“There are things that we do to each other that no man deserves. Oh, to live among the gods, where surely they are beyond such things.”
—Stories from Midgard, Volume 13
I woke in my bed with no memory of how I got there, a sharp sound piercing my sleep. There was a kink in my neck, and my head throbbed where I’d hit it. Hadn’t I fallen asleep in the kitchen? Next to the fire and—
I looked at my hands. There was still blood under my fingernails. But where was Loki?
There was the sound again. The throat-catching squeak of someone repressing pain. I wiped the sleep from my eyes. Loki was sitting in the chair across the room, bare-chested, still in yesterday’s bloodstained trousers. There was a pillow behind him and a blanket at his feet, but he was awake, his hands clasped over his mouth.
I pulled myself out of bed, trying to shake the weariness away. His eyes followed mine across the room, full of panic. A tendril of red was oozing through the cracks of his fingers, snaking around his wrist.
“Let me see.” I knelt down in front of him, trying gently to pry his hands from his mouth. When they came away, both palms were coated in blood. The poultice had come free, and the wounds were dripping. “This should’ve healed, at least a little. They shouldn’t be wide open...”
He’d thrown last night’s tunic onto the ground next to him. I scooped it up and pressed it to his lips. “Hold this tightly, to help with the bleeding. We need to go to my study.”
Loki followed behind me, the tunic pressed to his lips. I took him across the kitchen and through another door. My study was lined with bookcases, hundreds of books spanning across them with room for hundreds more. In the centre were a set of luxurious chairs, covered in linen and stuffed with down. The windows let in enough light during the day, and there were candles all around the room for after nightfall.
“Sit down. I’m going to try something.” He sat, and I bent over him, pulling the tunic from his hands. There was still so much blood.
I drew up energy, more than enough for a wound like this. I touched the tips of my fingers to the skin around his mouth, whispering runes that were more powerful than needed. And nothing changed. I gave the tunic back. He took it from me and put it back in place, worry in his eyes.
I went to the bookshelves, letting my fingers slide against the covers until they found the right one. Hexes, Curses, and Other Maladies.
I brought it back, sitting across from him as I hurried through the pages. The descriptions inside were as horrifying as the sketches, each one describing the curse and how one might reverse it but never how to cast it. The others were so mortifying that I nearly missed the one I’d been searching for; it was almost innocuous in comparison. Ever-bleeding Wound.
“Damned Dwarves. I think they cursed the awl. If I don’t remove the curse, you’ll bleed until you’re dead.” His eyes widened, his back straightening in the chair. “Don’t worry, I can help you. Besides, you’re too pretty to die.”
The comment had meant to elicit a smile but only earned me an arched eyebrow.
The runes were costly ones. If it were easy to undo a curse, they wouldn’t be half as fearful as they were. “When I’ve removed the curse, there won’t be enough energy left to heal your wounds. You’ll need to do that yourself.”
He shook his head. Yggdrasil above, he’d never learned.
I was puzzling over my options when he leaned forward and placed his hand on my wrist. His skin was abnormally warm, the heat of rune energy spreading through my skin. I pulled my chair closer to his. “That would work. It’s going to be one hel of a case of rune fatigue, but we don’t have much choice.”
Loki nodded, though there was doubt in his eyes.
I took his face in my hands. The tunic was wet, and he looked paler than usual, if such a thing were possible. I placed my thumbs close to his bleeding lips.
The runes that I needed were long and winding. Some were familiar, a common set used for disenchanting, but I kept needing to refer to the book in my lap for the others. After a dozen choruses of the same chant, I stopped looking down and simply moved my lips in silence to the flow of the runes.
Loki’s hands covered mine, pushing his own energy into my skin. The rush consumed me, pushing its way to my core. My heart was racing, my body alert to the overwhelming power under my fingertips. It felt like there was nothing I couldn’t do.
I kept working, the runes running faster on my tongue until I thought I might lose track of them. Repetition after repetition, until at last, black pus began to trickle out from the holes in Loki’s lips. The curse had broken.
I pulled one hand away long enough to wipe the blackness from his skin, then cast a series of runes to heal the wounds. The only thing keeping me moving was the energy that he was pouring into me, and even that was fading.
The bleeding stopped gradually, most of the wounds becoming thin silver scars that cracked the surface of his lips. Some were simple. Others were jagged creases in the meat of his lips. The worst of them were still an open, angry pink, but it would have to be enough. “There,” I said, dropping the runes. “As beautiful as ever.” And it was true. Mostly.
He didn’t move his hand away, but he was closing off the flow of energy. The warmth slowly faded, and my eyelids fluttered. The room went dark for a moment, and when I opened my eyes, I was in his arms. He’d caught me.
Loki picked me up and cradled me against him. I fell in and out of consciousness, my cheek pressed into his bare chest, jostling as he walked. He laid me out in my bed and pulled the furs over me. Just as I was fading back into the blackness of sleep, he leaned over and whispered in my ear.
“Thank you.”