Heart of Mischief (Soul of Shadow #2)

Prologue

Three weeks after homecoming

From his seat on the plush velvet armchair, Elias Everhart could see everything.

The dancers. The dwarves. The vittra. The reindeer. The pixie-size fairies and the elves with pointed ears. The guards standing at each of the entrances, all in mare form in the unlikely event of an attack. Highly unlikely, if Elias were being honest.

No one dared to invade the underworld.

Loki had organized quite the show that night.

Elvish women twirled on silks dangling from the eighty-foot-tall ceiling.

Trapeze artists swung through the air, passing flaming torches to each other with their teeth.

A pair of towering giants fought at the center of an enormous ring, much to the delight of everyone in a betting mood.

And, as always, the mead flowed in abundance.

Holding court above it all was Loki and his daughter, Hel—the queen of the underworld.

They sat on twin thrones, Hel with her legs crossed, back hunched, and face propped on one hand, ever the image of the petulant teenager.

As far as Elias knew, for most of eternity, there had been only one throne atop that raised stone dais.

It was only when Loki was banished to Helheim that he insisted on ruling beside his daughter.

Elias tried not to look at Hel for too long. Her face—one half alive and beautiful, all creamy olive skin and long eyelashes, the other half dead and rotting, eyeball stem and teeth visible even from his spot a hundred feet away—had always unsettled him.

At the foot of the dais, three ash wives danced, their bark-covered hips swaying to the sound of the fiddle and flute played by a pair of dwarves tucked away in some distant corner of the grand hall.

Ash wife spirits were Loki’s favorite to watch.

Normally, the god of mischief took in their performances with a casual half smirk on his face.

Today, he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself at all.

Something had been off with Loki since his brief visit to Silver Shores.

Something beyond the god’s usual mercurial attitude and petty annoyances.

Perhaps it had to do with what had happened to his son, the Fenrir wolf, who’d had half his teeth cut from his mouth right before Loki dragged him back to Helheim.

Elias had no idea where the god was keeping the wolf now.

He wasn’t even sure if the Fenrir should be considered friend or foe.

Or maybe Loki was on the verge of making one of his proclamations, an announcement for a ball or tournament or whatever other seemingly random scheme he’d dreamt up to pass his time in exile.

But Elias didn’t think so; for three weeks, the god of mischief had been in what could only be described as a “funk,” and he had no idea why.

Elias felt strangely restless himself. Usually, he enjoyed his time in the underworld, with its ample free alcohol and entertainment.

Right now, he was seated on a deliciously soft armchair, surrounded by the souls of beautiful human women who, while technically dead, felt plenty alive in the way they sprawled across his lap and petted his hair.

Between the gorgeous company and the mead flowing through his veins—with more waiting in the goblet dangling from his fingers—he should have been in a state of bliss.

But while Elias had done his best to enjoy this sure-to-be-brief vacation from his duties in Asgard, he hadn’t been able to fully relax. To let go. The theatrics were dull. The mead was sour. Even Helheim’s landscape seemed to have lost some of its strange beauty.

Though he didn’t want to admit it, Elias was in a funk, too.

It was strange. Mares didn’t feel “sad” or “down” or “depressed.” They didn’t feel anything, really.

It was one of the biggest perks of the job: being free from messy emotions and a pesky conscience, the two things that make humans most miserable.

Since the moment he’d completed his Trial to become a mare, he’d felt nothing.

Nothing but thirst for fear, of course, and the delicious euphoria when that thirst was finally quenched.

For seven years, he’d let those two impulses guide him, assist him in carrying out whatever missions Loki assigned him.

Then he met her, and everything changed.

She did something to him. Coaxed out feelings he’d thought were gone forever.

Resurrected them like the magician she was, skilled and sneaky.

Always one step ahead. There hadn’t been one moment where he’d felt his emotions come back to life, no sensation of a light switch flicking from off to on.

It had been a gradual thing. A pickaxe chipping away at the dam of his feelings, creating hundreds of tiny holes, so small that he didn’t realize they were even there until it was almost too late.

That night—homecoming—Elias had teetered on the precipice of something impossible. Something that would have brought the dam down entirely. Something intoxicating and delicious and absolutely, catastrophically forbidden.

But before that could happen, thank the gods, the girl had revealed the truth:

She’d never felt anything for him at all.

It had all been some stupid act. A ploy. Nothing more than a way to get the information she needed for her sister.

She had used him.

It was humiliating to think of how much the realization had hurt him.

Like a knife through his newly revived heart.

Chest bone shattered, aorta sliced open, blood all over the tiled hallway floor.

It was too much to bear. In that moment, Elias realized that he would much rather go back to the pleasant numbness of the previous seven years than suffer through the excruciating pain of losing yet another person he …

In the brief seconds between deciding to dam his emotions back up and actually doing so, there was panic.

Panic brought on by the fact that he didn’t actually know if he could.

What if all of that repulsive feeling that he’d done toward that girl had made just one too many holes?

What if he had opened himself up not only to the pain of her rejection, but to everything else, too?

All the hurt that had driven him to trade in his soul in the first place?

Thankfully, there was no such issue. He gummed up the holes, plastered them over with six feet of cement, and went right back to being the handsome, murderous sociopath he loved seeing in the bathroom mirror each morning.

He suspected that he had done so just in the nick of time—and tried not to dwell on what would have happened if he’d waited even an hour longer.

After doing away with those pesky emotions, the path forward had become obvious: steal Lou, bring her to the Fenrir as an offering in exchange for the riddle, and murder anyone who tried to get in the way.

Ta-da! Problem solved.

Such was the beauty of thinking without a conscience: no idiotic “morals” getting in the way of what needed to be done to meet one’s goals.

For the most part, his plan worked. He kidnapped Lou, got the riddle out of the Fenrir, and made it back to Helheim alive. The only downside was that he hadn’t actually gotten to murder anyone.

Not for a lack of trying, though.

And now he was in a funk, and so, apparently, was Loki.

Over on the dais, Loki was watching the ash wives dance with about as much enthusiasm as Elias would have felt if someone had suggested they go rescue a sinking ship filled with orphans.

Which was to say, none. The god of mischief was deep in thought, his brow furrowed beneath the salt-and-pepper hair he usually chose to sport.

Given that Loki was an immortal being who could shape-shift into literally any form—male, female, young, ancient, strong, wiry—Elias sometimes wondered why he spent the bulk of his time as a middle-aged man.

Loki was so vain naturally that Elias would’ve expected the god to keep himself free of gray hair and wrinkles for all of eternity.

As Elias considered this, Loki’s expression shifted. It was subtle but clear: a loosening of the forehead, a clearing of the fog in his eyes. The god had made some kind of decision, and whatever it was had led him to scan the crowd.

To his surprise, Loki’s eyes locked on Elias.

Elias stiffened. He fought the urge to avert his gaze, worried the god would think he had been staring. Which … granted, he had been staring, but there was no reason Loki needed to know that.

After a beat, the god lifted one hand and crooked his finger in summons.

Elias’s heart picked up speed. He thought he’d somehow slid past any repercussions after the fiasco in Silver Shores, but maybe his time had finally come. Inhaling, Elias pushed the women off his lap, rose to his feet, and started through the crowd.

When he reached the dais, Loki clapped twice.

“Ash wives,” he called, “you are dismissed.”

The tree spirits stopped dancing at once. They bowed low before swaying off into the party, leaving a trail of twigs and leaves in their wake.

As Elias watched them slink away, he couldn’t help but compare them to the ash wives he’d met on Asgard.

Outside of the underworld, ash wives were fearsome creatures to behold.

They were the guardians of the eight realms, the protectors of Yggdrasil—better known as “the world tree,” a white ash as big as the universe itself, upon which hangs every known realm.

Living ash wives would never dance for someone else’s entertainment. Not even a god’s.

But this wasn’t Asgard. This was Helheim, the underworld, the home of the dead, ruled over by Loki and his daughter. Down here, you listened to your rulers, or you suffered the consequences.

Once the ash wives were gone, Elias bowed to Loki and Hel. “Your Majesties.”

Hel didn’t even grunt in response.

Elias straightened in time to see Loki shoot his daughter a stern look, then wave over a soul servant holding a huge bronze pitcher. “More mead!” he called, a smile curling his lips for the first time all evening. “My daughter’s cup is empty, and it’s making her churlish.”

Hel pursed her lips—or, more accurately, half pursed them, as only half of her face had lips to begin with—and said, “It isn’t the lack of mead that’s bothering me, Father.”

Loki ignored her. As his goblet filled with fresh mead, he studied Elias. The attention made the mare want to squirm, but he kept his gaze steady.

“Thank you for coming,” Loki said at last, waving away the soul servant. “I have a mission for you.”

Elias’s eyebrows rose. “A mission?”

“Yes.” Loki took a sip from his goblet. “I need you to head to Alfheim.”

Alfheim? “But I just got here.”

Loki laughed. “That’s hardly true, my boy. You’ve been on leave a full three weeks. Haven’t you had enough drinking and dancing yet?”

“One can never have enough drinking and dancing, sir.”

“On that we agree.” Loki winked. “But I need someone to make a discreet visit to the realm of the elves.”

Inwardly, Elias groaned. He had no interest in visiting Alfheim, a realm so hideously peaceful that any mare worth their salt feels sapped of energy the moment they set foot on its repulsively beautiful meadows.

Unless, he mused, Loki is sending me there to sack the capital, Ljósborg.

Now, that would be a mission he could get behind.

Greatly cheered, Elias puffed out his chest. “What’s the assignment?”

As Loki opened his mouth to reply, a voice interrupted.

“Sir.”

Elias glanced back to find Ragnar, leader of the mare guard of Helheim, standing at attention.

Ragnar was, as always, in shadow form, his hulking body and shoulder-length hair outlined in flickering darkness.

Elias had never seen the head guard’s true face—not even in the gambling den, where the other guards gathered on days off to drink and bet and occasionally throw hands.

Everyone who came did so in human form. It was a house requirement; it’s too easy to cheat when you’re made of shadow.

But Ragnar never joined. Elias wasn’t even sure that he’d taken a single day off since becoming head guard centuries before. The man was obsessed with honor and duty.

Yawn.

Elias looked back up at Loki.

“This better be important,” the god said, eyebrows raised. “I was just about to send Elias here to wreak some delicious havoc on those imperious, annoying elves.”

“It is,” said Ragnar. “We have received news from Asgard.” He paused. “News that requires your urgent attention.”

“My urgent attention?” Loki snorted. “There’s no such thing as urgency in the afterlife.”

The corners of Ragnar’s mouth didn’t so much as twitch. “Trust me, sir. You’re going to want to hear this.”

Loki studied him. At last, he nodded and gestured for Ragnar to approach. The mare climbed the steps up to the dais and bent over to whisper in Loki’s ear. Within seconds, the god’s eyes expanded with uncharacteristic shock.

When Ragnar was done speaking, Loki leaned back and looked him in the eye. “You’re certain?”

Ragnar nodded.

Loki turned away, rubbing his chin absently with a thumb and forefinger.

It was his usual look of calculation, of the wheels turning as he cooked up a brand-new plan.

But there was something different about this particular expression.

Normally, when he was in this state, his eyes flashed and glimmered, as if lit from within.

A small smile would play at his lips. But this time …

this time, his eyes were dark, his lips turned down. Almost as if he was worried.

But the god of mischief never worried.

Right?

When Loki’s eyes returned to Elias, his face had altered once more. Now, it was resolute. Locked into whatever path he had chosen.

“Change of plan, Elias.” He leaned back on the throne, folding his hands on his lap. “You’re going to Asgard, not Alfheim.” He hesitated, as if he was still on the fence about what came next. “But first, there’s something you need to know.”