It all started on a chilly winter night in Asgard. I was running through the court garden, my golden hair dancing behind me in the pale starlight. No one was out in this area of the icy garden except a lonely raven circling far above me. I had just escaped from my room by practicing some of my forbidden magic skills. Thor and Jane wouldn't notice that I was missing…
Jane was always so busy with her own children, and Thor, well he was too busy drinking. I knew he would be out all night gulping mead with his friends. The banquet five days from now celebrating Uncle Loki's return to the family was making things even more stressful than usual. Since Odin had announced it two weeks ago, Jane and Thor had been fighting day and night. Thor was cautiously in favor, but Jane was very much opposed. My Uncle had always been hushed subject. I couldn't even have told you what he looked like, but I was insanely curious about him, even if it was just because Jane despised him. It didn't take much eves-dropping to gleam that. A small smirk crossed my lips as I thought of how she would kill me for being so inquisitive.
Softly, I slipped along the towering hedges, careful not to take any of the paths lest I be spotted. My heart skipped a beat as I saw the peaks of the trees over the garden wall. I had wanted to go to the taverns in the forest behind the court for as long as I could remember. I could meet someone. I could fall in love and make love. I could do whatever I wanted, and be whoever I wanted. I felt like I was going crazy inside the palace, longing to be free. Now that I was actually going, it felt surreal. The closer and and closer I got to the wall the happier I felt. Finally, in the chill of the snow, I reached the last barrier between me and the outside world.
I knew I had no hope of climbing it, especially now that the frost had covered Asgard with ice. There was only one way out of here. I took a deep breath, and tried to remember what I had read when I snuck into Friga's magic room. This was the moment of truth. I summoned the energy inside my veins out to my finger tips, making my skin tingle. Mimicking an illustration I had seen, I spread my hands out gradually wider. Suddenly, my energy released from within me and branched out from my hands in a silver light, creating a portal to the other side of the wall. Granted it was a shaky, smallish sort of portal, but it didn't need to be perfect. Draw my hood and gathering up my fur cape I slipped through it.
"My, my, silver is so ravishing in a maid… It's such a lethal color."
"What?" I looked around in shock to see the raven that had been circling earlier perched in the tree above me. It looked at me with his big onyx eyes, pondering my hands that still were glowing from the spell.
"What are you, demon?" I spat, hiding my hands in my cape, subtly reaching for my dagger in case it was needed.
The silky bird laughed seductively, "Demon? Hmm from sweetest mouths comes the vilest of language. No maid, I am no demon. I come from a different lineage of hell." He tilted his head to the side and I was struck with how dangerously beautiful he was, with the starlight shining on his inky feathers. The hypnotic gaze he seemed to hold over me was terrifying and bewitching at the same time. Maybe the taverns could wait a while.
"Why have you come to me hell-bird? To take my rebellious little soul?" I smarted with my hands on my hips.
"No," he crooned disinterestedly, "I don't want your soul. I am not in the habit of devouring wayward girls. I am just looking for some entertainment... like you." He tilted his head into what only be described as a smirk.
"What could a bird understand of my actions?" I sneered up at his branch, giving him a dismissing wave of my hand before starting of into the forest again.
"The pleasures of mortal men will never sate you."
His growled words stopped me dead in my tracks. I felt like I would burn a hole into the thick layer of snow beneath my feet, as my face heated up with indignation.
"You would be much better served by your fingers then their shafts, for your hands can do so many things." He crooned seductively behind me.
I couldn't seem to move as my hood hung down over my face. His words pierced me, staking me to where I stood with shame. With a sublet breeze the raven swooped down from his branch and landed in front of me. He was much bigger up close than he seemed up in the tree. The sheer weight of his magical aura was imposing, making the atmosphere darken as it became laced with raw sexual energy.
"What do you want from me?" I asked in a slightly broken voice. My right hand began wring the handle of my dagger nervously under my cap.
"Do you know why they forbid you your magic?"
My head sunk even lower, for my magically abilities had always been something I had been shamed for. "It's for my own protection," I shakily started, "and for everyone else's too, because it is dangerous and it would consume me. It's not normal. I'm not normal."
"Do not confine yourself to normality my sweet maid." The way the word "maid" slipped of his tongue made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. "The darkness touches but a few… And what it claims can never be restrained. You possess a dreadful gift that can never be returned, but it can be opened."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"You bleed chaos…" He murmured while spreading his wings in satisfaction. "And I crave it. It seeps out from your very soul. The gods, ha, they fear what they cannot bridle. So fond are they of their trappings and bonds that they would rather see you go mad then go free."
"Are you free?" I asked quietly.
"Free?" The raven laughed with neither joy nor sadness, and looked into my wide blue eyes. "Believe that I am maid." Suddenly, he swooped up in a swirling cloud of feathers and green smoke. Terrified, I drew my blade just to be pounced upon and shoved to the ground by a massive force. The icy snow stung against my thighs as they where crushed against it, while both of my wrist were held above my head in an iron grasp. I tried to scream. I wanted to scream. But as the dark green smoke cleared I found myself looking straight into the most beautiful pair of green eyes I had ever seen. They were so dark and pure, with flecks of gold glowing around the pupils. They shot through me with every heart beat like a virus, gradually making me sicker with every quiver of my breath.
"Tell me maid," the now man hoarsely whispered, "would you like it very much if I taught you such tricks?" My breath hitched in my throat in excitement, as he pressed even deeper into me. My eyes fixated up into the sky as he leaned around into my ear, his black hair brushing my neck, his breath tingling against my skin. "I won't tame you, for there's nothing more I hunger for than the unbroken. You will never want for freedom or power again. So what say you maid, will you be mine?"
The milky moonlight glistened through the evergreen branches into my full eyes, as the lazy snow flakes drifted onto my flushed skin. "…yes…" I whispered, half willingly and half compelled by his unescapable presence.
"Good." He said as if praising a child, and he kissed my neck with a greed that made me wonder what exactly I had just agreed to. No squire, or courtesan that I had coquettishly kissed had made me feel like this. His mouth traveled up to mine, and my lips were molded under his, sending shockwaves through my body. His hands moved down to clench my waist and heat filled my body. I was his.