“Now, my family didn’t want to see me leave Nidavellir,” the dark elf said. He hopped onto the stone, still clasping my hand, and gave me a tug as I jumped to pull me over. “They talked about accommodations this, renovations that. But the rest of town protested, and you do have to consider the greater good. All that chipping away at the ceilings to make room for this gallant figure of mine could have taken its toll on the caves. And I wasn’t going to live with a permanent crick in my neck.”
With a hiss, a globby shape shot out of the magma at my leg. A yelp broke from my throat, but Svend didn’t even flinch. He kicked the lizard-like creature back into the flow of molten lava.
“Fire salamander,” he said. “For all we know, The Blaze has sent them after you too.” He punted away another that scrambled up the other side of the rock. “Shall we?”
He leapt to the far side of the stream where the edge protruded a little farther. I sprang after him in a hasty attempt to avoid any more of those monstrous salamanders.
My feet skidded on the smooth stone there. Svend yanked me to him, our chests colliding. My heart stuttered in the moment his arm held me against him before he was stepping back and giving me room.
“There,” he said, grinning. “Safe passage.” But at the same moment a wisp of the memories lingering around him tickled my notice. A woman’s sobs. Another voice, shouting. A distant rumble and a flash of steel.
“Do I have to ferry the two of you across?” Svend called back in a jaunty tone, disrupting my attention. I peered at him as he eased over to the edge in case Jerrik or Gunnar did need help.
That was what he did, wasn’t it? He chattered on as if he were being open, sparing me the need to consider the memories that clung to him, but it wasn’t the whole story. It was only the parts he wanted me to hear. He must be hoping I wouldn’t notice the rest if he kept up enough talk to cover it.
“There’s lodging I sometimes make use of not far from here,” he was saying now as the others joined us. “A few rooms, a stash of food. We’d better rest while we have the chance. It’s still a long hike to the fortress.”
And Norns only knew what we’d meet along the way.
6
Svend’s “lodging” looked a lot like the caves that he and the others had used as their homes above. He’d shifted a few stones to open a passage and shown us a common room with a few low boulders as seats and the smaller rooms down a narrow sort-of hall, each doorway hung with a strip of cloth.
I’d claimed the room at the very end, with a blanket Svend had handed to me. The strain of the walk on these unfamiliar legs was starting to catch up with me, a dull ache prickling through my calves. I’d thought I’d curl up on the blanket and nod off the way I normally did so easily on a branch or a rooftop or sometimes even Odin’s shoulder.
But apparently this human body didn’t sleep as easily as a raven could either. I rolled from one side to the other, cushioning my head on my arm. My hair tickled the inside of my elbow. My dress shifted against my breasts. The friction of the fabric tingled through my nipples, and suddenly I was thinking about Svend’s arm around me, about Gunnar’s hand in mine, about the gleam in Jerrik’s striking eyes. Heat quivered under my skin.
I wet my lips. I was alone now, really alone and relatively uninjured, for the first time since I’d transformed into this odd encasing. Why shouldn’t I explore it a little? Maybe if I gave this body some of the stimulation it was apparently craving, it’d settle down and let me rest.
I squirmed onto my back. My dress moved against me again, and my intention only heightened the giddy energy that ran over my skin. I raised my hand to my chest and cupped my breast.
At first I only grazed the soft flesh lightly through the fabric, tracing the shape of it, the slope. Easing closer and closer to the peak that begged almost painfully for attention. I flicked my thumb over the nipple, and a jolt of pleasure shot through me. My breath quickened.
I’d never felt anything like that before. Maybe humans had one or two advantages over raven-kind.
The tingling was building between my thighs as well. As I circled my nipple with my thumb, drawing out the sensation, I let my other hand travel lower, over the rumpled folds of my dress, to what in this moment felt like the core of my being.
My fingers settled over the cleft between my legs. Even that light contact provoked a pulse of bliss. My breath caught with a gasp. Oh. Oh, yes, that was good.
I slid my hand lower in a gentle stroke, my eyelids fluttering and my lips parting as a heady wave of pleasure rolled through me.
“It’s more fun with company, you know.”
My hand snapped up at Jerrik’s dry voice. I shoved myself around to find him standing at the doorway, the curtain pushed to the side, a plate in his grasp. His eyes glimmered with a wanting so potent it echoed through me, stirring ripples of need. Then he jerked his gaze away.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was bringing your food, and I heard a sound—I’ll leave you to it.”
He bent to set down the plate. A question leapt up my throat and caught there. My heart thudded.
“Were you offering?”
Jerrik froze. He looked at me again. “What?”
“Were you offering?” I said, gratified to hear my voice come out even, if with that hoarseness I could never quite lose. “To be that company?”
He straightened up so fast he nearly knocked his head on the arch of the doorway. His jaw worked. “You wouldn’t want mine.”
I frowned, pushing myself to my feet to face him properly. “Why—”
A tendril of memory wavered by. My gaze followed it, and Jerrik stiffened even more than he already had. “Don’t.”
But I already was. I was seeing the girl that a Jerrik who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen had held and kissed and made gasp in the night. I was seeing her stare at his torn face, her lips clamped tight against a grimace of horror she couldn’t completely contain. The turn of her head, the swish of her hair, her back as she left him behind.
What a stupid, stupid girl.
I stepped toward Jerrik, and he winced. “No,” I said when he started to pull away. “Stay here.”
He let go of the curtain, letting it drift past his shoulders. His hand came down to brace against the doorway. “Muninn…”
I stopped in front of him and reached to touch his face. Not the perfectly chiseled side anyone would have called handsome. The side rent through with that ridged scar. Like one of the streams cutting through the landscape outside. A feature of his geography, as much him as the clear blue eyes and the leanly muscled chest just inches from me.
I traced my fingers down the edge of the scar like I’d wanted to the first time I’d seen him. Jerrik closed his eyes with a hitch of breath.
“I like it,” I said. “It doesn’t make you worse, only different. More interesting, if you ask me.”
My fingertips brushed the corner of his mouth. A strangled sound escaped Jerrik. Then he was tangling his fingers in my hair and pulling my lips to his.
He tasted tart and sweet like the apples we’d been eating earlier. The hot press of his mouth against mine set every nerve in my body jittering with delight. I’d never totally understood this mashing together of faces that humans appeared to be so fond of, but oh, the slide of his lips, the graze of his fingers over my scalp, the heated rush of this coming together—it was already ten times as much bliss as I’d found in my tentative explorations a few minutes ago.
I kissed him hungrily, probably as clumsily as this body did everything, but he didn’t seem to care. He groaned and kissed me back harder. His tongue flicked over the seam of my lips and delved past them when they parted. I gripped his shoulders, the rough fabric of his shirt, clinging on through the waves of sensation.
Jerrik tipped his head to release my mouth. His breath rasped. “You’re shaking,” he said in a low raw voice. “Are you—”
“With anticipation,” I said as another tremor ran through me. “With need. Don’t st
op. Gods, don’t stop.”
He made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and another groan, and then he’d captured my lips again. With a few weaving steps, we reached the blanket I’d left on the floor. Jerrik tucked his arm around my back and lowered me onto it with him, leaning his weight to one side so he didn’t pin me.
I traced my fingers over his chest, the lines of those taut muscles, the shallow jagged indent where he was scarred there too. Jerrik eased his hand down my back and then up over my belly to the curve of my breasts. He stroked his thumb lightly over the peak, and my nipple hardened in an instant. I whimpered against his mouth.
He caressed and teased one side and then the other until I was panting between kisses. I arched into him with an impulse I’d never felt before but that this body came to instinctively. Wrenching up his shirt, I worked my hands over the heat of his chest skin to skin. He squeezed one nipple, and I gasped. My hips canted toward him again.
“Please.”
His breath stuttered against my mouth. “You want this?” he said. His fingers skimmed down over my side to the hem of my dress and eased it up my thigh. The glint in his eyes was both eager and awed.
“Yes,” I mumbled. “Yes—” His hand came to rest between my legs, and all I could do then was moan.
Jerrik reclaimed my mouth as he rubbed his hand gently against my sex. I rocked with him, every bit of friction sending pulses of pleasure through my entire body. A sharper swelling of bliss was building inside me, from depths I hadn’t known I had.
He curled one finger up inside me, and I shivered at the rush of delight. Another, plunging farther. My whimper was muffled by our kiss. His lips seared from my mouth to the crook of my jaw, the sensitive skin of my throat, as I trembled against him.
“You have no idea how much I want…” he murmured. “But Norns only know how long I’ll last, with you, like this. You deserve better for your first time. So this is just for you. I’ll take you all the way there.”
The heel of his hand rubbed against the base of my sex, where a little nub sent heady sparks radiating through my core. He added a third finger inside, filling me, stretching me. The faint burn of the pressure only sent my pleasure spiraling higher.
I kissed him wildly. My hands fluttered against him as if they’d turned back into wings, wanting to touch, to hold, not sure where to find purchase. There was no holding on in the wave of ecstasy rising through me. Jerrik’s fingers plunged even deeper, and the rush of sensation crashed over me, splintering in a burst of bliss.
I cried out, clinging to him, as the wave swept through me. My body clenched and then went slack. Echoes of that pleasure kept tingling through me while Jerrik bent to kiss me once more, so tenderly it made my heart ache.
As the haze in my head cleared, it occurred to me that on the occasions I’d stumbled on two humans engaged in this sort of activity—and hastily retreated—both parties had appeared to be getting equal pleasure from it. I eased my hand down Jerrik’s chest to the front of his pants. The hard bulge there and the breath Jerrik sucked in confirmed my suspicions. He hadn’t gotten any release yet.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
I cocked my head, raising an eyebrow at him as I tugged down his pants. “What if I want to?”
I wasn’t selfish. I didn’t know if I could give him back half the pleasure he’d brought me, but I could at the very least try. And I was rather curious to discover those new sensations too.
“Well, then—” His Adam’s apple bobbed when my fingers closed around the hard but silky length of his cock. “It’s been more than five years since I last… with anyone…”
“I spent eons without ever doing it,” I said. “Better late than never.”
He let out a laugh that turned choked as I stroked him up and down. A groan reverberated from his chest. I kissed him, and he returned it with a graze of teeth and a slick of his tongue. His hips bucked toward me. I gripped him more firmly, speeding up my rhythm, until he was trembling like I must have been before. I reveled in the feeling, in the control I was making him lose, in the corded erection so hard and smooth and hot against my palm.
“Muninn,” he murmured. “I’m—”
His voice cut off with a choked sound, his embrace around me tightening. His hips jerked, and a warm spurt of release spilled into my hand.
“Did I do all right?” I asked, not entirely sure what was normal. Should I have tried to extend his pleasure longer like he had mine?
Jerrik let out a guffaw and kissed me hard. “It was perfect,” he said.
We lay there for a few minutes without speaking, our breaths settling into a softer rhythm. I felt the hesitation in Jerrik before he opened his mouth. He bowed his head close to mine.
“It’s probably better if I leave you to get your rest. Sometimes I don’t sleep quietly.”
Was he worried I’d be offended? I kissed him softly and smiled. “Then go sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, won’t I?
He smiled back, his eyes shining. As he left me, I snuggled into the blanket. Any tension my body had been holding was gone now. My eyelids drifted shut, and I was out in an instant.
With sleep came dreams.
At first they were gauzy fragments, glimpses of clashing swords, of wind-whipped branches, of scudding clouds. Then I was over a battlefield again, like the one where I’d first transformed. Chilling rain whipped against my human skin. Blood and mud slopped together in the fray below. My gut turned in newfound horror.
Odin stood next to me, towering twice as high as he ever had in reality. His hand squeezed around my shoulder tight enough to make the bones throb. When he shook me, my jaw rattled.
“Raven of memory,” he bellowed. “Watch close. Listen hard. I want every drop of blood.”
He tossed me down into the chaos again. I tumbled head over feet. Feathers burst from my arms. I flapped, half bird, half woman, dodging the swing of swords and the jab of spears. Odin’s voice carried on behind me.
“Go, raven. Bring it all. I’m waiting.”
I spun around, and blood sprayed me from a slashed throat. No. I couldn’t do this. Not again. Not ever again.
Suddenly Odin was looming over me. His hand lashed out and clamped around my neck. His skin was scaled with stone like the dragons, his eyes glowing just as red as theirs. The press of his thumb cut off my air.
“You do what I tell you,” he thundered. “You serve me.”
I choked and sputtered and flailed. Wrenching against him, I managed to slam my elbow against his wrist. His grip released. I hurtled away, scrambling, flapping, toward the pale green-gold light that shone across a quiet field just beyond the battle. If I could just make it—
A hand closed around my ankle and yanked me back. I flinched awake with a gasp.
The cave room was dark and still. No one there but me. The thumping of my heart started to ease. Just a dream. Just a dream.
I could still taste the iron of blood on my tongue.
I burrowed deeper under the blanket, but it was a long time before I found my way back to sleep.
7
When I slipped into the common room the next morning, Svend was the only other one up, sitting on one of the stone seats and chewing on a strip of dried meat. He grinned at me and nodded to a platter on the central stone that held more meat and hunks of hard-looking bread.
“This is the best I can offer for breakfast. But I’m guessing you’d better eat something. You didn’t have much for dinner, did you?”
A playful gleam danced in his bright brown eyes. Had he heard Jerrik and me together last night?
A flush crept through me, but it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable. I might not love this new body, but I could admit it was very good for some things. Things brought back by the look Svend was giving me, with a tingle of a different sort of hunger through my chest and low in my belly.
Surely humans weren’t always insatiable. They seemed to manage to do rather a lot of things other than pleasure eac
h other, despite all the pleasure these bodies were capable of. Maybe it was simply that the body was so new to me, those aspects so unfamiliar and exciting—or maybe, as I’d suggested to Jerrik, I’d had eons of desire built up without even realizing it before.
I sat on the stone next to Svend’s and picked up a piece of bread. He’d smeared a little butter on them that cut the dryness some.
“I pass through the tunnels all the time,” he said in his usual chattering way as I chewed. “This is one of my regular way stations. Everyone in the realm wants something, but an awful lot of them can’t be bothered to figure out how to get whatever that is. It’s a busy life, being a tradesman, but it means I can have just about everything.”
Did he know how his casual rambling drew my attention from the memories that shrouded him? He might simply be in the habit of talking like this with everyone. Answering any questions he thought they might have the way he wanted to, before they had a chance to frame the issue any differently. Deciding how to put his own life on offer.
“Were you a trader in Nidavellir?” I asked. “Before you had to leave?”
“Ah, no, we all had pretty much the same there, so the demand wasn’t quite the same. I come from a proud family of lichen farmers. You know, I always thought the stuff was dull, but now that I haven’t had a bite of it in years, I’ve got to say I miss it.”
His family. Another wisp of memory drifting from him caught my attention. The crying woman—barely as tall as Svend’s chest, fingers black-tipped, hands at her face. No, no, don’t let them. His mother, I thought, with an instinctive certainty.
“They didn’t want you to leave,” I said. “Your parents.”
Svend’s mouth snapped shut. His grin turned crooked. “Raven of memory,” he said. “The past is your business, isn’t it? I try not to think about that time.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think about,” I told him. “Your past goes with you anyway. It clings to you like leaves to an autumn tree, but there’s always more with each one shed.”
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