Thor lifted his gaze from the mug in his hands to his wife, and it was as though he saw her, truly, for the first time. Golden hair gleaming, burnished, glowing skin, darkened from so many days spent in the sun, and for all the beauty in her face, the banked fire in her eyes offered no warmth. Sif wore a string skirt, stopping above her knee, and the short tunic left her navel bare. An ivory bangle, carved from boar’s tusks, wrapped around her slim wrist.
Thor went still, lightning buzzing in his ears, and the room fading into shades of gray and white, too bright. He caught her arm just above the wrist, the delicate ivory brushing against his finger, smooth as silk. The ivory he had carved with his own hands, filling the grooves of stem and leaf with heated gold and scorching his mortal fingers in the process. His gift to Tora, to Eve, at their wedding feast. The bracelet he had taken from her wrist the night she had died, and kept hidden among his things all these years.
“Do you like it?” Sif asked, her eyes flashing gold. “It was a gift from Loki, after he returned from his exile.”
Thor stood so swiftly, the bench beneath him unbalanced. His fingers tightened around Sif’s arm, and though he could feel Baldur’s hand on his shoulder, he could not hear his brother’s words over the thunder of his thoughts.
“And the clothes, too?” he asked her, his voice rough. “Did he choose them for you as well?”
She bared her teeth in what was meant to be a smile. “What’s the matter, Thor? Aren’t you pleased by the lengths with which I’ve gone to satisfy you?”
“The bracelet is mine,” he growled.
“Is it?” she asked, all innocence. “I wonder what use you could have for such a bracelet, if not to gift it to your wife.”
“Take it off.” Baldur’s grip had turned painful, bruising, but Thor ignored it.
Sif lifted her eyebrows. “What of the clothes? Would you have me remove them as well, strip naked in the middle of Odin’s hall?”
“The bracelet, Sif.” It was all he could do not to crush the bones in her wrist and tear it from her arm. He wanted to, Odin help him. The clothes were something else. Not Tora’s, he was nearly certain, and nothing he had made for her as a symbol of their love. But she wore them now simply to taunt him. And he had no doubt that Loki had been part of it, nor did he care that he had played into their hands, allowing himself to be provoked. The bracelet was all he had of their life together, put behind him in the hopes of reconciling his marriage—a marriage he was beginning to suspect she had never meant to honor.
She sneered, twisting her arm free as if his hold were nothing. “And in return for overlooking this consort of yours, this whore of a goddess you took as your wife, what will you give me?”
“Enough, Sif,” Baldur said. “If the bracelet belongs to Thor, it is his right to ask it of you.”
Her lip curled, but she slipped it from her wrist, the gold vines within the ivory glinting in the light. Thor did not dare move, watching her fingers. Sif was as much a warrior as the rest of the Aesir, more than capable of snapping bone. Instead, she flung it at his chest so hard it stung him through his tunic. He caught it, but barely, and though he wanted desperately to check it for damage, he did not dare give Sif the satisfaction.
“And where is your justice for me, Baldur?” she asked. “What price ought Thor pay for his disloyalty?”
“Perhaps I paid already,” he said, barely stopping from snapping the ivory himself in his anger. That she would stand there before him and speak of disloyalty—“After all, there is Ullr, isn’t there?”
She flushed from chest to cheeks. “You dare!”
“It was not I who broke the trust of our marriage. And after what has happened, I dare not take you at your word.”
“Thor,” Baldur groaned. “Please, you must not—”
“No?” Thor snarled, rounding on him. “How long did you stand by and watch as she betrayed me, brother? How long has Asgard been laughing behind my back, thinking me a fool? No!” Lightning struck the hearth with a sharp crack, scorching the beams and the air around them. Baldur stepped back, and even Sif flinched, her face pale. “I have had enough!”
The lightning came again, then, white and hot with his rage and filling the hall with thunder so loud the stones cracked beneath his feet.
“Thor, please,” Baldur said, even his light shadowed in the brightness of the hall. “You will…”
But Thor let the room dissolve, lightning racing through his veins, through his heart, until he stood suspended in its liquid heat, his whole body alive with current.
The last thing he heard before leaving Asgard was the sound of Loki’s laughter.
“Back so soon?” Athena asked, teasing.
Thor did not so much as turn from the view of the palace stretched below him, all cavalry and soldiers, and the king who demanded more and more again, then turned to his son, snapping orders. The boy raced to obey, glory in his eyes, determination in every line of his body, in spite of its limitations.
“Adam is too hard on his son,” Thor said after a moment, determined to keep his other thoughts to himself. Perhaps if he focused on Adam, now Philip the Second of Macedon, he would not be tempted by desire for Eve.
He had not thought overmuch where the lightning should take him, only that he must flee. First, to the House of Lions, who had hardly known him, and then here. As near as he would allow himself to Eve, hidden in Athens as some fool’s wife, where she would barely be given the right to see the sun. It infuriated him to think of it.
Athena came to stand beside him, looking out at the palace and the army being drilled. “He plans to conquer the world. Of course he is hard on him. But Alexander is brilliant. Where Philip fails, his son will succeed.”
Thor grunted. If Alexander were so brilliant, Athena had no doubt had a hand in it herself, and he dared not argue against such a scheme. Adam pressed into the North and the East already, expanding the influence of Macedon, and as such, Macedon’s gods. As if the Olympians did not have enough already, with their fingers in Rome and Etruria thanks to Aeneas, and only limited by Carthage to the south and west, and the Celts and Gauls to the north. Anyone with eyes could see it would be only a matter of time before the Olympian gods reached even to the borders of the North Lands, for Odin’s influence expanded further south every year. Before long, the Olympians would swallow even the House of Lions—unless…
“Would your family object to my presence this night?” Thor asked. “For once, I come only for myself.”
“You should know by now you are always welcome at our table, Thor. My father will be pleased to have you as his guest.”
“And have I your word you will not abandon me? I fear I will offend Aphrodite unforgivably if I do not have some excuse in your company.”
Athena laughed. “Is not Sif enough excuse?”
Thor unclenched his teeth only with an effort, though his jaw was still tight, and he felt the burn of lightning in his eyes at even the mention of her name. She had shamed him so totally in Asgard, and no doubt Loki had completed his humiliation while he spent his days in Aphrodite’s bed, spreading word of his blindness to any god who would listen.
He forced himself to breathe, to release the tension knotting his shoulders and turning his hands into fists, and only when he had controlled himself again, did he answer: “Not anymore.”
Placed in Olympus, even Baldur’s
Sif would have loved it. He had meant to bring her here, before he had learned of her affair with Loki. He had even spoken with Hephaestus about building her a fine
“Ah! The Odin-son returns to us!” Zeus slapped him on the back between the shoulder blades so heartily
