Page 53 of The Chosen Son

She set about pouring a tall glass of amber ale, when I heard the squeak of hinges behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was; I could feel him like a beacon. “Phobos,” I said with an exhausted sigh.

“There you are!” he shouted, loud enough that the drunken laughter cut off as people turned to look.

“What’s that supposed to m—?” I found myself wrenched off the stool and up into his arms, crushed in his bruising hug. “Too… tight…” I wheezed.

He set me down on my feet but didn’t let go entirely. His eyes were blazing violet, but when I looked into them, it seemed wrong somehow. Almost like I’d been hoping to see them in someone else’s face instead…

“He said that—” Phobos’s jaw clacked shut, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say, and I could see a calculation going on behind his gaze. Guarded, he finally said, “You were supposed to come straight home, but when you didn’t show up, I got worried.”

“Uh-huh, and where was I?” I asked, hoping for an answer but doubting it would bring me any kind of satisfaction. Until I remembered it myself, I was trusting someone else to fill in the blanks.

“You don’t remember anything,” he said, though it was less of a question than it should’ve been. Almost like he already knew the answer… Alarm bells blared a warning. “You went off to fight Deimos,of course. He must’ve wiped your memory. That would explain why you can’t remember.”I rode into battle wearing a suit?That didn’t seem likely.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and tried to guide me out of the bar, and no amount of digging my heels in would get him to stop. When I tried to fight against him, to zap him with a little electric current to encourage him to let go, there was simply—nothing. The well of energy that usually simmered inside me, always at the ready, was bone-dry.

“Come on, let’s get you home. You can take a long, hot bath, and I’ll cook you dinner. That sounds nice and relaxing, doesn’t it?”

As my feet slid uselessly across the floor in the direction of the door, I blurted, “Loki!” I wasn’t even sure where that came from, but at least it had the desired effect.

Phobos came to a halt. “What did you just say?”

“Loki! If D-Deimos wiped my memory, it had to be because he was going to make another play at Loki. Right? I must’ve known something about his plans and… he erased it.” I didn’t think that was entirely right, but it resonated close to the truth.

And I could tell Phobos thought so too.

His arm tightened where it was wrapped around my waist, his jaw clenching. He wouldn’t look at me, his gaze zeroed in on the door, and I wondered if he had the ability to see straight through it. “Stay here,” he gritted out, stomping toward the door.

“You don’t want my help?” I called after him, but I was already shuffling back toward the stool. Considering the coffers were empty, I was more likely to be a liability than anything. And Deimos would never hurt Phobos. How I knew that I wasn’t sure, but I knewit was true.

“No, you’ll only get in the way,” he growled, stomping off with fists clenched. “It’s time my brother and I had a little man-to-man.” A couple people scurried to get out of the way, and even after Phobos had disappeared through the door, a tense silence remained.

I felt off-balance, like I’d had too much to drink, even though I hadn’t had a single sip of my beer yet. I levered myself up onto the bar stool and wrapped my overwarm fingers around the cold glass. I let my eyes slide shut and just sat like that for a minute, letting all my thoughts and feelings wash over me, like a river around a rock. Flickers of memory appeared for a fraction of a second, but I let them brush past without reaching for them. I knew if I tried too hard, they would slip away. Sometimes you couldn’t look at something head-on in order to see it, so I peeked at them from the corner of my eye, seeing a glimpse of a smirk, a flash of warm skin, warm, rich laughter I’d never heard but was somehow so familiar.

Strangest of all was the way my body was reacting to these mere flickers. My pants grew tight and damp, a shocking impulse to do naughty things with… Deimos? My fingers moved to the side of my neck, tracing a raised outline that felt suspiciously like a bite mark…

My confusion was interrupted when I swore I heard someone sniffing nearby.

I opened my eyes to find a man standing in front of me on the other side of the bar. He looked like a sexy lumberjack, with gray eyes, dark blond hair cut short and slicked back, and an impressive beard—and of course, no self-respecting tree-feller would be caught without his plaid shirt, rolled up to show off his corded forearms.

And he gave a short, sharp sniff, his upper lip curling a little. He didn’t say a word, but he was clearly looking at me.

The guy was giving off some seriously weird vibes. “Uh… hi?” When he didn’t say anything, I shifted awkwardly on my stool andtried to ignore him. I lifted my beer to my lips, but before I could get it there, the man had snatched it from my hand. Without a word, he turned around and dumped my beer into a sink.

“Hey, I was drinking that!” I snapped, though I realized belatedly that I hadn’t paid for it yet.

He spun back around, and I swore his eyes glowed for a second, but when I blinked, they were back to normal; must’ve been a trick of the light, like a flare from the fire or something. “Not in my bar you’re not,” he snarled, leaning across the counter, and even though he wasn’t overly tall, he seemed to tower over me.

I huffed, trying to suppress my frustration. If this was the owner, I was surprised he was still in business if he was so quick to chase away his customers. “Well… can I order something else then? I promise I can afford it,” I grumbled, pulling out my wallet, and I was surprised to find there was actually cash in it. I never carried cash.

But when I held out a bill, the guy shoved it back at me, scowling. “I don’t want your money. If you want to hurt your baby, I won’t have any part of it.”

His words ricocheted inside of me with the force of a sledgehammer. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

He narrowed his eyes, sniffed sharply again, nostrils flaring, then shook his head. “Humans.” Whatever that meant, the way he said it like a curse, I felt like I should be offended. He blew out a long-suffering sigh. “You’re pregnant.”

“I’m p—” The P-word caught in my throat, but my brain just kept going, spelling it out over and over, until I could see the truth of it before my eyes. Pregnant. My heart was racing, and then, it felt as if that single word were a key, turned in the lock.

The memory of a dream returned to me then, a prophecy, about a child with violet eyes, but the child hadn’t belonged to Phobos, but—

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