chapter two
bjorn
Fehu – Wardruna
S he tells me to make them watch.
And I do.
Oh, how I do.
Lux gave me the night. The tent. The altar. The blood. Told me to lead, and I will not fail.
This isn’t just Disting, it’s a fucking reckoning.
The gods demand blood—and tonight, I am their voice. Their hands, their blade.
And Giselle?
She’s the fire in their bellies. the chaos in their veins. She is the flame I carry into the dark.
I drag her onto the altar like I’m laying a crown on a pyre. She clings to me, laughing against my throat, blonde hair wild and tangled with ash, her body already trembling with want.
Petite. Powerful. Covered in runes and war paint. A goddess with a taste for pain.
My fucking goddess.
She stretches back across the altar like she was made for it. Like the bloodied stone beneath her spine was carved with her name long before I ever spoke it.
“You gonna worship, or just stare?” she murmurs, voice low and wicked, hips rolling just enough to make me grit my teeth.
I chuckle. Slow. Twisted.
“You think I’d put you on this altar and do nothing, ma petite mort?” I ask, tilting my head as I let my hand trail up her thigh. “You think I’d let the gods look down and see me hesitate when such a sacrifice was laid out before me?”
She shudders, grinning wide.
“Then stop wasting precious time, my love. Show the gods who I belong to.”
“Oh, they already know,” I whisper, lowering myself between her legs. “But they’ll fucking watch anyway.”
I tear her leathers aside, baring her completely to the flames, the blood, and the gods. Her thighs part for me like she’s opening the gates to Hel itself.
She’s soaked. Warm.
Her scent hits me like a war drum.
“Look at you,” I murmur, brushing two fingers through her slick. “Dripping onto the altar like a gift.”
“I am a gift,” she whispers, eyes fever-bright. “One you better unwrap with your mouth.”
“Gladly.”
I drop to my knees and press my mouth to her, tongue sliding between her folds. She arches immediately, one hand flying to my hair, gripping tightly.
Her taste? Like the breath of the gods before a storm. Wild. Sacred. Untamed.
She writhes beneath my tongue, panting, moaning—a creature of fire and frenzy, her thighs trembling against my shoulders. I suck her clit slow and hard, then push two fingers inside her. She clenches around me like a storm about to break.
Her body isn’t just responding—it’s calling.
To me.
To the gods.
To the crowd.
All around us, masked shadows shift and stir.
Groans rise like sacrificial incense.
A man in the front row fists himself like he’s praying. Like spilling his seed in front of the gods might earn him mercy. It won’t. But I let him try. I always let them try.
A woman grinds against another’s thigh like she’s trying to fuck the madness into herself, both of them glassy-eyed, drooling, drunk on blood and lust. Lost in us like we’re the end of the world, and maybe we are.
“Let them watch,” she gasps, fingers digging into my scalp. “Let them see you kneel for your goddess.”
“I don’t kneel,” I growl against her. “I offer. ”
I lick her again, slow and reverent, then glance up at her—hair tangled in blood, eyes glassy with lust, chest heaving.
“You were carved for the altar,” I whisper. “Your cunt, a sacred spring. Your cries, a hymn.”
She moans loud and shameless as I curl my fingers, my tongue relentless.
“You feel that?” I say, dragging my mouth to her inner thigh. “That’s the gods blessing you. That’s the crowd worshipping through their hands while I taste what none of them ever will. Mine,” I growl through gritted teeth. “You’re fucking mine.”
“I was forged for you,” she hisses, biting down on her bottom lip. “In fire and bone. In blood and belief.”
She arches, legs locking around my head as she teeters on the edge.
The torches flare higher, the canvas of the big top above us dripping with heat.
The crowd starts chanting again. Low, rhythmic, hypnotic.
Sk?l. Sk?l. Sk?l.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, voice hoarse. “Take it. Take all of me.”
“Oh don’t worry, I’ll take what the gods can’t,” I snarl, tongue returning to her clit, fast and punishing.
She explodes.
Screaming, shaking, back arched and mouth open to the gods—like she’s calling down thunder from Asgard itself.
Her slick floods my hand, my face, and the altar stone beneath her.
A sacred gift to the gods. To me .
I stay there, devouring every drop, even as she trembles and gasps, wrecked and perfect.
When I rise, I’m drenched in her.
My mouth. My beard. My chest.
Blood and lust mingling like they were always meant to.
I turn to the crowd, lifting my chin.
“Ma petite mort has been pleased. The gods have been given a taste. And now…” I reach for my axe, eyes gleaming. “Now they are hungry for more . ”
The altar drinks its second offering before the main event even begins.
Not from a throat.
Not from a gut.
But from her.
Her slick still stains my mouth. Her scent clings to my skin, sticky and hot, soaking into the grooves of the stone like it was meant to be there.
Blood. Skin. Sin.
The holy trinity of the Cirque Du Désir.
I press my palm flat to the altar, still damp with her. It hums beneath me—ancient and waiting. It's always like this. Every Disting. But this year? This year it’s mine.
The gods are watching.
So is Lux.
And I will not fail.
I whisper a quick chant in Old Norse under my breath, just to keep the gods’ eyes on me.
Flesh for favor. Bone for blessing. Blood for power.
I offer it all.
A high-pitched giggle cuts through the silence behind me. I don’t need to look. I already know.
Johnny.
That painted, grinning, chaos-fueled menace.
“Ohhh, Bjorn, my sweet, broody executioner,” he croons, voice dragging like a blade through silk. “You look so serious. Loosen up—we’re about to have fun!”
I turn my head, just enough to catch him in my peripheral. He’s soaked in gore, patchwork leather clinging to him like flayed skin, face painted in that twisted jester’s grin he wears better than most people wear their souls.
He's already bloodied.
Of course he started without me.
Alaska crawls at Johnny’s feet, bare skin dusted with ash, her black leather harness hugging her chest, silver rings gleaming in the torchlight. Her legs are wrapped in twisted leather straps like a serpent coiled around prey. The thick, rune-carved collar at her throat glints as she moves, bone charms clinking softly—each one a kill she earned. Her leash is wound tight around Johnny’s wrist, and her face is a mess of smudged black paint and blood-red lips, grinning too wide.
Too hungry. A wolf dressed in worship.
“We’re working, Johnny,” I say flatly.
He snorts, tightening his grip on her leash and giving it a sharp jerk.
“Oh, but we are working,” he hums, mock-bowing before the altar like a court jester in a bloodied throne room. “See? I brought you presents.”
He kicks a man forward—shaking, barefoot, eyes wild. The kind of man who once thought he was powerful. Rich. Untouchable. Now? Just meat with a pretty face.
Johnny kicks again. A second one stumbles. A woman this time, breath hitching as she looks up at me like I might save her.
Wrong tent.
Alaska crawls to Johnny’s side and rests her head on his thigh like the obedient little thing she is. Her eyes glitter as she looks at me.
“Do you like them, Bjorn?” she asks, teeth sharp. “Johnny picked the juicy ones.”
I step forward, gripping my axe tight in one hand, letting the weight of it remind me who I am.
The man Johnny pushed first is visibly trembling. Pale. Weak. Not fit for the gods, but they’ll take him anyway.
“Stand up,” I command.
He flinches as he stays kneeling. Stupid.
“Ooooh,” Johnny giggles, rocking back on his heels. “I don’t think he’s listening. Naughty little thing.”
“Maybe he’s broken,” Alaska purrs, licking blood from the back of her hand.
I raise my axe, letting it hum in the air.
The man scrambles to his feet, stammering like he just realized the rules of the game.
“Yes—yes, my lord.”
Johnny claps like a delighted child.
“Look at that! The mongrel speaks. You almost lost your head, little piglet.”
“Would’ve been a shame,” Alaska murmurs. “He’s got such pretty eyes.”
“Mmm, maybe I’ll keep them,” Johnny says, gripping the man’s face, dragging a clawed finger down his cheek. “Pop ‘em right out like candy.”
The man whimpers. Pathetic.
“Enough,” I snap.
Johnny pouts like I just kicked his puppy. “You’re no fun, Bjorn.”
“I’m not here for fun.”
“No, no,” he smirks, “you’re here to—what do you always say? ‘Honor the gods?’ Please. The gods don’t give a shit.”
I step toward him—tall, quiet and full of purpose.
“The gods don’t hear the prayers of madmen,” I mutter.
He smiles wider.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he hisses, eyes shining. “They whisper to me. All the time.”
I believe him.
Which is exactly why I don’t kill him.
He’d like it too much.
I turn back to the altar, pressing my still-slick fingers to the stone, and whispering another prayer.
Let the madness begin.
Alaska leans into Johnny, nuzzling his thigh.
“You’re upsetting him,” she says sweetly.
“Bjorn loves me,” Johnny croons, dragging her leash up tight. “Don’t you, big guy?”
I ignore him.
Indie’s whip snaps across the stone.
Silence.
I step up onto the altar, towering over them all.
Ten bodies kneel before me. Masked, stripped, shaking. Some with tears already trailing down their faces. Some with flushed skin and parted lips, aroused by fear, hard and wet just from being seen.
“Do you know why you’re here?” I ask.
Silence.
Then, one whisper.
“For the gods.”
I smile.
“No. You’re here for me. ”
I crouch, dragging my bloody fingers across the woman’s mouth. She trembles, lips parting, tongue darting out to taste the red I left behind.
I rise.
“Tonight, we honor the old ways. Not just with death, but with exchange. Disting is a time for trade. For judgment. For flesh.”
I reach into the basin beside the altar and coat my fingers in the thick, warm blood pooling inside—blood from the kill before the show began. The one no one saw.
I mark the first girl’s forehead.
A rune of devotion.
The next. A symbol of sacrifice.
The third flinches. I grab his throat, squeezing until his breath catches.
“You will serve,” I murmur.
I move down the line, branding each one. Red. Black. Gold.
Red for death.
Black for use.
Gold for suffering.
“Some of you were made to be used,” I say, gesturing to the ones already leaking between their legs, breath hitching from the weight of eyes on them. “Some of you were made to die,” I continue, eyes locking with a man sobbing quietly through his mask. “And the gods?” I smile. “They will feast on all of you.”