Page 20 of Coven Relics
“I’ve been on these lands before they erected these buildings. There are no farms nearby. There are no residential houses either. There are just too many ghosts here to try to grow food, and no one has ever wanted to buy a plot of land to build a house on. I’m missing something,” Freya said.
“Do you still have your feather cloak? Killian and I could search by air, and Ravyn and Bjorn could ride Sleipnir to check by ground.”
Freya’s feather cloak wasfabulous.It let you turn into a falcon, and if any drag queen saw it in the modern day, they would try to buy it off her. I adored that cloak, and Freya never let me borrow it unless it would benefit her. Unfortunately, that brother-sister bonddid notextend to clothes.
“Are you kidding, Loki? Youstillwant to borrow my cloak? You know full well you can shapeshift into a raven without borrowing my things. I don’t keep it with me when I’m not in my usual vessel. This body is mortal. I could die at any time. My family this time around are horrible, greedy bastards. I have a will, but they are going to fight it. I don’t want my favorite cloak wrapped up in some long estate lawsuit when I want it back.”
“Well, we have to dosomething.”
“I agree,” Ravyn said. “But running around checking every area is not the way to go.”
“Is there a place for me to lie down?” Bjorn said. “That tea is hitting me really hard. I might get a vision later, but not right now.”
“It’s time to go home, anyway. I can check in with Kaine when we get there,” Ravyn said.
“I’ll cook tonight,” Killian said.
“I’ll do dinner tomorrow. All of you have been spoiling me.”
“Grab onto me,” I said.
Bjorn looked like he wasn’t going to deal with the walk to Ravyn’s cottage very well, and I could do something about it. I still couldn’t believe Freya had given up the ability to travel like this. I offered to bring her home, but she said she had a car. Freya promised to be back tomorrow.
The countdown to the eclipse was getting very close, and I still had no idea where Valentine was.
Chapter16
Ravyn
Iwas still processing that my mentor and one of my favorite witches was really Freya. That was a bigger mind fuck than finding out I’d been sucking Loki’s dick. But she was still Minerva Krauss. She presented as this middle aged, buttoned up witch who had never married, but she had a sharp wit and didn’t suffer fools. She told us all we had better call her Minerva Krauss and not Freya, or we’d regret it.
Killian and I knew she had enough background with curses not to want to fuck with that. But, despite that little bit of prose that said otherwise, Loki agreed because he seemed to have a massive amount of respect and love for Freya. Sleipnir and Bjorn seemed to adore her, too.
Minerva told me I could tell Ripley because the twin bond was sacred, and she’d never ask me to keep a secret from her. She never did independent study with Ripley like she did with me, but those two bonded over the filthy books in the Library of the Profane, and Minerva cared about Ripley, too. Minerva knew Reyson, and she knew my sister. She knew if anyone were going to stop the God of Chaos from blabbing her secret for some social media likes, it would be my twin.
I didn’t have time to process all that. I wasn’t getting the time to have my own form of mental breakdown about a lot of things. Right now, we were back at my cottage, and I had an extremely stoned Viking seer to take care of. Loki and Killian were in the kitchen cooking, hoping food sobered him up a bit. Sleipnir up and disappeared on me.
Bjorn wasn’t as massive as Sleipnir, but he was still a healthy boy, and trying to get him to his bedroom alone when he was drunker than Cooter Brown wasn’t very easy. He wasn’t a difficult drunk. Bjorn wasn’t loud or trying to feel me up. All he wanted was his bed, but he’d forgotten how to get there, and he was much bigger than me.
I was trying to deter Bjorn from laying down in the bathtub, and there just wasn’t enough space in my hall bathroom to physically convince a Viking the tub wasn’t a very comfortable bed.
Sleipnir finally decided to show his face and help me. He got Bjorn out of the bathtub quicker than I ever could, but where the hell was he when I needed help steering him away from the bathroom in the first place?
“Sorry, I was reminding Loki that goat is best for sobering Bjorn up. It’s his favorite and the only thing he’ll eat when he’s like this. Loki said he was going to make Indian food, whatever that means. Let’s get Bjorn to bed.”
“Why is it so cold in here?” Bjorn moaned. “We didn’t come out of the pocket dimension during winter, and there is no snow on the ground.”
While Sleipnir was navigating Bjorn to his bed, I pulled an extra blanket out of the closet. When he was finally situated in bed, I threw it over him, but he wouldn’t stop shivering. This wasn’t drunk, and I was seriously wondering what the Unseelie put in that tea.
Bjorn didn’t need more blankets. He looked like he needed body heat. I pulled back the blanket, but I wasn’t about to jump in without his permission.
“Want me to help keep you warm?”
Bjorn opened his arms, and he just looked so sweet and vulnerable right now. He put himself in this position to help us. Bjorn seemed utterly miserable. He’d drunk this tea before, so he knew this would happen. I didn’t know Bjorn all that well yet, but I wanted to.
I climbed under the blanket and snuggled into Bjorn. He wrapped his arms around me and stopped shivering a little. Oh. Oh! This was totally platonic, and I was trying to help Bjorn, but he was superb at this whole snuggling thing. I felt his breathing change and realized he had fallen asleep. Sleipnir was sitting at the foot of the bed staring at me curiously.
“Thank you. The last time Bjorn tried this, the same thing happened. It was winter, and there was ice everywhere. Loki and I had to do this last time. The hybrids all refused to help Bjorn, even before he warned Loki they would betray him. Hybrids don’t happen naturally, even when gods have children. I had a fifty-fifty chance of being a god or a horse shifter.
