Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 1: Books 1-3 Page 19

  Sigyn leaned forward, hands on her cheeks. “And are you a villain or a hero?”

  Loki shrugged. “That probably depends on who is telling the story, does it not? Most of us try our best to seem heroes to our allies and villains to others. The best you can hope for is to look back on your actions and the intentions behind them and know you did what you did for the right reasons.”

  “And can you?”

  “Mostly.”

  Sigyn tapped her finger against her lip. “Naught … selfish? Naught you would take for yourself, and damn the consequences?”

  “Is that selfish, or mere self-interest? Should we not claim something of life for ourselves? We are so often asked to sacrifice all we can give and more for … for the future, for the people around us, for the needs of the many. But if everyone spends their life giving and giving and never thinking of themselves, what is the point? There must be balance in all things.”

  Her cheeks felt hot and her stomach unsettled, the way he stared so deeply into her eyes made her want to back up and move toward him at the same time. If he was saying what it sounded like, if he felt the same as she did … “And what would you claim?”

  Before he could answer, Hadding stood and clanked his goblet on the table. “The time has come to consummate the marriage. Attendants, escort the bride.”

  Well, damn. Sigyn watched Loki with regret. Now she’d never know what he’d have said. “I … I have to go.”

  She scampered over to Frigg and escorted her to her bedroom. Frigg said naught while Sigyn helped her out of her dress and into her nightgown. If she was nervous, she didn’t let it show. Sigyn stood a fertility idol by the bed, then hugged her sister. Though Frigg’s expression remained collected, she clutched Sigyn’s hand a moment. Sigyn embraced her.

  For a moment, it looked like her sister would say something, ask something. But then Frigg just nodded. Sigyn sighed and returned the gesture as Frigg settled back on the bed.

  Sigyn slipped out the door.

  32

  Tradition required witnesses see Odin remove the bridal crown as symbol of consummation. The sex was assumed after that. All ridiculous, but people lived and died on their traditions.

  Frigg sat stiffly on her bed, eyes locked in one corner of the room. Was she afraid?

  Odin sat in a chair across from her, hands resting on his knees. All the women he’d lain with, it had never quite felt like this. He’d always known what to say before. He sighed. “I’m glad your father agreed to this union. I hope you are pleased as well.”

  “I am … most pleased.”

  “Good.” He banged his palms against his knees. “Good.”

  He looked around her chamber. Rather than a brazier, she had an actual fireplace, casting warmth and a pleasant smoky aroma through the room. A weaving hung on the wall, depicting a dragon rising from the sea. He pointed at the tapestry. “You’ve visited the Gandvik Sea?”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “Ah. Shame. Well, we’ll go one day. My cousin lives on the shore. It’s very … impressive. Very impressive.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He rose. “So. Should we, uh …”

  She stared into her fireplace like it would give her the answer. Uh huh. He drifted over to the bed.

  Now she did look at him, eyes haunted. A vӧlva bride. As soon as he lay with her, she’d have him under her spell. Why then, did she look to be the one afraid?

  “Stand up.” He guided her up, then slid the dress over her head.

  She stood there in her shift, hugging herself. “Urd is a heavy weight.”

  “Yes.” She had no idea. The weight of destiny crashed down upon him, holding him to so many oaths that threatened to tear him to pieces.

  He unlaced his tunic and tossed it aside, then yanked off his trousers. After removing her shift, he laid her back on the bed. When he looked up, she had her fists clenched around the sheets. Eyes staring off into the darkness again. Seeing things, perhaps.

  She cried out in pain when he entered her, even gentle as he tried to be. She wiggled under him a bit, but not as he imagined. She’d gone so stiff this had begun to feel more like work than pleasure. When he finally spilled his seed, chest heaving, she went limp.

  Odin frowned. He didn’t feel any different. Maybe because she hadn’t taken her pleasure from him. Damn it. How was he to give pleasure to a woman so intensely uninterested in it?

  For a while, he lay there beside her, tossing around words in his mind and discarding each. Without her climax, this whole marriage meant naught. He hated himself for thinking that, but there it was. Ve’s life depending on him drawing out her power. Besides which, a lifetime—or many—married to a woman this pent up, this reserved, would serve him ill.

  But he had married her.

  After blowing out a long breath, he reached over to the sack that lay with his discarded clothes and pulled out the final apple, the last fruit of Yggdrasil. He rolled over, offering it to her. His wife.

  “Is that …?”

  “Yes.”

  Her hand trembled as she reached for it. “From Vanaheim …” She mumbled something unintelligible, then grasped his hand with her own and took a bite of the apple. In an instant she sat upright, no doubt shocked by the overwhelming sensation. Her eyes rolled back as she chewed, savoring every moment. Would she experience the same things he had? Bite after bite she took, eating as though driven by some compulsion.

  And then the core slipped from her fingers and she threw her arms around his waist. Odin let her push him back down on the bed and straddle him. Her body burned with heat, and the look on her face told him she felt the need as pressingly as he had back then. Frigg planted kiss after kiss on his face and chest before mounting him.

  It seemed the apples had much the same effect on women as on men. The urgency of her need hardened him far more than the first time. Finally, some fire in her.

  And then she screamed. No, he was screaming. A wave of energy hit him. Shadows moved in the corner of his room like ghosts watching him and his wife. The air shimmered, flickering back and forth between colors too vibrant to be real and too dull to hold his attention. Like a draught of the strongest mead, her release had left him dizzy, euphoric, and taunted by strange visions.

  His eyes glazed over, and shadows danced at the edge of his sight, cutting off his view of Frigg. Nor did he need sight. Somehow she was as much inside him as he was in her. Whispers plagued his mind, like secret conversations just out of eavesdropping range.

  This was something else, like he’d seen beyond Midgard to the Otherworlds. Could Frigg explain all this to him? Could she understand the choices and decisions he now faced? She had the qualities of a queen, if he could but trust her. And he had to—he’d married her because he needed her. And he needed her forever as his queen, as a partner.

  At last she collapsed and fell into a daze. Odin stumbled from the bed, eyes burning with the mercurial nature of his new reality. Color bled from the walls. Reality rippled around him, pressed in on him with a profound sense of the wrongness of the world, of the barest glimpse of alien realms hostile and angry.

  Much as those who touched those realms. Sorcerers, like the Niflungar, trading away their humanity bit by bit for powers drawn from corrupt and twisted worlds. Powers of Niflheim. A maelstrom of visions swirled before his eyes, of battles, wars, death. And terrible magic. The source of such powers lay in the frozen wasteland of the dead, its icy and perilous queen watching him now.

  As she had watched her children, broken in fire. And they fled north. Into the islands of Reidgotaland. To one island where they slept for centuries and now wakened.

  They called that island Samsey.

  And he knew. Knew where to find the Niflungar.

  He stumbled on the floor, blinking, trying to shut out the blurring, blinding procession of madness. In the shadows, his brother Ve ran. Raced in bent and twisted woods. Odin chased after him, or thought he did, and Ve spun, eyes glowing
red. His teeth had become tusks.

  Odin screamed in horror.

  33

  Sigyn had lingered by the door until all the other attendants, those on both sides, had returned to the party. Then she drifted away. Frigg would be fine, and Sigyn could do no more for her.

  Still, a vexing wildness roiled in her gut, one not even the mead seemed to soothe. Frigg was married now, and still Sigyn walked alone in the world. Her sister wanted to be queen. Sigyn would have settled for being anyone.

  No, she didn’t feel much like more drinking. With everyone at the feast, no one would wander the lower halls where the dvergar had hidden their secrets. She glanced around the corner, then headed for the stairs.

  Frigg’s workspace remained strewn with mess spilled over the floor and filled with foul odors. Her sister must not have allowed any slaves down here—rightfully so, they’d like as not poison themselves—nor had she come back to clean up herself.

  She stared at the runes on the wall, but they slipped round and round in her mind, unwilling to divulge their secrets. Maybe she was drunker than she’d thought.

  “I have an answer for your question.” The voice came from behind her, causing her to stiffen. She turned slowly. Loki stood in the shadows of the threshold, not quite in the light of the sconce here and blocking that of the one in the hall. “If you have an answer for mine.”

  His question? He had asked her if she was content with her life. In truth, before today, she had thought of little other than that question. So simple, really, and yet so difficult to quantify. So few ever stopped to ask such a thing.

  “I’m lonely,” she said before she could stop herself. The words seemed to escape on their own. “I’m surrounded by people who don’t understand or appreciate me, who resent whatever help I offer them. My own sister loves me. I know she does, but she can’t show it … And I … I just want somewhere I … fit.” Gods, that sounded ridiculous. “Why are you so interested in this?”

  Now he drifted into the room, looking a moment at the runes before turning sharply on her. “Because I am drawn to you. You are not like other people, Sigyn. And sometimes you think it’s your curse, but it can be a blessing. And I would claim you, if you let me.”

  Sigyn swallowed, uncertain what she had just heard. Was he saying he wanted to bed her? Freyja, she’d take it even if that was all it was. If he wanted more … No. She couldn’t afford to delude herself. He would go away with Odin and leave her here. But even if for a night, she wanted something more than this life. Frigg would have her dreams. And Sigyn needed to pretend to have her own, if only for a single bright moment.

  She took his hand, trying to still the trembling in her own. She shut the door to the workshop then fell back against it. “I want something real.”

  Loki leaned in, his cheek brushing hers. “So do I.”

  His hands were warm on her face and shoulders as he pulled away her dress, warm as he caressed her breasts. She shuddered from it all. She hadn’t lain with a man in too many moons, and now, this one … She leapt up on him, wrapping her legs around his back. She didn’t want to be a proper noble lady. She wanted to be her. He didn’t recoil, just hefted her up, against the wall, kissing her with such urgency she couldn’t breathe.

  His whole body felt aflame as he pushed inside her. Sigyn almost wept for the closeness so long denied. She threw her arms around his shoulders and pulled him closer, trying to drink in every moment until her body at last surrendered. She felt his release, too, hot inside her.

  And then something happened.

  Like a surge of energy passing through her, forcing her to arch her back as she climaxed again. She looked into his eyes and saw stars there. And she fell into the sky, watching the world change and change again beneath the eternal cosmos. Shooting stars crashed through those skies and pummeled the world. Fires burned, and tides surged, until at last she stood beneath the greatest tree she had ever seen. Its trunk stretched up toward the heavens, seemingly connecting all the worlds of creation. Along its boughs ran a silver squirrel that watched her with knowing eyes.

  And from the branches grew a golden apple. She could see within it, not with her eyes, but with something deeper. That apple glowed like sunlight, shimmering with the light of life itself.

  Sigyn reached for it, and her hand clasped around its smooth surface. It pulsed like a beating heart, tantalizing and intoxicating. She shook herself, suddenly realizing she and Loki lay on the stone floor. But she truly held a golden apple in her hand.

  “I asked you what life you’d want to live for eternity,” Loki said. “Odin gave me one apple to give to whom I pleased. One chance to offer someone I wish to spend my immortal life with.”

  Sigyn’s hands trembled around the apple. “Me? You just met me.” She couldn’t even swallow. Such events did not even unfold in skalds’ tales, and even such tales always ended in tragedy. The heroes died, oft as not, betrayed. Life offered naught but hardship and a bitter end.

  Except for this time. He wasn’t asking her to marry him—he was asking her to spend the rest of time with him. Dizziness swept over her, and she nearly fainted. Eat this and she would become something more than human. She would be a goddess herself … She held in her hands the chance for immortality. And if she took it, there would be no turning back. There could be no return to the life she’d known. The uncertain future would lie before her, stretching on and on, titillating and terrifying in equal measure.

  But then, maybe it was already too late. Maybe knowing what she held in her hands, what life could be like, would already make this little town seem stifling, even suffocating, to know that she could have had more, could have embraced an urd beyond the ken of mortals. And with Loki, she could truly be herself—and he wanted her for who she was. Never in her life had she met anyone like him. And, in truth, she knew she’d never meet his like again, never have another chance at such a perfect match for herself.

  “Perhaps I just met you,” he said. “Perhaps I knew you in another lifetime. Maybe, just maybe, I have always known you, and I’ve waited so long just to find you again.”

  A tear formed in her eye, but she blinked it away. She wouldn’t let aught spoil this moment. If it were a skald’s tale, then let the drama unfold as it would.

  She bit into the apple.

  34

  Odin gasped, his knees slamming into the floor. He was in Frigg’s chambers, his new wife tossing fitfully. A vile surge in his stomach sent him crawling to the chamber pot, where he heaved up all the mead he’d drunk at the party. Panting, he glanced back at Frigg. His sickness had not disturbed her in the least, it seemed.

  Gods, had Loki known this would happen? Was that how the man had gained such insights—had he too fucked a vӧlva? No wonder men feared the witches’ seduction. Such visions would haunt the bravest warrior.

  Odin yanked on his clothes and wandered out to the great hall, stumbling twice into the walls. While some still slept off the party, it seemed the sun had risen, because outside he heard music. Sleeping in Frigg’s isolated, windowless chamber had disoriented him. How did these people manage without seeing the sky?

  In the town square, some of the men chanted a song to their ancestors, while another played the lyre. In their midst Idunn danced, her thin red dress swirling in the air. It caught currents of the winds, flying about like her dark hair, entrancing almost every man and woman in Halfhaugr. If all Idunn said was true, did these same apples make the Vanir immortal? What was a goddess if not a woman untouched by time, blessed with powers others could never understand? He’d seen her vulnerability with Ve that day.

  But Idunn was an enchantress. Maybe Loki should have suggested her for Odin’s wife. Odin shook his head at the thought. Frigg was his wife now. Indulging in such fantasies dishonored a woman who didn’t deserve such treatment. She would be a fine queen.

  Idunn turned, smiling at Odin, almost like she knew what he’d been thinking. His ears flushed. Damn. Not like every man in the whole town w
asn’t thinking the same thing about her.

  She glided over toward him, placed her hands on his chest, then kissed his cheek. “How was the wedding night?”

  “Idunn?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t seem like someone who’s lived for thousands of years.”

  She laughed. “Because I talk too much? Or because I’m not afraid to call you out for staring at my tits? Which, by the way, you’ve been doing again. Not that I really mind. I know they’re nice. Anyway, how many immortal women do you know? I know a few. Mostly, priorities change when viewed against a canopy of eternity. False modesty falls away, and you’re left with a clearer view of the things that matter in life—happiness, laughter, companionship. Or else … or else you become so caught up in your own existence you forget the lives of those around you. Some of the other Vanir are like that. To them, your lives go by so fast they no longer take notice at all. It’s kind of sad.”

  Odin worked his jaw, uncertain what to say to all that. He had been admiring her breasts. Again. And she did talk more than he expected a goddess to. But then, so often, her words seemed to hide more depth than her flippant tone would suggest.

  “So did you give her an apple?”

  “Yes.”

  “I assume you remembered she’d be needing your sexual attentions right after … You should probably be with her instead of me. We all have needs.”

  “Yes.” He shook his head as he walked away, trying to clear the lingering shadows, though he did not head toward Frigg. He needed to find Loki. He didn’t know how, but somehow he understood. Secrets of the world had unraveled before him. Maybe his blood brother could explain the visions. And what he’d seen of Ve, what did that mean? After scouring the town, he found Loki and Sigyn both sitting on the roof of a house. How and why they had climbed up there Odin couldn’t guess.