Page 15 of Her World In His Hands

“In Asgard, held at my palace. I have him under guard. Come on.”

In the dungeonsof Thor’s mighty palace, Njord and Thor confronted Loki.

The prankster God’s face contorted into smouldering rage as soon as they appeared. “You’ll pay for treating me this way! I was so pleased when finally, there was a venture which included me, thinking it would be the salvation of us all, but no, you two have to take me down a peg just to prove what huge important entities you both are…”

“Loki, you will never have the brains to outwit either of us, so shut the fuck up and listen,” Thor interrupted the sly God.

The cunning creature sneered at Njord. “You don’t know how to pick your friends do you?”

Njord frowned. “You’ve never proven to be anyone’s friend other than your own. You betrayed my people during the Aesir-Vanir war without blinking an eye and you expect me to trustyou?”

Loki spat on the ground; his spittle turned into flies which buzzed upwards into Njord’s face, he flapped his hands to disperse the foul cloud of insects.

“You know for once I thought we could all work together and that you’d included me in something, but no. The rest of you can’t cope with the fact that for once it’s my name spilling from the lips of mortals. No one calls your names or worships either of you anymore and you simply can’t abide that they call to me! My name has been called out so many times, that Odin will have no choice but to elevate me above the both of you!” His bitter words echoed about the dank space.

“You don’t fool us with your pathetic injured soul act. The facts will come to light when the vandalism stops because we have you locked away,” Thor snarled.

“Think about it muscleman, why would I sabotage the club when people are evoking me by calling my name?”

“Because you can,” Njord retaliated.

There wasa sudden drop in temperature and they were plunged into darkness. A moment passed before the wall sconces flared back into life. The flickering light showed nothing but a pile of empty chains. Loki had vanished.

“Damn, I’ll bet that was Hel who came to rescue him, and for about the third time in his miserable existence… Fathers and daughters… still I like to think Þrúðr would rescue me if ever I needed her,” Thor’s voice softened as he spoke his only daughter’s name.

“I wouldn’t know. My daughters seem to hate me most of the time.” Njord shook his head ruefully.

“Well, you do have rather a habit of abandoning their mothers which might have something to do with that,” Thor said sarcastically. “The problem now is where do we go from here?”

“First and foremost is we change the safe-word at the club. I suggest we use ‘Viking’ this time. We have another problem, Sassa wants all the Gods to leave the club.”

“What!” Thor roared. “No, no, no. The Gods haven’t had so much fun or adoration in hundreds of years. They love their roles as dominants and I can tell you they won’t give ‘em up easily. I’m certainly not going anywhere!”

“Tricky…How many of the Gods has Sassa actually met?” Njord asked.

“As far as I know only me, she’s seen one or two in the background moving about. She spoke to me about us playing, doing a scene, but she never followed it up.” Thor replied.

Njord tamped down on the surge of jealousy in his gut. His mantra was, I’m not jealous, I’m territorial. His belief being that jealousy was when you wanted something that was not yours, whereas, territorial is protecting what’s already yours.

“Well then, since it’s only you she met, the others can stay and we could disguise you,” he suggested.

“Hmm, how do we do that?”

“Add a tattoo, shave your head, or maybe dye your hair dark?”

“Okay, yes, I’ve thought of getting a tattoo. I hate the idea of shaving my head, so I’ll dye my hair dark. Your task is to get Sassa under control and convince her to let us stay. I could fucking well kill Loki! He’s spoiled everything for the rest of us once again!” It was well known the guileful Loki tore up the mistletoe and, under his guidance, the blind god Höd hurled it as a shaft through Balder’s body. The gods sent an emissary to Hel, goddess of death; she would release Balder if all things would weep for him. All did, except one giant who turned out to be Loki in disguise which meant Balder remained in death.

Njord loathed the duplicitous Loki and decided to withhold the fact that Sassa wanted them gone, with or without Loki’s pranks. He sighed, Thor was right, he needed to get his woman under his control, but how? Sassa was no longer the naive young girl he’d known before, even though she’d remained physically unchanged for hundreds of years she was now a formidable woman of wisdom with many years life experience. He had his work cut out if he was to convince her to share his life.

His cell chirruped; glancing at the cell number he frowned. Why was Paige, Sassa’s C.E.O calling him? “Nick Godden… What? Calm down, Paige. yes, yes… No, she was gone when I woke this morning. Not yet, I’ll get back to you…Yes, I understand that.”

“What’s going on?” Thor asked.

“Sassa’s missing.”

“Since when?”

“No one’s seen or heard from her since last night. I was the last one to see her apparently.” Loki’s strange words came back to him haunt him.

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