Vaguely, I remembered Dörr pushing something away from us. I sat upright and looked around the room with amused horror. The bedding was wet with blood. Black essence puddled around my alpha, who’d moved up to the head of the bed beside us. The wooden frame was completely shattered. Cracked posts broken apart on the marble like kindling. The mattress sat unevenly on the floor on top of the remnants. The heavy drapes at the window billowed with fresh air—telling me we’d broken out the windows.
“Whoa. I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t stay in the queen’s suite with all that glass around us.”
“I hit a new frequency I didn’t even know was possible,” Heimdallr said. “I bet even the Screaming Madness heard us at the ends of the universe.”
My cheeks heated with a blush. I could only imagine the look on Franz’s face when he surveyed what was left of the bed.
Heimdallr threw his head back, roaring with laughter all over again. Blushing harder, I closed my eyes and pulled the blood,essence, and cum to me. I couldn’t fix the windows or the bed frame, but I could at least clean up the bodily fluids.
He twitched beneath me, his entire body shaking. My eyes flew open and I watched his skin knit back together. The gouges on his throat, shoulders, and arms. Gone. Except for pearly rainbow marks still glittering in his dark skin. I’d left permanent marks in this beautiful, perfect god.
“You’re scarred,” I breathed out, regret tightening my throat.
He jerked upright, pulling my face against his chest, his arms sliding around me. “I love that you marked me. I want everyone to see exactly how hard you loved me. In fact, I want you to claw and bite me all over. Leave nothing unmarked. I want it all.”
Relieved, I eased back with him to the mattress. Dörr stretched out behind me, his arm sliding around me, pressing me against the god. “Perhaps you can mark rainbows into all of us now, my queen.”
I yawned, my eyes already heavy with sleep. Though I managed to whisper, “I’ll try. Next time.”
30
HELAYNA
Idreamed of my mother.
I saw her sleeping in the same bed we now lay in, though from the way she tossed and turned, she didn’t rest well or easily. Vampire queens didn’t age like humans, but she looked so young to me. Before whatever deal she’d made with Loki. Before she had me to worry about.
She sat upright and stared at me as if she could see me across the years. Her auburn hair hung in a thick braid, longer than I remembered from the few snippets of my childhood I still retained. Her face was smooth and soft, her eyes gleaming almost the same green as Loki’s.
I wanted to ask her so many questions. Why him, when he’d sired Hel’s line in the beginning? Why not a god like Heimdallr, who’d been nothing but kind, considerate, and loyal to me in the short time I’d known him. Though if she’d gone to him…
I wouldn’t have him inmyBlood, and now that I’d tasted him…
I refused to give him up.
She moved to the edge of the bed and stood. Dressed in a simple white nightgown, she padded barefoot to the foot of thebed. Her hands moved over the floor in some kind of pattern, her lips moving, but I couldn’t hear her words. Closing her eyes, she knelt and lifted her wrist to her mouth. She bit her wrist and allowed her blood to drop onto the floor.
Then she disappeared.
I thought at first the dream had ended, but I still stood staring at where she’d been kneeling. The bed was empty, even though I knew neither Dörr nor Heimdallr would leave me unattended, especially in a strange, new place. I stepped closer to where she’d knelt. Droplets of her blood looked black in the darkness. There was some kind of pattern in the marble. Swirling lines, curves. It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I started to trace the lines with my finger?—
Something licked my face. Tiny, sharp teeth lightly grazed my chin. Waking me up.
Bjørg’s furry face filled my vision. Her head tipped to the side, her fuzzy ears cocked. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she jumped down off the bed and yipped. Again.
I sat up, and Dörr rose with me. “What is it, my queen?”
Heimdallr’s golden eyes narrowed on my face. “You were dreaming of Helle. You saw something.”
I nodded, trying to hold on to the wispy fragments before they faded. Bjørg barked again, more insistently. “She wants to show me something.”
Dörr stood and offered me a hand to help me off the low mattress. Wagging her fluffy tail, Bjørg waited at the edge of the purple rug. As we moved toward her, she scratched her front paws at the edge of the rug, as if she wanted to dig into the marble.
“I need to see what’s under the rug.”
Immediately, Dörr shoved the mattress aside and Heimdallr flipped the rug back to reveal the marble floor beneath.
Smaller gilded tiles were inlaid into the white marble in the same design I’d seen in the dream. A triple spiral. The same symbol I’d seen in the legacy on the brooch.
