Page 12 of Delinquent Dette
“Do you not want them?” The words hung in the air like curled ashes after a fire, floating down with glowing embers, ready to set the world ablaze.
“More than anything,” he said with a whisper, and on the edge of it came tears. Frikka was not an emotional Dette even at the worst of times. “But something bad will come. It will come and we will survive it. No matter what, because there is a beautiful day beyond this storm.”
Sten’s stomach twisted. “I will hold your hand and watch you burn the world down around you. I will protect you from yourself. I will cheer when you triumph and wash the blood from your hands.”
Frikka stared at his fingers, scars on his knuckles and callouses that hadn’t been there when they’d had their first clutch. “Only one thing ever washed the blood from my hands and it was Thor’s tears. He washed the blood away, and it meant nothing in the end.”
Sten pulled Frikka to his chest and tucked the Dette’s face into his neck with a harsh sigh of frustration. Riddles. Seers spoke in riddles and lies, and Loki worked his magic through his fickle Dette. “Whose blood will be on your hands next?”
A long stretch of silence spanned the moment as Sten tightened his grip. Frikka shook in his arms, dropping the last of his cookie as it fell to the floor in crumbles. “The gods themselves will be to blame, I’m certain.”
***
Weeks later, the Dior den’s Dette birthed a full clutch of eggs, but Frikka did not confide his own status, though Sten saw his belly swell by the day. He wore looser clothes and ignored any mention of it.
So, when Hallr returned from his sojourn with more tales of flowers and a hope for the future, Frikka smiled for him. “You’ll prove them all wrong, someday.”
“I doubt it. They hate me, for the most part. I cannot search for answers if they don’t let me speak to the Dettes! How do the physicians ever learn if they cannot question them? How am I to learn if they won’t speak to me?” Hallr thrusted his leather journal onto the table, the pocked surface of it stretched thin over notes, parchment, dried flowers, and the odd leaf.
“Your father brings that herb and flower home to me sometimes. It is potent and helps with a Dette’s cycle.”
“But nobody knows where it comes from and I’ve not yet found a fresh blossom anywhere!” Hallr sighed and slumped. “The Vritra will let their secrets die with them. I’m satisfied that flower and the mating blossom are one and the same, if not in the same clada.”
“Then go visit with the Dior den’s new Dette. He’s a high Vritra with a new clutch, so mind the Drakes. You have my social skills and it shows.” Frikka kissed Hallr’s cheek and sent him on his way. A mission doomed from the start.
After that moment, Frikka stayed in their cavern, eating only what he needed to feed the growing eggs. Questions ofhow manywere met with shrugs, and Sten wished for the world that he could bring the Dior doctor over. That he wasn’t attached so fiercely to his mate and their eggs. Because Frikka had an illness, something dark in his mind eating away at him by the day.
A clap of thunder woke Sten in the night. He glanced around in darkness and sniffed until he caught an unfamiliar odor,something close to blood. Frikka had woke and curled to his side a few feet away from Sten, his clothes kicked off and body shaking. “Frikka?”
Sten hadn’t been permitted to be with Frikka when he laid their first clutch. It had been a show for the gothar, witnessing him produce six beautiful eggs and five perfect blanks. It had been the best laying they’d seen in years, the ease of which he passed them and how little he cried out. Sten had been proud, then, not knowing he had a future with the Dette.
What happened that night was not the sweet laying twenty-six years ago. It was harsh and brutal. Frikka shifted and bled, passing egg before blank, crying out at every push.
He sobbed in his draconic form, their minds unable to unite as Drake could with Dette. They were not mated. Sten was so tempted to mark him so he could, but Frikka would never forgive him.
So, in the middle of a summer storm, Frikka birthed six full eggs and five blanks, the largest laying he’d heard of at the time.
Lightning struck, Thor, shaking the skies with thunder. Rain hammered the house above and great winds whipped. It was like their first clutch all over again, the rage of the gods above and blood below.
“Not yet, please,” Frikka pleaded as he shifted and lay with them. “Please.”
Sten stared at their clutch, his heart sinking in his chest.
There is a beautiful day beyond this storm,Frikka had said.
But that wasn’t the storm.
That came months later.
Chapter Eight
Frikka
2022
Sleeping brought nightmares, as they often did. Creaking wood beams, the crash of infected lumber, the fluttering wings of termites that caught in lamplight that he’d not known to look for. The new world had such insidious creatures.
He dreamed of six eggs crying out at once gone silent. And before that? A single one muted. Seven children total he’d never been able to meet. Seven children he’d given to Valhalla. They may not have died in battle, but they died bravely. And when he met his end, he’d scorn the gods themselves to make sure his pups earned a seat at the table and feasted with Nidhogg when he hunted.
