[Location: Wildwoods, Midgard]
"So, want to tell me now?"
Faye's voice cut through the crackle of the fire, soft yet sharp, the way frost crunches beneath a hunter's boot—quiet, certain, inescapable.
I looked up. She was walking toward me with measured steps, the shadows of the fire painting long streaks over her form. In her arms, she carried a heavy bear pelt, folded neatly as if she'd prepared it just for this moment. Without a word, she dropped it into my lap.
The weight of it startled me. The pelt was warm, thick, still smelling of pine sap, musk, and faint blood. My hands brushed along its coarse hairs, my fingers tightening on instinct, but I didn't look at her. Not yet.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, voice flat.
A lie. One she would never believe.
Faye didn't call me out immediately. Instead, she sat down beside me, closer than she needed to. Her shoulder pressed against mine, firm, deliberate, as though daring me to flinch or pull away. I didn't. Couldn't.
The hearthlight painted her profile in gold and ember. Her jaw, sharp yet softened by a faint scar near her chin. The loose strands of auburn hair escaping her braid glowed like threads of fire. Her eyes, fixed not on me but on the flames, reflected the light like polished amber glass.
"Brooding, much?" she asked finally, her lips curving slightly—half jest, half accusation.
I breathed out slowly, the weight of her nearness pressing harder than the pelt on my lap. "Brooding is what people call it when they don't want to admit they're worried."
Her eyes shifted then, sliding to me, searching, measuring. "And what are you worried about?"
The question struck like a thrown spear—clean, precise, meant to pierce straight through.
I didn't answer right away. The silence stretched taut between us, broken only by the fire's hiss as sap bled from the logs. The crackle of embers sounded louder than it should have, filling the gaps where my words should've been.
"My journey."
I especially emphasized my.
The word hung heavy in the air, a weight not even the fire's warmth could soften.
Faye didn't flinch. Her lips pressed together, her expression unreadable, but her eyes… her eyes said everything. There was no anger there, no scorn. Only the quiet weight of someone who already knew the truth, and was waiting for me to admit it out loud.
"You mean our journey," she said softly, though her tone carried iron.
"No." My grip on the pelt tightened, knuckles pale against the dark fur. "Mine."
Her breath caught—just slightly, almost imperceptibly. If I hadn't been watching her so closely, I might have missed it. But I did see it. The smallest falter in her composure, the faintest fracture in her calm mask.
"And why," she said after a pause, "is it yours alone?"
Because you're wife-to-be of bloody Ghost of Sparta, damnit!
That's what I wanted to scream.That's the truth thrumming in my chest, the truth hammering against my ribs like a caged beast demanding release.
But I didn't say it. Couldn't.
Because how do you tell a woman—this woman—that her entire life, her entire future, had already been written in a script I was never meant to read? That somewhere out there, in a world not her own, people sat comfortably in front of glowing screens and watched her story unfold like it was just entertainment?
No. That was madness. Worse than madness.
It would shatter her.
And if there's one thing I've come to know about Laufey the Just, it's that her spirit is a glacier: vast, unyielding, and deeply ancient. But even glaciers can crack if struck the wrong way.
So I swallowed it down. The fire in me. The prophecy I shouldn't know. The future I shouldn't have seen.I smothered it all beneath a mask.
"My burden," I finally said, voice low, roughened with restraint. "Not yours."
Her amber eyes lingered on me a moment too long, sharp enough to peel back the layers of my soul. She knew there was more. She always knew. Faye had that way about her—like she could sift truth from lies the way hunters separate bone from flesh.
But she didn't press. Not yet.
Instead, she leaned back on her hands, stretching her legs toward the fire. Sparks leapt in the air, swirling briefly in the draft that slipped through the timber walls. Her silhouette shifted, and for a heartbeat she looked less like the woman beside me and more like the Jötunn of legend: untouchable, monumental, inevitable.
"You carry your past like a millstone," she said finally, her tone gentle, almost pitying. "But burdens shared weigh less."
"Not this one," I said quickly. Too quickly.
Her gaze flicked to me again, catching the crack in my composure, and her lips curved—not in humor, but in that faint, knowing way that made me feel as though I'd already lost the argument before it began.
"Then you are either a fool," she murmured, "or you think me weak."
The words landed like thunder.
"I don't—"
"You do," she cut me off, her voice calm but laced with quiet steel. "Because if you didn't, you would trust me. And you don't."
The silence that followed pressed like a mountain on my chest.
Her words weren't venom, but truth. And truth hurt more than any blade.
I turned my face away, staring into the flames, because meeting her eyes would've been like staring into a mirror reflecting everything I didn't want to admit.
"I trust you," I said finally, my jaw tight. "This wrath, I told you it keeps me alive and wouldn't let me die, and if I even died, I would come back. Out of seer wrath, if I ever lose control... There would be no one..."
"…No one? No one what?"
Faye leaned forward, her presence filling my vision, cutting through the flames, cutting through the air, cutting through me.
Her blue eyes didn't waver, didn't blink, didn't soften. They were daggers, piercing past every wall I had ever raised.
And gods help me—I couldn't look away.
"…No one to stop me," I said finally, my voice low, gravel dragged across stone. "No one to pull me back if I fall."
Faye's lips parted, just slightly. A breath left her, slower than it should've been. Her eyes flickered—not away, not down, but deeper. Into me.
The silence between us swelled until even the fire seemed to quiet itself, as if the flames bent to listen.
"You think yourself a monster," she said softly, her voice gentler now, though no less sharp.
I let out a bitter laugh, dry, humorless. "Think? No. I know."
The bear pelt slipped from my lap as my hands tightened, fists clenched, trembling. Red cracks crawled faintly across the backs of my knuckles, glowing beneath the skin like molten seams in broken stone.
"I've seen what I am when wrath takes me. Whole fields burn. Rivers boil. Skies blacken. Flesh, bone, gods, demons—it doesn't matter. Everything falls."
I turned to her then, forcing myself to meet her gaze, though every part of me screamed to look away.
"And when that happens here… who will stand against me?"
The words dropped between us like a hammer on anvil, the ring of it stretching into eternity.
But Faye…
Faye didn't flinch.
She didn't recoil. Didn't pale. Didn't show even an ounce of fear.
Instead, she leaned closer. Her face so near now that I could see every detail—the faint freckles across her nose, the subtle scar that traced the line of her jaw, the way her lips pressed together as if holding back words sharper than any blade.
And then, softly, she said:
"I will."
The words struck harder than any blow I had ever taken.
"You—" My voice cracked, rough, disbelief spilling through. "You would stand against me? Against that?"
"If it must be done," she said firmly. "If wrath swallows you, if you forget yourself, if you become the beast you fear… then yes. I will stop you."
Her tone was steady. Certain. Not born of pride, not of arrogance, but of conviction so absolute it carved the air around her into stone.
I stared at her, every thought in my head colliding, shattering, re-forming in a storm I couldn't contain.
This woman. This Jötunn. This… impossible force wrapped in mortal skin.
She didn't understand. She couldn't. The beast I was, the abyss I carried, the cycle of rage and death that chained me—how could she ever stand against that? Against me?
And yet…
And yet her eyes burned with truth. And in that truth, I saw no hesitation. No doubt.
Only her.
"I don't want you to," I whispered finally, voice raw. "I don't want you anywhere near that part of me."
Faye's brow furrowed slightly. "And yet, you want me near the rest of you?"
The question was simple. Too simple.
But it cracked me open.
I opened my mouth to deny it, to lie, to bury everything under another mountain of silence.
But I couldn't.
The firelight glowed against her skin, her hair, her eyes, and in that moment—gods help me—I couldn't lie to her.
"Yes," I said, the word tearing itself out of me like a confession dragged from a guilty man. "Yes, I do."
The air shifted.
Faye's breath caught, faint but there. Her eyes widened—just slightly, just enough. She turned her face away, the firelight catching the curve of her cheek.
For the first time since I'd known her, Laufey the Just faltered.
Gods forbid me—she blushed.
SHE.
The unyielding glacier. The mountain of calm, the one who stood against the storm without bending… she flushed like a maiden caught in a lie. A faint bloom of warmth along her pale cheeks, fleeting but undeniable.
And it ruined me.
Because that single slip—more than any of her steel words, more than any vow of defiance—tore through every defense I had left.
"…Faye," I whispered, the name leaving my lips before I could stop it.
Her head snapped toward the fire again, as if the flames had suddenly become the most fascinating thing in all the Nine Realms. "The night grows cold," she muttered, her voice quieter than before, steadier, but not steady enough.
I almost laughed. Almost. But the sound that came out of me was closer to a choke, rough, strangled by the weight in my chest.
The silence pressed again, heavy, suffocating. The pelt slid further off my lap, forgotten now, as my hands curled into fists at my knees.
"I shouldn't have said that," I muttered.
Faye didn't answer right away. Her profile remained lit by the fire, sharp and soft all at once, like a blade wrapped in cloth. Her lips parted slightly, then pressed together again, as though the words that tried to rise were too heavy to carry.
Finally, she said, "And yet you did."
The simplest reply. But it cut deeper than any spear.
I turned away, my eyes dragging to the ward-staff outside the hut, its faint blue glow pulsing in rhythm with the night. "This path leads nowhere good," I said, voice rough. "You know that."
"I know nothing," Faye replied, calm but firm, "except what stands before me now."
The words lodged in me. I wanted to argue, to tell her she had to know, that the future had already been carved. That she wasn't mine to want.
But the truth—the real, sick, bitter truth—was that I didn't want to let her go.
Not to fate.Not to prophecy.Not to Kratos.
My throat burned. I rose to my feet suddenly, the pelt falling fully to the floor. The crackle of the fire seemed louder as I paced toward the door. The cold night air seeped through the wood, sharp and biting, but not sharper than the war inside me.
"You should get some rest," I muttered, my back turned to her.
"And you?" she asked.
"I don't."
A pause. Her voice softened. "Because of the wrath?"
"…Because of everything."
The quiet stretched. I half-expected her to press again, to hurl another truth-laced blade into my back. But instead, I heard the soft rustle of cloth as she stood. The faint scuff of her steps across the timber floor.
And then, warmth.
My face pressed against her chest, my breath muffled by the coarse linen and the softer flesh beneath it. Her arms circled me—not hesitantly, not cautiously, but firm, deliberate, as though she meant to hold me in place even if the world itself tried to tear me free.
I froze.
The weight of her touch rooted me to the spot. My fists trembled at my sides, the cracks of glowing red flickering like dying embers across my knuckles. I should have stepped back. Should have torn myself away before this became something it could never be.
But I didn't.
Gods forgive me—I leaned into it.
Fuck it. I want her.
If Kratos even came close to her, Mantra-induced Wrath would befall him.
With that thought, my limp arms wrapped themselves around her—slow at first, then tighter, until it was less an embrace and more a claim.
Possessiveness. It seeped out of me like venom, like the cracks of burning red that flared across my forearms whenever wrath stirred too close to the surface.
She leaned back just enough to see my face, and unknowingly, I tilted my head upwards as she was the standing one while I was seated.
Her eyes.Gods damn me, her eyes.
Serene blue pools, wide and unflinching, staring into me like I was something worth reading instead of something to be feared. In their reflection, the fire behind her flickered, but it felt like the flame was inside me instead—spreading, consuming, searing.
"Asura," she whispered.
The sound of my name—my cursed name—on her lips sent a jolt through my chest. No mockery. No caution. No dread. Just… warmth. A weightless warmth that wrapped around the jagged edges of my soul like silk, like she had no idea what kind of monster she held in her arms.
I should have pulled back. I should have ripped myself free and thrown a mountain's worth of distance between us before the truth of me swallowed her whole.
Instead…
"I want to protect you," I said, the words tearing themselves free like chains snapping from rusted iron.
Faye blinked, caught off guard. Her brows drew together, a flicker of surprise breaking her glacier mask. "Protect me?"
"Yes." My grip on her tightened. "Even if fate itself says otherwise. Even if—"
I cut myself off, biting hard on the inside of my cheek until copper filled my mouth. I almost said it. Almost spilled the truth—that her fate wasn't with me, wasn't mine to claim. That her story belonged to another.
But the moment stretched, her hand rising, fingers brushing against my jaw, halting every thought in my head.
Her touch wasn't soft—it was grounding. A hunter's calloused hand, the hand of someone who had gutted beasts twice her size, who had stood against cold and hunger and gods. But in that moment, it might as well have been the touch of the divine.
"You speak as though I need protecting," she murmured, tilting her head slightly. "Do you truly think me so fragile?"
"Fragile?" I huffed, almost laughed, though it was bitter and broken. "No, Faye. Not fragile. You're… gods, you're the strongest thing I've ever seen."
Her lips curved—not a smile, not exactly, but something that softened the harsh set of her jaw. "Then why this burden you clutch so tightly to yourself? Why deny me the truth?"
Because if I told you… you'd hate me.
Because if I told you… you'd walk away.
Because if I told you… I'd lose you to a man not yet here.
Or... It's me who's overthinking.
My silence must have spoken louder than words, because her eyes flickered, narrowing just slightly. She searched me again, deeper than before, and for the first time, I thought she might actually glimpse it—the truth buried in my marrow.
I panicked.
So I kissed her.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't clean. It was the desperate clash of two storms colliding, my hands fisting in her tunic, dragging her down to me as if I could chain her here, bind her to this moment forever.
For a heartbeat, she froze. Shock, hesitation, something unreadable.
And then—gods help me—she didn't pull away.
Her breath mingled with mine, warm against the cold air of the Wildwoods. Her lips pressed back against mine, firm, certain, a warrior's kiss that was not surrender but acknowledgement.
When she finally pulled away, the fire between us didn't dim—it roared.
Her hand stayed on my jaw, thumb brushing the seam of my cracked skin where faint lines of red glowed. "You're a fool," she said softly, voice trembling just enough for me to hear what she tried to hide. "But so am I."
"But I am the bigger one."
***
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