River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)

Good job with the make him fall in love you thing, Hanna.

Another chuckle. “Good,” he muses. “I wouldn’t want to think any less of you. Now, get up.” He reaches out and takes the coffee cup from me, which is tiny in his giant gloved hand. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

Or what, you’ll get out the chain? I want to ask, but he probably would and my neck still feels bruised from it. So I get to my feet and stare up at him, trying to find a balance of rebellion and compliance.

Beneath his mask, his eyes are looking me over, thinking. They feel like fire.

Finally, he says. “Take off your nightgown.”

My heart sinks.

Is he serious?

“Why?” I ask, trying to sound strong, though my voice trembles.

“Because I’m telling you to. Take off your nightgown.”

“I’m naked underneath.”

“Quite aware of that, fairy girl.” He motions with a nod. “Now take it off or I will take it off for you. Which will it be?”

I swallow hard, knowing my options. There are three. I could refuse, and he could force me, which would undoubtedly be the worst. He probably gets off on the power trip. In fact, I know he does, considering how fond he was of that iron collar.

I could do it while crying, wanting to shrivel up into a ball, horrified at the thought of being naked in general, let alone in front of him. I’ve spent a long time, through numerous one-night stands, working on my relationship with my body, trying to find the confidence in its strength and in its flaws, trying to overcome all the years of damage I’d inflicted on it, and while I’ve come far, I’m not sure if I can handle this particular brand of vulnerability and humiliation.

Or I could raise my chin and own it proudly. Be strong. Refuse to give into the panic. Refuse to give him the fear that he desires from me. Refuse to be humiliated.

I choose the last one. I look Death right in those fathomless sockets, steady and calm, and I bring up the hem of my nightgown, pulling it over my head and throwing it behind me on the bed. My head is held high with nerves of steel, despite being oh so very naked right in front of him.

He doesn’t say anything. His unseen eyes burn across every inch of my body, from my neck, to my breasts, to my stomach, to between my thighs, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

I swallow hard, trying to bury the terror that wants to drown me. I won’t let it. I will be strong. I will not fear.

“Well?” I ask him boldly, with an expectant raise of my brow.

A low, guttural sound rumbles from inside his chest, making the hair on my body stand on end, every nerve inside me tightly wound until it feels like they’re going to snap and obliterate me. Jesus. What the hell was that?

Moments pass, the tension between us growing thicker.

Then he clears his throat.

“When I was born, the first person who touched me died,” he says in a rough voice, his eyes still leaving flames on my bare body. The way he stares at me feels like consumption. “It was my mother’s Birthmaiden. Pirkko was her name. Though I don’t remember her, I’ve never forgotten her name, because I killed her. My first casualty. And you never forget your first one, even as a newborn.”

He turns and walks over to the wardrobe, and the moment his eyes leave my body I feel like I’m deflating, exhaling so forcefully that I almost collapse. “You see, my parents were told that one of their sons would be the God of Death, that I would be called into my role as a deity when the time was ready, when Tuonela was ready,” he says, running his hands over the lacquered surface of the wardrobe. “They didn’t know it was me until Pirkko died, they certainly didn’t know that I would come with a price—the touch of death. My mother wanted to hold me and console me, for I was just a crying baby, new to the world, but my father couldn’t let her. They are Gods, but even they didn’t want to take the chance. Knowing what I know now, it was a wise move.”

He sighs. “So, my father wrapped me in reindeer pelt, and it was through a lot of trial and error, in other words a lot of dead servants, that they discovered it was only my hands that caused death. After that I had to wear gloves and gauntlets all the time, but the damage was already done. My siblings stayed away from me, people and Gods alike feared me. Even my own parents treated me differently. More like a pet than a son. Always so distant.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” I ask, because one sob story isn’t going to win me over.

That brings out another chuckle from him as he opens the wardrobe. “No. No one is supposed to feel sorry for Death, and especially not you. You should feel sorry for yourself, standing naked like that, all because I asked you to.”

I don’t know where this is going, so I decide to keep my mouth shut for now.

He carefully riffles through a drawer in the wardrobe and then brings out a white lacy thing. “Perhaps it was this that made me a better ruler for Tuonela. Because I was cruel at times, but I had empathy. Ruthless but not heartless.”

I can’t help but snort. Not heartless? Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, buddy.

He ignores me. “As you know I eventually got married. I was able to please my wife without touching her with my bare hands, I made it my mission.”

“I’m not sure I need to know all this,” I mutter.

“But you do,” he says quickly, grasping the white dress and coming over to me. “You do. I did all I could and then some, but she said it was the fact that I could never touch her with my bare hands that made her leave me and take up with another. Frankly, I knew that was a lie, and yet I remember the prophecy that the giant Vipunen told me when I was just a young man. That one day I would find someone, the one person able to withstand my touch, a person I would then love and marry, and that an alliance would form, an alliance that would cement my position in the kingdom forever. What alliance and with whom, I don’t know, and the one I am to marry? I don’t know that either.”

“How do you know it wasn’t your ex-wife?”

He lets out a sharp, sour laugh. “Louhi? No alliance came of our supposed love or our marriage. If anything our marriage was a strategy on behalf of her father, to further fragment this world when we finally broke apart. No, it wasn’t Louhi.”

I feel his gaze deepening, tension thickening.

“You think it’s me,” I say quietly.

“It could be,” he says. “I think there is only one way to find out.”

He places the dress in my hands and then unsnaps one of his gloves.

I suck in my breath as terror shoots through me.

“What are you doing?” I cry out softly.

He pulls his hand out of the glove and I stare at it in horror and fascination. It’s the large, lightly tanned hand of a big man. The only thing unhuman about it are the strange markings that keep pulsing with light, like someone has drawn lines all over his hand and wrist with a metallic gray sharpie, lines that keep glowing for a moment in different spots, as if lit from within. I caught a glimpse of the lines earlier in the desert, and even close up they don’t make much sense.

While I’m trying to figure it out, he reaches out to my breast with his bare hand, pausing just inches away, and my body floods with adrenaline, ready to flee.

“If I touched you, I would know,” he murmurs. “If I touched you and you didn’t die, I would know you were meant to be mine.”

I’m frozen, staring down at his hand, unable to move. “Is that why you’re keeping me?”