It felt like ropes of ice started twirling around me. I still didn’t know a name. It was a god, and not one of ours.

 

Then memory surged up through it. “Lugh.”

 

“You remember me now. I had hope you would be something else.” I saw the glimpse of silver from his hand and then my vision started to dim.

 

“You…have…no…clue what or who I am.”

 

I couldn’t believe this. But I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t escape. I almost hoped the Unseelie Lady would show back up.

 

She was better company.

 

Kanesha had gone for help. That was the only hope I had as I felt myself go down, losing grip on my sword.

 

I was held down, I was tied down. I couldn’t move. I no longer seemed, in a way, to need to breathe.

 

I knew what he was doing to me, and I knew he could let me go. I knew he wasn’t going to. I was reaching out with everything in my mind for some kind of help.
Any kind of help.

 

Then I blacked out. Or something akin to that, anyway. I lay on a featureless plain beneath silver stars.

 

I still couldn’t move, but now I knew that Kanesha couldn’t find me either. Despair flowed into me. At least Surtur might not be able to find me.
At least if the prophecy was that I would start Ragnarok, I wouldn’t be able to. But I wouldn’t be able to stop it either.

 

I wouldn’t be able to live. To love. I was going to be here forever. I was going to be here until each of those silver stars fell to the void below.

 

I didn’t hate him. I didn’t have the energy for that, and the energy to think was rapidly fading away.

 

But I couldn’t give up.

 

I couldn’t give up. It was odd how I had to place my hope in others, or maybe not so odd. Something…I understood something in that moment.

 

That we all have things we have to put our faith in. People. That even the gods are sometimes reduced to prayer.

 

That this godling was reduced to praying to and for the mortal she loved in a moment when she could not escape.

 

I could feel my bonds now.

 

They were made of woven starlight.