I stared at him. The information was at once so simple, unexpected, and powerful. The king’s sister, our rightful queen, whom everyone thought had died, was alive? Where had she been for the last ten years? I tried to picture the princess of my childhood. Inkeri had been fragile, sickly, and always in her brother’s shadow. But she’d had gentle eyes, fins the color of brilliant sunshine, and a quick smile for anyone who spoke to her. Although the fortress had mourned, no one had trouble believing it when she perished.
“Where?” I demanded. I had too many questions, but with Loki I wanted to keep them as simple as I could so they couldn’t twist things. How had the king hidden her all these years? And why had he done it? Inkeri had been his puppet, doing whatever her brother asked without the smallest hint of a rebellious nature. “Is she in the fortress?”
“Oh, no,” Loki said, grinning as if they took pleasure in whatever hellish predicament King Calder had devised for his sister. “He made her a special pit. He goes there to feed her himself, through a window just large enough to slip a wee basket in. He’s been building the walls thicker by the year. By now, you’d probably need fire to blast through them.”
“Why not just kill her?” Mama asked, as she rose from my bed and swam over to us. “I know the king is a sadist, but it seems an unnecessary risk to keep her alive.”
Loki laughed, and their eyes lit with something like joy. “However distantly, the royal lines of the merfolk are linked to Aegir; they descend from the product of an indiscretion in his wilder youth. The sea god is a lazy hedonist who takes little interest in the power of his second sight. Most of the time Aegir does not concern himself with what you merfolk do to each other. He’s much more invested in the orcas and the sharks. However, when one of his own line dies, he feels the soul’s departure.”
Our legends said that the gods cursed fratricide above all else. While I doubted Loki condemned any crime, the sea god was rumored to enforce the sacred laws with severity when he bothered to take an interest. I tried to imagine what life had been like for Inkeri, alone and sealed in the deep, probably knowing that everyone believed her dead. It was a fate worse than anything I had imagined for myself. Now that I knew the truth, I had to help her. It was the only way to begin to atone for what had happened to Vigdis.
“Where is the pit?”
“Near the shark bay, in the iceberg just off the north point of the ice shelf.” Seeming to assess my reactions, Loki watched me while I thought. “You won’t be able to free her. The ice around her is much too thick.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” I snapped. The fact that the god hadn’t yet dissolved me into a splash of green oil loosened my tongue. “Just for information.”
Their eyes twinkled, and a grin tugged at the corners of their lips. “I want to give you a gift.”
I backed away from them, taking Mama’s hand. “I don’t want your gifts.”
The god pressed a hand to their left breast and wobbled on their feet; the mocking smile was in place once more. “You wound me. No, this isn’t a bargain. If you do not like the gift I give you, then you may return it at any time. But you have passed my test. I consider you worthy of my rare blessing.”
Test? I nearly lunged for them, wanting to gouge Loki’s eyes out and rip the teeth from their smug mouth. In these months of torture, they’d been testing me?
“A test? A test for what? What is wrong with you?”
Loki shrugged. “Many pray to me but few are worthy of my interest or my true assistance. You mortals think very highly of your value to us. I choose my followers carefully, but when I have chosen, I can be a valuable ally. Once you’ve had time to think and adjust, I will return.”
“You killed Vigdis as part of a test?” I seethed.
The god shrugged. “She was a useless girl.”
“She was a child!” Mama interrupted. “She didn’t even have time to know herself, much less see what she could become.”
Loki shrugged. “Ersel did not have to choose her. She did not have to accept my deal at all.”
With those words, they pushed a blade straight into my heart. The trickster rubbed their hands together and green sludge erupted from the tips of their fingers, spraying me like ink from a spooked squid. The liquid stank of dead flesh and decay. I screamed, waiting for the pain I was sure would follow and trying to scrub the slime from my skin. It began to seep in through my pores.
“I don’t agree to this!” I screamed, clawing at my flesh. “This is not a bargain. Odin, Freya—”
Loki inspected their long nails, as if judging their sharpness. “Oh, stop it. Odin won’t intervene. He knows you’ll like this. And as you said, it’s not a deal. It’s my gift to you.”
When all of the green slime had oozed in through my skin, I looked at myself, assessing the change. I didn’t look or feel any different. The eight monstrous legs still lurked beneath my torso, each casually exploring the room by touch, each compelled by a will all its own.
Loki crossed their arms and leaned against the fragile wood of the human closet. “I have given you three forms. When you learn to show me a little gratitude, I’ll give you more.”
“Gratitude?” I spat out. “You honestly expect me to thank you after everything you’ve put me through?”
“Forms?” Mama asked, looking at Loki as if she wanted to dismember them. Her fingers grasped one of the rust-dulled blades from the tabletop. After what I’d seen her do, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her embed it in Loki’s back. “What forms? What are you talking about?”
Loki held up three slender fingers and counted them off. “This beast, which you may inhabit to remind you of your folly. Merperson. Human. You will now be able to shift between them. They all belong to you, and I am sure you will find uses for all of them.”
My breath stopped. After all my months of struggle, they’d just given me the human form I had desired when I made that first, horrible deal that had sealed Vigdis’s fate and led to all of this. Rage burst from me in an explosion of flying tentacles. I hit the god again and again, focusing pure anger on them as my legs bombarded their head, back, and sides.
When they recovered from the shock, Loki straightened and made a fist in the air. Immediately, my tentacles stilled as if bound to my body by an invisible chord. They pulled an empty vial from their sleeve and pressed it into my shaking hand. “Use this to shift. It is an object forged by me and will help you activate what is inside you.”
I turned the bottle over in my hand. A small chain was attached to each of its sides, just long enough for me to wear around my arm like a bracelet… or a fetter. I had to resist the urge to bash it against the door and crush the vial to pieces.
The trickster cleared their throat, then said, “As I said, I will allow you time to settle, but I will be back. If you’d been a good girl and accepted your gift nicely, I might not have made you use a talisman.” They grinned and I struggled against the binding force. “But… I see you still have some learning to do. I’ve made an investment in you, in your training, and I don’t like to waste my time.”
Striding toward the door, Loki pulled it open and vanished in a flood of emerald light.