When Loki's consort and soulmate marries his rival to save their son from a curse, a prophecy leads to consequences even the God of Chaos couldn't predict.
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The Unseelie Goddess of War's revenge against Asgard's Dark Prince puts him in a no-win s...
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After sleeping, eating a breakfast of seaweed rolls, and enjoying both of my sexy males again, we finally left the shelter of the partially standing structure we'd taken refuge in. I must have really been out of it to have not noticed the holes in the roof and crumbling wall on one side. Still, no one had disturbed us, although I suspected Loki and Elatha had taken turns keeping watch. Any time I woke, only one warm body was pressed against me.
Bright sunlight sparkled off the ocean waves, and when I turned to look at the source, a sun was rising in the direction of Elysium. The sky, with its haze of ash, made the sun look like a ball of dark red fire.
How does that work in this dimensional reality? Is Helheim a planet orbiting a star? Is it the same star as Earth?
Elatha's touch on my shoulder drew me out of my musing and I turned, smiling at him. I'd felt his worry, but my body hummed right now. Between him and Loki, they'd charged me up to full this morning.
"We should be able to climb down here," Loki said. Facing the rising sun, he peered over the bluff's edge.
Elatha and I joined him. To our left, a marsh with tall grasses and reeds stood at the mouth of a river, the combination of the Lethe and Archeron, if I correctly recalled Loki's explanation yesterday. Stretching out in front of us and curving around the end of the bluff was the ocean. The descent to the shoreline was more gradual here, with the bluff's erosion providing a gentle downward slope.
"Is it safe to enter the water here, with the river so close?" Elatha asked.
"Yes. Once the salt water mixes with it, the rivers lose their effect. As long as we enter the water where the ocean waves are breaking, we should be fine," Loki said, pointing past the clear outlet flow of the river to the waves crashing on the rocky beach.
"What are we waiting for, then?" I started down the slope, half stepping, half sliding as the loose soil shifted with my movement.
It was almost like downhill skiing, an activity my sister Heather enjoyed, and despite our differences, was one of the few things I shared with her. The reminder had my chest tightening a lance of pain, an old ache now. I hadn't seen Heather in six years... okay, only fourteen and a half months for me, but she'd refused to visit when I spent time at my Vancouver home and had been otherwise unavailable any time I'd reached out. We'd never been close, but I hadn't expected her to cut me off so abruptly now that she knew I'd discovered I was adopted. She'd never even seen Aidan.
Aidan. Landing at the bottom of the slope, I rubbed my chest as the ache deepened. Gods, I missed our son. Heat built behind my eyes and I turned my face into the salty spray coming off the crashing waves. This had to work. It had to. I couldn't bear to think of my little boy dying.
Small rocks and soil pelted the backs of my legs with little stings as Elatha and Loki joined me, riding waves of rock and loose dirt of their own. The interruption of my worries was welcome, and I shook my boots free as the last of the churning ground came to rest.
