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Kirby ached at having to send Min away. Finally seeing his face again, even for a heartbeat, was beautiful agony. Then removing the one person from her side who had her back...
She could stroll across campus again, but after the scene she’d made with Erek, that would draw more attention than she cared for. She preferred if people thought she and he were still here, hiding in the stacks.
Kirby closed her eyes and summoned a prayer. “Loki, I know you’re keeping an eye on me,” she muttered. She might not worship this god, but she desperately needed him to hear her, and that should be enough. “I need you here.” She hated how much she meant those words.
Nothing.
And then a new heat at her back. “You’re not that important,” Loki whispered in her ear.
“You came, didn’t you?” Kirby wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford to turn down allies. She’d had her doubts about Loki’s motivations, but the fact that he showed up so quickly squelched some of her noisier concerns.
She needed to stay on campus as Brit. But she also needed to communicate with Starkad. To share information and build a strategy. Going through Loki was the best way to ensure that, if someone had to know what she was up to, it was someone with as much to lose as her.
“Let’s go somewhere more private and talk,” Loki said, and then they were in his office. “Now then, you were saying?”
“You were right. About who I am, about why I’m here, and about my needing your help.” She mentally rolled her eyes.
Loki strolled to the other side of his desk and sat. His posture was calm. Confident. “Fuck, it must hurt to admit that.”
A bit, yeah. “It kills me dead. If you were hoping for more, this is the closest I get to groveling.”
“What happens if I lied?”
“If?” Kirby barked a laugh. “However, you do want this. For this place to stay standing. To use an entire private army to shield you from a single girl. To talk to Davyn.” She didn’t hesitate to dangle the last offer, since Davyn wanted the same thing. They were big boys; they could choose to write their own mutually assured destruction. “You don’t get any of that if you fuck me over too soon.”
“I don’t get any of that right now, even if I work with you. Easy enough for you to make offers when you get paid up front and I have to wait.”
This time she didn’t hide the eyeroll. “Did you feel the earthquake less than an hour ago? Time is critical.”
“I know.” Loki sighed. “Hel was never talking about Brit when she said one of her followers would return. She meant you. Kirby.”
Bullshit. “She never made me feel like a part of anything here. Why would I come back?” Then again, she’s isolated Brit pretty completely, too. How many Nobles felt that way, but never let it show?
“It didn’t matter if you returned to serve her. It was pretty much guaranteed that you’d return. But she knew who you were when you arrived—we all did. And I don’t mean the Valkyrie bit. You weren’t a killer. She pushed with everything, to make you hate the outside world. To bend you to her will. To break you in her favor.”
Bile rose in Kirby’s throat. She’d suspected as much, especially with Brit’s memories backing up the theory, but hearing someone say it outright... He could be lying, but this was something that felt real. “That’s fucked up.” She kept the emotion from her voice. Thank Brit for that.
“She’s arranged to have hundreds of people who worship her killed, so she can live again. You expected reasonable?”
The gods rarely were. “Great. We’ve both groveled. I’ll tell you everything I know, if you give me an outside line to Starkad and let me bring him in for backup.”
“This goes back to what I said about paying up front. I don’t like having you here. I don’t like having him anywhere.”
“I can leave right now and let you deal with the death. With Hel.” Kirby was bluffing, and it wasn’t a good bluff. She’d do everything in her power, to keep a goddess of destruction—one the other gods were scared of enough to lock away—from being released.
Loki smirked. “If you were willing to do that, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. Tell me what you know, and I’ll decide if the threat is worth the risk of bringing in backup.”
Negotiating was an option, but there were some things Kirby wasn’t willing to bend on. “You’re not a tactician. You’re a salesman and an administrator, and if you had the skills these soldiers do, you wouldn’t need them. I say who my backup is.”
“Don’t insult me while you want favors from me. I don’t want to do this without your help, but I will. But I can evict you from the campus right now, and you won’t be back.” Was he bluffing? There was only so far she was willing to push. “I’m doing this to save my own neck, which won’t happen if you stick my head on the chopping block for someone else.”
She clenched her jaw. “Fine. The Nobles have figured out there is no ritual to follow, beyond a believer spilling blood.” She wasn’t giving up everything, though. There was no way to know how he’d react to the news about a different goddess being released. “And as you waste my fucking time, proving your dick is bigger, they’re figuring out the best way to kill as many people as possible, simultaneously, with a lot of bloodshed. We need to isolate them, and if they figure out we’re coming for them, it won’t be easy. I’m not doing that without backup I trust.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve spent the last few years hunting Nobles.”
Holy fuck. Did he understand the concept of time is of the essence? How long was he going to drag this out?
“I wasn’t alone. I only went after two at a time,” Kirby said. “And they didn’t know I was going to be there. There are a dozen Noble teams on campus, and once they get wind someone is picking them off on their home turf...”
Loki’s drawn-out sigh made it seem like he was about to make the biggest sacrifice of his life. “All right. Bring in—”
The sound of the doorframe splintering filled the room. Loki’s office door was kicked open. Kirby reached for her gun as she spun, but the person pressing a barrel to the back of her head was faster.