Read Online Fate Undone (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 5) by Linsey Hall - Free Book Online

 
    On that day, she’d no longer be serving this table. She’d be seated at it. The thought sent a shiver of aching want through her. To be somebody . To be a god.
    She’d do anything for that.
    Finally, she reached the edge of the dais and climbed the stairs in the darkened back corner.  
    “Watch it, you ham-fisted cunt.” The gruff voice broke through her reverie. Panicked, she glanced down to see her foot crushing the edge of Baldr’s cloak.  
    Oh, no. Not Baldr. The god of light glared at her and she heaved herself back.
    “Go climb under a stablehand, it’s probably all you’re good at,” Baldr said.
    “Lighten up, golden boy.” The raspy voice of another god barely registered in Sigyn’s consciousness as she struggled to balance the haunch of stag that was about to plummet off her tray and onto the floor. And the edge of Baldr’s cloak.
    Desperate visions of the greasy meat staining the fine fabric pushed good sense from her mind. She called upon her magic, gasping at the pain that tore through her chest at the unorthodox use, and righted the meat upon the tray.  
    She shoved it onto the table and said, “I’m so sorry, your eminence. So sorry.”  
    She tripped over herself to back away. Baldr was the last one she wanted to anger, as he very much disagreed with raising demigods to full godhood. She shoved down every retort that rose to her lips and spun, desperate to disappear before Freya noticed her. Or worse, the magic that she’d used for too mundane a purpose.
    Her gaze caught on the god who’d defended her.  
    Loki. Her chest tightened and she shoved away the rush of pleasure as she raced off the dais and into a darkened back corner of the hall.  
    She sucked air into her lungs as she warily eyed the high table. The gods ate and drank and shouted at each other as the golden torches shone down upon the great wooden table. The rich colors of their robes and the gold that decorated their bodies gleamed in the warm light.
    Freya, her golden-haired mother, didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Sigyn’s shudders relaxed an infinitesimal amount and she rubbed her chest, sighing as the pain faded. She really needed her staff to properly channel her magic. Without it, the pain came.
    Which she supposed she deserved, since she’d been using her magic for such an unimportant purpose as saving her own hide from Baldr’s displeasure. Arrogant ass. But that was to be expected from the gods. Supreme arrogance. Which, in her case, usually resulted in rudeness.  
    Except from Loki. She peered at the handsome, black-haired god who’d only recently arrived at the Hall of Aesir. He’d been here but a week and the other gods hadn’t been pleased by his arrival. She’d heard of him, of course. The trickster god who made the other gods’ lives hell. It was like he lived to bring them down a peg.
    She grinned when he shouted an insult across the table at Thor, then turned another upon Baldr. She was desperately jealous of Loki’s ability to say whatever he wanted. She wanted to be able to tell Baldr what she thought.
    But more than that, far more than that, she wanted a seat at that table and the power and prestige that came with it. She’d put up with any insult to have that.
    So she watched Loki and lived vicariously through him. He was very good at flyting , the insult game that the gods played. But he played it more viciously than the rest, his barbs meant to sting and maim. He never held back, seemed intent upon crushing his opponents with the worst insults he could devise.
    But he’d never turned that cruelty on her. Nor the rudeness that most of the other gods showed her. She could bear their rudeness—she could bear anything—as long as it earned her the seat she coveted. It was the price a half-blood would pay to ascend to full godship, and she was willing to pay it.
    But Loki. In the week he’d been here, he’d been nothing but courteous to her. Why, she had no idea. She liked it. As