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It was an annoyance that hindered his thoughts for weeks. He had not wanted to admit it, to debase himself for being reduced to wanting to visit that other world that smelled too much of moss and rain and magic. He had no interest in the incredible fragile humans, the ones that bled from their hearts and and drank their world in with eyes and ears and lips. He consoled himself with the fact that if the young woman in blue had been enough to enrapture the nefarious Rumpelstiltskin, then he was not entirely guilty. She had an otherworldly gift or talent-it was the only explanation.
That did not make it easier to swallow when he found himself thinking of blue eyes and chestnut hair, and he snapped his book shut in irritation, tossing the novel down to the floor. He sat in the windowsill, boots crossed at the ankles and glaring out the window.
It was only in times of recumbence that he could think of more things he could have said. She’d lifted her chin with more regality than a royal, with a defiant confidence of the words she spoke being true, and he ground his teeth together imagining all he could have thrown at her. Breaking her notions and dismantling her own illusions made his mouth water, because to whom or what would she cling to when she realized she had nothing left in that crumbling world of dusty magic?
There was, in Loki’s experience, a beauty in desolation.
And the old scaly sorcerer used her as a maid.
Sliding up from his window seat with a loud click of his boots on the floor, he paced the length of the library shelves, frowning at nothing but his mind churning bitterly over their exchange. It had been so easy to speak to her, to watch her pale skin glow beneath the sunlight filled window and impossible to mistake her rosy blush. She’d sat upon the spinning wheel like a queen upon her throne, silver shoes peeking from beneath the hem of her crinkled blue linen skirts. She had spoken with neither coldness nor warmth, but a gentle hesitancy. Perhaps she had feared to say the wrong thing to a client of her master’s.
Or maybe she was careful of her words. That warmed him from the inside out, the idea that those soft words her precious voice murmured to him over the snapping of the fire had been given true, honest thought. There was something about it, a woman with a way of wit, that had his fingers curling into the sleeves of his tunic. She was no fool, and he felt a heat spread up the back of his neck, hotter than when she’d caught his wrist.
It had felt like centuries since someone had touched him when her fingers found the skin beneath his sleeve. He had expected her to be pliant and supple, as most of the mortal women he’d encountered were, but beneath her softness, her gentleness, there was steel and it smoldered. In that moment, he had known she would not be deceived, tricked, or disobeyed.
A maid had spurned the hand of a god, and he was left to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from overturning the shelves of tomes and scrolls and books because he still smelled the honey she’d stirred into her tea. It had painted her lips when her eyes danced over the rim of her cup, and he wanted to break something-perhaps, even, himself.
His last glimpse of her had seared his skin, her twin crystal eyes filled with curiosity that he wished he could slake. Her speech of love had left her breathless and flushed with passion, and drinking her in with his eyes had not been enough. For all the worlds, he would even sit and let her berate him over his attitude toward the very notion if he could catch that same look from her again.
His fingers twitched, recalling the coldness the Dark One had rebuffed his offer with-to take her with him-his mouth twisted into a scowl. Whatever spell the little maid had cast over the sorcerer was powerful, and Loki felt nothing but irritation to have found himself caught under it, as well.
Pulling books from the shelves, he made the decision to seek out whatever magic the impudent and lovely creature possessed and cure himself of it.
Her distraction was beginning to get on his nerves.