Page 53 of Last Thrall of Asgard

I wanted Loki. Not justanything. Not anyone else.

Loki.

“My turn at last, is it?” a deep voice said from behind me.

I steadied my resolve.

First, I had to get through Odin.

The following chapter contains:

Blindfold Play, Suspension, Domination Play, Sounding, and Swinging.

Chapter eight

The Captor

OLI

Iturned. All I saw at first was shadow, an ominous silhouette. He was silhouetted because all the light was behind him: a great gleam coming from the backside of Asgard, with even more light radiating from the white stone of the half-moon structure he stood within.

The small amphitheater was open in the direction it faced with no roof. It was simple in design with thirteen chairs, the one in the middle, with six on either side of it, being the tallest, just behind where Odin waited.

This was Gladsheim. I had seen the statue of Odin that marked its entrance from the other side of the city. I saw now that a covered corridor connected it to the city proper, but the true “hall” of Odin’s sanctuary, where he sometimes counseled with the other gods, was open to the elements for a spectacular view.

I turned to look at it again before addressing Odin, to take in the plains of Idavollr, the stretching valleys and fields where the gods might frolic, ride horseback, or spar. It was beautiful and private and peaceful here, this end of the universe. The flowers, the expanse of land, were all different from where I’d left Loki. There were more flowers, for one, in more colors, and the land seemed to go on forever into an unknown distance.

I wondered again if where Loki often snatched me to—his feasting hall with no doors, that private hot spring, that picturesque hill—was Jotunheim or just somewhere he’d conjured.

“I am sorry,” I said, returning my attention to the god at hand and ascending the mildly angled slope. As I stepped within the dome of Gladsheim’s non-roof that blocked out some of the light from Asgard, the true figure of Odin materialized from the shadows.

He was everything he should be. Too much so.

Like in the vision I’d seen of Loki, he was a striking figure in height and size, believable to be the father of Thor. He was mostly covered in long dark robes with a large, wide-brimmed hat shadowing his face. Long wavy white hair flowed down his back, blending with his long white beard, perfectly combed but otherwise unadorned. He was old and wizened looking, and his right eye was covered with a dark brown leather patch. The runeon the patch was identical to ones on his bracers, and he held onto a spear he used as a walking stick, as if he couldn’t remain upright without it.

The rune was Odin’s, one also meaning leadership, like a Roman F, but the shape of it was made with the silhouette of two ravens, a wing each making up its angled lines.

While Mimir had been the type of older man a young man could easily lust after, Odin was playing the part of frail grandfather, clearly on his last legs. And clearlyplaying the part, not the true Odin. Not like this. I knew my stories: this was the appearance he took to trick mortals.

But I was done being tricked.

“I feel in the worst state to be presented to the greatest of the gods,” I continued, cocking my head at Odin’s withered form. “But you aren’t looking that great for a god reborn. If I’m being honest, and I prefer to be, you don’t really look like this, do you?”

Odin regarded me with his lone, piercing eye. “You scoff at an old man’s desires? Afather’sdesires after losing everything?”

“I scoff in the face of tricksters and will continue to. No matter who they are or pretend to be.”

The light gleaming from Asgard coalesced into Odin’s lone eye like it might shoot a beam through me, rending me in two.

Then Odin laughed.

He clutched the edges of his robes, tearing them from him like a simply tied cloak. Then he twirled the fabric around his figure, obscuring himself for a moment, and what appeared when he finished and attached the robes like a cape at the back of his neck was a sturdier man of vibrant middle age.

His chestnut hair and beard had ample highlights of gold in them, mixed with a few grays and whites, and his eyes gleamed amber, a ruddy gold of their own. The eyepatch and bracers remained, but his garb was kinglier now. Richly dyed fabrics of purple and gold made up his tunic with added sashes, darkleather, and metal fastenings. His cloak that had been his old man robes seemed like it had sprouted fur, but I realized instead that it was covered in raven feathers, like Odin might take flight as easily as his birds.

But there were no birds. Not real ones. I saw no sign of the fabled Huginn and Muninn, or Odin’s wolves, Geri and Freki, who awaited the meal of the many dead left in Odin’s wake as the god of war. Not even Sleipnir was stabled or grazing nearby.

“Loki said I would find you not as you were. I don’t know what I expected. You seem in good spirits, yet I find you alone.”

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