To Love a God

by Evie Kent

  Something shifted in the shadows, a soaring figure in the depths of the narrow corridor I’d come sprinting out of. Focus. There would probably be time for an existential crisis later, right?

  I shot off on unsteady footing, following the path around the shimmering blue water, but rather than lose myself in the darkness again, creeping along one step at a time, I pivoted. Took a hard right. The waterfall’s stream dusted the wall with spray, but it didn’t touch completely. There was an opening back there—rocks leading up to it like misshapen stairs. No time for hesitation, for second-guessing and debating; I climbed confidently on the balls of my feet, my touch featherlight, moving fast so that there wasn’t the time to slip.

  Six feet up, I scurried into a much smaller inlet than I’d expected, with barely enough space for me to crouch in.

  But it was hidden away behind the falls.

  Relatively secure.

  At least no one could sneak up on me from behind.

  The water fell like thunder, a constant wall of white and blue and mist in front of me, drowning out him and anything else that would make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Heart in my throat, I pushed up against the rocks, bracing anywhere I could, and closed my eyes. Adrenaline was great for fight or flight, but long-term it made me shaky, numb, disoriented, and weak. What little bread I’d scarfed down in the crate had started to swirl inside, threatening to come shooting up the second I let my body relax. For now, it stayed tense, every muscle taut, every synapse in my brain firing on high.

  Which, in the end, made my thoughts jumbled and my body shiver.

  Not great.

  Focusing on the pummeling water, I tried to take a few deep breaths to settle everything. In and out. In. Hold. Out—slow release. Slowly, I willed my muscles to relax just enough to get the grit out of my jaw, to settle the stiff ache in my neck.

  When I opened my eyes, some of the shakiness had ebbed.

  Only it came rushing back when I spotted a huge hand about a foot from my face reaching through the waterfall. My scream died in that little inlet, the rock and the thundering falls muting my terror, and I shrank back, eyes wide and heart racing, then swatted and kicked at the intruder.

  He latched onto my arm all the same, snapping tight around my bicep like he could see me in here. Just as I was about to duck down and bite his wrist, he yanked me out—clear through the falls. Freezing water beat down on my entire body for only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity as he dragged me through, then held me at an arm’s length over the pool.

  Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, this man—I refused to say his name, even in my own fucking head—dangled me by the arm as one holds a kitten by their scruff. And I squirmed like one, flailing and writhing, dripping wet as he slowly ambled down the rockface back to the path. He held me like I weighed nothing, the corded muscle up his arm tensed but not strained, not even a flicker of effort twitching across his handsome face.

  One of my kicks nearly landed, my toes just missing his side, and he tossed me onto the ground with a sigh. My shoulder took the brunt of the fall, but I rolled with the momentum, springing back up and charging toward the unexplored darkness at the end of the path, less than graceful on the wet stone. The shadows weren’t my first choice, but maybe, somehow, I could lose him in them.

  “There’s no way out.”

  His frankness stopped me dead in my tracks, my feet suddenly bolted to the ground. Freezing water dripped off me, splatting like thunder. My hair stuck to my face, my neck, drenched. I stared hard at the corridor’s black mouth, hating that in my heart of hearts, I couldn’t detect a lie.

  “Am I just supposed to believe that?” I demanded, my voice hoarse, quivering. Usually I could bark down random assholes on the street, the catcallers and the slimeballs who told me to suck their dicks—as if that was some enticing invitation. Here, with my back to him, I faltered.

  That pissed me off.

  And more than that, it terrified me.

  “I’ve spent eight centuries searching, little human,” he drawled, his smile back—audible, almost, a huge injection of charm in his words again. Like he thought he was the fucking cat’s meow. “There really is no way out.”

  For him, maybe, if I were to believe the story about the witch, about Ragnarok…

  But no. No, I wouldn’t believe that. There had to be other holes in this mountain. The water filtered out of the lake from somewhere.

  I’d find them. Every last one. Because there was no way in hell I was going to be a—

  My heart sank.

  A victim.

  Kidnapped.

  Trafficked.

  Oh my god.

  I staggered forward a few steps, but the realization was a knockout—the knockout, a blow straight to the gut. My knees hit the ground first, and I braced, catching myself with one hand before I face-planted onto the stone.

  All my life, I’d heard stories about human trafficking in the city—women sold into slavery, taken, beaten, abused. Kidnapped in broad daylight. My parents had prepared me for the bullshit evils of this world, and after they had died, Oma and Opa took over from there. Manhattan was my home, and I’d always considered myself savvy, hyperaware that at any moment, I could become a target.

  Another depressing statistic.

  And now… It had happened.

  I…

  Oskar—that piece of human garbage—had told me why I was here, my new purpose. Companionship. You didn’t need a PhD to interpret the subtext: sex. Why else would a man want companionship?

  Trafficked.

  Kidnapped.

  Trafficked. Kidnapped.

  Traffickedkidnappedtraffickedkidnappedtrafficked.

  I clutched at my chest as the whine in my ears screeched again, mind racing, those same two words screaming at me. My breath came hard and fast, and suddenly I couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t suck it down fast enough. Couldn’t stop gasping. Couldn’t quell the panic.

  The edges of my vision shimmered white, and my whole body cramped with a humming, TV-static buzz that made me double over.

  If you don’t get your shit together, you’re going to pass out. Somewhere, deep down, I was still there—still the same woman who flipped catcallers the bird and told shitty teenagers to get up on the subway and give their seat to people who needed it. But she was way down in there, the voice of reason swiftly overtaken by my body descending into full panic shutdown mode.

  Cool hands cupped my face, one on either side, big enough to engulf me, strong enough to lift me back up. Everything else was a blur—except his eyes. Green. Emerald green, specifically, rich and beautiful and glossy like a marble. Around the iris, subtle flecks of golden flames. I didn’t want to look, but I also couldn’t look away, those exquisite eyes magnetic. Like a still forest, like a mountain overrun with soaring pines, there was so much to them—an eternity beneath the surface.

  They scared the absolute shit out of me.

  But… They intrigued me, too. Excited me. Soothed me.

  My body settled under his watchful eye, his hands cradling my face. Crouched in front of me, he waited until my breath evened out, until I could support myself again, easing back on my heels.

  “They told me w-who you are,” I whispered, unable to force the words out any louder—just in case the rest of the world heard me. “What you are.”

  “Yes?” He tipped his head to the side, those massive hands settling on his bent knees. “Say it, then.”

  No. I shook my head, eyes welling, gut churning. No, I couldn’t say it. This wasn’t real. He wasn’t real.

  “Say it,” he crooned, this time with a flash of perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth, his canines unnervingly sharp. His beautiful emeralds seemed to darken, a storm on the horizon, brewing in my silence. “I love to hear you humans say it.”

  I clapped a hand over my mouth when I gagged, that bread from the crate finally ready to make a reappearance. Another heave earned me a second showing of his tee
th, his smile deadly, his gaze dangerous.

  “Oh, come now,” he rasped, dropping down to follow me when I ducked my chin to my chest. “It’s not so bad… Two syllables. That’s all.”

  Oh god. I really was going to be sick. Saliva flooded my mouth—the mouth sweats, fuck, the mouth sweats—and I swallowed down as hard as I could, trying once more to focus on my breathing. Couldn’t he see what this was doing to me? I shook my head again, unable to look at him, unwilling to lose myself in that darkening forest.

  “Go on, little human…” He grabbed my wrist and wrenched me closer, his breath hot, his eyes full of accusations. “Say it.”

  “No—”

  The levies broke. I turned away with another painful heave—and emptied what little I had in my gut onto the ground beside us.

  5

  Loki

  Well, that certainly was… something.

  She had been doing so well until—this.

  Ah, there was that bread from earlier, slimy and undigested, along with a smattering of colorless bile. She had nothing else in her, and that was a problem. I took very good care of my consorts; if they played their part well, they needed to last.

  I released her so she could fold over and cough, both hands planted on the ground, long, elegant fingers splayed wide. Her eyes watered more and more with each violent hack, and I stood to put some distance between us.

  The thought of your name makes her violently ill—

  “The lake is fresh water,” I said tersely, pressing through despite the wicked whispers bouncing around my skull. “It empties… somewhere. I’ve yet to fully map it. Can’t quite fit through the hole. But it’s fresh and clean. So.” Nora glanced over her shoulder with a grimace, her perfect eyes bloodshot and wet, and I motioned halfheartedly to the one speck of landscape in here that had never been cruel to me. “Tidy yourself up.”

  I left her with that, preferring her as the beautiful offering in the white dress, the little lamb sacrificed to the starving wolf—not needing to see her scrub the vomit from around her succulent lips, to splash the cold water over her splotchy cheeks. Moving at a good clip, I took the painfully familiar path back to the main hall and headed straight for the kitchen. Under one of the counters, stacked two rows deep across four shelves, were all the cookbooks I had collected over the centuries. Some had such faded ink, such worn pages, that their only purpose was nostalgia. Others were new, vibrant, with glossy pages and typed text, with images so meticulously crafted that I couldn’t imagine a human arranging them.

  The newest lot had arrived with the magazines; no sense in feeding a modern woman the tasteless, stodgy dishes of the past. As an homage to my darling Lucille, long gone, home on the Amalfi Coast—probably dead, honestly, it had been so long—I went for an Italian manuscript. Flipped through the pages, scrutinizing names and pictures, before settling on handmade gnocchi with a butter and chive sauce. This one had a photo, the little doughy pillows piled high on a blue-and-white porcelain dish, christened with two sprigs of crossed chives.

  Lucille had made a similar dish for me from scratch, kneading her dough, portioning it, boiling it. I remembered every second, the way she danced around the kitchen—which hadn’t been anywhere near this fancy over seventy years ago—like she was home. It was the only place she had any confidence, my darling Italian mouse. Hopefully she had gone on to marry a man who brought a bit of fire out of her, because fuck knows I certainly couldn’t.

  Though there was an intimidation factor that came with being a god’s consort.

  While I could recall every step, every flourish of Lucille’s expert hands, not bothering to do more than skim the recipe, the photo was all I needed. After planting a bowl of my own—heathered grey, matte porcelain, conjured out of thin air from a magazine this morning—on the counter next to the stove, I got to work. The effort to craft each individual gnocchi elicited a sharpness between my brows, but I endured, accustomed to every kind of pain at this point.

  Unfortunately, fashioning food from nothing but a photo took more out of me than building all this furniture had, and by the time I heard tentative little feet pitter-pattering along the calendar corridor, I’d had enough. Out came a pan, a stick of butter, some salt, and—well, fuck, I had no chives. Conjuring a whole chive plant, roots and all, left me breathless, but I hid the weakness from all but myself, as I always did.

  No one could know.

  That bitch’s curse had taken so much from me already.

  Bare feet slapped up the polished stone steps, my lamb creeping from the shadows—clean, hopefully. None of them had ever been defiant enough not to see to their personal hygiene, but the realms were full of firsts.

  “I’ve got something going for you,” I drawled, sprinkling salt into my bubbling butter, then rotating the sauté pan to mix it in. Her footsteps had fallen silent, too silent for my liking, and I found her loitering in the doorway when I glanced back, that white dress only marginally less transparent than it had been freshly doused. Perky breasts. Dark pinkish-brown nipples. Hard to miss, really, given the fabric. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen a pair of tits before. My gaze flickered up her figure, and our eyes met just long enough for me to study her expression as I added, “If you can stomach it.”

  Slicked black hair tucked behind her ears, she licked her lips and crossed her arms over herself, silent, perusing the main hall without a word. So be it. A harsh snap of my fingers ignited the rest of the hanging lights, not just the ones scattered around the kitchen, and I heard her inhale curtly at the surge of soft yellow.

  “Quite a kick you’ve got there.” Such a simple statement, yet it carried the weight of a dozen meanings—first and foremost that her lashing out hadn’t sparked my ire. I could handle a few swipes of a kitten’s claws. Beyond that, I acknowledged her spirit, and the fact that all this time later, my nose still stung a bit.

  Impressive, for a human.

  Still she said nothing, but I found her deeper inside the space now, standing at the helm of the great table. Not exactly touching it, but close enough to nudge her hips against the edge.

  Did she enjoy my craftsmanship?

  Shall I bend you over that table tonight, little human? Fuck you into the oak? Is that what you desire?

  “So, tell me, Nora Olsen from America,” I carried on as I plucked a few strands of chive from the new potted plant next to the sink. She was my first American—first consort from across the world. I’d had an Irish girl once with a scream like a banshee, but usually the village found worthy companions closer to home. “Who am I?”

  “Someone who shouldn’t exist,” she croaked, this time without hesitation. I whirled around, nostrils flared, and she scampered a few paces away, cheeks pale. Her eyebrows then shot up when I chuckled. Someone who shouldn’t exist. Witty creature, this one. My cackles struck the stone and bounced back to her with an intensity that made her wilt, her shoulders rounding.

  “Yes, I suppose so, for this day and age,” I mused, spearing my fingers through my cropped hair. “And had I the courage, I would have ended my existence long ago, but here we are.”

  Nora stared back at me like I had twelve heads, not so much as a flicker of amusement rippling across her features. At the first whiff of butter straddling the line between perfect and burnt, I turned back and snatched my pan off the burner, setting it aside for a final round of seasoning.

  It had never been so difficult before to woo my companions—to sweep them under my wing. Yes, sometimes they were petrified of me and spent a great deal of time screaming and wailing and hiding under whatever would take them, but that I could handle. For I was a chameleon, a villain who listened when my old friends and foes dug their heels into their set beliefs, the whole lot preferring the ax to a few precise words. Usually I excelled at comforting a terrified woman, smooth like liquid gold, my voice husky, desirable, as I coaxed them into my own personal hell.

  Nora was—unreadable—her expression subdued, distant, aloof. Unmoved by
my voice, my healing abilities, she had yet to crack even a half-smile.

  She required effort, tact.

  And that delighted me.

  For I had always relished a challenge.

  “Drink?” After all, liquor loosened many a tongue—

  “Water.”

  I arched an eyebrow as I spilled the steaming butter sauce over her gnocchi. “In my experience, a good pint of ale calms the nerves.”

  In fact, I had prepared for that—wine, beer, liquor, every poison available had a place in this kitchen, all cool and waiting for those full lips to indulge in them at her leisure. Nora’s eyes dipped to the bowl on the counter, and then she cleared her throat.

  “Water.”

  How dull. “Fine. So be it.”

  My back to her, I rooted through the cupboards, not quite remembering where I had shoved everything earlier, until I happened upon the glassware. She certainly didn’t deserve a crystal tumbler, so I grabbed a plain, boring glass for her plain, boring drink, and filled it with fresh, filtered mountain runoff that came streaming from the tap. I then placed that and her gnocchi on the table, only to spot her headed for the ramp, ambling along like she wasn’t exactly sure what to do with herself.

  “You’re here for me, little human,” I told her, and she stuttered to a stop a few feet up the incline. I cocked my head, gaze slithering along her muscular calves and up to that ceremonial white gown, mind awash with what I might find beneath it. “The sooner you accept that, the more fun we can have.”

  She lingered for a long moment, her hesitation drawn out, before stalking up the rest of the ramp without the meal I had slaved over. Rude. Petulant creature.

  A snarl cut across my lips. I would so thoroughly enjoy her inevitable downfall.

  After adding a few more fresh chives to my creation, I grabbed the glass and the bowl, then trailed after her up to the electrified bars. The willowy beauty didn’t even acknowledge my presence, her gaze wandering the cell door of her new cage, left to right, up and down, meticulous in the way she searched out the hinges.