Page 20 of The Goddess is Fierce
“I’ve been researching Baldur at the library between classes. I know you don’t think it’s him and the people who knew him before didn’t, but I was looking foranything.There’s not a lot about Baldur. I think he was young when he died. I have no problem with the two of you being together. I wasn’t going to say anything unless you said for sure you had feelings, but what little I could find on Baldur was that he was married before he died. Please don’t get too deep with him until he gets his memories back. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Yeah, George should know that, but I still wanted to give Church a nut punch for telling her that.
“Ugh. Thanks for telling me. We’re both drawn to each other, but that’s who he is now. I’m aware that could change when he remembers who he is. I should probably talk to Freya, too.”
“I wish you could sleep in here with us. I had an amazing night’s sleep in your dorm room the other night,” Church said.
“The lesbians said you breathed too loud and probably would have beat your ass if George didn’t like you,” Drake laughed.
“I don’t snore! Guys, honestly, we’ve been rooming together this entire time. You’d tell me if I snored right?”
Drake fell out laughing. Church was flipping out, and he definitely didn’t snore. I would have purred up a storm if I got to sleep in her bed. Matilda probably would have eaten me.
“You don’t snore. You breathed too loudly for a man in their dorm,” Drake giggled.
“I don’t get it.”
Church looked utterly confused and now I was trying not to laugh, too. I was not under any grand impression that Matilda and Mags decided to talk to me in the first place because I was sitting with George.
“My sister likes all of you. She really does. Mags does, too. But they like you in the sense some people like other people’s kids. You get to interact and have fun with them on your termsand at the end of the day, they go to their house and you go to yours. They adore spending time with you, but they don’t want to live with you, even if it’s just for the night. If they didn’t get annoyed by your breathing, you would have moved too much and they would have gone to Belladonna and Mina’s room. If I do that again with any of you, I’ll have to talk to them first because it’s their room, too.”
I got it. This wasourroom, and we all wanted her here, but there wasn’t space and we couldn’t exactly push the beds together.
But they’d eventually graduate. We’d get our own place with a big, giant bed. Maybe Baldur would be with us, maybe he wouldn’t, but we’d all pile into that bed and sleep the way a lion’s pride was meant to.
I couldn’t wait. I didn’t have a single drop of foresight, but I knew this was going to work out.
And maybe I’d think up something better than magical crabs for that stupid warlock.
azren
. . .
Iloved teaching, and I was motivated to fix whoever was murdering students at the Academy of the Profane. Especially since Baldur might be involved. I didn’t kill Baldur, but I had alotof guilt about his death. Loki was a good friend. I knew about his kids because I went myself to reap them out of respect for him. I was back on the Netherworld for the most part and made frequent trips to Earth to visit my friends.
I checked in with Loki, but I should have ignored him when he said he was fine. I should have barged into his life and crashed on his couch until he actuallywasfine. My friend was one of the most hardheaded and stubborn people I knew, buthe wasn’t violent except for Baldur. I wouldn’t have been able to talk him out of any of his usual shenanigans, but I’d always felt like if I’d just shown up and refused to leave, I could have talked him out of what happened to Baldur.
Death was my domain. I taught Lilith necromancy so she could teach her witches because even though everything died, sometimes it was helpful to temporarily bring them back. I didn’t have to sacrifice and bleed like a witch would, but the rules were the same. The essence had to bewillingto come back, and the vessel had to be undamaged.
Itriedwith Baldur, but his vessel was too damaged. I could have done what I did with Freya and kept putting him into mortal bodies, but his parents didn’t want that. They wanted to wait until the fates decided it was time for him to come back and gave his vessel back. I didn’t kill Baldur, and I did exactly what his family wanted and let the fates decide when he came back.
I still felt responsible for how he was now.
I wanted to delve in and fix it, but memory wasn’t one of my powers. We had to wait for Muninn. And I had to deal with some stupid supernatural politics.
The college dodgeball league wasn’t about to kick a god off one of their teams. Even if she was terrible, they could have used her for ratings. But she wasn’t. I watched tryouts and practice. George was actually good and when Michael and George teamed up on something, they were showboats. I’d been watching dodgeball on two realms and I’d never seenanyonedo what they did with the Air Ball. Dexter, Oscar, and Drake also made amazing plays with her that was going to make their team exciting to watch.
The league would have seen the footage and known what they were going to do for their ratings. But they had to make a show of investigating when they got the complaint and stress mygirlfriend out. I wanted her to take the necklace off, but whenshewas ready. I was starting to realize why she left it on.
People were treating her differently and the only reason the board wasn’t exploiting her for publicity was because Church Senior did a hostile takeover and wouldn’t let them. I’d dealt with the old board president when I was temporary headmaster. He would have had people hiding in bushes to take photos of her all over campus.
No one knew George, and I were together and therealreason I agreed to do what I did to keep her on the dodgeball team. The board of the Academy of the Profane and the board of the other school seemed to think that idiot warlock wasn’t responsible for the injuries he gave himself shortly before he tried to get George banned from playing college dodgeball.
Personally, I thought he should lay there in bed while the healers mended his bones so he could really stew on the consequences of his actions. I hadn’t hung out with a lot of pixies and the angels mostly kept to themselves, but even I knew what that warlock tried was going to end badly without an angel.
Between Dexter’s video and Gabriel and Church Senior going to bat for George, the other school was starting to realize they were looking like poor sports in all of this. Georgedidhave advantages on the dodgeball field, but she wasn’t using them. She could have portalled from one end of the field to the other and used her strength to throw the ball past the goalie, but she wasn’t. She was running, flying with the aid of her brother, or passing the ball.
I’d gotten on video chat and informed all of them of this as well. There was one last thing they wanted and the other school would withdraw their complaint against George. It was stupid, and I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t risk being wrong about the league not wanting to lose the ratings that would come from George and Michael playing together.
