Page 21 of Coven Relics
“The hybrids didn’t like Bjorn. I knew why they hated me. They were jealous of how Loki treated me after they rescued me. Bjorn, I didn’t get at first. Everyone who meets him ends up loving him. He’s one of the kindest men I know, but if you’re in a battle, he’s exactly who you want at your side. After everything, I knew why they were hoping Bjorn would die from the cold and refused to help us keep him warm. They were worried about what he would see.”
“We’re going to find Valentine and stop him,” I said. “I don’t know where he’s hiding, but everyone will be looking with that reward.”
“I never said thank you. Bjorn and I can build shelter with the right tools, but it takes time. Your home has a lot more comforts than anything we could build, and you didn’thaveto let us stay here. I understand you don’t hunt or farm food anymore. You hand over those plastic things for it. Bjorn and I eata lot,and you and Killian have been feeding us without complaint. You’re very kind. After being held hostage as a horse and then dealing with nastiness from jealous hybrids, that means a lot to me.”
“Not everyone is terrible like Thorunn and her friends. Unfortunately, there are still bad people in the world, but there are also a lot of great ones.”
“I love everything about being a horse shifter, even if Odin tried to keep me as a pet. I’m not a hybrid, but I got a little extra boost with Loki being my mother. I can run on water and travel to any realm I want to. It’s pretty amazing, and there’s no one else alive like me. The hybrids kept trying to make me feel defective. My mother is a god, but I took after my father.”
“I honestly think you’re amazing as you are. They teach stories about you in history lessons when they are covering Loki. They didn’t really cover you being a shifter and the whole Odin thing. Everyone at my high school thought Sleipnir was badass, and I didn’t hear a single comment about how it would have been better if you had been born a god. There’s alotof Sleipnir fan art out there, too. I should show it to you sometimes.”
The more I heard about Thorunn and her friends, the more I disliked them. They were mass-murdering psychopaths, but they were cruel to people who were supposed to be their friends for no reason. Sleipnir actually blushed. This big, massive horse shifter had pink on his cheeks.
“They talk about me now?”
“Oh, yeah. They start teaching us about the gods in primary school. The lessons get more in depth as you progress through school. If you go to university as I did, there’s one semester on the gods, and then your history lessons are on their creations. I first learned about Loki and Sleipnir in elementary school, though not the exact circumstances of your birth. They showed us a drawing of an eight-legged horse, and everyone thought it was so cool.”
“It’s weird people are making drawings of me when they’ve never met me.”
“Most people draw things they find cool. Literally, everyone who has ever drawn Sleipnir doesn’t even think about the fact that you didn’t end up a god. They think an eight-legged horse who is the fastest thing alive is cool as fuck.”
“That’s weird because no one thought that before I went to the pocket dimension except Loki, Bjorn, and Freya.”
“Oh, I’m sure plenty of people thought that. You just weren’t around them.”
“Yeah, but they probably just associated me with being Odin’s steed and everything they forced me to do with Odin instead of being Loki’s son.”
I started giggling because there werea lotof questions about Sleipnir being Loki’s son. Honestly, I had a million questions about that, too, and now I could finally ask. Seriously, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t yet, but in all fairness, a lot was going on.
“Actually, when we got more in depth into Loki in high school, people were much more curious how a male god gave birth and threw out all these theories about how you ended up with Odin. Of course, we didn’t spend a ton of time on Loki because no one knew he had created any race, but all of my classmates were big fans of his and were curious about his children.
“The history taught now is wrong now that I met him. Hel is supposed to be the queen of an underworld, also named Hel, that gets the souls of some of the dead that doesn’t go to Valhalla. Her two siblings are supposed to be subdued until Loki escapes from the cave the gods bound him in and starts Ragnarok to end the world. You’re supposed to be just a very fast horse, not this deathly hot man when you aren’t carting Odin around.”
Sleipnir wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
“Who makes up those stories? They murdered my siblings before I was born, and my mother doesn’t want to end the world. He’d be horribly bored in the Aether. Anyone who knows him would know he likes it here too much to destroy it.”
“Most people go their entire lives praying to their various gods and leaving offerings, but never meeting one. My sister accidentally raised one from the dead, and now I seem to be tripping over gods. I even got to meet my creator, Lilith, and we text sometimes. Nothing is like what I was taught in school.
“I’ve had time to process that the God of Chaos is a big cinnamon roll with a sweet tooth who is utterly devoted to my sister, and you really don’t want to piss him off. I know now gods aren’t omnipotent and can get overwhelmed. I understand they all have completely different gifts and purposes. Finding out I’ve been sleeping with Loki, it was his puzzle box, and he had people inside? I properly shook my ass and drank, but I haven’t freaked out about it yet.”
“Bjorn and I haven’t either. Not about gods. We are pretty used to them. I wasn’t expecting to meet Freya in a different vessel, but Loki and Freya are mostly the same. Everything else is different. Nothing is like what I know. It doesn’t even smell the same outside anymore. I’m trying to keep an open mind, but goat is one of my favorite foods, and I don’t even know what Loki is doing to it.”
I hadn’t even thought about all the culture shock. Ripley told me about Reyson. He just dove in and relished in everything. Sleipnir and Bjorn seemed to absorb everything, but everything that was normal to me had to be a total mind fuck to them.
“Indian food is great. They use all these spices, yogurt, and this cheese called paneer. They do beautiful things with goat and lamb. There are a ton of things Loki could be doing with the goat, but it’s going to be delicious. I’m not sure where he got the goat since I don’t have any in the freezer.”
Sleipnir just grinned at me.
“Loki can technically conjure up an entire feast, but he prefers cooking. Sometimes, he’ll conjure the ingredients, but he always puts them together for something good. He taught Bjorn and me how to cook, but some of the hybrids refused to learn. They thought Loki should just conjure everything we ate. Some of them disagreed with Thorunn, so, unfortunately, they didn’t starve to death after they betrayed my mother. Thorunn thought that as a first-generation creation of a god, there should be people hunting, farming, and cooking for the hybrids, but Loki was always against slavery, even if they were captured in battle.”
“All I knew about them was horror stories parents tell kids to get them to behave. I knew they killed many people and pretended to be healers for a while, but their remedies were toxic. History doesn’t even remember Thorunn’s name, or that she was mad crazy and thought she was Loki’s ex-girlfriend. The more you tell me about her, the more I hate her.”
“Angrboda wasn’t really an ex-girlfriend. She was more of an infatuation. Loki was born in Jotunheim. It’s another realm. I don’t think you understand that there is this hierarchy among the gods. They consider the primordials to be the best, and there is a kind of a worship among the other gods towards them. Next on the ladder, are the gods created by the Aether. Gods marry other gods and have children. They have children with mortals, too.
“Most of the time, their offspring are looked down on because they were born and not created. They hate children with mortals. They tore away Loki from Jotunheim to live in Asgard and become blood brothers with Odin to keep the peace between the two realms.
“They never really accepted him. Loki would sometimes sneak back home, but no one could find out about it. Angrboda was called The Witch of Ironwoods. She was a fierce warrior and leader of a clan of wolves. She sheltered Loki when he would sneak home, and they had a long fling.
