Chapter 39
The hall they entered was pure chaos.
Its structure was much like what she had always imagined a castle’s great hall would be: one enormous room made of stone, towering pillars surrounding the open space, a sky-high ceiling carved with arches and gargoyles, and high stained-glass windows filtering in hazy orange light from outside. But inside that grand space …
A circus.
Hoops and silks, glitter and spinning plates.
Contortionists bent into impossible shapes.
Lithe, graceful beings with pointed ears twirled about on delicate fabric dangling from the ceiling.
Banquet tables lined the edges, piled high with colorful delicacies Charlie had never seen before.
Moose and wildcats roamed freely among the guests.
A man with reindeer antlers on his head did a triple backflip through a flaming hoop.
A trapeze wrapped in black-and-purple vines stretched right over the center of the room.
Bark-covered women resembling the ash wives Charlie knew from the forest took turns grabbing hold of the trapeze and tossing each other through the air.
There was no net to catch them if they fell, but they didn’t seem to mind.
Among the performers, partygoers milled about.
They plucked shimmering sweets from the banquet tables and sipped from emerald goblets, laughing so loudly it was as if they were a part of the show.
At the very center of the room, a group danced in an elaborate circle, alternately joining hands or swinging from elbows or clapping in time with the dizzying music.
As the huge doors groaned open and a human marched inside with a gnome on her shoulder and two bodies and a horse floating behind her, however, the party drew to a sudden halt. Music wilted. Voices died. Performers stopped midact to stare at the scene that had entered the hall.
Charlie came to a halt at the edge of the wide, rectangular platform that formed the entry to the hall.
Just in front of her was a short staircase that led down to the main floor.
If she hadn’t been so focused on the task at hand, she might have been overwhelmed, unsure of where to look first: At the goblin bathing in a fountain of mead?
At the ethereal beauty of the pointy-eared creatures who, moments before, had been dancing in languid circles?
At the three tiny men with long beards who had paused their eating midbite and now had chicken bones in hand, fleshy bits of meat hanging from their mouths?
Charlie spared them no more than a glance. She had one purpose. One mission. Her eyes moved with singular focus until, at last, they landed on what they sought:
The throne.
There were two thrones, actually. Both were carved of worn wood that looked as if it had recently washed ashore outside the castle.
The chairs themselves were regularly shaped, but their arms and backs were something terrifying: gnarled twigs and branches that twisted around themselves and bent in strange directions, like the trees of a dark fairy tale.
The effect was that of two enormous wooden crowns that hovered above the heads of those seated on the thrones.
Of Loki and Hel.
A part of Charlie had thought that she’d imagined it.
That surely her mind must have exaggerated the similarities between her face and Loki’s.
Memory was unreliable, right? We remembered what we wanted to remember.
So surely the Loki she saw in the cave hadn’t actually had her same eyes, hadn’t actually shared the nose that belonged to all three Hudson children, the nose that they had always laughed about because it was so different from their mother’s.
She had been wrong.
Loki was right there, on display before everyone, and he looked exactly as she remembered.
He and Hel were the only two not staring at the newcomers. Their heads were bent together in casual conversation, Loki swirling a goblet of mead beside his knee. After a few noticeably silent seconds, however, they seemed to finally realize that something was amiss.
“What happened?” Loki asked, rising from his throne as he looked out over the party.
With his face turned outward, Charlie could better see the salt-and-pepper stubble on his jaw, the friendly creases at the sides of his eyes.
He grinned cheekily at the party, a smile so eerily similar to Mason’s that she almost gasped. “Did we run out of mead? Because—”
His voice died the moment his eyes landed on Charlie.
Blood drained from his handsome, tanned face.
The goblet fell from his fingers, clattering across the dais and onto the marble floor.
His eyes widened. His jaw, now pale white behind his stubble, opened and closed several times in disbelief.
It was the exact same expression that Mason made whenever he was caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to, which happened rather frequently.
In fact, now that Charlie was there, standing before Loki, studying him in the orange light filtering into the hall, she wondered how she could ever have seen this man as anything but an older version of her brother.
The resemblance between them was so striking it was almost painful.
“Father?” said Hel.
Charlie glanced over at the queen of the dead. Her sister.
My sister.
The words snaked around her heart like icy chains.
Now that Hel was facing outward, Charlie could see that the half of the goddess’s face that she’d seen moments ago did not represent her whole face.
Not even close. In fact, the two halves were so shockingly different that it looked as if they’d been sewn together from two separate beings: one, a beautiful young woman with olive skin and straight dark hair, the other, a corpse.
Half living, half dead. And it wasn’t only her face; the entire left side of her body was blue-black and rotting, from the slice of ankle peeking out below her dress right up to her hairline.
Sensing Charlie’s shock and fear, Henry nuzzled his little body into her neck.
I AM HERE
“Father?” Hel asked again, one green eye and one dead eye shifting from the intruders to Loki and back. “What’s going on?”
Charlie didn’t wait to hear Loki’s answer.
She started down the stairs, her sneakers squeaking loudly on the marble.
She flicked one hand over her shoulder, which allowed her to grab a current of magic and pull the others along behind her.
No one had taught her to use such a gesture; it came naturally, instinctively, as if the currents themselves were whispering instructions into her ears. She didn’t even need to focus.
When she pushed into the crowd, the partygoers gasped, stumbling backward.
Their fear opened a path through the madness.
A small smile pulled at Charlie’s mouth.
She was pleased by their fear. She was more than pleased; she was untouchable, ferocious, practically immortal.
It was just as she imagined taking drugs would feel.
She was high on her own magic.
When she finally reached the dais, she didn’t pause for pleasantries.
Loki was still gaping down at her, clearly at a loss for words.
Charlie crooked one finger over her shoulder, bringing Elias’s body rushing forward.
She floated him up onto the dais, until he lay suspended just in front of the thrones.
And with a snap of her fingers, his body lowered gently to the floor.
Behind her, Mason and the helhest dropped to the marble as well.
“Fix him,” she said by way of greeting.
Henry squawked in agreement.
Loki looked down at Elias’s body and back at Charlie.
“Fix. Him,” she repeated, barely recognizing her own voice. When had she become this person? A person who went storming into castles, making demands of gods? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She just needed Elias to be saved.
“Father.” Hel didn’t sound afraid, merely irritated. “Do you know these humans?”
“I don’t—” Loki started, but he couldn’t seem to find an ending. His eyes were moving fast, taking in the hundreds of watchful eyes trained upon them. The longer he looked, the more panicked he seemed.
Then, as sudden as the slice of a guillotine, the panic vanished.
His mouth snapped shut. His forehead relaxed.
His hand came up to rub his nails lazily together below his chin.
In fact, in one blink, his entire body had shifted from surprise to indifference so quickly that Charlie could almost believe she’d imagined his initial reaction.
“Hmm.” Loki’s eyes dropped to look at his nails. “Not sure. All humans look so similar, don’t you think?”
The words sent a hot streak of fury through Charlie’s chest. How could he say that?
It was Loki who had claimed them as his children back in that cave, Loki who had sent Elias up to watch over them, Loki who had turned Charlie’s entire life upside down.
But now that they were standing before him, he was going to pretend to have no clue who they were?
Charlie opened her mouth to argue, but Mason spoke first.
“Bullshit,” he spat.
A wave of whispers rippled through the crowd.
Mason stepped up to stand beside Charlie. His fists were clenched at his sides, his face bright red with rage. Apparently, Loki’s rejection stung him just as badly as it did her. Perhaps even worse.
“You know exactly who we are,” Mason went on. “Don’t pretend you don’t.”
Loki raised his eyes from his nails with exaggerated slowness. All around, party attendees shifted their stance, eager for a better view of the dais. Let’s see which of the humans loses their head first, shall we?