, no, Ravenna. Not at all.”

  “I did. I missed you a bunch. But he’s always around you, these days. He’s insufferable!”

  “Loki? Oh, I don’t know... I’d rather be around him than have you drip poison in my head every minute of every hour.”

  The voice started laughing, which made Valentina’s ears ring. She wondered whether it really was because of Ravenna, or because her physical body had been hanging upside down for too long.

  “You think I’m poison? Tell me, girl, what have you been up to since I took a break from our sisterly relationship?”

  “I don’t have time for this.” Valentina started floating over the fortress in search of anything that might help her identify the place.

  “No, no. Just tell me one thing you did. One.”

  Val shook her head and stayed silent. Apparently, what remained of the fortress, a tower and some small bastions, was on top of a tall hill, not exactly a mountain, and it overlooked a city below. The city was her answer. It had to be. She found the main building, floated down the stone stairs, and tried to find her way to the city. She could have zapped herself again, but she didn’t want to miss any important details.

  “You lied, cheated, and betrayed,” Ravenna said in a singsong voice.

  Valentina grunted when the pain in her ribs increased. Now that she knew Ravenna wasn’t the one hurting her, she would have loved to be able to have a chat with her long-lost Higher Self and tell her to stop whatever she was trying to do.

  “You’re ignoring me,” the voice continued, “but it doesn’t work that way. If you ignore me, it doesn’t mean I’ll just go away. And if you don’t admit what you did, it doesn’t make it not real, either. So, yeah... Keep telling yourself that I’m poison if it helps you sleep at night. Since you met Loki, you’ve changed. Tell me who you’re hanging with, and I’ll tell you who you are.” She laughed again. “Hanging! Get it?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You know it’s true,” she singsonged again. “Did you think that you could be all lovey-dovey with the God of Trickery and Mischief and not have his wickedy-wickedness rub off on you?”

  No matter what she said, Valentina wouldn’t entertain her. She floated down a narrow, rocky path until she found an old sign, probably the last one standing. The arrow that pointed toward the city said Grenoble, and the arrow pointing up said Bastille.

  “Got it!” She closed her eyes and willed her etheric body to find her physical one back in the hotel room before Ravenna even caught up with what was going on. When she opened her eyes, she was hanging upside down from the ceiling. Her head was pounding worse than ever. She lost focus, and the tarot cards fell to the floor. Loki was watching her from across the room, a satisfied smirk on his lips.

  “See? It wasn’t that hard.”

  “Put me down. I know where the Magician is.”

  He stood up, and with a wave of his hand, returned Valentina to a normal standing position. When her legs gave in and she lost her balance, he was there to catch her and hold her against his chest. They stayed like that for a long moment, Valentina waiting for the dizziness to pass, and Loki taking full advantage of her temporary weakness. He leaned in and inhaled the scent of her now disheveled hair. She smelled like ripe blood oranges, reminding him of that time when he’d lived in Valencia, and met a girl whose father owned an orchard. Under the hot Spanish sun, he’d chase her all day, tackle her to the ground, and hold her there, in the tall, green grass. Until one day, when he’d told him she was engaged to be married, and the chasing stopped. Loki sighed. He wrapped his arms around Valentina’s waist and drew her even closer, suddenly desperate to feel her lithe body pressed against his, her breath tickling his neck, hear her heart flutter rapidly in her chest. He closed his eyes and placed a long, lingering kiss on the top of her head. The Valencian girl had chosen someone else over him. Would Valentina do the same? He had her now, in his arms. With Piper and Magny gone, he had her all for himself. Still, even as she melted in his embrace and sought his warmth and gentle touch, Loki felt like he was losing her. Like he had lost her already, a long time ago. Like it had been decided by fate, and not even the God of Mischief could trick fate into favoring him. This time, too, fate would favor someone else. Sometimes, if he looked hard enough, he could sense how Valentina had been promised to someone else. He might steal a kiss or two at some point, but he would never be able to steal her.

  “Where is he, love?” he asked in a whisper, doing his best not to choke on the words. Could he be the one who was fated to have Valentina? The Magician… Would he, Loki, survive it?

  “I saw a city. The name sounded French. Grenoble. And in that city, on top of a tall hill, there’s an old fortress. Bastille.”

  Loki nodded. “Well done. We can be there by
tomorrow evening.”

  After another minute, Valentina wiggled free and stepped away. She started gathering the cards in a neat pile. Loki knelt down to help her. Their hands touched, and after a moment’s hesitation, she took his hand into hers and looked up into his deep green eyes.

  “Will you please enter your card?”

  Loki pulled away and jumped to his feet. Well, it hadn’t taken her long to break the spell completely.

  “Loki, come on,” she insisted. “You’ve already helped me so much. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Nothing. But I need you… I need you to be the Hanged Man.”

  “For now, I’m of more use to you just the way I am, love. Trust me.”

  Valentina bit her lip. She sighed and nodded slowly. “I trust you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Despite the urgency of the situation, Valentina stayed two more days in London. She did everything in her power to convince Piper to go with her to France, and she failed time and time again. Her best friend didn’t even spend the nights at the hotel anymore. She was always at Sia’s. For the first time since they were friends, Val found herself second on Piper’s list of priorities. And it hurt. What hurt even more was knowing that it had all been her fault. She’d betrayed Sia’s trust, and the price she had to pay was Piper. For the time being, her friend wanted to stay. She’d promised Val it was nothing permanent and that she’d just gotten tired of traveling and of all the jumping from one plane to the next, but that didn’t make Val feel any better. In the end, Loki convinced her it was time to move on, and reassured her that she’d see her friend again in the near future. Valentina believed him. After all, he had proved before that he was pretty good at divining the future. She felt guilty. She’d taken Piper away from her home and her family, and she knew that Piper missed her parents and brothers. They video chatted almost every night. Now, she was forced to respect her wish and leave her with Sia. Why did she feel like the young painter had just replaced her? Oh. Because she had. When Magnus had offered to stay behind and make sure Piper was safe, Valentina finally gave in and let Loki book the tickets to France.