As the day wore on, I started to feel exhausted, but I pushed through it. Loki had to physicaly move everything, so despite the chil, he ended up warm and sweaty. He took off his shirt, and the ordinarily pleasing sight pained me. The marks on his back looked better than they had before, but they were stil there. Reminders of what he’d gone through, for me.

“What happened to him?” Wila asked me while we cleaned out one of the houses. A tree had gone through the window. I got it out, and she cleaned up the glass and branches.

“What?” I asked, but I saw her staring out the open window at Loki as he tossed a destroyed couch on the garbage pile in the road.

“Loki’s back,” she said. “Is that what the King did to him?

That’s why he has amnesty?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Wind came up around me, blowing my hair in my eyes, as Wila created a smal tornado in the middle of the living room. It circled around, blowing al the glass and little bits of tree into the funnel, so Wila could send it out to the garbage.

“So what’s going on with you and him?” Wila asked.

“Who?” I said. I tried to pick up one of the couches that had been tipped over, and Wila came over to help me.

“You and Loki.” She helped me flip the couch back on its feet.

“Don’t play dumb. There’s something major there.”

“There’s nothing anywhere.” I shook my head.

“Whatever you say.” She roled her eyes. “But I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s the marriage going?”

“The past three days have been fantastic,” I said dryly.

“What about the wedding night?” Wila asked with a smile.

“Wila! This isn’t the time to be talking about that.”

“Of course it is! We need to lighten the mood,” she insisted.

“And I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about any of this yet.

Your life has been al drama since the wedding.”

“You’re teling me,” I muttered.

“Take five minutes.” Wila sat down on the couch and patted the spot next to her. “You’re visibly exhausted. You need a break.

So take five and talk to me.”

“Fine,” I said, mostly because my head was beginning to throb from al the objects I’d moved. That last tree had been hard to get going. I sat down next to her, and a bit of dirt bilowed up from the couch. “This is never going to be clean.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Wila said. “We’l get this place picked up, and then we can send out our maids to help them clean or something. We’l get it al taken care of.”

“I hope so.”

“But Wendy, how was your wedding night?” Wila asked.