Chapter 2 #3
As he ascended the broad glass staircase bordered by vibrant greenery, a gentle soundscape of trickling water from nearby fountains filled the air.
Each step was flanked by planters overflowing with meticulously cared-for botanicals- white roses blushed in moonlight contrast beside ivory gardenias exhaling their delicate fragrance into the night; plush peonies stood stately among emerald carpets of ground cover.
Everything appeared as it should: sharp lines intersecting with organic forms. Neatness and precision reigned supreme-how Loki preferred it.
The cool touch of polished steel railings under his fingers steadied him as he approached his personal realm.
A space painted in stark monochromes and subtle hues, with its minimalistic surface.
In this curated world, order wasn’t merely aesthetic; it was an extension of identity, a mirror reflecting the inner harmony he craved, muting out the chaos once known only too well.
With a simple wave of his hand, the massive cream-colored front door swung open effortlessly, bypassing the need for any fingerprint scan.
As he stepped inside, the tranquil notes of classical music filled the air from discreetly installed speakers in the ceiling, creating an atmosphere of elegant serenity.
The coolness of the white marble foyer was tangible beneath his feet as he made his way toward the stairs, where each step on the plush cream carpeting absorbed his footfalls.
He pushed open the French doors leading to his bedroom and took in the familiar sight—a room immaculately arranged thanks to his housekeeper’s meticulous touch.
Everything was in its place within this realm of austerity and orderliness.
Transitioning fluidly from there into his expansive bathroom: a vast walk-in shower encased in glimmering tiles and a sunken tub that invited indulgence with its promise of accommodating four people comfortably.
Reaching out, he turned the gold-plated shower handle with an ease born from habit. He peeled off his clothes, savoring every moment. Part of an unhurried ritual he’d cherished over decades. A ritual tied intimately not just to routine but also to soothing comfort at day’s end.
The hot water hit his skin like a baptism of steam and heat, and he stood under the pressure of it until the tension in his shoulders finally began to loosen.
He braced both hands against the cool marble wall and let his head drop forward, water cascading down the back of his neck, over the sharp ridges of his spine.
She was still in his head.
He scrubbed his hands over his face and turned the water off.
Wrapped a towel around his hips and padded across the heated floor to the decanter on the sideboard.
He poured two fingers of a single malt Scotch- one of the finer things the century had produced- and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city below.
Los Angeles glittered. Neon and shadow. Vintage stone dressed in electric light.
And out there, in one of the cramped apartments above the Raven Weaver, Val was- what?
Sharpening her blades? Checking locks on the doors and windows?
Standing over Elle and watching her sleep with that fierce, quiet vigilance she wore like second armor?
He gulped his drink.
The towel dropped when he turned from the window, and he didn’t bother to retrieve it.
He moved to the edge of the enormous white bed.
Pristine. Every pillow and fold of linen immaculate, because he rarely slept in it.
He didn’t need much sleep. But as he stood looking, he found his imagination doing something entirely without his permission.
He saw her there.
Val. Stretched across the white sheets like a warrior goddess who had finally let her guard down.
Golden hair spilled across the pillow. That long body bare and luminous against the white, every line of her—supple and strong and achingly real.
Those sharp sapphire eyes, half-lidded and dark with wanting, fixed on him.
Her lips parted. Her voice low and stripped of all its practiced indifference as she called his name.
Loki.
He exhaled through his nose and growled.
He’d imagined women before. Thousands of them over thousands of years. It had never felt like this. Like a hook behind the sternum. Like something that mattered beyond the mechanics of desire.
What infuriated him most- and he was self-aware enough to admit it- was that she was immune to him.
Completely. Wholly. Infuriatingly. He had turned his smile on her, the one that had unraveled queens and shieldmaidens and sorceresses alike, and she had rolled her eyes.
Rolled them. As though he were a tedious inconvenience rather than the most dangerous and compelling creature she was ever likely to meet.
Was she awake?
He tried to picture it. Val standing, bare feet on cold floorboards, blade in hand, running through forms in the dark, the way soldiers did when sleep wouldn’t come.
Or maybe she was already in bed, flat on her back in the way of someone who had learned to sleep still, economical, ready to move in an instant.
Was she dreaming?
And if she was- was it of him?
He almost laughed at himself. Almost.
The empty glass dissolved from his fingers.
He lay back against the white linens and stared at the ceiling.
The city hummed below, distant and inconsequential.
He hadn’t dreamwalked in what? A thousand years, give or take a century.
He hadn’t had reason to. Hadn’t wanted to.
The last time he’d slipped through the membrane of someone else’s dreaming mind, it had been a different age, a different world.
But Val remained rooted in his head, and he wanted to know why, because she had no business being there in the first place.
He closed his eyes.
He let the city noise fall away, layer by layer, the way one peeled bark from a birch.
The distant thrum of bass from some club.
The honk of a horn miles away. The hiss of the air conditioner.
He let it all go until nothing remained but the dark behind his eyelids and the slow, deliberate rhythm of his own breath.
Her face.
He built it carefully. The architecture of her.
Those cutting sapphire eyes, sharp as a blade’s first edge, the kind of eyes that looked at a man and saw straight through to the part of him he kept bricked up and mortared.
The line of her jaw. Strong and clean. The slight flare of her nose when she was angry, which had been- he smiled faintly- essentially the entire time he’d known her.
The full, wicked curve of her mouth that said things her words never did.
Her voice. Low and unhurried and without deference.
I would never think of you.
Liar. He smiled again. Of course, she would think of him. Whether she wanted to or not, he would make sure of it.
Her lips.
He lingered longer than necessary, but he was nothing if not thorough.
The breath moved out of him in one long, slow release, and he stopped fighting the pull and let himself go under.
The twilight between waking and sleeping was a place that had no color of its own.
It shifted and morphed and smelled different every time.
It was nothing and everything all at the same time.
Tonight it smelled of cold stone and something faintly floral- wildflowers, he realized, and his chest tightened with recognition.
He moved through the grey membrane of it the way he walked through water, not swimming, more like being carried by a current that knew where it was going even when he didn’t.
He had forgotten how strange and uncomfortable it was to give up complete control and let the world take him where he needed to be.
The panic hit him before the light did. It was the helplessness of it.
The not knowing. The being carried somewhere unknown rather than choosing.
He nearly wrenched himself back by sheer instinct alone.
His chest seized. Every muscle in his body went taut with the need to grab control of something, anything, and he had to force himself to breathe through it the way he’d once forced himself to breathe through the acid.
Through the chains. Through every moment in his long and complicated life, when he’d been at the mercy of something larger than himself.
Let go, he told himself. Let go.
And then the grey dissolved, and light shone through.
Warm, golden, unfiltered sunlight poured down from a sky so blue it hurt to look at, and he stood at the edge of a forest he didn’t recognize, with the smell of wildflowers so thick and sweet it almost suffocated him.
The field stretched out before him in every direction, rolling and unhurried, full of color- lavender and white and soft yellow, bending in a breeze carrying the faint, distant sound of steel cutting air.
He went absolutely still.
She moved through the field the way water moved through stone- finding every line of least resistance, every crack and crevice, and filling it.
Her sword caught the light in long arcing flashes as she worked through her forms. She wore almost nothing.
A top, torn at the hem and the shoulders, leaving her stomach and arms bare to the sun, the fabric doing little to conceal the muscled lines of her torso.
The breeches cut ragged above the knee, ripped for range rather than modesty, and she had none.
Every step, every pivot, every controlled extension of her blade was a study in pure power.
He watched. He hadn’t intended to. He’d told himself this was reconnaissance. Curiosity. A simple matter of understanding what it was about this particular woman that had lodged itself beneath his skin. But he watched, and he forgot to be strategic about it.