21

Six years past and worlds away

The season of Asgard never really changed. It hung in an eternal combination of winter and summer, an endless season of brisk air and clear sky, of emerald leaves and lush grass against a backdrop of chill winds and snow on mountain slopes, all filtered through the icy dome that protected it from the greater winter outside.

The stark cliff top on which we stood felt like true winter. Black clouds churned overhead, threatening a storm. Frigid air stirred restlessly, chilling me to my bones. Bare trees guarded the sentencing ground, black branches spiked against a storm-gray sky. Patches of ice glittered on the rocky ground.

The Aesir ringed the sentencing ground, a smaller, grimmer circle inside the naked trees. Red-faced Thor stood with his fists clenched more tightly than ever. Frigg had ceased weeping. Blank eyes stared from her brutally cold face. Odin’s expression was no less hardened and no easier to look at.

All the gods had come to watch Loki die. Even if the presence of all the Aesir had not been required for an execution, I thought they would all have shown up. The decision had been unanimous and immediate. Heimdal alone had raised the question of what effect Loki’s death might have on the treaty situation with Jotunheim.

“It doesn’t matter,” had been Odin’s ice-faced reply. “We will deal with them later.”

Loki stood in the center of the sentencing ground. His sharp features had twisted into such hatred that I no longer recognized him. His auburn curls clung tightly against his skull, dark as dried blood. A crackle of lightning lanced the clouds above, briefly illuminating all the stark, sharp lines of his face.

Iron shackles circled Loki’s wrists and ankles, and chains driven into the stony ground held him in place. Silver light and runes limned with sapphire blue winked along the shackles’ surfaces, a reinforcement wrought by Heimdal. Heimdal’s magic alone could have held Loki every bit as securely, but holding Loki for an extended time would tire Heimdal.

And it would take some time for Loki to die.

“This is wrong.” My voice wavered.

I stood beside Heimdal, near enough to Odin that he could hear me. Heimdal’s head twitched in my direction, although he didn’t look toward me. Odin didn’t move.

I hadn’t been part of the council which had decided Loki’s fate. I wasn’t, so far as they were concerned, even supposed to be here. Not one of the Aesir had asked if I thought Loki deserved to die for his crime.

Maybe he did. Maybe it was only my upbringing that insisted no one deserved death, the echo of my father’s voice even now reminding me that no one can change without being given another chance. Maybe it was my itinerant compassion, insisting that what Loki had endured at Baldur’s hands cast Loki’s actions into the light of self-defense.

If Loki was telling the truth. I was the only one who’d ever been tempted to believe him. And Loki had, just as Heimdal had tried so many times to warn me, been using me to help carry out his plan to commit murder.

But my father’s voice did ring in my ears, my conscience insisting that a death sentence was nearly as wrong as the murder that had inspired it. The Alfar would not have condoned this action.

I was the only Alfar who still had a voice.

And I still, looking at Loki’s twisted expression, couldn’t decide if I saw the wickedness of a man who’d deliberately murdered another or his defeated hatred for abusers from whom no one had protected him.

“It’s not humane.” My voice wavered a little less.

Odin’s head moved this time, although he also didn’t look all the way around. “We are not human.”

I opened my mouth to continue my argument. “If Baldur had not—”

“Iris.” Heimdal’s hand encircled my wrist. “Hush.”

His voice held as much chill as the air around us. His fingers slid lower and closed around mine. I couldn’t tell if he intended to comfort me or merely hold me in place, errant child that I was.

“You have no say here, little rainbow. We never have.” Emotion thickened Loki’s voice—what emotion exactly, I couldn’t tell.

Fresh grief welled tears into my eyes, and I couldn’t tell for whom I wanted to weep.

“Silence!” Thor’s outburst crushed the cliff top’s stillness.

“There will be enough of that soon, won’t there?” Loki glared at Thor and then at Odin. Defiance snarled through his words. “You brought it on yourselves. Everything I’ve ever done.”

“No.” From beside me, Heimdal spoke with a deceiving calm. “But you have brought this on yourself.”

Loki jerked his gaze from Odin and turned the full force of his glare on Heimdal.

Heimdal stood firm. Only his jaw worked.

“Once, you had our trust.” Heimdal’s voice lowered. Gentled. “We called you brother. It’s you who’s left us no choice.”

“Do you know what Heimdal did? Nothing.”

Only with effort did I resist the sudden urge to yank my hand from Heimdal’s grasp. At the same time, I wanted him to pull me entirely into his arms and tell me none of this was real.

“Enough.” Thor didn’t bellow this time, but he sounded like he wanted to. “The sentence has been decided. Carry it out.”

Heimdal’s jaw clenched again, but he said no more.

My jaw clenched, too, and my heart thudded against my rib cage. I wanted to keep objecting, to point out that Loki’s actions could very well have been considered justifiable. If Loki had seen no other escape from what he had implied was continuing abuse at Baldur’s hands…

“He twists the truth to suit himself.”

If there had even been continuing abuse. Or any to begin with. Hadn’t I experienced for myself how Loki exploited circumstances and manipulated people? Thor was an overgrown child of a man, but bruise or not, I’d never seen him actually lift a hand against Loki. And Baldur…

I knew what I’d seen.

But I didn’t know what I’d seen.

What if everything Loki had ever told me had been a lie?

What could I do about it, even if it had been the truth?

And so I stood there, trembling on the edge of taking action but with no idea what action to take. Or whether it might, in truth, be better to take no action at all.

Odin stepped forward beside Loki and lifted his hands. The air between his fingers darkened. Thickened. What magic he wrought, I couldn’t tell exactly. The darkening was no trick of light magic but something else entirely. It smelled like rotting vegetation and wood smoke.

Between one blink of my eyes and the next, Odin held a snake in each hand. Their coils undulated, a muted deep green that might have been beautiful under other circumstances.

Their appearance was not something I’d expected. No one had explained how this would work.

My heart raced. Heimdal’s fingers squeezed mine more tightly. He’d told me not to come. I began to understand why.

“You’re soft-hearted and so easily hurt.”

The snakes hissed, opening mouths that seemed too large for their slender bodies. Revealing fangs that seemed too large for their mouths.

Every bit of defiance drained from Loki’s face. By the way his eyes widened, I guessed that no one had told him this part of his sentence, either. My stomach tightened.

Odin hefted the snake in his right hand. When he spoke, his voice was the very essence of winter wind. “This venom is a distillation of all pain you’ve caused others. Every betrayal. Every wound. Every agony.”

A new expression flashed across Loki’s face. It could have been regret—or merely fear.

Odin lifted the other snake. “This contains the guilt and remorse that should be yours. Together, they will taint your blood and drip through your veins, burning you with what you’ve inflicted on others.”

Odin paused. He stared at Loki with frozen eyes.

“You will remain chained here, for however many days it takes you to die.”

Days. Not minutes, or even an hour. Days of agony. I watched the same horrified understanding trace itself across Loki’s face.

The snakes hissed. Loki opened his mouth—to object? To defy Odin even now?

Before Loki could speak, Odin stepped forward, extending his arms.

The snakes leaped forward, arcing out of Odin’s hands and onto Loki’s body. One sank its fangs into Loki’s shoulder, the other into his neck.

Loki shrieked.

I echoed his cry with a gasp of my own. I flinched back, as much from the agony in Loki’s voice as from the sight, and lifted my free hand to my face.

But I couldn’t look away.

The snakes worked relentlessly. Lightning-fast, they withdrew their fangs and went after Loki again, arching back and striking with flashing, dripping fangs into Loki’s neck. His head. His face.

Again. And again. And again.

Loki never stopped screaming. A convulsion shuddered through his body. He didn’t fall—the shackles holding him wouldn’t allow it. But his body shook. He thrashed, trying to get away from the striking fangs, but there was nowhere for him to go.

Sobbing now, I took a step back, squeezing shut my eyes and turning my head to the side. Why I wept, I wasn’t sure—could I really weep for Loki even now, after he’d killed Baldur? That act had been cold. Deliberate. Murder.

Desperation.

Maybe I cried for myself. Whatever the reason, I stood there, eyes shut and tears rolling down my face, while Loki’s screams wore away his voice to a ragged moan.

Heimdal’s hand again tightened around mine.

I didn’t care. No matter how much comfort Heimdal offered, it wouldn’t make any of this less wrong. I ached with helplessness. If I’d had any power at all to stop this senseless punishment—a punishment he may not even deserve…

Any power at all.

Something fluttered in my mind. It felt the tiniest bit like hope.

Magic is not as strong on worlds not its own. I knew it myself, from my own experience. Heimdal had admitted that his was the same. He’d said Loki’s worked less well here on Asgard, too.

The snakes Odin had summoned were magic. So was the poison intended to kill Loki.

I opened my eyes.

Loki slumped within his shackles. The snakes were gone, but puncture marks riddled his flesh, reddened and already bruising. Darker, larger bruises marred Loki’s forearms.

No. Not bruises. Along each of Loki’s arms, a tattoo-like shape of a snake writhed.

Loki lifted his head. All expression had drained from his face. His eyes were unnaturally wide. They blinked, unfocused, searching.

Until they fixed on me. Loki’s face was that of a child’s, one who’s been punished past the point of comprehension. One who felt lost and had never felt any other way. One who had trusted me to understand that feeling. To help him feel less alone.

One who murdered one of his adopted kinsman—and used me to do it. One who made it perfectly clear that he did not want to be saved.

But I desperately wanted to save Loki. And there was no chance of saving someone who was no longer alive to save.

Midgard, I decided. According to Loki, Jotunheim no longer wanted him. And Asgard’s magic was at its least potent in Midgard. If the poison in Loki’s veins could be weakened enough to no longer cause his death, that world would be the most likely place for it to happen. Maybe someone on that world would even be able to counteract the poison entirely.

“It’s a nice world, isn’t it? Room to breathe.” Loki had seemed so content that day.

Because his plot to bring back mistletoe to Asgard had been a success?

Baldur’s fingers, viciously pinching Loki.

“Nothing that it would do me any good to repeat.”

I stood up straighter. Maybe Heimdal took my action as a sign that I understood Loki’s sentence and had accepted it. He released my hand.

All of the Aesir knew, most likely, that I did not require a bridge stone to open my ways and send someone along them. Physical contact, yes, but only for the briefest moment. Only tradition demanded the bridge stone, but they’d become so accustomed to that setting for my magic that they might not think of me using it anywhere else.

They wouldn’t be thinking at all about what I could or couldn’t do, not right now. Their attention was on Loki, and none of them were weeping. They were busy taking satisfaction in his agony.

No one was looking at me. No one but Loki, and I wasn’t sure he was actually seeing me.

I took a deep breath and began to call down the light—quietly, carefully, without fuss. As I did, I edged away from Heimdal. Closer to the horrible scene at the center of the sentencing ground.

Colors gathered around me, darkening at the edges.

Loki’s gaze focused. His eyes widened.

If he’d noticed, so would everyone else. I dashed forward, away from Heimdal and past Odin.

Shouts went up behind me. I threw myself at Loki, clasping my fingers around his bloodied forearms as I fell into him.

The snake tattoos writhed against my touch. I gasped and nearly drew back. My magic faltered.

“Iris!”

Heimdal’s voice. He would come for me, any second now.

Leaning forward again, I gritted my teeth and pressed my hand against Loki’s arm. Colors swirled anew, flashing rainbows against the grim sky.

I pictured the first bridge stone I could think of on Midgard. Sturdy gray stone. Ancient crystal dulled beneath centuries of grime. It stood inside a city, where someone might find him.

My bridge’s void opened before us. It drew Loki forward, and I slipped after him.

“No!” An icy chill buffeted past me. Sapphire light lanced through the darkness.

Loki jerked free from my grasp. Gasping, I reached for him. But the cold.

So cold!

I couldn’t move. I tumbled backward, out of the bridge I’d opened. Asgard’s frozen ground slammed into my back.

Icy runes of deepest blue shimmered around me.

“What did you do?” My words barely came out, more a gasp than a sentence.

Heimdal’s barrier lasted only a second longer. I felt it fade, and the brittle cold that had knocked me back gave way to returning warmth. I rolled onto my side and levered an elbow beneath me.

Before I could do more than that, Heimdal was over me, reaching for me with both hands. His eyes were wide and his face unnaturally pale. He was asking if I was all right, I thought, but his voice came from so far away. The world tipped and tilted around me.

On the other side of Heimdal, Loki’s chains, now empty, clattered to the ground.