Marion’s dad watched the video with Lia, Loki’s wife, three times.
He asked for the rest of the raw footage next, and watched at least an hour’s worth of those recordings, too. The first half-hour or so, he watched in silence, and Marion and Tyr remained silent as well, apart from the faint chink of silverware or glasses, or their cups of cappuccino after the White House staff brought up breakfast.
Despite their feast at the hotel, Marion found she was ravenous again.
She ate all of her salmon crepe and hash browns, pounded her glass of cranberry juice, and was tempted to ask for more. She decided to lean back on the couch and sip her cappuccino instead, watching her dad’s face as he went through the videos, one by one.
When he first saw the face of the man with the scar, he flinched, then clicked his fingers, motioning over Torres.
He pointed to the man in the video, giving him a grim look.
“You’re aware of this?” he said. “You saw this already?”
Torres bowed, nodding once. “Yes, sir.”
“Send this over to Clarence. Immediately. His eyes only.”
Marion knew he meant Clarence Stockman, the Attorney General.
“…Have Roy picked up. Right now. Tell Clarence it’s a national security issue and that the Secret Service will coordinate all actions with the D.O.J. Tell him to make sure there’s little or no warning, if they can manage it.”
Torres gave a short bow, then motioned at several other agents. He was speaking into his wrist microphone as he walked away, heading to the door leading to the Center Hall.
Marion watched him go, then looked at her father, one eyebrow quirked.
“Why did you make him Secretary of State, anyway?” she asked. “I never liked that guy.”
“Oh, didn’t you?”
“No. Super creepy. And not because of the scars.” She pointed at her eyes. “Dead eyes, Pop. You should avoid those in future.”
Her father shook his head at her, chuckling.
“You always were shit at keeping up with politics,” he joked. “It’s cute you think I don’t have to take multiple considerations into mind when choosing a role like that.”
Marion snorted. “Choose better next time, Dad.”
Her father gave her a grim look, and Marion’s smile faded.
“Sorry,” she said, patting his hand. “I guess that’s not really funny.”
“Not when he nearly killed my daughter, it isn’t,” her dad said, that harder look returning to his face. “Needless to say, he has access to a lot of things we need to get him away from, asap. But like you said, there must be more of them here. I imagine it’s going to take a while to find all of them, and to chase down this network on the international front.”
Marion swallowed. “Anyone else on those recordings you know?”
“A few,” her dad said, leaning back on the couch next to her and folding her arms. “But this is huge, Mari. If it’s this high up, we’re going to have to go through everyone, like I said. That means at Justice, too, but I’ll need to get them working on this.”
Marion nodded, frowning as she glanced at Tyr.
“In the meantime,” President Ravenscroft said, aiming a finger first at her, then at Tyr. “You two aren’t going anywhere. You hear me? I want you both staying here. At the residence. At least until we’re reasonably confident we’ve got the worst of it rooted out.”
Marion nodded, then hesitated.
Her dad frowned. “What? That not acceptable to you? Even now, Mari?”
She shook her head at once.
“No, it’s not that. Not at all.” She glanced at Tyr, then back at her father. “I want to stay here. Especially with all of this going on.”
Hesitating again, she studied her dad’s face.
“I just wondered,” she said. “Do you know what they’re talking about, Dad?” Marion nodded towards the tablet. “I know they want war and all that. I know a lot of this was to blame everything on the Chinese and get you to retaliate. But it sounded like Taggert wanted you to do something in particular. Like he was pissed off that he tried to get you to do something shady and you refused. Do you know what he’s talking about?”
Marion’s father gave her a look.
“I know exactly what he’s talking about,” he said, firming his lips. “He wanted me to negotiate with the damned international mafia, to cut deals with them to make us money on the side. He wanted me to do the bidding of a bunch of damned crooks… and dictators. All to make a few bucks. He tried to make it sound like I had no choice.”
Scowling at her, he added coldly,
“…Bunch of horseshit. I don’t know who the hell he thought he was talking to, Marion. That friend of yours might call me a Boy Scout, and maybe I am. I’m not selling out my own damned country. Not now. And not ever. After we had that talk, son of a bitch knew I was going to fire him. A damned traitor in my administration? Is he insane?”
Her dad grunted.
“…I was already looking for his replacement.”
Marion’s lips quirked, twitching into an involuntary smile.
Patting her dad’s hand on his thigh, she grinned over at Tyr.
“Good,” she said, giving a single, mockingly serious nod. Her voice turned as sharp and businesslike as her father’s. “…and damn straight.”
23
Everything
Tyr stretched his arms and back, yawning from the couch in the solarium.
He smiled when he saw her approaching him, a book open on his chest where he must have left it when he dozed off.
He sat up gracefully when she’d almost reached him, catching the book to stop it from falling, and setting it down on the glass table to his left.
Still grinning at her, he patted the yellow cushion beside him.
He enveloped her in his arms once she was close enough, kissing her neck, her face, pressing his cheek to hers, kissing her mouth.
That last kiss lasted a bit longer.
By the end of it, Marion was breathless, and smiling at him like a big dork.
“Hey,” she said, kissing him back when he nuzzled her face again. “How was your nap?”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he protested jokingly. “The God of War never sleeps.”
“Hiding then?” she queried innocently. “Are you going to let me deal with the press and answer all the awkward questions from the Secret Service and whoever else on my own? Forever?”
He held up his long-fingered hands.
“Maybe?” he said, wincing when she smacked his arm playfully. “You’re much better at the human stuff than I am, Marion.”
She grunted. “The human stuff. I see.”
“Well,” he said, leaning back on the couch and pulling her with him. “We’ll have to deal with the god stuff at some point too. Would you want to share that part with me?”
When she started to open her mouth, Tyr raised a warning finger.
“…Think carefully before you answer,” he warned, grinning at her faintly. “You think human beings are nuts? Wait until you meet my family.”
Seeming to think about that himself, he shrugged.
“Although my brothers are both married to humans now, and strangely, it seems to be civilizing them both. Perhaps we can risk the dinner engagement they’ve all four been insisting we attend, once we’re released from here––”
“Dinner engagement?” She laughed, hitting him with a pillow. “Seriously?”
“Absolutely,” Tyr said, some of the humor leeching from his eyes. “Loki and Thor insist they want to get a look at you. And I think Silvia and Lia, their wives, could always use another mortal to commiserate with, given how they are stuck living with my brothers.”
Marion let out a laugh, hitting him with the pillow again.
“So you’re sticking me with the human stuff and the god stuff?” she snorted, whacking him again with the tasseled yellow cushion. “Typical.”
“Are they really giving you su
ch a hard time?” Tyr said, his voice more serious. “Your father’s people? The media?”
Marion exhaled a long sigh, letting her body fall back on the couch, and back on Tyr’s broad chest. Adjusting her spine once he’d wound his arm around her, gripping her shoulder and squeezing her against him in a hug, she sighed again.
“It’s winding down now,” she admitted. “I’m mostly getting questions about you, and about the rumors of some kind of jet-pack, and the two of us flying around D.C. after that car accident. I’ve been asked about conspiracy theories…”
She turned her head to smirk at him.
“…Some of which are true, by the way. I’ve been asked a lot about how I escaped the kidnap attempt on St. Barts. Luckily, I’ve been able to tell them I can’t remember most of that, which is true. I also have the fallback that most of that stuff is still under investigation and I’m not allowed to talk about it, which is partly true––”
“––and partly not,” Tyr finished, smiling as he kissed her temple.
“Also,” Marion added. “They’re pretty distracted now by the investigations and indictments going on around Roy Taggert and the Syndicate more generally. That’s taking up a lot of the media’s time these days, so I’m more of a side-show, related to that.”
“A side-show, eh?” He smiled at her, kissing her face. “That sounds… like human kinky to me.”
“Human kinky?” She snorted, looking at him. “Do I want to know what would qualify as god-kinky?”
“Probably not,” he told her, flashing one of those killer smiles.
“You might be wrong about that.”
Resettling on the couch, he leaned his head back.
“I will tell you,” he promised, holding up a finger. “But only if you do another of those dances. Like at St. Barts. When I first saw you, and you just about gave me a heart attack…”
She smirked at him. “That good, eh?”
“Oh, it was very very very good, Marion,” he murmured back, leaning his mouth closer to hers, his eyebrow arched. “A little too good, if you want the––”
Someone cleared their throat.
Both of them jumped, then turned, looking up from the couch.
A man stood there, wearing a dark blue suit.
Before Marion could even focus her eyes properly, Tyr slid out from under her, moving so that they were sitting beside one another on the yellow couch, versus Marion lying over the black-haired god’s lap.
When Marion met the gaze of the man standing over them, she smiled.
Her father smiled back at her, adjusting a gold tie between the lapels of his dark blue suit. Still smiling at her subtly, he aimed a mockingly stern look at Tyr.
“You two behaving yourselves?” he said.
“Define ‘behave’––” Marion began with a smirk.
Tyr cut her off.
“Of course, sir,” he said politely, his expression bland.
Marion and her dad exchanged looks.
Then both of them burst out laughing.
Marion nudged Tyr’s thigh with one hand.
“Don’t feed his big fat head,” Marion advised the god. “Trust me. He doesn’t need it. At all. He’s got hordes of people bending over backwards to please him, every day. Not to mention people shoving microphones under his mouth whenever he deigns to speak––”
“Hey!” her father said, chuckling. “Whose side are you on?”
“His,” she said promptly, hooking a thumb at Tyr. “One hundred percent, his.”
Some of the humor faded from her father’s blue eyes, replaced by that knowing look she’d been seeing on him since he first witnessed her interacting with Tyr.
“I see that,” the President of the United States murmured.
Before Marion could think of a good response, her father sat down across the glass table from them, unbuttoning a button on his suit jacket as he sank to the thick yellow cushion.
“I have some news for you both,” the President said, looking between them.
“Good news?” Marion said. “If it’s bad news, can it wait until tomorrow?”
“It’s good news, peanut,” her dad said, smiling wider.
That more serious look remained in his eyes.
He looked at Tyr, then back at Marion.
“We think we’ve found the head of this ‘Syndicate,’” he said, his voice as serious as his eyes. “Like the tapes implied… he’s organized crime. We’ve got him on the run now, like Bin Laden. The military is on it. They’ve got Special Forces teams looking into scenarios for once we run him down. He’s been labeled an international terrorist, so it’s unlikely he’s going to be able to work totally invisibly behind the scenes, the way he was before.”
Pausing, he looked between them again, laying his hands on his thighs.
“Anyway,” he said. “The nitty-gritty of all that probably won’t interest you much… and a lot of it I can’t share yet. But suffice it to say, it’s likely both of you saved my presidency. And likely my life. It’s pretty clear they were going to do everything they could to sabotage things from the inside… so your country owes you a debt.”
Giving Marion a brief look, he aimed a more serious one at Tyr.
“I can’t exactly give my daughter a medal without looking pretty biased,” he said, giving the god a faint smile. “But I’m in debt to you, son. Our country is in debt to you. My daughter tells me you’re a pretty private person, and maybe you have your reasons… so I wanted to ask you if it was okay if I made your role in all of this public. And honored you for it. Formally, that is. With some small token of your country’s esteem.”
Tyr glanced at Marion, his expression deadpan.
Then he looked back at President Ravenscroft.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I very much appreciate the gesture. I would respectfully decline that honor, but I appreciate it more than I can say.”
The President nodded, frowning faintly, but without looking offended.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he said. “But I had to ask.”
“Did you?” Marion said, snorting. “Did you have to ask, dad?”
“Yes, Miss Marion. I did––”
“There is one thing I would ask from you, however,” Tyr said, breaking into their back and forth. When father and daughter looked over at him, he went on in a stiff voice. “I would like Marion to come live with me,” Tyr said. “Somewhere we might have a bit more privacy.”
Tyr paused, looking between them.
“…If Marion was agreeable, of course.”
President Ravenscroft smiled at him wanly, his blue eyes turning shrewd.
“Are you asking to marry my daughter, Mr. Tyr?” he said, his faint drawl growing more prominent. “Is that what you’re asking me right now?”
“No,” Tyr said, blunt.
Marion burst out laughing.
Tyr glanced at her, giving her a faint smile before adding,
“But only because I haven’t had a chance to ask her that, yet, sir,” he added, quirking an eyebrow at Marion meaningfully. His dark eyes returned to the President. “Also, in full transparency, I felt it was too soon. But your daughter has agreed to share a residence with me. We have even discussed a few locations, including St. Barts, where we met, along with Montenegro, Barcelona, Paris, and a few other locations.”
Pausing, Tyr added,
“I know you said before you wished us to remain here, for security reasons, but from what I’m hearing from you now, it is unlikely either Marion or I is a target at this point.”
Pausing a second time, Tyr added,
“I understand that Secret Service will still be required.”
There was a silence.
In it, Marion’s father appeared to be measuring Tyr with his eyes.
After a long-feeling pause, a slow smile bloomed over his lips.
Rising to his feet, he offered a hand to Tyr.
“I appreciate you asking me, son,” Alan Ravenscroft said s
eriously, shaking the god’s hand when he rose. “It’s polite. And it’s considerate. But it’s damned old school. And I have to tell you, it’s good you tacked on that thing about ‘national security’ at the end. If my daughter gets wind of you asking permission of me to live with her… or marry her… or anything of the kind… she’s liable to stab you in your sleep.”
Tyr shook the President’s hand back firmly.
“Thank you for the advice, sir,” the god said, his words as solemn as his face.
“…That being said,” the President added, pausing to wink at his daughter. “She’s my last child. And I have access to the nuclear codes.”
Marion smacked him on the arm, but her father only laughed.
Tyr, looking between them, didn’t say a word.
When Marion looked at him, studying the stillness of his face, the god smiled. That fire in his obsidian irises seemed to burn brighter. Seeing the look there, feeling what lay behind it, a warmth crawled up from her toes to her belly… then up to her chest, throat, and cheeks.
She could feel what he was telling her that time, too.
She could feel it well enough to feel a flicker of embarrassment to see it so plainly, with her father standing right there.
Her father had already told her, though, just the night before, that he saw it, too.
“That boy worships you,” he’d said seriously, when she went to visit him in his study, hoping for a quick game of chess. “He positively worships you. I wish I could find a reason to disapprove, but I honestly think he’d take a bullet for you… and maybe you for him. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get in the way of that. Not without winning a prize for Worst Father of the Year.”
“Would you get in the way of it?” Marion asked him, nudging his shoulder playfully from where she stood by his chair. “If you had a good enough excuse?”
“No,” her father said, looking up seriously. “No, peanut. I wouldn’t. Honestly, I think you’ve got yourself a good man there. I’d tell you not to blow it, but with the way the two of you look at one another, I honestly don’t think that’s humanly possible.”
Smiling at the memory now, Marion refocused on Tyr’s face, only to see him smiling back at her, his dark eyes still glowing with those fire-like embers.
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