13

An hour or so later, a knock came on my door. I stared bleakly at it from across my tiny house’s single room, where I’d huddled into the furthest corner of my bed while waiting for my Loki-inspired sniffles to relent. I felt small and stupid and…

And confused. Because while my brain insisted on replaying every ugly word Loki had said to me, it also insisted on noting that he’d looked and sounded like he hadn’t meant them. Damaged as he was, perhaps lashing out was more self-defense than true cruelty.

I wanted to believe that. I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t know what I wanted.

Except that I knew I didn’t want to go to my door. When a fist thumped against it a second time, though, I knew I’d have to.

“Iris.” Heimdal’s voice. Muffled through the oak door, it still sounded stern.

I sighed, scrubbed my hands over my cheeks, and scooted out of bed. Standing, I smoothed my robes and my hair. I could manage presentable. I could manage calm. All I had to do was relinquish control to the numbing emotional weariness trying to overtake me.

I opened the door to find Heimdal planted on the threshold. His expression—or lack of one—matched the sternness I’d heard in his voice.

Thor stood behind him. His face was no longer red, but he still looked ready to bellow at the slightest provocation.

“Thor requires a bridge.” Heimdal spoke quietly, all business.

Business. I took another steadying breath. Fine. I could handle business.

Then I recalled one of the things Thor had bellowed. Loki should be banished. And I hesitated.

“To where?” I didn’t move from my doorway. I stood there with my hand on the latch and looked into Heimdal’s eyes as I awaited an answer.

Heimdal’s jaw worked. Whether that was because he disliked questions in general or because he understood my reason for asking this one, I didn’t know. Behind him, Thor’s face darkened.

“To Svartalfheim.” Heimdal responded, words clipped. “To commission a gift for Sif.” He paused, and his tone softened. “To perhaps bring her comfort for the damage done to her.”

Not to Midgard this time. So rather than running off on a hunt for solace in the arms of mortal women, Thor thought some bit of material wealth would make up for Sif’s shorn hair. Sadly, knowing Sif, he was possibly right. Especially since the Svartalfar were well-regarded for the artistry of their metal-working.

I glanced past Heimdal at Thor.

Thor returned my gaze with the glare of a petulant little boy. I tried to decipher how much of his anger was genuinely on Sif’s behalf, and how much was because someone had broken one of his favorite toys.

“What a kind and husbandly thing to do.” I managed at the last second to strip away a thread of pure, Loki-like mocking from my voice.

Heimdal’s eyes narrowed. Thor, however, stood a little straighter and squared his shoulders. Some of the red drained from his face.

I shut the door behind me and slipped past Heimdal, leading the way toward the city’s bridge stone. I could have taken Thor from anywhere, but Asgard’s traditions declared that travelers depart from the bridge stone clearing. Gods knew, we didn’t want to do anything against Asgard’s traditions.

Thor and Heimdal followed me to where Asgard’s nearest bridge stone hunkered, solid as the Aesir who lived there, in the center of a clearing. The stone itself was plain blue-gray granite, as if carved from ice.

I’d added my own touches to the clearing. Baubles and prisms and bits of colored glass hung from the delicate branches of birches. A set of streamers, colored silk salvaged from the robe I’d been wearing when I fled Alfheim, fluttered in the same brisk breeze that pinched my cheeks. Colors winked from the light-catchers, stolen from Asgard’s wintry sunlight.

True to Heimdal’s word, Loki was nowhere in sight. So, despite Thor’s suggestion, Loki had apparently not been banished.

Of course he hadn’t—that would put Asgard at odds with Jotunheim. Loki’s banishment was a threat that was never at risk of becoming a reality, I realized only now. After I’d made a fool of myself and managed to alienate Loki in the process.

Did it matter, that I’d raised Loki’s ire? Maybe that had been only a matter of time, anyhow. Maybe he’d never truly considered me a friend to begin with.

“He twists the truth to suit his own purposes.”

Or maybe he’d been testing the strength of my loyalty, and I’d walked away when he needed me most. The thought left me unsettled.

Thor stomped silently into the center of the clearing—he was well-familiar with my ritual, since he demanded its use with such frequency. Heimdal followed too, but he stopped at the edge of my space, as he always did. He never stepped into my clearing without awaiting my invitation.

For the moment, I didn’t offer one. Still shaken by Loki’s blatant rejection of my attempt to help, I thought one god at a time was more than enough to deal with. As it was, Thor continually glanced toward me with lowered brows and an expression that alternated between reluctant approval and a sulking, little-boy frown. Probably, he couldn’t decide whether I’d chosen Loki’s side or his.

Neither, I decided. I was for the moment completely alone. Homesickness sharpened by grief stabbed my heart.

Thor also kept glancing toward Heimdal, and I suspected that was the real reason for Thor’s silence. Left to his own devices, he’d probably have bellowed his displeasure into my face before demanding I send him on his way. As it was, Thor waited for me to lift my hand before planting his atop it.

“Svartalfheim,” was Thor’s sole spoken word. Which I already knew, but stating your destination was also part of the tradition.

Far overhead, I imagined a spot of purest white light. I inhaled, imagining that I drew the white light down to me in a thin but steady stream, down through the top of my head and into my body. The light tingled, stretching fingers of energy into my limbs. It came more slowly than it had in Alfheim, but I was accustomed to that. Traveling from other worlds had always required more effort.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the bridge stone in Svartalfheim, cut granite in a courtyard of polished quartz. The white light I’d called down flashed around me. I imagined it twisting and bending, just so.

Colors flared to life, byproducts of my manipulation of the light. Around Thor and me, light seemed to fade, fluttering with darker versions of rainbow flashes. Thor darkened, too, and what I could see of my hand beneath his. As the world around us warped in a roughly egg-shaped shell, we became ephemeral.

The light flashed. With a sound like silence giving way to absence, Asgard was gone.

On the far side, gemstones winked like stars in Svartalfheim’s high and wholly artificial sky. I lowered my hand away from Thor’s immediately.

“When you’re ready to return, call.” I spoke the words quickly, still following tradition.

Without waiting for Thor’s reply, traditional or otherwise, I stepped back and equally quickly opened a bridge for my own return to Asgard. I only wanted to be away, from Thor and everyone else. I kept my painting supplies in the clearing, to while away time when waiting to be called to return for a traveler. I longed for the distraction of brush and canvas.

Light. Colors. The void of a bridge opening. And through it all, an eagerness to be back to my clearing and alone with my painting.

But I wasn’t alone. Heimdal was waiting for me.

Heimdal remained exactly where I’d left him, at the very edge of the bridge stone clearing. I glimpsed him from the corner of my eye as I returned from Svartalfheim. He stood far enough to my side that I didn’t face him directly. He didn’t speak, but I felt his presence.

I allowed the light I’d used to ebb from my limbs, energy dissipating and colors fading as I let it slip away. Then I just stood there, among the birches with prisms glinting peek-a-boo colors and silken streamers from a world that no longer existed fluttering against my cheek.

I had no idea what to say, so I waited for what words Heimdal might have. Maybe he’d think Loki had delivered reprimand enough all on his own. Or he assumed that the magical chaotic influence Loki wielded had affected me, even after I’d assured Heimdal I would never be susceptible to such a thing.

Had Loki used his magic on me? I wasn’t sure how you could tell, but I didn’t feel like he had. Certainly he hadn’t been pleased by my words today.

To the side, out of my sight, Heimdal cleared his throat. I felt like I should say something to him, but emotions raged in my chest that I couldn’t define. If I spoke, I wasn’t sure whether I’d shout at Heimdal or burst into tears.

Loki uses everyone. It’s not personal where I’m concerned. It never was. He was never my friend.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I stiffened.

“I’m sorry.” Then Heimdal placed his other hand on my other shoulder.

The warmth of his fingers eased some of the stiffness from my posture. When Heimdal turned me toward him and drew me into the circle of his arms, I didn’t resist.

He encircled my shoulders with one arm. The other hand stroked my hair and down the back of my neck.

“Sorry for what?” Tentatively, I leaned my cheek against Heimdal’s chest. “I’m the one who’s an idiot.”

“You’re guilty of nothing but caring too much.”

Heimdal tucked my head beneath his chin. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I felt less empty. Less alone.

“I should have trusted you.” I murmured the words against the coarse cloth of his shirt.

“Yes.”

He stated it as sternly as I’d come to expect from him. But with my ear against his chest, I was close enough to hear a rough catch in his throat, as well. As if my pain also pained him.

A split second later, I realized I could also hear his heartbeat. And that it beat as unsteadily as mine so often did in his presence. His chest rose and fell, steadily but maybe more quickly than usual. Beneath my cheek, only a thin layer of black broadcloth separated my skin from Heimdal’s—and not just my cheek but my entire body pressed against his.

Abruptly, I was no longer thinking of Loki, of my own foolishness, or of anything else at all except for Heimdal. My own pulse increased.

No. He’ll hear it.

But even if I could have controlled my heart, I abruptly didn’t care to.

If he doesn’t know by now how I feel, he’s a bigger fool than I am.

I brought my arms up from my side, but only as far as Heimdal’s waist. I slipped one hand around to the small of his back and pressed it there. Pressed my entire body more tightly against his. My other hand settled against his abdomen, just above the waistband of his trousers. Beneath my fingers, the washboard hardness of his stomach tightened.

I turned my face and lifted it, so that my mouth and nose pressed against the skin at the base of his throat. His scent filled me, musk and steel and sun’s-warmth. A sweet ache that started low in my stomach rolled through me.

Heimdal inhaled sharply. His pulse, now beneath my mouth, went from unsteady to outright racing. I smiled against his skin and traced my lips up his neck and to the whiskery roughness of his jaw, relishing the friction of his skin beneath my lips.

Heimdal stopped stroking my hair. His hand dropped like a hawk from the sky and closed around the hand I’d planted against his stomach. The arm around my shoulder shifted as well, catching my other wrist. He drew both my hands together between us, clasping mine between his but stepping back so that our bodies no longer touched.

My mood dived toward its second round of humiliation and rejection within the space of a single hour.

Then Heimdal lowered his face toward mine. Emotion smoldered in his deep blue eyes, and I knew I’d been right. He wanted me as much as I did him. His gaze flicked briefly toward my lips. For a moment, I was sure he was about to kiss me.

“You’re vulnerable.” He nearly whispered the words, but they came out with steady determination. “You’re soft-hearted, and so easily hurt.”

As my brow furrowed with confusion—was he complimenting or insulting me?—Heimdal paused and swallowed. His hands pressed more firmly around mine.

“Iris.” The tenderness with which he said my name hurt my heart. “I won’t become one of the people who hurts you.”

I shook my head, my brow furrowing even more deeply. But before I could gather my senses enough to reply, Heimdal lifted our clasped hands. Gently, he kissed my fingers, and the rough warmth of his lips and his breath against my skin made sure my senses remained scattered.

“I’m sorry,” he said, as he had at the beginning of our conversation.

Then he let go of my hands, backed a few steps before turning, and walked away.