Page 30 of The Best of Brenna Grant

Loki’s Christmas Story

Loki struggled to find his purpose in the world, but he needn’t have worried. It found him.

Chapter Nine

Loki learns the origin of his name.

“Bor, may I speak with you outside?”

“Of course.” Bor led the way out the door and, instead of stopping, walked into the nearby forest, continuing on until he came to a clearing.

He turned around, giving Loki a pointed look, but Loki had no idea what the old man wanted from him. His gaze scanned the area, a small clearing surrounded by trees on all sides. Strangely enough, something pulled to him, so he walked the perimeter without any prompting from Bor, finally stopping at a tree with multiple cut marks across it. It looked as if someone had attempted to cut it down and failed. A stump was not far from it, so he sat down, staring at the tree as visions peppered his mind.

A young lad.

An axe.

Tears.

Screams.

Howling pain—the kind of pain no healer could cure, the kind that would dig at you every day.

Every day until you wanted to quit, run away, give up.

“Do you recall anything about that tree, Lucas?”

Tears flooded his eyes as it all came back to him, flitting bits and pieces of memory tugging their way out of the recesses in his mind. “You called me Lucas. You know my true sire.”

Bor stood with his hands behind his back. “I did, and I do. Tell me what you remember.”

Loki stared at the tree and a young lad popped in front of him, a lad angry at the world, swinging an axe at the tree over and over and over again.

The lad screamed and screamed, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”

Loki stared at Bor through his tears. “Who did I hate so badly?”

“Your father, or the man you believed to be your father, and another man.”

He jumped up from the tree stump as the memories returned in full. “I was angry with my father. I hated him. He wasn’t truly my father, but I didn’t know it then. I tried to save my mother from a beating…”

“Instead your father and his helper beat you.”

“Aye. That man, Hamish, threw me in a wagon and took me away. I recalled this before…he tossed me out of the wagon expecting me to die, but I didn’t.”

“Nay, you were stronger than they expected you to be. You fought hard, crawled on your hands and knees until someone found you.” Bor stood unmoving, his hands still behind his back.

“You. ‘Twas you who found me.” Memories of a burly, bearded man with a smile and kind eyes flooded back to him. Bor had climbed off his horse and lifted him up, giving him water and telling him he’d not die. “You saved me, brought me to Ayr.”

“I did bring you to Ayr, but you’d already saved yourself. I then brought you here to live with us. Even in this place, your desire for vengeance ate at your insides. Do you remember?”

Loki’s eyes widened. “I do.” He paced in a circle. “I wanted to kill Hamish. Hamish and Blackett, the rat bastard who beat my mother and pretended to be my sire. Only he wasn’t. He killed my mother, I’m sure of it.”

“Probably. You wished to find them and make them pay. I’d hoped you would lose some of your anger if I allowed you to swing at that tree, but it never helped, until one day…”

Loki held his hand up. “Saints above, I remember. Allow me. I swung and swung, and one day, I was so angry that I told you I didn’t want to be called Lucas anymore.”

“Aye, you believed it tied you to Blackett, that he’d chosen the name for you.”