Chapter 39 #2
Charlie held her breath, but Mason didn’t even notice the tension.
“How dare you try to brush us off,” he seethed.
“We came all this way to find you. We traveled between realms, and now that we’re finally here, you act like we’re nothing to you?
Like you didn’t see us in that cave? Like you didn’t call us your—”
“Actually,” Loki said loudly, cutting him off. “Now that I think about it, you do sort of look familiar. Aren’t you the humans I sent one of my mares to kill?”
Mason stared at Loki. Loki stared back. He flicked his eyes between Mason and Charlie in rapid succession. And although his face barely moved—his eyes barely widened; his lips barely twitched—Charlie received the message that he was sending:
Play along.
The creatures at this party couldn’t know that she and Mason were his children. She didn’t know why they couldn’t know, but they couldn’t.
“We are,” Charlie said loudly.
Mason shot her a confused, angry look. As subtly as possible, Charlie reached over and pinched his waist with two fingers.
She prayed he would remember the signal from when they were kids.
It was one they had used countless times, employed whenever their mom caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to do, and they needed their cover stories to match.
A signal delivered differently than Loki’s but bearing the same meaning:
Play along.
And like that, Charlie felt her talent for lying switch on.
Felt the gears beginning to turn, the easy pleasure of the words rolling off her tongue.
“You did send Elias up to kill us,” she went on, making sure the whole room could hear her voice.
“But as it turns out, we were more useful to him alive than dead. I possess magic, you see. Powerful magic, as you saw from our entrance. As does my brother. So, Elias enlisted us as his allies.” She nodded at his pale body on the floor.
“He was on his way back to Helheim when Rattatosk attacked.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
For the first time since they’d entered the hall, Loki looked down at Elias. Really looked at him. Studied him, taking in the pallor of his skin, his twitching limbs, the breaths wheezing loudly in and out of his lungs. And Charlie saw it register in the god’s mind that his mare was dying.
His initial reaction was unreadable. Was he afraid?
Angry? Happy? Indifferent? She couldn’t tell.
Their arrival in Helheim might have shocked Loki enough to make him briefly speechless, but he was the god of mischief at heart.
He knew how to mask his emotions, to play at whatever end would suit him most. Charlie had no doubt about that.
After a brief pause, Loki started to laugh. It was a nasty, slippery sound that came from too high in his throat. “And you think I’ll just give him my blood?” His laughter raised in pitch.
As if following his cue, the creatures of the party began to chuckle, too.
“You humans,” said Loki, slapping his knee once. “Always so filled with those idiotic delusions that you call ‘bravery.’ You think you’re the first to come stumbling into my kingdom and make demands of me?” He pouted like a puppy. “How cute.”
“You have to heal him,” Charlie said, her voice coming out more uneven than she would have liked. The high of her entrance was wearing off, and now she could see nothing but Elias’s deteriorating body. The spasms had gotten worse, the sweat so bad it leaked through his clothes. “He’s a mare.”
“And I’m a god.” Loki rolled his eyes as if she’d tried to explain to him what two plus two equaled. “As if I care for the life of one mare servant. Why would I soil myself by handing over my immortal blood to save someone so easily replaced?”
Elias moaned. His body spasmed twice, jerking over onto one arm, the other flailing across his chest like a rag doll. His eyes were half-open, only the whites visible. With mounting horror, Charlie spotted bubbles gathering on the corners of his lips, as if he were beginning to foam at the mouth.
“So, you don’t care for him at all,” Mason said flatly. “This human who pledged his life to you. You’re just going to let him die?”
Loki shrugged. “Probably.”
More foam leaked from Elias’s mouth. The bubbles were a putrid yellow gray. They gathered around his lips, making him look like a rabid dog. He twitched violently, head tossing back, eyes flying open and rolling toward the ceiling.
“Please,” Charlie choked, taking a jerky step toward Elias.
Her heart thundered in her chest, a whining sound picking up inside her head.
Death was near. She could feel its presence.
Could see its cold, bony fingers wrapping around Elias’s chest, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Nothing but beg. “Please, please, for the love of the gods, just … just help him.”
Loki stared down at her, unimpressed.
It’s true, she realized, feeling her hope deflate. The stories, the myths … they’re all true. He’s as cold and calculating as they say. He doesn’t care about Elias. He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
She’d come so close to saving Elias. So close. She’d teleported hundreds of miles, made it all the way to a different realm, used more magic than she thought herself capable of … Yet here, a few feet from the finish line, she would be thwarted by a selfish god she’d foolishly hoped might love her.
Loki loves only power and ambition.
That was what her book had said. He cares for no one and nothing and will do favors only for those who can give him something in return.
And that’s when it hit her.
The solution. The way she would save Elias’s life. It was so blindingly obvious that she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to realize.
“I pledge myself to you,” she said before she could second-guess herself. She raised her voice as loud as it could go, wanting everyone in the hall to hear. “If you save Elias’s life, I will pledge myself to your service as a mare.”
Surprise and something like fear flitted through Loki’s eyes.
“What?” Mason rounded on her. “Charlie, don’t—”
She cut him off, eyes trained on Loki. “Do you accept my pledge or not?”
The god’s surprise lasted only a moment. A flash, gone as quickly as it appeared. His expression settled into its usual indifference as he studied her, weighing her offer.
Charlie couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She could only stare into this man’s eyes—the eyes of a father who did not want her—and will him to accept.
At last—at long, long last—Loki said, “Very well.”
“No!” Mason yelled, and Charlie nearly sobbed with relief.
Loki took two graceful steps over to Elias’s body.
Elias had stopped convulsing. His eyes had fallen closed, his body eerily still.
Loki held out his right hand, palm facing up.
A half second later, a long, thin dagger materialized.
He wrapped his fingers around the dagger’s hilt, using it to slice a thin line on his other hand.
Bending over, he held his wounded hand over Elias’s gaping mouth and squeezed it into a tight fist. Blood trickled down his palm, landing on Elias’s tongue and lips, staining the foam around his mouth a deep crimson.
For a long, silent moment, nothing happened.
Elias did not move.
Did not breathe.
Did not even twitch a finger.
Charlie’s head started to spin. The walls were closing in on her, the ceiling crumbling to nothing. The entire palace was collapsing, its stones piling over her body, suffocating her.
He’s dead, she realized, breath coming in shallow gasps. We were too late. I lost him, and I bargained away my life in the process.
The words played in her head in a torturous echo:
Too late.
Too late.
Too late.
And then, like a man bursting from the water after nearly drowning, Elias’s eyes and mouth flew open as he gasped in a desperate, glorious breath of air.