Аманда Хокинг - Torn

“Don’t pretend like you’re not happy to see me.” His cocky grin returned, lighting up his face. “I’m sure you’ve been miserable since I left.”

“Hardly,” I scoffed. “I’ve been planning my engagement party.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about that dreadful business.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“That’s why I’ve come to save you.”

“Save me?” I echoed.

“Yes, like a knight in shining armor.” Loki spread his arms wide and bowed low.

“I’ll throw you over my shoulder and scale the wall with you like Rapunzel.”

“Rapunzel used her hair to climb down from a tower,” I told him.

“Forgive me. The Vittra don’t believe in nursery rhymes or fairy tales.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “And I don’t need to be rescued. I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

“Oh come now.” Loki shook his head. “Princess, you can’t believe that. You’re not supposed to be locked away in a horrible castle, engaged to a boring fool, forced to sneak out in the night for a chance to breathe.”

“I appreciate your concern, Loki, but I am happy.” Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure if that were true or not.

“I can promise you a life of adventure.” Loki grabbed onto a branch and swung over, so he landed on the bench with astonishing grace. “I’ll take to you to exotic places. Show you the world. Treat you the way a Princess really ought to be treated.”

“That all sounds well and good.” I smiled up at him. I was flattered by his invitation, even if I didn’t trust it. “But… why?”

“Why?” Loki laughed. “Why not?”

“I can’t help but feel like you’re only trying to get me to shirk my responsibilities as a Trylle Princess so I can aid your cause,” I said honestly.

“You think the King put me up to this?” Loki laughed again and jumped down from the bench, landing right in front of me. “The King loathes me. Despises me.

Threatens to behead me on a daily basis. The Queen had to go against his wishes to get me. He wanted you all to execute me.”

“Now I really wanna go back to that,” I smirked.

“Who said anything about going back? I’m asking you to run away from all of this, from all the Trylle and the Vittra, the silly royals and their silly rules.” He gestured widely around us.

“I can’t.” I shook my head, and I hated how tempting the idea was. To run away from all the pressure and stress of the palace. “I can’t let the kingdom down. I have a duty here, to these people.”

“You have a duty to yourself to be happy!” Loki insisted.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I have too much here. And let’s not forget that I have a fiancé.”

“Don’t marry him,” he scoffed at the idea of it. “Marry me instead.”

“Marry you?” I laughed. “You told me that I should only marry for love.”

“That I did.” In a rare moment of honesty, Loki looked almost stunningly handsome. He stepped towards me, moving so close we were nearly touching.

“Princess, marry me.”

“That’s…” I shook my head, astounded by his proposal. “That doesn’t even make sense, Loki. I barely know you, and you’re … you’re my enemy.”

“I don’t care where I come from or who you are,” he said simply. “I can make you happy, and you make me happy. We could have a happily ever after.”

His eyes were on mine, and even in the dim light, they glimmered gold. A slow wave started to wash over me as relaxation flowed through me. Just when I realized that Loki was trying to knock me out, the sensation stopped.

“What happened?” I asked, as the fog lifted from my mind. Loki stood inches in front of me, and I knew I should move away, but I didn’t.

“I’m not going to do that to you,” he said quietly. “What I told you before is still true. I want to know that when you’re with me, it’s because you want to be, not because you have to be.”

“Loki-” I started to protest.

He put his hands on my face, and they felt warm on my skin, even though they should’ve been cold from scaling the wall. He leaned into me, but he paused before his lips touched mine. His eyes met mine, searching them for any resistance, but I didn’t have any.

His mouth covered mine, and warmth stirred inside me. He tasted sweet and cool, and his skin smelled of fresh rain. My knees felt weak, and my heart battered against my chest. His hands moved back, tangling in my hair, and pressing me to him.

I wrapped my arms around him, and he felt strong and powerful against me. I could actually feel his muscles, like warm marble, and I knew he could crush me if he wanted to. But the way he touched me was passionate and delicate all at once.

I wanted to give in to him, to his invitation, but a voice of reason gnawed at me.

My stomach fluttered with butterflies, then twisted with knots.

“No, Loki.” I pulled my mouth from his, gasping for breath. I put my hands on his chest and took a step back. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Princess.” Loki watched me walk backwards away from him. His expression was so desperate and vulnerable, it made my chest ache.

“I’m sorry. But I can’t.”

I turned and ran to the palace, afraid that I would change my mind if I hesitated any longer.

The next few days were a blur. I did everything I could to keep my mind off the kiss with Loki. I couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t want to. I just had to put it behind me and move forward with my engagement.

The training with Tove left me with a constant dull headache in the back of my skull. Making arrangements with his mother left me with pain in the remainder of my head. Willa tried her best to work as an intermediary, but Aurora didn’t seem ready to let our earlier conflict go.

Elora was feeling better, so she joined us one afternoon. I thought that would help, but it didn’t. When Aurora wasn’t busy picking at me, she was picking at Elora.

And when she wasn’t doing that, they were both picking at me.

I spent most evenings in the library with Duncan, studying as much as I could about the Trylle way of life. I’d found a Tryllic dictionary, and I had to keep leafing through it as it looked through older documents. It was impossible to guess what it meant since the Tryllic didn’t have the English alphabet. For example, the word Tryllic looked like this - Трыллиц.

With the small desk lamp being the only light in the room, I sat at the desk with my nose buried in a book. Duncan was at the shelves, crawling through the acres of books to find ones that he thought would be best. He did know more about their history than I did, but not much more.

“Burning the midnight oil?” Finn asked, scaring me so much I nearly screamed.

He stood at the edge of the desk, and I hadn’t even heard him come in.

“Yeah, I guess.” I stared down at the faded pages of the book, keeping myself focused on them instead of Finn.

I hadn’t talked to him since I’d kissed Loki. In a bizarre way, I felt as if I’d cheated on him. That was really silly considering I was engaged to Tove, and whatever Finn and I had was long over. He’d made that perfectly clear.

“I have something I need to go check on,” Duncan said, taking his cue to exit.

He didn’t need to, since I doubted that Finn and I needed privacy, but it was nice that he tried. He gave me a hopeful smile before he slipped out, leaving me alone with Finn.

“What are you looking up?” Finn asked, nodding to the stacks of books on the desk.

“Anything. Everything.” I shrugged. “I figured it was about time I got to know my history.”

“It’s a very large history,” Finn said.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m finding out.” I leaned back in my chair so I could look up at him. The dim light from the lamp left most of his face in shadow, but his expressions were so unreadable anyway, it didn’t really matter.