Emily rifled through her briefcase, while the young deputy examined the room with a slack jaw. Obviously she'd never expected the house to be in perfectly restored condition.
Silence fell across the room once everyone was settled. Ariel stared daggers at Emily Robbins. Why would she want this house, this home that Ariel had come to love?
"You're still here. I expected you to be long gone by now."
Ariel met the other woman's acid tone with one that was calm, civilized and didn't give away her anxiety or anger. Surely Jeffrey had some legal mumbo jumbo that would send these two packing. All she had to do was remain composed. "Why would I leave? This is my home." She refused to let her adversary see she was sweating. It wouldn't do her case any good if the enemy knew she wasn't as confident as she might appear.
"Mrs. Robbins, as attorney for the Bradley Family Trust, I must inform you that there is no precedent to lay claim against this property or its contents. This is a copy of the deed of trust and supporting documentation." Jeffrey broke in before tempers could flare.
"Mr. Gaines, the only deed in the county register's office is dated 1810. The original deed is to one Michael Jedediah Bradley. The surroundings fields were sold off by a lawyer for Josephine Bradley in 1875 and the house and immediate grounds were put into a trust. They've never been redeeded and according to my sources there are no direct descendants. This woman, whoever she is, is no relation to Michael Bradley. She doesn't have any rights to the ownership of the house and lands named by the trust." Ms. Robbins sounded bored. As if she'd practiced this scene so many times she was tired of it. Or had she used these same lines on other unsuspecting homeowners in the past?
"Here is the new deed, signed, witnessed and recorded three weeks ago to Miss Ariel Bradley. Also, here is Miss Bradley's birth certificate and documentation showing she is a direct descendent of Amelia Bradley, the eldest daughter of Michael." Sliding the papers across the table, he glanced at Ariel's wide-eyed expression and winked. Then he nodded with a frown, indicating she should keep her shock to herself.
Three weeks? He must have filed the papers the day they’d met at his office and signed all those legal forms. Had Miss Josephine seen this coming even then? Obviously, she knew more than Ariel had given her credit for.
"The family history tells that Amelia left town with a traveling salesman two days after her eighteenth birthday. She went to Richmond and later moved to the Smokies, alone and pregnant. She kept in touch with her aunt through letters over the years."
"Can you prove these claims? I was told that she," Ms. Robbins sputtered, waving one hand in Ariel's direction," was orphaned as a tot. How can she be a descendent of the Bradley family?"
"Even orphans have family, Ms. Robbins," Jeffrey pointed out reasonably.
"Maybe she's a member of another Bradley family. How do you know for certain that she's part of this clan?"
"Come into the library, madam, and you'll have all the proof you need." Seth broke in, bored with the bickering. This needed to end before he lost his temper and threw the sharp-tongued shrew out on her ear.
She had no claim to Ariel's birthright. Besides, he was hungry. He wanted these people out of the house so he could scrounge up something to eat. Purposely keeping his expression neutral, he pushed away from the wall and led the way from the dining room.
The others rose and followed like lames to the slaughter. Emily looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but didn’t question why he was wearing a full cut white shirt, tight fitting pants and shiny black boots. She looked uncomfortable, like she was ready to give up and leave this place. Hopefully, she would never have to return in the future. But first she needed to see the proof that the house belonged to Ariel.
Throwing open the double doors to the library, Seth stepped back, waving for the others to proceed him. He followed, stepped behind Michael Bradley's large mahogany desk and gestured to the painting over the fireplace. "You're proof, Mrs. Robbins, a family portrait of Michael Bradley and his twin daughters, Anna and Amelia. The portrait was painted on the girls' sixteenth birthday. The family resemblance cannot be denied."
The gold-framed painting was a traditional family portrait. Michael was seated in a comfortable chair in the center. His daughters stood behind him, each with a hand on the back of his chair. The girls wore matching gold and pearl necklaces with their green gowns with their fiery tresses piled in complicated twists on top of their heads.
He smiled when Ariel gasped beside him.
She looked exactly like the two girls!
* * *
The End
* * *
S. E. Walker has the free-spirited soul of a gypsy, and the heart of a warrior. An Air Force veteran, her first, last, and forever love is telling a story that will touch readers’ hearts, and maybe change the way they look at the world. She lives in central Texas with Honey, her mixed breed companion, and a writing muse who demands lots of time off to play between books, and snacks. Lots of snacks.
About the Author
S. E. Walker was born in Maryland, a state her family never lived in. At the age of five, she fell in love with books and decided she would join those who created such magic.
She currently lives in central Texas with her seventy-pound mixed breed fur-baby, Honey, who is a combination protector, personal trainer, and alarm clock.
* * *
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Website – www.sewalkerauthor.weebly.com
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Alys of Asgard
Catherine Banks
Alys of Asgard
* * *
Despite being raised by Odin, All Father of the Norse Gods, Alys has come to realize her presence in Asgard is throwing the balance and flow of life completely off-kilter. She opts to move to Midgard--Earth--but the transition is far from smooth. Discoveries lead her to realize her adopted father has lied to her all her life, and with all she thought she knew stripped away, it's up to Alys to uncover the truth about who she really is.
1
“Sif, stop hitting her!” Sigyn yelled as the beautiful and angry Aesir goddess punched me in the sides again and again. If she didn’t stop soon my ribs would break.
“She shouldn’t be here,” Sif growled, “She’s not one of us.”
“I don’t want to be like you,” I growled at her, “You’re a rude and cold-hearted witch.”
She pried my arms apart, exposing my face which I had been protecting, and growled in my face looking more feral than ever before. “I could kill you right now, mortal.”
“Odin wouldn’t let you,” I told her smugly. “And you’d get in trouble.”
Her lip twitched in a snarl and before I could move she head butted me in the face. My nose felt like it exploded and I could feel the hot blood dripping down my face. “Ah!” I screamed in pain and tried my hardest to get her off of me. She was too strong. If only I wasn’t mortal. If I were a goddess too, I would put her in her place. Then again, the reason she was attacking me was because I wasn’t a goddess.
“Alys!” Thor yelled, running over and knocking Sif off of me. His hair was like golden silk and his blue eyes were as deep as the oceans on Midgard. He sat me up and tore off his shirt to wad it up against my nose. If only I didn’t have to tilt my head back to stop the blood, I could have looked at him shirtless a bit longer. “Can you walk?” he asked me.
“Stop protecting her!” Sif yelled at him. “She’s mortal. She’s supposed to get hurt!”
“You are a member of the Aesir!” He snapped at her. “Show a little more class and stop hurting her because you can. We are supposed to protect them, not purposefully hurt them.”
She glared at me once more and then stormed away. Sigyn looked at me apologetically and then followed after Sif. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Again.” He seemed to always have to save me from one thing o
r another. Lately it was Sif more and more often. She and I had a terrible amount of animosity going and it didn’t seem likely to be quelled any time soon.
He ran a hand down my hair and asked, “What did you say to anger her this time?”
I turned away from him angrily and stormed away. “Nothing.” I couldn’t tell him what was said because that would mean admitting to him that I liked him. I couldn’t admit my feelings to him.
He followed me and I found his presence incredibly reassuring. “She could kill you very easily,” he reminded me.
“I don’t need you to remind me of that,” I snapped. “I’m well aware of my limitations.” I was reminded every day that I wasn’t a god and that I could be killed by them with barely a flick of their fingers.
“Alys,” Jord said in shock, “Why are you bleeding?” I hadn’t even seen the goddess in front of me due to my anger. She was the most gorgeous goddess on Asgard, they were all beautiful, but Jord was by far the most beautiful, and had the kindest heart of them all.
“Sif broke her nose,” Thor told her.
“Tsk, that girl needs to fight in a battle or two to release her anger,” she whispered. She took Thor’s shirt from my nose and rested her fingers against the throbbing flesh. Warmth radiated from her fingers and then the bones snapped back into place.
“OW!” I yelled and gripped my hands into fists tightly to keep from pushing her away or reaching up to shield my face from her.
“Sweet Alys, why can’t you learn to get along with Sif? You’ve been fighting with her since you were ten years old,” Jord whispered.
I glanced at Thor who was thankfully not looking at me and said, “We’ll never get along anymore.”
Jord looked at her son and then smiled sweetly at me with a knowing expression in her eyes. “Oh, Alys.”
“Thank you for healing me,” I whispered, grabbed Thor’s shirt, and walked away from her towards the stream. Thor followed me and sat down on the bank with his hands behind him so he could lean back and looked up at the sky.
His muscles gleamed in the sunlight and he looked more like a god every day. I knew I shouldn’t even consider that we might be a couple or that he could even like me as anything more than a strange mortal friend, but my heart refused to stop reacting to him every time I saw, heard, or thought of him. It was at the age of ten that I had discovered my feelings for him and it was also then that Sif had realized that we liked the same man. The rivalry between us had only grown in the past eight years.
“You’re staring at me again with a sad expression,” he whispered.
I turned away quickly and put the shirt in the stream to clean the blood out of it. I hated it when he caught me looking at him.
“Do I make you sad?” he asked softly. I shook my head instead of trying to speak. It was often impossible to speak when he was near me. “Are you scared of me?” I shook my head. How could he even think that?
“You make her nervous, obviously,” Loki said from beside me.
“What are you doing here?” Thor asked him angrily. The two rarely got along, even after being ordered by Odin to learn to get along.
Loki placed a hand on my ribs and I hissed in pain. I hadn’t thought to ask Jord to heal them as well since my nose had been hurting far worse. “Sif and you get into another fight?” he asked me as he began healing me. I nodded.
“Since when can you heal?” Thor asked him in quiet shock.
“I learned for Alys,” he said smugly.
“Thank you,” I whispered as his magic healed my bruised and cracked ribs.
“Would you come eat supper with me?” he asked me as he continued healing me.
I turned my head slowly and looked into his silver eyes. He was so different than Thor. Where Thor was light, Loki was dark. He had black hair, and wore dark clothes all the time. He preferred fighting and tricks to learning or making friends.
“You want me to eat with you?” I asked him in surprise.
He smirked. “Yes.”
Part of me wished it had been Thor asking, but for all his trickery against the other gods, he was handsome and kind to me. “Okay.”
“What?!” Thor bellowed. “You’re going to go with him?”
“Why shouldn’t she?” Loki asked him angrily.
“Boys,” I snapped to get their attention. “Can we not fight right now? My head still hurts from the pounding I just got.” They both knew it was a lie since Jord had healed me, but thankfully they quieted.
Loki pulled his hand away, finished with healing me and stood up. “I’ll see you later, Alys.”
“Goodbye, Loki.” I focused on cleaning the shirt, scrubbing the red stain that was trying very hard to remain permanent.
Thor growled and thunder shook everything around me, including the ground beneath my feet. The quake caused me to lose my footing and I fell sideways into the stream. The cold water swirled up around me, tugging me along by the current, and chilled my fingers in an instant. I kicked my way to the surface and gasped air in as soon as my mouth was above water.
“Alys!” Thor yelled. I opened my eyes and realized with shock that I had traveled a half mile downstream from him. I didn’t remember the current being so strong or fast before. He ran to me, dove into the water, and pulled me to the shore. I held onto his neck as I regained my breath and also to take the chance to touch him. “Are you alright?” he asked me as he pet my sodden hair.
I nodded my head and gripped him harder. “I’m sorry you had to get wet.”
“Well it was starting to get hot,” he said with a laugh.
I pulled away from him and found my smile mirroring his. “You’re one of a kind, Thor Odinson.”
“As are you, Alys,” he whispered, setting his hand against my cheek.
My heartbeat became erratic, my stomach tight with nervousness, and my cheeks reddened with embarrassment. He leaned his face closer to mine, our lips only an inch apart.
“Thor!” Odin bellowed from his throne room, his voice carrying across all of Asgard from his power.
Thor stilled, his eyes locked with mine. “I have to go.”
I couldn’t talk. I did figure out how to let go of him and stand up, thankfully. He put his shirt on and walked towards the castle while I stared after him, trying to remember who I was and what I was supposed to do now. He turned at the castle doors and smiled brightly at me. “Alys?”
“Yes, Thor?” I somehow answered.
“Will you meet me for breakfast tomorrow?”
Breakfast? He wanted me to eat breakfast with him? “Um, yes.”
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow morning then.”
“Okay.”
He walked into the castle and I fell down to my knees on the wet grass. I sat there in silence for a while and then started shivering from my wet clothes. Loki was going to press me for answers if I showed up in dirty and wet clothes, so I headed home to change. My home was set apart from the others, on the far side of the castle grounds right in the center of the grasslands. Odin had built it for me with his own two hands, not even using his powers, once I was old enough to live in a place of my own, which had been at nine years old. I still had no idea how I had come to be on Asgard, but even with Sif’s constant attacks, I loved it here. I had grown up with the others and learned so much about the other worlds and the other beings. I had yet to meet anyone other than the Vanir and Aesir and no matter how much I begged Odin to let me go with them when they took the others, I wasn’t allowed to go.
I pushed open my front door and hurried inside to start a fire. My home consisted of a bed, a dresser with my clothes, a table with four chairs, one window, and a fireplace large enough to hang a pot over to cook. I changed clothes, setting my wet ones on the back of a chair near the fireplace to dry and then sat down in it to brush my hair while it dried as well.
Someone knocked on the door, which wasn’t all that abnormal, but I rarely received visitors at my home. I rubbed my arms to try to warm my skin up again
and opened the door.
“Hello,” Sif said with a smirk on her stupidly beautiful face.
I leaned against the door and asked, “What do you want?”
“Is that any way to address a goddess?” she asked me, but strangely there was no anger behind it. What was she up to?
“How can I help you, Sif?” I asked her more politely. I really wasn’t in the mood to argue or fight, especially when I needed to meet Loki soon.
“I came to apologize,” she said.
Nothing about her smirk or demeanor suggested she was coming to apologize at all. Odin had made her apologize to me before and she had acted like she was being tortured the entire time.
“Thank you,” I said and started to push the door closed.
She stuck her foot in the way and reached in to grab me in a hug.
“What are you doing?!” I demanded fearfully.
“Don’t worry, you’ll forget all about this in a moment,” she whispered. A strange pressure built against my head and then I began feeling uncontrollably dizzy.
“Stop,” I begged her as I weakly fought against her.
“It’s almost over,” She whispered.
“What are you doing?” I asked again as my legs grew weaker and my body sank to the ground.
“Quiet, mortal and go to sleep.”
I fainted a moment later.
* * *
I opened my eyes and found Sif standing next to my bed with a satisfied grin on her face. “Sif, what are you doing here?” I asked her, sitting up and trying to swing my legs over the edge of my bed. The movements made me very dizzy and I felt nauseous as the room spun uncontrollably.
Magic and Shadows: A Collection of YA Fantasy and Paranormal Romances Page 126