Page 65 of Last Thrall of Asgard

“It’s what I do.”

“Me too, apparently.” I chuckled. “But you kept resisting me. Why? That’s the only thing I don’t understand. Why did you make me work so hard to have you?”

Loki went quiet. I didn’t like him quiet. Because that sadness remained, and I saw the glisten of tears in his eyes.

“Loki…?”

“Pact over, yes?” He sat up. “Time to go home? Be free? Free of me.FuckingHeimdall,” he suddenly spat. “I hate it when he’s right.”

“Right about what?” I sat up next to him. “Tell me. Please.”

Loki didn’t say anything and wouldn’t look at me.

Then I remembered the well, Mimir’s well, and what I’d seen when I drank from it.

“I saw you watching me. Not just during my godly escapades as one animal or another, but before then. In a vision when I drank from Mimir’s well, I saw that Heimdall had watched me too, but the day you first watched me was not when you took me. Weeks ago? Months?”

“What of it?” He turned his head, so his scarred side was hidden.

“Tell me. Heimdall was about to say something to you, something he said you wouldn’t like, but in my vision, I didn’t get to hear what it was.”

“You expectmeto say it?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t.”

“Loki—”

“I can’t! So, if you need to know… I will have to show you.” He reached up a hand to cover my eyes.

Behind his palm appeared the same scene I had witnessed before, with me looking through his eyes, as Heimdall spoke.

“For you, Loki, he will mean the shattering of all that you are. You will want him desperately, but there is nothing you can do to ever make him want you the same way back.”

“You think I would fall prey to some mortal?”

“I have seen it.”

“Then your abilities have left you since Ragnarök, old friend. I will tell you what is going to happen. That man’s future is only wrapped up in ours because I am going to gift him to the others. Yes! That’s what I’ll do. Hel knows they need it. Someone unafraid. Someone who will challenge them and draw them out of their self-imposed cages. We’ll even start withyou. But believe me, I will never want him for myself the way you claim.”

“We’ll see.”

Sudden light made me squint as Loki uncovered my eyes.

“You lied to him. I could feel it. You never truly believed you could beat Heimdall’s prophecy.”

“Who can? He’s never wrong. And I’d already learned that you can’t fight fate.”

Loki wanted me.

But he didn’t believe I wanted him.

“You played along, pretended to be flippant and uncaring, pretended to be what you thought everyone believed you were, because…”

Loki remained facing away from me.

“Because you believed you deserved that pain,” I finished. “Wow. You really are an idiot sometimes.”

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