There was a lot of blood, but not as much damage as there might have been, and Angrboða was pleased for that. Loki did not say a word when he limped in hours later. The badgers set him into a hot bath in the stone tub, moving around to lay bandages and ointments out before shuffling off to other chores. He absently washed the mud away and stood to rinse away the last of it, his marble body a study in bruises as he poured the ladles of steaming water over his head.
Angrboða moved closer as Loki dried himself off, his movements pain-filled and slow. She wrapped the gashes along his bicep in linen strips and stitched up a ragged puncture above his hip, saying nothing as he stood there, his fury growing as cold as the dirty water in the tub. When she was done, she rose up and held out her arms to his naked, wounded body.
He stared at her.
She lifted her chin higher, and the sudden pull of magic forced Loki forward, into her embrace as Angrboða's arms slid around him, drinking in the chill of his frame.
"Such beautiful hate," she crooned. "Such distrust. I had no idea you loved me to this degree, my dark prince."
"This is not love," Loki rasped, his words thick with loathing. "You have ensorcelled my loins for your own devious reasons. You are a vile, heartless bitch and I detest you more every day I am forced to service you."
"Yes," she murmured softly, "you are full of rage and pain, child of stone. If you could kill me, I know you would, and happily. Come, lie in my arms tonight while I tell you a story."
He arched an eyebrow at her, his anger cool and unyielding, but Angrboða merely slid away and took one of his icy hands, pulling him along towards the bed, and Loki followed against his will. When they reached it, she lay down and guided him to her until his head rested against her breasts, the rest of his long, chilly body draped alongside hers under the comfort of owl down and fur. Angrboða clicked her tongue and the candles winked out, leaving only the dull red mouth of the distant fireplace as the only light in the hall.
"Once, long ago, when the nine realms were still soft and new, when Yggdrasil was but a slender sapling" she began, her words soft and slow, "there was a jotunn who burned."
Angrboða waited a moment, knowing that the prince in her arms was paying attention despite his sulking. He made a low sound deep in his throat, and she continued, gently stroking Loki's hair as she did so.
"He burned outside, with flames and sparks so strong they blotted out the stars, and everywhere he stepped turned instantly to ash. Nothing could survive his touch, his breath, his kiss. His name was Surtr, and he brought life to the nine realms, since nothing lives without heat, not even the monsters of the wet depths, or the shadows that stretch across the stars."
"Surtr is but a legend," came the sneering protest.
"So are you," she reminded him. "Or shall be. To continue, Surtr not only burned outside, but also in the inside. Heat is the herald of passion, and as the father of all fire Jotunn, Surtr held the passion of all nine worlds within himself. The force that compels us to mate, the basic urge of life boiled inside him with unending intensity."
"Painful," came the slower reply.
"Yes," Angrboða agreed. "And maddening. He found himself driven to find a mate. One who would not die under him, who would give him harbor between her thighs. He searched all through Muspelheim and finally found a maiden who did not flee his approach. She was nearly as tall as he, and as dark as a night without stars. When Surtr came closer, she told him to kneel."
Angrboða waited, and a moment later came Loki's question. "Did he?"
"No," she replied. "Surtr's madness tormented him and he roared at her in fury, telling her that she would be the one to kneel. The maiden watched him rage, and when Surtr reached to grab her wrist, she let him. Once his fiery fingers touched her skin however, the heat drained from them, giving him relief all through his hand and palm. He was so startled that he let go, and the maiden laughed."
"How . . . familiar."
"Shhhh. Naturally Surtr tried to grab her again, but she eluded him, dancing around his lumbering frame with the ease of a flame. He tried to catch her, and demanded to know her name. She told him he would know it when he slept, and vanished in a twist of smoke. Surtr didn't think he could sleep, not with the object of his relief so close at hand, but he was tired and troubled, so he stretched out along the barren rock and closed his eyes."
Loki lifted his head slightly, and Angrboða saw that by his speculative gaze that the story had intrigued him enough to make him forget his resentment-at least for the moment. "And he slept?"
"After a time he did," Angrboða confirmed. "And he dreamt of a dark cave lit by flaming roots. At the far end of the cave was a hearth, and tending it was the maiden of before. She watched him come nearer and when he did, he saw she held a staff—"
"—Lævateinn," Loki broke in, his interest sharpened. "It was real?"
Angrboða waited a moment, and then continued. "A staff of gnarled Iron-wood with fire glowing through runes on it from the door of death, a heavy branch constantly aflame and never consumed by the power it held. A weapon worth of respect.
'Give it to me!' Surtr commanded her, caught between desire for her and Lævateinn. But when he came closer, she held it high between her two hands and let it drop into a stone chest where nine heavy locks closed it. Surtr raged, but the maiden stepped on top of the stone chest and held out her arms to him."
"He should have shoved her off and stolen the chest," Loki observed drily. "It's what I would have done."
Angrboða's smile gleamed in the dark. "So you would; however, Surtr embraced her instead. But this was still a dream, and however much he tried to take her it was not possible. She wrapped herself tightly around him, smoke and steam filling the cave, and right before he awoke, Surtr heard her whisper her name, just as she had promised. Upon rising, he called out 'Sinmara!' and she appeared, the chest at her feet."
"So Surtr gained Lævateinn?"
"No," Angrboða replied quietly, her hand resting on the back of Loki's neck. "Sinmara pushed him to the ground and rode him. Their mating moved the valleys and made glaciers crumble; when Surtr erupted, so did every mountain of fire within the nine worlds."
Loki arched an eyebrow. "Impressive," he murmured, but there was a gleam of amusement in his gaze, and his hand slid down her cool belly.
"It was enough to worry Asgard. Odin knew then and knows now that the children of Surtr will rise behind our father and bring down the Æsir in the time of Ragnarok," Angrboða intoned.
"So you are the daughter of Surtr?" It wasn't so much a question as confirmation.
"I am the first born and only daughter of my fire-father and nightmare mother, little prince," she murmured. "Created in that first mating, when the inferno of their lust burned hottest. I carry my father's passion and my mother's insanity in the very obsidian of my soul."
Neither spoke for a while. Finally Loki propped himself on one elbow to look down at her, his elegant gaze caught in curiosity. "So we are . . . . opposites. Male to female, ice to fire, anger to lust."
"And yet linked by stone," Angrboða finished, bringing a hand up to touch his chest. "The nine worlds stem from Yggdrasil, which in turn grows on stone, my princeling. Stone is eternal, from the smallest fragment to the largest world."
"Seed," Loki bent to breathe against her lips, "does not grow in stone."
"Yours shall," Angrboða laughed softly. "Yours shall."
He pulled her to him, rolling with her over the fur, his actions rougher now as Loki nipped his way from her collarbones to the hot peaks of her nipples, his teeth worrying their hardness. Angrboða slid her fingers through his hair, tugging him closer, urging him on with little gasps of pained pleasure as she slid a leg over his hip.
"Harder," she purred, "Leave your mark, taste me!"
Loki did, his white teeth leaving red crescents along the smooth globes of her chest, his lust and banked anger flaring as they wrestled together. Angrboða clawed his shoulders and ribs, enjoying the way he hissed and winced at the pain, and when he shoved her thighs apart, dropping himself heavily on her small frame she gave a breathless laugh of giddy madness and kept fighting, drinking in his growls of fury with her red, red kisses.
Each stroke stoked the heat between her thighs, churning slickly with sweat and musk and the glaze of arousal. Angrboða tensed, well-aware of how close both of them were now, passing through that glorious moment of inevitability. She kissed Loki hard, teeth knocking against his, and hissed into his mouth. "Wound me. Hate me, son of ice!"
Grunting, he scraped his cheek along hers and bit her, just under her ear, along the smooth muscle of her throat; the pain knifed through Angrboða, igniting her climax, which rushed through her like a wild ocean wave. She shook, dark blood rolling down her shoulder, her arms and legs wrapped around Loki like vines. He gave a hoarse bellow that was muffled in her hair, and drove himself deeply as he came, his seed searing inside her.
Breathless, neither of them spoke for a while, lying entangled amid the slick and sweat of their coupling. Angrboða felt the trickle of her blood begin to slow. After a while Loki raised his head to nuzzle her, and she felt his kiss linger on the wetness there.
She smiled into the dark.
-oo00oo-
"I am a prince, not a kitchen drudge," came Loki's flat statement. He looked at the list again, frowning as Angrboða wrapped herself in a cloak of hawk feathers and took a steaming mug from one of the badgers. She sipped it and handed it back, then met Loki's gaze.
"You are a prince, a clever prince and you will bring these things back to me before night falls," she told him gently. "Treat it as a challenge to your cleverness, son of Laufey. Two may be bought, but the other two will require different methods of procurement, and all are necessary."
"Where are you going?" this time his tone held both curiosity and a hint of possessiveness. Angrboða stared at Loki for a moment, her eyes flickering with a warning hint of inner flame.
"I have a barter of my own to complete, the final element for my elixir," she told him. "Good luck to you in your hunting, father of my brood, since you will surely need it."
"What if I fail? Will I be punished?"
Angrboða finished tucking the feathers around herself. "Yes."
"That's not fair," Loki protested. "I didn't ask for this quest."
"No," came her agreement. "It is not and you did not, however I need those items and you have the Singasteinn. Do not fail me."
With that Angrboða strode out of her hall and to the stables, where her sleigh stood waiting. She climbed in, took the reins and let the polar bears begin their run. It took effort not to look back and see if Loki was watching; Angrboða pushed thoughts of him away and concentrated on steering the bears through the rough track in the woods as the wind ruffled the feathers she wore.
Behind her, grey shadows ran, a phalanx of fanged guards.