Chapter 3
FREYR
“Blast! This ram is determined to thwart me, even in death!” I muttered.
I took no shame in admitting I spoke aloud to myself often, as I spend much time alone, and who was one to talk to when with no one but oneself?
In my case, my sword. And Gull, if I was near the great steed.
If I dared say that speaking to either of them was the same as speaking to myself, they would leave me in a heartbeat for, well, Ravnur most like.
Both had a liking for him, in ways they were never quite cordial with others.
Tools, forged instruments or not, they had spirits in them without a doubt.
I took a breath to calm the fidgety tremors in my hands as I looked upon the severed ram’s horn I had been painstakingly coring, cleaning, and polishing.
Free of its marrow, washed, and now near pristine in its shine, it was practically perfect, but my latest attempt to smooth a rough edge with a piece of glass had resulted in a scratch.
I needed to stop rushing, but between kingly and godly duties, I had barely had time to give the horn its due attention. I wanted it done today.
For when I saw Ravnur again.
I might have slain the beast, but ’twas with Ravnur’s arrow, and a turning point for us—well, for me—attempting to see him through new eyes.
Could I say I loved my hirdman? Not so quickly, no.
But the want was there. The inkling was there.
And I didn’t want to sully our progression with a piss poor job at making him a drinking horn out of our prey.
But how to fix the scratch without making it worse?
“While I appreciate the creativity, won’t that pinch a bit going in?”
I nearly toppled backward at being so thoroughly startled by my unexpected guest. “Loki!” I shouted up at him, where he loomed over me from behind my workbench.
I was in my home, modest as it was, for I did not need anything ostentatious, and he had definitely not knocked.
I righted myself and spun upon the bench to face him. The guileful imp looked largely unchanged since last I’d seen him. The unbraided portion of his hair hiding half of his face was new, but I suspected I knew the reason he kept it in shadow.
I too might hide scars if I had them.
Not quite as tall as me if I were standing and far more slender in figure, Loki was a fine specimen of a Jotun.
Fair. Downright beautiful with his flame-like hair, from an almost black at its roots to an immediate blood-red before slowly fading orange and eventually reaching flaxen ends.
Pale-eyed and pale-skinned, he was very stark in appearance, perhaps more so to me because I always strove to blend with nature.
Loki did not blend anywhere but commanded attention from anyone within view of him. I did enjoy the embellishments on his garments forming snakes and wolves and the like, for he was all of the above, a force of nature like me, if a bit more enigmatic.
“Must you always drop in unannounced?” I asked.
“What would be the fun in announcing myself?” Loki hopped up onto the bench as delicately as having floated there, then spun on his toes and hopped down again to sit beside me. He knocked his shoulder into mine. “I’ve always heard you had an impressive horn.”
I huffed, still holding the ram’s horn I had been polishing. While both Loki and I had slept with some of our fellow gods, we had never been with each other. I preferred lovers without ulterior motives, and one could never be sure with him. “Where is Oli then?”
The corner of Loki’s mouth twitched almost imperceptivity. “Why? Fancy another go?”
“No. But I thought he might be interested to know I did as he asked of me.”
“Did you? And what was that?”
“As if you’re unaware.”
“Why not? Who’s to say I know everything?”
“You, usually.” I returned my attention to the horn, debating attempting again with the piece. “Or perhaps it was a little bird who told me,” I teased, for I knew full well it was no ordinary bird who had perched on the railing of Skidbladnir while I had my way with Oli.
“Can’t get a little shapeshifting past the god of nature, eh?” Loki said with a surprisingly soft tone, almost thoughtful. He knocked his shoulder into mine again. “So what is this phallic marvel for?”
“It’s a drinking horn, clearly. It’s intended as a gift.”
“How sweet of you!” He snatched the horn from my hands. “But you needn’t repay me for Oli’s services. He was my gift to you!”
“Loki.” I was wary to try and take the horn back from him and worsen its fate, when he flung it into the air, caught it, only to fling it again, like half-hearted juggling. “If you damage that horn, so help me—”
“Honestly, helping is what I do.” Upon catching the horn a third time, Loki held it steady and brushed his thumb over the scratch I had made with the glass.
It didn’t glow or give any indication of magic being used, yet in the wake of Loki’s thumb, the scratch was gone, good as new, maybe even more smoothed than I had hoped for.
“I can see you were using skill rather than magic to craft this, but cheating to correct an accident doesn’t really count. Especially if I do it.”
Another unexpected fling of the horn made my breath catch, but it landed back into my hands as if guided by more magic to reach me safely. “Thank you.” I had been using skill alone, for a gift didn’t feel quite as much from the heart if not made with tender care and attention.
It was a fine black drinking horn, nearly pure obsidian in color.
Just like Ravnur’s hair.
Perhaps I gazed a little too long at it, for Loki began skipping about the room as if aimless and distracted. As if he was stalling for time but had no real reason for being here.
“Oli is on to our next slighted brethren, I assume?” I ventured, since he had yet to answer my original query. “Is he to visit all of us?”
Loki kept turned away from me, presumably inspecting one of my prized animal hides on the wall. “If I sent him to everyone I’d slighted, he’d be on his back until the next end of days. He is with Balder now.”
“Balder? In Hel? With Hel?”
“Such a dutiful daughter, mine. But really, she is sick of the golden god’s whining, so win-win.”
“Loki.” My tone called for his attention, but he still didn’t face me, skipping about instead to another item, my personal drinking horn, that I doubted he really cared about inspecting.
“It was a kind gesture—odd, and something only you would think of—to send that young mortal to me, to however many of us he will be visiting, but what else is it about him? What do you want from all this?”
“I don’t want anything. Just paying my debts.
” The next item of note Loki looked at was my sword in its sheath, poised on a pedestal to denote its preciousness to me.
Loki reached out as if to give the sword a flick with his finger, but it gave a little quiver of warning, and he thought better of pestering it.
“Loki, seriously now, is there any—”
“You like him then?” He skipped back to me and gave the finished horn a gentle tap, causing it to resonate with a sound that would usually only be heard from glass. He was letting me know he wasn’t asking about Oli, very clearly steering the conversation away from Oli.
“I have always liked Ravnur.”
“Yes, yes, but do you like, like him?
So juvenile, but that was our god of mischief. Sentimental but always in a roundabout way to avoid letting his guard down. I suppose I had been the same in some ways lately. I stroked the smooth surface of the horn. “I think so.”
“And that doesn’t… scare the ever-loving shit out of you like bad digestion?”
I laughed. No one quite spun a phrase like Loki either. “It does. But I believe the fear, the risk, might be worth it.”
“Even knowing you could lose it all again?”
I looked up at that, looked into Loki’s pale blue eyes—well, eye, since the shadowed half of his face remained veiled by flowing hair.
There was no guile to him in this moment, which I hadn’t thought possible of the crafty imp.
“I think that is the most important reason to risk it. Because I might lose, yes. But I might… win.”
The strangest flutter filled my chest. Nerves. Excitement. And dare I say… hope.
I might win. I might get to have what I had so longed for and never truly known.
“Such the romantic.” Loki shoved my shoulder, teetering me on the bench. He hovered near to me afterward, as if unspoken words remained.
“Was there something else you wanted to say to me, Loki?”
That strange guilelessness returned, but then he said, “Nah.”
“Trolls take you, you venomous, vile wretch!”
My attention stole to the window, propped open slightly to let in air and the ambient noises of my people that usually soothed me. But whatever argument had erupted not far outside my door was clearly full of vitriol.
I returned to Loki—but not even a strand of fiery red hair remained where he had recently been standing. Typical. If he did have more to say to me, he’d be back.
Tucking the horn into my belt satchel, I hurried to exit the cottage and see to the commotion. A king’s duties were never done.