“Two boys,” I whispered.
I looked at Fenris beaming beside me and Týr standing next to him. Two men, I thought. Two men for my two boys.
“Well, Thrym will be wanting to know what to call them,” the midwife said as she gathered up the mountain of blood-soaked rags she’d stacked around the base of the birthing chair. “Ere Fenris? The names?”
Fenris turned to me, wiped his cheeks with the back of his hands, and knelt by the bed. Very gently, almost as if he were afraid they might break, he ran his fingertips along the soft scalps of his sons.
“What do you think?” he whispered. “What do they want to be named?”
The answer came to me with such sudden clarity it may as well have been written into the Nine Realms since the very moment of creation.
“Egren,” I said, smiling at the smaller one. “And Jael.”
Fenris nodded. “Like your brothers.”
I stared at the tiny infants nestled against my breast. Egren’s eyes had closed, but Jael had begun to wiggle in my arms, his little lips opening and closing soundlessly.
“Your family would be honored,” Fenris said.
I tore my eyes away from the twins and met Fenris’s gaze. He stood in the sunlight, his toga loosely draped around his shoulders, his pale eyes sparkling. The monster of the Ironwood, who had fled his mother’s castle to begin a new life. Who had lost everything on Asgard in his attempts to protect me, to provide a safe home for his family. Who had given up the wolf and become Thrym’s heir on Midgard.
I remembered how he’d looked on the day I married him, when he’d knelt before me and sworn his fealty to me. Had I truly thought I loved him then? Before he’d rescued me from Nøkkyn’s fortress, or allowed the Æsir to bind him to guarantee our safety? Before he’d abandoned the wolf, the magic that kept him safe and free, and then, somehow, found the strength to live without it?
How little I’d known of the man I married.
How little I’d known of love.
“Husband,” I whispered to Fenris. “I’ve never loved you more than I do right now.”
Smiling, Fenris bent down and kissed me.
EPILOGUE
They called the season of the Saturnalia festival “winter.” To Fenris and me, that designation sounded like a joke. We found it endlessly hilarious when the servants complained of the cold weather or the short days.
“Oh, I know,” Liburnia had said that morning, as we both tried to wrestle a squirming Jael into his swaddling robes. “Where you and Fenris come from, the sun vanishes for nine months and you have to eat the ice to survive.”
We’d both laughed at that, our voices rising over Jael’s increasingly vocal protests. But that morning, as I stood between Fenris and Thrym in the broad courtyard outside the temple to Saturn, my own words came back to haunt me. I’d allowed Liburnia to wrap my shoulders in a thick, wool cloak. Still, the morning’s cold, relentless rain had soaked through the cloak, and the thin linen dress I wore beneath it, until, for the first time since Loki brought me to Midgard, I was actually cold.
I tried not to show it. The Romans, Thrym had explained, appreciated stoicism. So I stood very still and tried to look stoic while Thrym gave a long, convoluted speech, thanking everyone for their hard work during the previous year, thanking various deities whose names blurred together for the blessings of rain and prosperity, and then formally announcing that his legacy would continue in the form of his niece and nephew. Sol and Fenris Lokisen. The crowd greeted this with polite applause. More than a few of them, I thought, looked slightly less than stoic.
And then it was time for Fenris to speak. I bit my lip as he drew a deep breath and stepped forward. His hands bunched into fists, then relaxed. He rocked forward on the balls of his feet.
“I came here a barbarian,” Fenris began. His Latin was smooth and clear, although we both spoke with the same clipped accent that marked Thrym as a barbarian. “Yet, you welcomed me. I came here not knowing your language. Not knowing how to tend to grapes or make wine.”
He paused. The crowd listened expectantly.
“I wasn’t even certain,” Fenris continued, “how to tell a mare from a stallion.”
The crowd erupted in laughter. I was too stunned to respond. A joke? Fenris hadn’t told me what he planned to say; he hadn’t even shared his thoughts with Thrym, who was now laughing so hard his face was turning red beneath his enormous beard.
“You have taught me everything,” Fenris continued. “And I thank you.”
He gave a slight bow. The crowd murmured appreciatively. Thrym had told us one of the traditions of the Saturnalia festival is role reversal. The masters, he explained, serve the servants, and the servants voice their grievances. Apparently, Fenris had taken that to heart.
Fenris waited until the murmurs died down to continue. “I am honored to be chosen as Thrym’s heir,” he said. “It’s an honor I don’t deserve. I fully intend to spend the rest of my life living up to this choice, and continuing Thrym’s legacy.”
The crowd erupted in cheers. Fenris glanced back at me, a hesitant expression on his face. Did I do all right? he seemed to be asking.
I flashed him an enormous grin. In the span of several heartbeats, he’d established himself as Thrym’s humble, hardworking heir, and he’d assured the crowd that none of Thrym’s beloved traditions, especially his habit of freeing all the slaves in his domus, would be lost.
Fenris returned my smile, and his shoulders relaxed beneath the delicate folds of his somewhat disheveled purple-lined toga. Liburnia had begun calling Fenris’s wrinkled toga “the barbarian style.”
Thrym clapped Fenris on the back and raised his hand in the air, calling the crowd’s attention back to the center.
“And now,” Thrym announced, “let the celebration begin!”
Another roar of applause greeted this announcement. The crowd surged forward, toward the entrance to the temple of Saturn. Thrym had explained that Saturnalia begins with the ritual of unbinding Saturn, which would take place inside the temple. Fenris had some important role to play in this as well, but I was unsure of the exact details. Jael and Egren, at five months old, had yet to master Roman stoicism, so I’d offered to remain outside with the twins during the ritual. Even from here, surrounded by the crowd, I could see Liburnia holding the twins next to a glowing brazier beneath the overhanging eves of the stables. Their warm, orange firelight looked especially inviting.
As the crowd emptied into the temple, I moved to join Liburnia. Jael was fussing in her arms, moving his head against the folds of her dress like he did when he was hungry. I reached for him, but Liburnia shook her head.
“There’s someone to see you,” she said, with a strange sort of smile.
I frowned at that. Everyone I knew on Midgard was inside the temple behind us, doing some sort of ritual. Which would be followed, Thrym promised, by the biggest and wildest party of our lives. Fenris and I had both greeted this news with stoic grimaces; the few parties Thrym had hosted since our arrival on Midgard had dredged up dark memories of Val-hall for both of us. Privately, Fenris and I had agreed to spend most of the Saturnalia celebrations in our room, rediscovering each other’s bodies. We’d had precious little time to be together since the twins were born.
“Who is it?” I asked Liburnia.
“Oh, just go,” she responded, waving her hand in the direction of the stable’s dark, open doors.
Trying to ignore the tickle of apprehension in my belly, I stepped into the stables. They were warm, and dark, and smelled of wet horses.
“Hello?” I called.
A small candle flame burst into life. I jumped. Loki emerged from the shadows, grinning.
“How did he do?” Loki asked.
“He did amazing,” I said. “You didn’t see his speech?”
A frown crossed Loki’s face, making him look almost like Fenris. “No. I wasn’t sure if he’d want me here. And I didn’t want to distract him.”
I
opened my mouth to respond but found no words.
“How is he?” Loki asked. His pale eyes flashed in the candlelight.
“Good,” I answered, honestly. “Very good.”
There had been a time when I didn’t think my husband would survive the trauma of his rescue. Now, there were times when I almost felt like he’d been born a Roman noble.
“Has the wolf come back yet?” Loki whispered.
I blinked at him. Loki raised his hand slowly. What I’d first taken to be a candle, I now realized, was a flame. Just a flame. It hovered in the air above Loki’s open palm, consuming no fuel. Producing no smoke. Just like the fire in Thrym’s cave, that part of Loki’s magic he’d ripped from his own body and soul.
I shook my head silently, too stunned to answer.
“All in good time,” Loki said.
He snapped his fingers; the flame vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Loki wiped his hands together as if we’d just finished something and walked past me out of the stables.
By the time I joined him, Loki had taken Jael from Liburnia’s arms. She was blushing furiously as Loki rocked my son, who’d fallen silent with his little mouth wide open as he stared up at Loki’s face.
“Týr is waiting for you both back at the domus,” Loki said, in the language that Liburnia wouldn’t understand. “He didn’t want to distract Fenris, either.”
My heart jumped at that, and a different sort of warmth kindled to life deep inside me. Týr had spend two weeks with us after the twins’ birth, helping with diapers, rocking the twins through the long nights, and holding both of us in turn. It had been almost long enough for us to imagine it might actually last. Until Loki had arrived to warn us Óðinn was looking for Týr.
“I knew I couldn’t stay,” Týr had explained on our last morning together.
Behind him, the sun rose slowly above the fields of grapevines outside our window. Both twins had been blissfully asleep that morning. Týr’s eyes had gleamed with tears. Outside our door, Loki waited to pull Týr back to Asgard. Part of me had wanted to bar that door, to keep Týr with us forever and damn the consequences.
“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” Týr had promised.
Five months had passed since that morning. Five full moons. And, on each of those five nights, when the full moon cast its silver, watery light through our window, Fenris had left the domus to pace the grapevines and olive groves, the cobbled streets and wooded groves. Waiting. And every morning, for five months, he had returned exhausted, shaking his head. Not this time, he’d whispered. Not yet.
Jael squealed in delight, pulling me out of my memories. Three glowing, golden orbs hung suspended over Jael’s head, moving in slow, silent rotations. Loki handed Jael to me. The orbs followed. Liburnia stared at us both with her mouth wide open.
“Oh, and I did what you requested,” Loki said.
I tore my eyes off the shimmering orbs floating above my son’s head and tried to remember what in the Nine Realms I’d asked of Loki.
Oh. Stars. I hadn’t been serious.
“You went back to Nøkkyn’s castle?” I gasped.
He nodded. “Yes. But, technically, it’s no longer Nøkkyn’s castle.”
“Who—Whose castle is it, then?”
“Let’s just say it belongs to someone you’ve met.”
My head spun. Someone I’ve met? Who in the Realms did I know who could lay claim to a castle? The answer surfaced suddenly in my mind, as clear and shimmering as the noonday sun off still water.
“Angrboða?” I asked, incredulous.
Loki’s grin curdled, becoming a snarl. “Yes. She’s claimed it in the name of her unborn child. Jörmungandr.”
My gut shifted uncomfortably. Loki seemed to struggle to regain control of his expression.
“At any rate,” Loki continued. “The woman you asked about, Brunild, is still there. Her daughters are now all married off, as she was quite pleased to tell me.”
Loki’s smile returned slowly. “She also told me a rather unbelievable story about the night the Fenris-wolf assassinated the king. Were you really tied to a burning funeral pyre?”
I nodded as my cheeks burned. “You didn’t actually have to do that,” I stammered.
I’d only mentioned Nøkkyn’s castle because I’d been half out of my mind with sleep deprivation. Loki and Sigyn had come to visit four months after the twin’s birth, and Loki had asked me if there was anything I missed from my old life. I’d mumbled something half coherent about the woman in Nøkkyn’s kitchen who’d brought me bread and mead from Fenris. I’d thought I was just making conversation. I had no idea Loki actually intended to visit the damn place.
Loki shrugged, dismissing my feeble attempt to justify my request. “I was curious,” he said. “And the castle actually seemed relatively content. For all her many faults, Angrboða is typically fair to those held under her thrall.”
His eyes darkened, and I decided to move to a safer topic of conversation. But the sudden roar of the crowd drown out my words. I turned to see people streaming out of the temple’s doors, cheering and laughing. The sun broke through the clouds, and the courtyard filled with buttery light, making the entire world seem freshly scrubbed. Jael squealed excitedly from my arms.
“There he is,” said Loki.
Across the courtyard, Thrym and Fenris appeared in the doors of the temple. Thrym had an arm clasped around Fenris’s shoulder, and he was beaming as if Fenris really had been his very own flesh and blood. Fenris looked almost stunned, like he could hardly believe he’d been able to do this. To deliver a speech, to complete a ritual. To stand in front of a crowd and win them over without magic, or strength, or trickery. With nothing more than his words, and his open, naked honesty.
My monster of the Ironwood, I thought, with a smile. My demon lover.
My husband.
EXCERPT FROM THE TRICKSTER’S SONG
Shivering with the unpleasant vestiges of my nightmare, I stood and pulled back the cantrips. I’d disguised myself as a new recruit, although two weeks of training with Skadi’s army had gotten me absolutely nothing. Óðinn may have been on to something with his whore suggestion, although I still couldn’t quite force myself to go down that route. Even though the whores’ tents seemed more comfortable than the barracks where I currently found myself.
I’d gone without sleep until tonight, when exhaustion forced me to claim the darkest corner of the barracks and try to set my most subtle protections. This wasn’t Midgard, after all; many of the elite fighters in Skadi’s army could sense magic, if not use it themselves. Anything more complex than my usual illusions and cantrips had the potential to set off their alarms.
Another voice called from the darkness. I held my breath, listening for the response. When it came, the answering cry was farther away than I’d expected. Was someone new arriving now, in the middle of the night?
How very interesting.
I slipped through the thick canvas doors of the tent, blinking in the darkness. Torches flickered around the perimeters of the camp. And there, in the darkness of the valley, was the distant, orange gleam of another torch. Followed by another. And another.
As I watched, a stream of torches flowed between the mountains, moving closer and closer to the barracks. The guards called and were answered with friendly greetings. I slipped between the tents, standing in the shadows, until I could see the camp’s main entrance. Several horses stamped in the gloom just inside the ring of torchlight. I recognized three of Skadi’s four generals.
And, riding the biggest, most formidable mount, was Thiassi’s daughter Skadi. Moonlight glinted off her armor, and off the longsword hanging at her side. I’d only glimpsed her before; she didn’t deign to come near the raw recruits, and I could hardly blame her for that. I’d thought briefly about attempting to pass as a male escort and gain entrance to her tent, but nothing about Skadi’s strict military operation or grim demeanor made me think she’d be interested in a little wartime d
alliance.
A horse whinnied from the mountains and was answered by Skadi’s stallion. Her dark mount pranced a bit, until she pulled him under control. One of the mares in the approaching battalion must be in heat. I grinned to myself in the shadows. Horses were just as predictable as the rest of us.
It didn’t take long for the approaching troops to come within the flickering glow of the torches. A crier came first, galloping the last few feet to approach Skadi and her generals. He was hardly more than a boy, and he slid off his mount to bow low at the iron-clad feet of Skadi’s war stallion.
“My Lord,” the boy panted. “Thrym of the Iron Wastes swears his fealty, and presents his men unto your service.”
The boy stood, blinking in the torchlight. Skadi did not acknowledge him; her eyes were fixed on the column of approaching soldiers.
“It’s about damn time,” grunted Hryery, one of the older generals under Skadi’s command. “Send him up!”
My heart rose to my throat. Holding my breath, I stepped further into the shadows. I knew Thrym. I knew him quite intimately, actually. But I’d have to ascertain where his loyalties lay before I dared to approach him.
The boy, whose face had now turned quite pale, struggled to re-mount his horse. Even I could see his legs trembling. Once he’d finally regained his seat, he did not look back before he vanished into the darkness.
There was a slight flicker of motion among the river of torches along the valley, and the indistinct murmur of voices. Then another set of hooves thundered toward us. A moment later I saw Thrym, wearing his full armor, astride a great blood bay warhorse.
I almost sighed in appreciation. I first met Thrym when he stole Mjölnir, Thor’s magical hammer. I’d expected to fight him, perhaps even kill him, but the evening had ended in a much more satisfactory manner. Since then I’d paid several visits to Thrym, almost all for the pure pleasure of his strong, hard warrior’s body and his downright decadent living quarters. He was a generous and surprising lover, and he’d been one of my favorites, before Anya caught my eye on Midgard.
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