Page 52 of Last Thrall of Asgard

“No!” I dropped the horn, staring at the lost knowledge evaporating at my feet. “I didn’t see it all! There was more! I didn’t see everything I needed to!”

“My boy.” Mimir wiped his brow and propped the axe against the remains of the well. “Whatever you were shown was all you were meant to see. No one should have all knowledge, or we stop seeking it. We stop questioning. We stop fighting to understand it. Then we might as well be no more than heads with nothing to rest upon.” He grinned, and as much as there was panic, disappointment, and anger within me, I knew he was right.

Loki wanted me. He did. He had to! And he knew something about my future. That was why he’d taken me. I just had to find out what.

“Hopefully, all this knowledge will seep to the other realms,” Mimir said of what the roots had absorbed, “just enough to tempt people to learn more rather than horde knowledge for themselves.”

“A reassuring thought, if it happens that way. Thank you, Mimir.” I began to back away, needing to return to Loki. Now. Immediately. “I have to make use of the knowledge I learned.” Then I left him, stepping out of the hollow, which outside its arch was now an open expanse.

The landscape was beautiful. If this was somewhere in Midgard, I didn’t know where, because it certainly seemed heavenly. I was dressed yet again, standing atop a lush green hill covered in bright pink flowers. Below was a lake with mountains in the distance, and the nighttime sky of earlier had been replaced with a sunrise, turning the sky varying shades of pink like the flowers.

I lost my breath taking it all in, much as my surroundings often changed. I lost my breath again when my full turn revealed Loki standing where he hadn’t been before.

The half of his face that I could see looked furious.

“Loki—”

“Let us skip to the point, shall we? Odin is next. Odin is last. Then our deal is complete, and you can go home.”

“No.”

Loki’s eye twitched and he smiled a very unfriendly sneer. “Are you backing out of our arrangement?”

“No. But I don’t want Odin to be the last, and neither do you.”

His cruel smile remained, not reaching the eye that gleamed at me. “Need to complete your set, do you? And to think, you once pretended you didn’t want to only be good forfucking, yet you. Are. Insatiable.”

“Just like you.” I stepped toward him. “Admit it! You want me foryou. I saw as much. I drank from Mimir’s well and sawit myself. Or rather, sawmyself. You watched me as much as Heimdall did. Maybe more so. When you first saw me getting fucked on that altar, it wasn’t the same day as when you abducted me.”

“Are you sure? How could you possibly keep the days of all your dalliances straight?”

“Loki—”

“You will only see me again after Odin so I can conclude our pact.” He backed away at my continued advance. “Then you are free, Oli. Lucky you.”

“Gods damn it, Loki!” I stomped, keeping the distance he’d forced between us. “Will you listen for one fucking second? It’s no wonder you infuriate as much as you entertain. You lead yourself right into it.Youcause it. You bring it on yourself! And here I thought the great god Loki didn’t care what others thought of him.”

His eye twitched again. His false smile too.

“That was what I liked about your stories. That you didn’t give a damn. You wanted to make merry, yes, make mischief, make people laugh, or maybe get back at someone who’d wronged you or your friends, but you didn’t care if it all went wrong. You didn’t have to care. You’re Loki! Now here you are wallowing, lying to yourself like you lie to others? You have no right to wallow when you brought it on yourself.

“What I wouldn’t give to have what you did, freedom from the very beginning to be as you were and have what you wanted. What I wouldn’t give to haveanythingother than what I got.”

It was selfish, I was being so selfish, colder and more bitter than I’d intended. But I was angry, and angrier still that Loki dared to seem angry with me.

When he looked at me, his voice was cold and bitter too, and he stretched his awful smile wider.

“Aren’t you lucky then? Becauseanythingis what you’re getting.” He turned from me, but before he could banish me to Odin like I knew he would, I raced around in front of him and grabbed his face, inadvertently brushing the unbraided half of his hair aside and seeing, feeling, finally understanding the half he kept hidden.

It was scarred. That side of his face was mottled with scar tissue. It was a series of teardrop shaped scars connected like a downpour. That eye was milky too, like he had been splashed with acid.

Or had the venom of a snake dripped onto him as punishment until the last days of Ragnarök brought him into the fight.

In that second of registering why Loki hid his face, I saw a bluish-green glow, and then I was blasted backward, like all the magic in the trickster repelled me in one great gust, and when I blinked awareness, I was somewhere new again.

Damn it. I’d gotten angry and said it all wrong. What I’d honestly loved about Loki and his stories was that he seemed like the embodiment of the freedom I’d always craved. I didn’t resent him for that. I felt sympathy. Empathy. It hurt to see him bow down within his shackles, mourning and lamenting, despite pretending otherwise, and therefore proving that not even the gods were ever truly free.

He did need me. My aid. My help. And all I wanted was the freedom to give it.

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