Chaos Rising: A Loki Fantasy Adventure (The Nine World Chronicles, Book 2) by Lyra Wolf

Author:Lyra Wolf [Wolf, Lyra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ravenwell Press
Published: 2021-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

13

Into the Fire

I walked down the stairs and the air grew colder.

Sigyn leaned against the white arched walls of the foyer, her arms crossed tight against her chest. She stared at the marble floor.

I cursed myself. She shouldn’t have had to relive that night. She shouldn’t have had to see the truth of how I looked.

I could barely stand the truth myself.

Plaster angels and gilded filigrees blossomed above our heads on the ceiling as I walked into the foyer. Car engines roared on the other side of the door outside. Shoes struck pavement.

Sigyn kept her eyes firmly on the stone floor. She dug her fingers harder into her sweater.

I stood next to her, trying not to think how warm she felt in the cold.

“I lived with the terror of knowing where you were. Strapped down. Alone. Suffering.” She gripped her arms tighter. “It’s different to actually see it.”

“I never intended for you to know the…effects,” I pushed out. “I didn’t want to burden you with that truth.”

Silence fell between us, broken only by the muffled conversation of a passerby. The spinning spokes of a bicycle.

“The truth.” She spat out the word as if it were bitter. “The truth is…The truth is I hated the world for forgetting you, but I hated myself more because I envied them. Because everywhere I looked was a ghost waiting to rip out my guts.”

Without thought I pushed back a stray lock of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. As I had done in the past so many times when we were together.

“Sigyn, don’t—”

Her eyes rose to mine and they knit with a million emotions that fought together.

“I wanted to forget you like they could,” she continued. “To consider you a legend, a distant memory long buried. Anything to stop the pain of losing you. Of knowing what was happening to you and that I was helpless to stop it.”

My throat dried.

She twisted her sweater between her fingers.

“I reinvented myself to survive. With work. With a new life. With a new—” she paused. “But no matter how much I tried, how much I wanted…” She reached out and cupped my cheek. “I never stopped loving you, Loki.”

Where she touched my illusion melted, but she didn’t retract her hand from the decay. She didn’t flinch feeling the marred flesh beneath her palm.

“Everything in me wants you,” she said. “Needs you. Your heart, your touch…I want to be yours, Loki, fully and utterly—but we can’t be together.”

I rested my hand over hers, wanting to still her trembling even though mine trembled more.

“Why?”

A sad smile cracked her face. Pity infected its edges, as if I couldn’t see something she knew to be painfully clear.

“When you returned…when I first saw you, I was happy,” she said. “I had you back. I found you again. Then came the rush of hurt. Fear. Everything I tried to push down and lock away. It all bubbled to the surface. What loving you means. What being with you means.”

A chilled gust of wind forced its way beneath the heavy door, making it chatter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.