Loki brushed his fingers over my hair. The tender gesture wrenched at my heart. I wanted to lean into it, and at the same time I wanted to pull away, because he couldn’t mean it. He shouldn’t mean it, not for me.
“Ari, you’re a valkyrie now,” he said. “You’re meant to dispense justice by shifting the tide of war.”
“That doesn’t mean I should have fun with it,” I blurted out, my buzz loosening my tongue. “There’ve been so many times, so many people I might have wanted to get out of my way, when I never could— What if it’s not just to turn the tide that I’ll want to do it?” I swallowed hard. “Maybe someone like me isn’t meant to have that kind of power. Maybe there’s a good reason all those valkyries Odin used to summon were pure of heart and whatever.”
Loki shook his head, his smile somehow grim and amused at the same time. “You know who you’re talking to, don’t you? Hello, I once orchestrated the end of the world. You’re not going to convince me that you’re somehow such a wretched soul you don’t deserve the gifts you’ve received.”
“That—that’s different,” I said, but my protest sounded weak even to me.
Loki leaned close again, his face just a hair’s breadth from mine, bringing that spicy sweet scent with him. For a second, I thought he was going to kiss me. My pulse stuttered way too eagerly.
But he just spoke, the air from his lips moving against my cheek. “It should be comforting, pixie. No matter how bad you are, no matter how bad you get, you can never be the worst there is. I’ve already got that title in the bag.”
His tone was light, flippant even, but a splinter of pain echoed from him into me at the same moment. The trickster god cared so much more than he liked to admit. Somehow that tugged at me even more than the closeness of his lips.
“Come back with me,” he went on. “Come back with me and smash those bastard cave-dwellers right out of your realm. We won’t let them lay one finger on your brother. Take all that darkness in you and rain it down on them.”
Excerpt from Claimed by Gods
by Eva Chase