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I tilted my head back and bit my tongue, refusing to stop her again. Then, meeting her gaze, I came. Hard. Something stung my eyes as pleasure overwhelmed me. I filled her, enjoying the delicious friction as her body writhed around my cock.

“Damn,” I breathed as she fell against my chest. “I love you so much, Skald.”

“I love you in every lifetime,” she whispered.

I curled my arms around her and played with her hair until sleep came. Dreams taunted me with images of her and our life together. If being with her was only a dream, reality was my nightmare. We’d never found each other. She’d given up on my soul. I was still in the grey, lost without her.

When I woke hours later, sweaty and messy, and not caring that we smelled of sex, I tried to shed these anxious thoughts. I clutched her and pulled her closer until my heart slowed and I finally believed this was real. We lived in peace. We were together.

I’d live the rest of this life with my wife, and this was all I wanted.

As dawn light filtered in through our window, I woke again to her stirring beside me. We spoke of the farm and of the task given to us by Queen Stasia. Later, we discussed which part of the village to restore next, before I had to bring up the only problem still nagging at me.

“I’m sorry my mortality damns you too,” I said.

Her brow furrowed and eyes searched mine. “Don’t say you’re sorry. You’re human again.”

“And you’re a god.”

“Not fully. I don’t have the centuries in this role that Odin did. I can’t rule Valhalla or decide the tides of war.”

“Not yet.”

“That’s not something I ever want.” Her throat worked a swallow, and her gaze wandered before her eyes found me again. “I only want to be with you.”

“Soren will take care of that,” I assured her, and when a smile ghosted across her face, I knew she believed it too. I cupped her jaw and pulled her onto me. After a slow kiss, she twisted and pressed her back against my chest. “Tell me something,” I said, though I already knew the answer because I knew my wife inside and out, and she wasn’t telling me everything. “You can call upon Hel now, can’t you?” She hummed; the vibration confirmed what I already suspected. As her power in Odin’s role grew, she could command Loki’s daughter to a new assignment just as Odin had given her the task to oversee the underworld. “So why not release Soren from the task and replace him with Hel?”

“Because Soren wanted the adventure.” The quiver in her voice said enough. I knew my wife inside and out.

“That’s not all.”

She inhaled sharply. “No. She’s my sister, Drak. Even though it was awful, all she wanted was for our mother to apologize. She wanted to believe Mother loved her.”

That was when I understood. Lux never intended to damn her sister. Not when she hid beneath the hatch under their childhood bed, and not when she told Soren to take her to the underworld.

“You think he’ll never make it to the underworld,” I said.

She nodded, the back of her head pressing into my sternum. “I know. I looked into his future.”

“And what did you see?”

“His child…” she paused for a shaky breath. “And hers.”

Lux

59 years later

Agoat bleats outside. Life carries on in the unnamed village built by my husband’s hands while I sit beside him at the center of the library. His eyes are closed, listening to the erratic beat of my heart as it breaks.

His breaths come in short bursts, and I don’t think he has the energy to open his eyes one last time. He’s lost most of his sight anyway, and where his eye was once scarred by a witch’s weapon, both of his eyes are now coated in pale grey that blankets the piercing blue of his youth.

I brush the overgrown hair back from his face. Thick white hair tumbles over my shoulders, and his head is covered with a silver sheen, hair still full. Wrinkles crease our lips with lines from decades of smiling. The sun took its toll with damage spots across our foreheads, and by dragging our cheeks heavy, but joy always lifts our faces back to the memory of a life long ago.

How long it has been since we spent even an hour apart, and now, in death, I refuse to part with him.

I’ll follow him into the afterlife.

I whisper my prayers to the fates that Soren shows up. That he’s still alive.