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STARCROSSED
The dreams begin after she meets her fiancé’s brother.
“I’m Loki,” he says, holding out his hand with a grin. “Thor may have told you about me.”
“Jane,” she replies. His fingertips are cool and smooth, and instead of shaking, he brings her knuckles to his lips. Chills flit across her skin with the brief, electrifying contact.
His smile falters—just a hair—and his brows pull together in fleeting consternation. She yanks her hand back, breaking the unsettling connection between them. (He’s dangerous, she decides. Aptly named after the mythological God of Mischief.)
He laughs, though his pale eyes hold something other than mirth. Question. Curiosity. Interest. “I like her,” he says, turning to his brother. “It’s a pity you found her before I did.”
Thor lets out a boisterous guffaw and claps his brother on the shoulder, but Loki winks at Jane as if sharing an inside joke with her, as if they have more history than this first meeting. She laces her fingers together to hide the sudden tremor in her hands. Because she can feel it—the weight of something between them when there should be nothing.
That night she dreams of a picnic in an emerald meadow. He lazes next to her on a blanket, raven hair long, falling past the collar of his tunic in soft waves. He plucks a berry from the modest spread of food and feeds it to her, fingertips brushing across her lips before drawing his hand back.
“Marry me,” he says. “Be my wife.”
She gives him a pitying smile despite the flutters his words induce. (She loves him, and it frightens her.) “You know I cannot.”
He groans, lying back on the blanket. “I know you’re betrothed to Theoric,” he says, waving his hand in dismissal. “Will you truly choose a common soldier over a prince?”
She shakes her head; the choice is more complicated than he implies. “I choose fidelity and loyalty, Loki.”
He sits up, suddenly earnest, and pins her with a gaze so bright, so intense, she’s forced to look away. “I will gladly give you those things.”
She almost believes him (she wants to believe him), but this is Loki, the mercurial dark son of Odin who leaps from one shiny bauble to the next on whim. “I’m certain you would make a valiant effort,” she replies, “until you grow bored and move on to your next conquest.”
His expression turns angry, resolute. “Do not belittle my love for you, Sigyn.” He caresses her cheek, draws her closer to him. “You’ve made me a desperate man, and there are no lengths I will not go to in order to get what I want.”
His gaze drops to her mouth. “I mean to make you mine. Forever.”
She clutches the blanket as he kisses her, ruthless and hungry.
Jane wakes with a gasp.
Just a dream, she tells herself. A mere figment of her over-exuberant imagination born from her encounter with him the day before.
Just a dream. (Why does it feel like a memory?)
He appears unannounced and unwelcome in her lab days later. “Thor told me what you do,” he says by way of explanation when she demands the reason for his visit. “I’ll admit that I’m rather curious about your work.”
He’s lying. (She can’t explain how she knows this.) She’ll play along, though. She gives him a tour of the facilities, and he follows closely behind and asks surprisingly intelligent questions. He listens raptly as she expounds on Lorentzian transversable wormhole theory and he understands. (Thor is supportive of her research, but the concepts, the mathematics are beyond him.)
Loki admits to a passing interest in physics, expresses a wish that he was funding her project instead of his brother. She backs away from him, from the intimacy and longing in his last statement. She’s disturbed that a part of her wishes it, too.
“Forgive me,” he says, closing the distance she tried to put between them, “but have we met before?”
She shakes her head to deny both his question and her awareness of the inexplicable tug coaxing her toward him. “Not that I know of.”
“You’re sure?” He studies her with a frown. “It’s just that you seem terribly familiar.”
“Maybe I have one of those faces.” She manages a weak laugh despite her heart pounding against her ribcage.
“Right, of course. That must be it.” He smiles, though it doesn’t ease mounting tension. He drags his tongue across his bottom lip, and she recalls the dream, his mouth on hers.
“Would you,” he says with a ghost of uncertainty in his voice, “join me for lunch tomorrow?”
Yes. The word dances precariously at the tip of her tongue, but she swallows it back. Because the invitation feels like more, and for a heartbeat, she forgot that her life is tied to another. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
His smile twists at the corners—almost a smirk. (Dangerous.) “Why not?” he asks. “You’re soon to be my sister, and what’s the harm in a little familial bonding?”
Everything, she wants to say. But she doesn’t have a rational explanation why they shouldn’t. “Fine. Okay.”
His expression is luminous—there is no other word for it—and something inside of her soars over having that effect on him, followed by briny guilt. “Brilliant,” he says. He takes her hand in his and draws a line over her knuckles with his thumb. “I’ll text you the time and place. Until tomorrow.”
The kiss he places on the top of her hand is as soft as the first one he gave her, but it lingers a hairsbreadth past the point of decency, and she decides she’ll cancel their plans when he contacts her later.
(She doesn’t.)
That night she wanders down stone corridors flickering with the amber glow of torchlight. A castle—her castle, or soon to be hers. But it’s not home; it never will be. Her soul is forever in Ireland. (Her heart is elsewhere, too, but she dares not think on what cannot be.)
A hand grasps her from a shadowed alcove, and another covers her mouth before she can scream. “Quiet,” her captor warns in a low murmur. She recognizes the baritone timbre—just as the length of his body pressed against her back is equally familiar.
He leads her down darkened hallways until they are without the castle walls and into the moonlit gardens. He looks wild and beautiful with his inky hair making an unkempt halo around his perfect visage. She loves him and that love is a wound which will never heal.
“Tristan,” she whispers, and he pulls her to him, takes her mouth with abandon. She is incinerated and reborn with his kiss like the phoenix of lore, and she clings to him until she might die for want of air.
He breaks away from her, chest heaving, and rests his forehead against hers. “Isolde,” he murmurs with such affection that she feels as though she might float away.
“Isolde,” he repeats. “I beg you, do not wed my uncle. Come away with me.”
His plea cuts her; she wants this marriage no more than he does, but the consequences of fleeing her obligation are a burden too heavy to bear. “I cannot.”
He retreats from her, brows pinched together in frustration. “But you do not love him!”
“I do not,” she agrees. “But love is not enough.”
He stares at her, horrified. “Love is everything.”
As much as he’s stabbed her with his allegation, he’s angered her as well. “Will love keep my family safe from your uncle when he discovers that I have betrayed him?” She advances on him. “Will love keep us warm and fed as we wander over hill and dale as beggars, never settling for fear that King Mark’s wrath will find us?”
His head drops in acquiescence. “Ever pragmatic, my Isolde.” He looks upon her with sorrow, though he offers her a smile. “Ever steadfast.”
He cradles her jaw with his long fingers, calloused by wielding a sword for so many years. “Know this, my love,” he says. “Whether you marry him or not, I will never leave your side.”
He kisses her again, without tenderness this time, but with need and pain and what should have been, and she sobs at the onslaught.
Jane’s face is wet when she wakes, eyes swollen, throat tight. As a little girl, she used to have nightmares where she was chased by dire wolves through an endless forest.
This is worse.
Because in the light of morning, the wolves would dissipate, and with them, the fear. But these dreams, the emotion, the ache, the yearning remain like barbed thorns burrowing into her chest.
She shouldn’t meet him for lunch.
She does. (She wonders if there was ever a choice in the first place.)
He’s in the back of the bistro, sitting at a small table tucked in a hidden corner, and when he rises to greet her, radiant, happy, she feels as though her heart beats for the first time. He’s more casual than she’s seen him, clad in pair of dark slacks and a white button-down, collar open, sleeves rolled up.
“Jane,” he murmurs in a tone just on this side of reverence before kissing her cheek. “I’m so glad you came.” He was afraid she wouldn’t, she realizes, and it thrills her that he—
Stop.
She takes the seat he pulls out for her, giving him a neutral smile as apprehension and anticipation battle inside of her.
After the waiter takes their order, Loki leans forward on his elbows. “Tell me everything about yourself.”
They talk. The conversation is halting at first, awkward, but they soon fall into an easy rhythm. She tells him how she fell in love with the stars, of spending summers in Norway with her godfather. She tells him her happiest memories, her most embarrassing moments, and he interjects with stories of his years at Eton, of the insanely creative pranks he pulled on his bullies. (She laughs more than she ever remembers laughing.) He shares his darkest moment—finding out he was adopted and the self-imposed estrangement from his family that followed, an estrangement which is only now beginning to heal. She aches for him and talks about losing her parents to a senseless accident at the vulnerable age of fourteen.
Their lives are laid bare, and she knows—knows—that she could have loved him. And it would have burned brighter, hotter, more completely than the steady, gentle hum of affection she feels for his brother (a love, which until this moment, seemed blazing and all-encompassing).
If only—
No.
Loki leans back, stretching his legs, one brushing against hers. He studies her with a piercing gaze, and her skin tightens with goosebumps. “What is it about you?” he says in a low voice as if speaking more to himself than to her. “It’s driving me mad because I hardly know you, but I’ve never wanted anything more than I want—”
She stands abruptly, her chair screeching against the tiled floor. “I have to go.”
He rises, grasps her wrist. “Please, don’t.” She stares at him as he steps around the table. “Don’t go, Jane.”
She shakes her head. “This isn’t familial bonding, Loki.”
He traces a line down her cheek, along her jaw (why is she letting him touch her this way?). “No, it’s not,” he agrees.
“I’m engaged to your brother,” she says in attempt to break the virulent hold he has on her.
“I know.” He laughs, quiet and bitter. “I know you are, and I don’t care.”
She steps back from him; it terrifies her how much she’d hurt if he didn’t want her and how much it hurts that he does.
“You feel it too, don’t you? That you’re meant to be mine, not his?” he asks, his expression almost pleading as he follows her retreat. “It’s madness, but I think… I think I’m already yours. I feel like I’ve always been.”
She runs.
Because she’s afraid if she opens her mouth that the right words won’t come, but she’ll tell him the truth—that she does feel it, with every cell in her body—and her meticulously built house of cards will come tumbling down.
She texts him later. Tells him that it would be better if he stayed away. Blocks his number before he can respond.
She cries herself to sleep.
He walks the castle gardens at her side, hands clasped behind his back, as they speak of unimportant matters. She is unattended save for him; if there is any man her husband trusts with her safety, it is Lancelot.
He turns to her, handsome features pained. “Your majesty, I am dying.”
She’s struck with alarm. “What ails you?” she asks, fearing the loss of her most beloved acquaintance. (He is more than that, in fact, but she cannot admit it.) “Have the physicians seen to you?”
He laughs, though there is no mirth in it. “No, it is not that kind of ailment,” he says. “I am of sound body. Unfortunately, I am not of sound mind.”
She directs him to sit with her on a bench, her heart thrumming with worry. “What troubles you?”
“You trouble me,” he confesses, and her limbs grow weak. He takes her hand, holds it against his chest. “I love you, Guinevere. I love you with the fire of a thousand suns, and to be near you, but eternally forbidden to express my profound affection for you is the slowest, most agonizing death any man can experience. I can bear it no longer.”
Her hand trembles as she takes it back from him. “You cannot say such things.” Even if it makes her soul sing with rapture to hear it. Because she has loved him as deeply, as secretly, and she has gallantly born the weight of it knowing her ardor was unrequited.
He slides closer to her. “But I must. For I fear I shall throw myself from the highest parapet if I am forced to conceal this truth any longer.” He searches her with a gaze imbued with supplication. “Be it a sin to love you, Guinevere, I will gladly accept damnation. Lie with me. Just once, and I will be satisfied. I swear it.”
He does not wait to hear her answer, but covers her mouth with his and tastes the proscribed fruit which he has denied himself for so long. And she lets him, knowing that once will not sate this hunger. Knowing that it is not only his damnation he will incur, but hers as well.
She cannot refuse him what has ever been his.
In the weeks following her lunch with Loki, Jane is plagued with more dreams. In every one, she plays the woman who choses obligation over love. In every one, he is undeterred by her rejection. And they all end like a Shakespearean tragedy. When she wakes, she’s tempted to call him, to hear his deep voice on the other end of the line and reassure herself that he hasn’t been beheaded or burned at the stake or impaled by a sword for the simple crime of loving her.
She doesn’t call, though.
But she can’t avoid him forever.
She tries to stay at Thor’s side during the engagement party, tries to ignore the smolder of his brother’s eyes trailing her with avarice and envy. Loki’s presence fills every corner of the exorbitant Odinson mansion, and she’s suffocating. She excuses herself with a false smile and pushes through the throng in search of some place, any place, where she can breathe again.
He finds her, of course. (He always will.) She grips the balcony railing, but doesn’t turn when the French doors open and close, or at the soft, liquid footfalls that stop behind her.
“Jane,” he says her name like a prayer, and she closes her eyes.
“Don’t, Loki.”
“I can’t help it.” His fingertips graze her bare shoulder and he whispers, “You’ve made me a desperate man.”
Her heart stops. (They’re dreams. Just dreams.) “What did you say?”
He turns her in a slow circle to face him, to see the steely determination written in his features. “There is no length I will not go to—”
“—in order to get what you want,” she recites, the blood in her veins congealing with frost.
He stares down at her, lips parted, brow furrowed in confusion. “You’ve had them, too. The dreams.” It’s as though something clicks into place for him. “That’s why I’m so drawn to you. I thought I was losing my mind, but they’re real. We’re real.”
She shakes her head. This is ridiculous. Impossible.
“No,” she says. “No, there’s some kind of explanation—”
“Jane.”
“—like mass hallucination or—”
“Jane.”
“—I don’t know. This is not my expertise but—”
“Guinevere.”
The rest of her frenetic rhetoric chokes to a stop.
“Isolde,” he says with the same staggering affection as he did in her dream. “And so many other names throughout time. But the only real one is—”
“Sigyn,” she finishes for him in a whisper. No, no. None if this is possible.
“Yes, my Sigyn.” He brushes his fingers across the tracks her tears have made in her cheeks. “You can’t marry him.”
“Loki—”
“You have to choose me. You’ve never chosen me. Have I not proven myself enough? I find you in every lifetime and love only you. Is this not the fidelity and loyalty you wanted? Choose me.”
He’s asking her to betray his family, to destroy his tenuous relationship with them by hanging her faith on the absurd notion that they are gods out of mythology, somehow cursed in an endless loop of always wanting and never having.
“I can’t.”
“Then the torment goes on.” His face falls with grim resignation. “We’ll have our dalliance as usual, and we’ll bring ruination to everything we care for—only to be reborn and begin the cycle anew. Simply because you are too afraid to trust my devotion to you.”
His brutal indictment wipes out any argument she has left.
“Let me know when you’re ready to start the affair.”
“I would never—”
“You will!” he snaps, and she knows he’s right. He sucks in a deep breath before continuing, “You will, Jane. It may take months or even years, but eventually you will warm my bed more than his because you’ve always loved me, and you always will. And I will go along with this madness because I’m desperate to have any part of you, if I can’t have all of you.”
This is the precipice she’s stood before countless times, the choice to stay with what is secure, certain. Or to take his hand and leap.
She leaps.
“I choose you.”
He stares blankly at her as if he misheard her.
“I choose you, Loki.”
Joy, relief, and unadulterated love wash over him, and he pulls her to him, crushes his mouth over hers. In rapid fire, she experiences the same decision in every life she’s lived. As Guinevere, as Isolde, as hundreds of others. And each time, she chooses love.
Until—
He lazes next to her on a blanket and feeds her a berry, fingertips brushing across her lips. “Marry me,” he says. “Be my wife.”
She begins to deny him (despite the heartrending affection she feels for him), but there is a wrongness about rejecting his offer out of hand. So she asks instead, “What of Theoric?”
He raises a brow. “I will see that his family is well compensated for the loss. And surely it will be better for yours if you marry a prince rather than a soldier.” He gives her an impudent smile. “Marry me, Sigyn.”
She wonders how sincere he could be. (She wants him to be.) He is Loki, after all. “And if I refuse, what will you do?”
He sobers, and the unfamiliar expression on his beautiful face unsettles her. “I will find a way to persuade you to choose me,” he promises in a tone that sends chills dancing across her skin. “Even if I have to cleave time itself, I will make you mine.”
He takes her hand, kisses her palm, and then the inside of her wrist. “Fair Sigyn, don’t refuse me.”
She closes her eyes, fear mingling with the warm thrill building in her middle, and says:
“I won’t.”
~FIN~