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bookishwenchDust blew through the swinging doors of the Long Branch as a gust of wind whipped down the deserted main street. Heat shimmered off the packed dirt that passed for a road as the hottest part of the day blasted the wooden storefronts with so much strength that the paint began peeling off. No one was outside. It was too hot to do anything but feel limp and groggy. Every breath seemed to take extra effort, and Loki longed for the cool mist of the Great Waterfall back home. He considered asking Heimdall to open the Bifrost, but even that seemed like too much work. Instead, he took the same path as the wind and pushed open the saloon doors, finding the inside quiet and at least slightly cooler out of the blazing light of the Midgardian sun.
“We’re not open yet,” came a familiar voice from behind the bar.
“Not even for me?” he said, putting on his most charming grin.
“Well, now, this is a pleasant surprise!” the woman said, smiling in a way that set her eyes sparkling. “Lonnie! We haven’t seen you around Dodge for at least a couple years. How’ve you been?”
“Oh, nothing much to report,” he said, settling against the bar and leaning his elbows on the worn boards. “And you, Miss Kitty?”
“The world keeps turning and I keep turning with it,” she said, still smiling as she pulled out a large mug and filled it with cold beer. “This one’s on the house.”
“Your generosity is most appreciated,” he said, grabbing the mug and downing it at one go, then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s hot out there.”
“It’s Kansas and it’s August,” Kitty said, chuckling. “Of course it’s hot. You planning on setting up a poker table again?”
“Possibly,” Loki said, letting his eyes rove over the familiar room. “Either that or faro. Is there anyone who might be interested?”
“I don’t think they’ve quite forgotten that royal flush you managed to pull out of nowhere last time,” she said, eyeing him critically. “Neither have I, if it comes to that.”
“Are you suggesting I was dealing from the bottom of the deck?” he said, putting a hand to his heart as though her words wounded him.
“No,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “I know you weren’t. I’ve seen enough cheats to be able to catch most of their tricks.”
“And played more than a few yourself, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said with a smirk.
“Possibly, but don’t tell anyone” she said. “No, the only way you could have pulled off that move was magic.”
“And you don’t believe in magic?” he said.
“Even with everything I’ve seen, the answer is still no,” Kitty said, and for a moment her smile slipped and looked weary.
“Then in that case, you have no objection to my starting a game?”
“I suppose not, but even though it’s quiet right now, just know a whole slew of cowboys are planning on showing up tonight.”
“Particularly rowdy, I take it?”
“Texans,” Kitty said as though that explained the matter fully. “Just don’t wind up getting shot or lynched or tarred and feathered. They’re liable to take offense at anything.”
“I assure you, none of that will happen,” he said, doffing his dark green Stetson. “I wouldn’t want to sully your floors.”
Kitty laughed, then pulled another beer for him, which he drank more slowly this time.
A handful of mortal years ago, feeling bored, Loki had decided to explore the American West for no other reason than the stories he had heard sounded delightfully chaotic. His time in Dodge had proven that the rumors were a mere shadow of the reality: gunfights, bank robberies, stagecoach kidnappings, wild cowboys, wilder saloon girls, and all of it soaked in beer and whisky so pathetically bad that it was charming. He liked this place, its sense of not being wilderness or civilization, not one thing or another, tilting between past and present and just as likely to turn into another of the ghost towns that littered the prairie as it was to grow into a proper city like Denver. It could be anything, and it changed from minute to minute. The energy was intoxicating, and he was in his element.
When Lonnie Dinson, as he called himself here, had shown up, the picture of a professional gambler with his green suit and polished manners, two men had tried to shoot him almost on sight just for being “a dude.” They hadn’t been expecting him to produce a pair of daggers from nowhere, sending the first hurtling through the air to knock a six-gun out of one man’s hand with the second following close behind and cleanly slicing the buttons off the other man’s shirt without so much as nicking the fabric. True, Loki’s accent marked him as foreign—and that he certainly was, just from much further than any of them expected—but he was as wild as any of them and, in spite of the grave sin of winning far too much at poker, he was accepted.
Glittering in the middle of all that lovely chaos like a fiery ruby was the red-headed Kitty Russell, half-owner of the Long Branch. She was smart as a whip and had no need for any man to save her. On Loki’s fourth night at the saloon, a customer had gotten too rough with one of the other girls. Loki had nearly intervened only for Kitty to beat him to it, smashing a bottle over the bar and threatening to scratch the man’s eyes out, looking like she was some vengeful goddess herself. The offender had turned tail and run. Loki, on the other hand, found himself slightly smitten with her.
“I have never seen anyone—cowboy, rancher, mountain man, or gun slinger—drink as much as you do, as fast as you do, without getting even the tiniest bit drunk,” she said, shaking her head as he put a coin on the bar to pay for his third beer.
“I don’t get drunk, my dear,” he said, “only full.”
“Well, you must be the emptiest fella ever,” she said, laughing. “You can set up at the table nearest the door, Lonnie, and be a good boy and try to get them to pay for their drinks before you take all their money, will you?”
“If I happen to divest anyone of their entire fortune, I solemnly promise to make up the difference to you myself,” Loki said with an overly dramatic bow.
He had just seated himself at the battered old table and opened his valise to pull out his cards and chips when the door swung open again, admitting a man so tall and broad shouldered that Loki was mildly surprised he hadn’t needed to turn sideways and duck to get through.
“Kitty,” the man said, nodding to her in greeting, “you haven’t seen Doc anywhere, have you?”
“No. He’s not up in his office?”
“Just tried there.”
“Someone hurt?”
“Nah, just wanted to see if he’s up for dinner at Delmonico’s tonight,” he said.
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him,” Kitty said, wiping off the bar.
Loki noticed it at once, of course. The bar was already perfectly clean, and a light flush was painting her cheeks in a far prettier pink than the rouge she had applied earlier. So, that was the way of it.
“Thanks,” the man said, oblivious to the obvious, “I’ll check by later tonight to see if there’s any trouble.”
“Oh, say, Matt, have you met Lonnie Dinson?” Kitty said, motioning towards Loki. “I think you were trailing the O’Grady Gang halfway to Fort Larned the last time he was here.”
“No, I haven’t,” Matt said, and Loki stood and nodded politely. “You’re a gambler, then, Dinson?”
“Aren’t we all in one way or another?” he answered. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, mister--?”
“Dillon. Matt Dillon, United States marshal,” he said, giving Loki an appraising look. Something in the way the man’s eyes squinted told him that whatever the marshal saw, it wasn’t inspiring perfect confidence in him. “You run an honest game, Dinson?”
“As honest as the day is long,” he said, mentally adding, “in Norway on the winter solstice.”
The man hummed as though he wasn’t completely convinced, but nodded. “Not from around here, are you?”
“No. Is that a problem, Marshal?” he said, sizing up the other man, who really was rather impressive for a mortal. He would even have dwarfed Thor.
“No,” the marshal said, still giving him an even look. “We just don’t want any mischief around these parts. Got enough already.”
Loki very nearly laughed at the phrasing, but instead he shook the man’s hand firmly and watched him walk out, the doors swinging in his wake.
“Really, Kitty?” Loki said, turning his gaze on her and raising one eyebrow playfully. “A marshal?”
“What do you mean?” she said, giving him a look every bit as sharp and probing as this Dillon’s.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, biting back a grin and a regretful sigh at the same time.
“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” she said, not letting him off the hook.
“I mean, my dear, that you are obviously in love with that man, more’s the pity.”
He immediately regretted his words because Kitty looked at him as if he had slapped her.
“You can leave,” she said, her voice low and trembling with anger. “Now.”
“I meant no offense—” he started.
“Oh yes you did,” she growled, her hands balling into fists.
“Alright, maybe I did a little,” he admitted, his brows furrowing in confusion, “but not enough to warrant being kicked out in the street. It just struck me as amusing that a woman with as little regard for the rules of society as you have would be enamored with a lawman.”
“Because I’m not in his class? Is that it?” she spat at him.
“Only in the sense that he isn’t good enough for the likes of you, not the other way around,” Loki said, daring to come a little closer to the bar. “Kitty, why are you doing this to yourself? I can’t imagine a happy ending to this scenario, and I have a truly spectacular imagination.”
She barked a rough laugh and dropped her head, breaking the fierce glare she had held him with since he had said what she had obviously meant to be kept unsaid. To his horror, he saw her face twist for a moment as though she might cry, but she immediately grabbed a glass from the bar, filled it with whiskey, and finished it with one swallow. She cleared her throat quietly, then straightened again.
“He’s married to being a marshal,” she finally said. “Always has been, always will be. I know there’s no future in it, but it doesn’t matter.”
Loki nodded, then gently put his hand on hers where it rested on the worn wood.
“The heart wants what it wants,” he said, quoting from the genius mortal he had encountered a few years ago in Amherst, a quiet but fascinating creature he had gently courted for a summer, though he had somewhat regretfully broken her heart when he left.
Kitty screwed up her mouth into a self-deprecating smile and gave one nod, agreeing with the sentiment in all its hopeless truth before sitting down next to him, perhaps a shade too close for propriety.
“I don’t know why I told you that,” she said. “I’ve never said it aloud to anyone, but with you… There’s something strange about you.”
“I’m charming,” he said, dismissively
“Of course you are. We both work in the same general line of things, and that’s a skill we build right about the time we learn to walk. But it’s more than that. You really don’t belong here.”
“Does anyone?”
Kitty shrugged.
“Probably not,” she said. “Maybe I should just go back to New Orleans on the next stage out of here. It has to be better than waiting for the day he’s not fast enough or some outlaw looking to make a name for himself shoots him in the back. And that day’ll come. I’ve known it since the first time I laid eyes on him.”
“Only the Norns know what our fates will be,” he said. “I wouldn’t go putting words in their mouths. It may draw their attention, and that’s rarely a good thing.”
“Superstitious, huh? Never knew a gambler who wasn’t,” Kitty said. “Not a good one, anyway.”
“I suppose you could say that,” he said, then took her hand in his own. “And I suppose there is absolutely no use in my attempting to charm you into a simple, pleasurable, mindless liaison in one of the rooms at the top of those stairs, is there?”
“No, there isn’t,” she said.
“A tragedy,” he said, his long fingers stroking her own one more time before withdrawing. “I meant no offense.”
“None taken. I get enough offers every night that if I fell into a tizzy every time a man propositioned me, I’d swoon my life away,” she said.
“That man is a fool if he doesn’t realize the goddess he is passing over in the name of duty,” he said, his eyes blazing just a bit inhumanly in the low light, but Kitty was looking towards the street where Dillon was.
“A goddess?” she said, laughing again. “Lonnie, I think you missed your calling. You should have been a poet.”
“And who says I’m not?” he said. “We all have our secrets, don’t we?”
“Maybe we do,” Kitty said. “I take back what I said before. You can stay. Miners and cowboys and heaven knows what all else will start coming through that door in a few minutes, so you better get ready. I’ve got to go change into my work clothes. When Sam gets here, tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Of course,” he said, watching her climb the stairs, listening to the soft rustling of her crinolines with each step.
She stopped part way up and turned around to look at him.
“I’m guessing I don’t need to ask you to keep what we talked about quiet. Am I right?” she said, and he had the distinct impression if he ever broke his word to her, he would find himself on the business end of a Winchester.
“Our conversation never occurred,” he promised, drawing an X over his heart.
She turned once more and disappeared into the shadows at the top of the stairs.
Once she was out of sight, he went to the swinging doors and looked out at the street. A few more people were now walking along the boardwalks in the eddying dust, but Matt Dillon stood a full head taller than any of them, easy to see even at the distance of half the street. He was leaning on a hitching post, speaking to a thin man who walked with a stiff leg. Loki felt a rush of anger as he reflected on this man’s utter lack of appreciation for what was in front of him, but Loki glanced upward where somewhere Kitty was putting on one of her jewel-toned dresses for the night and relented, deciding to do what he could to keep her heart safe.
It was a small spell he cast, nothing with great power, but it settled around the man, offering a mild but lasting protection. A bullet could pierce it, but perhaps it would be less than fatal even if carefully aimed.
Loki gave one curt nod of satisfaction and sat at his table, artfully arranging the decks of cards and piles of chips, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was reminded of a woman much like Kitty, strong, courageous, unique, a warrior at heart, and cursed any man fool enough not to hold her close forever, even though it meant he cursed himself.
“The heart wants what it wants,” he repeated to himself, remembering dark hair running through his fingers with the pain of regret pulling at his every breath. No matter how far he ran from Asgard, he couldn’t escape the memory of her. She was too much a part of his heart, even now.
And if Kitty wore a dress of emerald silk that night with paste jewels flashing around her throat as she laughed and drank and hid her own secrets, well, perhaps the Norns had chosen to punish him by showing him what he would never have, even for a moment.
“We’re not open yet,” came a familiar voice from behind the bar.
“Not even for me?” he said, putting on his most charming grin.
“Well, now, this is a pleasant surprise!” the woman said, smiling in a way that set her eyes sparkling. “Lonnie! We haven’t seen you around Dodge for at least a couple years. How’ve you been?”
“Oh, nothing much to report,” he said, settling against the bar and leaning his elbows on the worn boards. “And you, Miss Kitty?”
“The world keeps turning and I keep turning with it,” she said, still smiling as she pulled out a large mug and filled it with cold beer. “This one’s on the house.”
“Your generosity is most appreciated,” he said, grabbing the mug and downing it at one go, then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s hot out there.”
“It’s Kansas and it’s August,” Kitty said, chuckling. “Of course it’s hot. You planning on setting up a poker table again?”
“Possibly,” Loki said, letting his eyes rove over the familiar room. “Either that or faro. Is there anyone who might be interested?”
“I don’t think they’ve quite forgotten that royal flush you managed to pull out of nowhere last time,” she said, eyeing him critically. “Neither have I, if it comes to that.”
“Are you suggesting I was dealing from the bottom of the deck?” he said, putting a hand to his heart as though her words wounded him.
“No,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “I know you weren’t. I’ve seen enough cheats to be able to catch most of their tricks.”
“And played more than a few yourself, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said with a smirk.
“Possibly, but don’t tell anyone” she said. “No, the only way you could have pulled off that move was magic.”
“And you don’t believe in magic?” he said.
“Even with everything I’ve seen, the answer is still no,” Kitty said, and for a moment her smile slipped and looked weary.
“Then in that case, you have no objection to my starting a game?”
“I suppose not, but even though it’s quiet right now, just know a whole slew of cowboys are planning on showing up tonight.”
“Particularly rowdy, I take it?”
“Texans,” Kitty said as though that explained the matter fully. “Just don’t wind up getting shot or lynched or tarred and feathered. They’re liable to take offense at anything.”
“I assure you, none of that will happen,” he said, doffing his dark green Stetson. “I wouldn’t want to sully your floors.”
Kitty laughed, then pulled another beer for him, which he drank more slowly this time.
A handful of mortal years ago, feeling bored, Loki had decided to explore the American West for no other reason than the stories he had heard sounded delightfully chaotic. His time in Dodge had proven that the rumors were a mere shadow of the reality: gunfights, bank robberies, stagecoach kidnappings, wild cowboys, wilder saloon girls, and all of it soaked in beer and whisky so pathetically bad that it was charming. He liked this place, its sense of not being wilderness or civilization, not one thing or another, tilting between past and present and just as likely to turn into another of the ghost towns that littered the prairie as it was to grow into a proper city like Denver. It could be anything, and it changed from minute to minute. The energy was intoxicating, and he was in his element.
When Lonnie Dinson, as he called himself here, had shown up, the picture of a professional gambler with his green suit and polished manners, two men had tried to shoot him almost on sight just for being “a dude.” They hadn’t been expecting him to produce a pair of daggers from nowhere, sending the first hurtling through the air to knock a six-gun out of one man’s hand with the second following close behind and cleanly slicing the buttons off the other man’s shirt without so much as nicking the fabric. True, Loki’s accent marked him as foreign—and that he certainly was, just from much further than any of them expected—but he was as wild as any of them and, in spite of the grave sin of winning far too much at poker, he was accepted.
Glittering in the middle of all that lovely chaos like a fiery ruby was the red-headed Kitty Russell, half-owner of the Long Branch. She was smart as a whip and had no need for any man to save her. On Loki’s fourth night at the saloon, a customer had gotten too rough with one of the other girls. Loki had nearly intervened only for Kitty to beat him to it, smashing a bottle over the bar and threatening to scratch the man’s eyes out, looking like she was some vengeful goddess herself. The offender had turned tail and run. Loki, on the other hand, found himself slightly smitten with her.
“I have never seen anyone—cowboy, rancher, mountain man, or gun slinger—drink as much as you do, as fast as you do, without getting even the tiniest bit drunk,” she said, shaking her head as he put a coin on the bar to pay for his third beer.
“I don’t get drunk, my dear,” he said, “only full.”
“Well, you must be the emptiest fella ever,” she said, laughing. “You can set up at the table nearest the door, Lonnie, and be a good boy and try to get them to pay for their drinks before you take all their money, will you?”
“If I happen to divest anyone of their entire fortune, I solemnly promise to make up the difference to you myself,” Loki said with an overly dramatic bow.
He had just seated himself at the battered old table and opened his valise to pull out his cards and chips when the door swung open again, admitting a man so tall and broad shouldered that Loki was mildly surprised he hadn’t needed to turn sideways and duck to get through.
“Kitty,” the man said, nodding to her in greeting, “you haven’t seen Doc anywhere, have you?”
“No. He’s not up in his office?”
“Just tried there.”
“Someone hurt?”
“Nah, just wanted to see if he’s up for dinner at Delmonico’s tonight,” he said.
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him,” Kitty said, wiping off the bar.
Loki noticed it at once, of course. The bar was already perfectly clean, and a light flush was painting her cheeks in a far prettier pink than the rouge she had applied earlier. So, that was the way of it.
“Thanks,” the man said, oblivious to the obvious, “I’ll check by later tonight to see if there’s any trouble.”
“Oh, say, Matt, have you met Lonnie Dinson?” Kitty said, motioning towards Loki. “I think you were trailing the O’Grady Gang halfway to Fort Larned the last time he was here.”
“No, I haven’t,” Matt said, and Loki stood and nodded politely. “You’re a gambler, then, Dinson?”
“Aren’t we all in one way or another?” he answered. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, mister--?”
“Dillon. Matt Dillon, United States marshal,” he said, giving Loki an appraising look. Something in the way the man’s eyes squinted told him that whatever the marshal saw, it wasn’t inspiring perfect confidence in him. “You run an honest game, Dinson?”
“As honest as the day is long,” he said, mentally adding, “in Norway on the winter solstice.”
The man hummed as though he wasn’t completely convinced, but nodded. “Not from around here, are you?”
“No. Is that a problem, Marshal?” he said, sizing up the other man, who really was rather impressive for a mortal. He would even have dwarfed Thor.
“No,” the marshal said, still giving him an even look. “We just don’t want any mischief around these parts. Got enough already.”
Loki very nearly laughed at the phrasing, but instead he shook the man’s hand firmly and watched him walk out, the doors swinging in his wake.
“Really, Kitty?” Loki said, turning his gaze on her and raising one eyebrow playfully. “A marshal?”
“What do you mean?” she said, giving him a look every bit as sharp and probing as this Dillon’s.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, biting back a grin and a regretful sigh at the same time.
“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” she said, not letting him off the hook.
“I mean, my dear, that you are obviously in love with that man, more’s the pity.”
He immediately regretted his words because Kitty looked at him as if he had slapped her.
“You can leave,” she said, her voice low and trembling with anger. “Now.”
“I meant no offense—” he started.
“Oh yes you did,” she growled, her hands balling into fists.
“Alright, maybe I did a little,” he admitted, his brows furrowing in confusion, “but not enough to warrant being kicked out in the street. It just struck me as amusing that a woman with as little regard for the rules of society as you have would be enamored with a lawman.”
“Because I’m not in his class? Is that it?” she spat at him.
“Only in the sense that he isn’t good enough for the likes of you, not the other way around,” Loki said, daring to come a little closer to the bar. “Kitty, why are you doing this to yourself? I can’t imagine a happy ending to this scenario, and I have a truly spectacular imagination.”
She barked a rough laugh and dropped her head, breaking the fierce glare she had held him with since he had said what she had obviously meant to be kept unsaid. To his horror, he saw her face twist for a moment as though she might cry, but she immediately grabbed a glass from the bar, filled it with whiskey, and finished it with one swallow. She cleared her throat quietly, then straightened again.
“He’s married to being a marshal,” she finally said. “Always has been, always will be. I know there’s no future in it, but it doesn’t matter.”
Loki nodded, then gently put his hand on hers where it rested on the worn wood.
“The heart wants what it wants,” he said, quoting from the genius mortal he had encountered a few years ago in Amherst, a quiet but fascinating creature he had gently courted for a summer, though he had somewhat regretfully broken her heart when he left.
Kitty screwed up her mouth into a self-deprecating smile and gave one nod, agreeing with the sentiment in all its hopeless truth before sitting down next to him, perhaps a shade too close for propriety.
“I don’t know why I told you that,” she said. “I’ve never said it aloud to anyone, but with you… There’s something strange about you.”
“I’m charming,” he said, dismissively
“Of course you are. We both work in the same general line of things, and that’s a skill we build right about the time we learn to walk. But it’s more than that. You really don’t belong here.”
“Does anyone?”
Kitty shrugged.
“Probably not,” she said. “Maybe I should just go back to New Orleans on the next stage out of here. It has to be better than waiting for the day he’s not fast enough or some outlaw looking to make a name for himself shoots him in the back. And that day’ll come. I’ve known it since the first time I laid eyes on him.”
“Only the Norns know what our fates will be,” he said. “I wouldn’t go putting words in their mouths. It may draw their attention, and that’s rarely a good thing.”
“Superstitious, huh? Never knew a gambler who wasn’t,” Kitty said. “Not a good one, anyway.”
“I suppose you could say that,” he said, then took her hand in his own. “And I suppose there is absolutely no use in my attempting to charm you into a simple, pleasurable, mindless liaison in one of the rooms at the top of those stairs, is there?”
“No, there isn’t,” she said.
“A tragedy,” he said, his long fingers stroking her own one more time before withdrawing. “I meant no offense.”
“None taken. I get enough offers every night that if I fell into a tizzy every time a man propositioned me, I’d swoon my life away,” she said.
“That man is a fool if he doesn’t realize the goddess he is passing over in the name of duty,” he said, his eyes blazing just a bit inhumanly in the low light, but Kitty was looking towards the street where Dillon was.
“A goddess?” she said, laughing again. “Lonnie, I think you missed your calling. You should have been a poet.”
“And who says I’m not?” he said. “We all have our secrets, don’t we?”
“Maybe we do,” Kitty said. “I take back what I said before. You can stay. Miners and cowboys and heaven knows what all else will start coming through that door in a few minutes, so you better get ready. I’ve got to go change into my work clothes. When Sam gets here, tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Of course,” he said, watching her climb the stairs, listening to the soft rustling of her crinolines with each step.
She stopped part way up and turned around to look at him.
“I’m guessing I don’t need to ask you to keep what we talked about quiet. Am I right?” she said, and he had the distinct impression if he ever broke his word to her, he would find himself on the business end of a Winchester.
“Our conversation never occurred,” he promised, drawing an X over his heart.
She turned once more and disappeared into the shadows at the top of the stairs.
Once she was out of sight, he went to the swinging doors and looked out at the street. A few more people were now walking along the boardwalks in the eddying dust, but Matt Dillon stood a full head taller than any of them, easy to see even at the distance of half the street. He was leaning on a hitching post, speaking to a thin man who walked with a stiff leg. Loki felt a rush of anger as he reflected on this man’s utter lack of appreciation for what was in front of him, but Loki glanced upward where somewhere Kitty was putting on one of her jewel-toned dresses for the night and relented, deciding to do what he could to keep her heart safe.
It was a small spell he cast, nothing with great power, but it settled around the man, offering a mild but lasting protection. A bullet could pierce it, but perhaps it would be less than fatal even if carefully aimed.
Loki gave one curt nod of satisfaction and sat at his table, artfully arranging the decks of cards and piles of chips, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was reminded of a woman much like Kitty, strong, courageous, unique, a warrior at heart, and cursed any man fool enough not to hold her close forever, even though it meant he cursed himself.
“The heart wants what it wants,” he repeated to himself, remembering dark hair running through his fingers with the pain of regret pulling at his every breath. No matter how far he ran from Asgard, he couldn’t escape the memory of her. She was too much a part of his heart, even now.
And if Kitty wore a dress of emerald silk that night with paste jewels flashing around her throat as she laughed and drank and hid her own secrets, well, perhaps the Norns had chosen to punish him by showing him what he would never have, even for a moment.
