There was an array of paintings—portraits that went through the centuries. But I couldn't make out the faces on them, their traits indiscernible. As I got closer, though, familiar features began to appear on them, clearer with every step I took. Once I was close enough, I recognized the man represented in every single one of them, the man represented through the centuries.

Ulrik.

With a startle, I sat up on the bed at once, woken up by the shock. My mind was in such a state of confusion that it took a moment for me to return to reality. I was in Ulrik's bed, but I couldn't remember going to sleep, especially with my clothes on. The curtains were drawn, but I saw rays of light coming from their edges.

The secret room. I found a key to open it, and Ulrik had caught me snooping around. Haakon... He claimed to be Haakon, and he'd sliced his arm open to prove it. All of that felt like a fever dream, and I struggled to grasp what was real and what wasn't.

"How are you feeling?" a low, terribly familiar voice asked.

My eyes darted to its source, and in the shadow of the poorly illuminated room, I noticed a silhouette seated on the big armchair a few feet away from the bed. I couldn't hold back the instinct to recoil, pulling the covers higher on me as if it could protect me from him.

This man wasn't who I thought he was. The person I'd fallen in love with over the past few weeks was nothing but an illusion, a lie. Because even if I still couldn't accept that his claims were real, this whole thing was either a cruel joke at my expense or the most mind-blowing revelation of my life.

"How long was I out?" I tremblingly asked.

"A little under an hour. I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Mila," he said, leaning forward so his elbows were on his knees. "I wanted to ease you into the truth, not this."

"This can't be the truth. You can't be...immortal."

"Why?"

My eyebrows came together. "What do you mean, why? Gods don't exist."

"Most of them do, actually. You've met a few of them, even."

"What?"

"The club we went to in Oslo. You met Tyr."

My eyes widened, and then I dubiously asked, "The god of war and bloodshed? The one who lost his hand to Fenrir?"

But as I said those words, I was reminded that the man had indeed worn a prosthetic hand, something I hadn't linked to the name before now.

"That Tyr, yes. And the man who came and sat with you while I was gone, the one who bothered you... It was Loki."

"Loki, the trickster god?"

He nodded, and despite the darkness, I could tell he was dead serious about all that. "And the man who came to your aid was Thor, my half-brother."

My jaw dropped, but I snapped it closed as bile gathered in the back of my throat. I was feeling dizzy again, my brain incapable of computing all of this. Everything in me wanted to reject his story and remain anchored in reality. But the malicious aura of the man who'd bothered me was still fresh in my mind. And I had noted the resemblance between the man who'd come to my aid and Ulrik. Everything added up, but even that wasn't enough to convince me.

"We met your great-grandmother," I reminded him, certain I'd found a mistake in his elaborate lie.

The way he sighed and passed a hand over his face wasn't frustration but rather weariness. "Agnes isn't my great-grandmother."

"Who is she, then?"

I could sense his eyes on me, intense and piercing, as he said, "She's my daughter."

It hit me like a punch in the guts, leaving me breathless. During our visit, she'd called him father and even Harald. I'd put it on the count of dementia, but what if she'd been lucid? The nurses themselves had pointed out how she'd been herself that day. Ulrik's devotion to her—his gentle care for the elderly woman—had a whole other meaning if this was true.

I was going to be sick. Being in this bed, where we'd shared so many tender moments, felt wrong. But my body was weak, my hands trembling as they clutched the duvet, and I wasn't sure that I could stand and not topple over, crushed by the weight of his revelations.

"She was born in 1848," Ulrik continued, unprompted. "My genes gave her a long and healthy life, but her mortality caught up."

"Do you—do you have more children?"

He shook his head. "Agnes is my last living child. I told you before that I have watched everyone that I ever loved die, and watching your child die is the toughest of them all. That is why I go out of my way not to conceive anymore. But accidents can still happen, as it did with Agnes."

Ulrik had always been adamant about using protection between us, never trying to negotiate sex without a condom. Not even once had he pushed for it, which was different from my other experiences with men—Even one-night stands had sometimes tried.

Why did all of this make so much sense? Why couldn't I come up with a rational explanation that would dismantle all of this? But his mysterious ways, his reclusive life, his obsession with the swords... They would all make so much sense if this was true.

"What about Yuko? Is she also...immortal?"

He shook his head again. "I met her in Japan when she was fourteen. I saved her life, and she vowed to repay it by serving me for the rest of mine." Ulrik let out a small, sardonic chuckle. "She didn't realize what it meant back then. I took her as my ward since her family rejected her, and she's been with me ever since as a valued friend."

"What about your parents?"

"My mom truly died when I was a child. And with her gone, my father returned to Asgard and left me behind. I saw him again a decade later when he visited with two formidable gifts to make up for his negligence."

"The swords," I breathed out, completely stunned.

"Yes, two swords worthy of a god, forged in Nidavellir by the dwarves Brokkr and Sindri, and assisted by the sons Ivaldi."

Oh, God... Of everything he'd told me, this was the most compelling argument. I could still remember how Henry hadn't been able to scrape off the metal there. And its insane state of preservation, as well as the sapphires, had never made any sense before—unless there was something beyond our understanding that explained it—like the sword being forged by the same people who created Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, and Odin's spear, Gungnir.

My head spun so hard that I was thankful to be seated, as I might have fallen to the ground otherwise. There was so much to consider at once that questions piled and piled in my mind until I couldn't sort out a single one of them. The implications of what he was stating went much beyond his betrayal and lies.

The old Norse gods existed, and so did the dwarves from the Edda. Were Valkyries real, too? What of the great wolf Fenrir and the Yggdrasil? Were there eight more worlds out there with elves and giants?

I remained silent for a while while I tried to process everything. I was so absorbed that I didn't even notice when Ulrik stood from the armchair. It was only once he was by the bed, sitting by me, that I reacted. My whole body jolted away from him, evading the hand he tried to lay on my legs over the covers.

"I can't—I can't be near you right now," I stuttered.

The sadness in his eyes was impossible to miss, and it sent a painful pinch through my chest. "I'll leave you alone, then. When you're ready to talk, love, I'll be in my office."

Again, he tried to reach for me and give my face a gentle caress, but I avoided the touch. This was too much. Not just the lie, because deep down, I could understand why it wasn't something he shared easily—I would have thought him a madman. It was everything that came with it. If he truly was Haakon, then he was born over eleven centuries ago.

In the darkness of the room, I examined his familiar features, the face I'd grown to love, discovering it in a brand new light. This man was over a thousand years old. Not only that, but he was a legendary Norse hero I'd idolized for most of my life, a man I'd admired ever since reading about him in an old dusty book on Old Norse folklore.

And I had done so much more than that. He had been inside me so many times, I'd followed the outlines of his tattoos with my tongue, and grazed every part of his muscular body with my hands. Earlier today, I'd even swallowed his cum after giving him some fantastic morning head...

What kind of twisted was this? My childhood hero turning out to be the best lover I ever had?

I had allowed a lie inside of me and now felt violated.

"I think I need to...get back home," I asserted with a wavering voice.

"To London?"

I nodded, knowing that if I spoke, my voice would break.

He sighed in defeat before pinching the bridge of his nose. "I would prefer if we have a talk before you go."

"And I would prefer to leave. This is—this is too much, Ulrik. I never signed up for any of that, and now... I feel betrayed. You lured me in and made me fall in love with you so that I would stay despite all this. But it's too much."

It took the confusion on his face, followed by instant chagrin, for me to realize that I'd accidentally confessed my profound feelings for him.

"It was never the plan, Mila. I tried with everything I had to resist you and keep you at bay. I don't get close to people anymore because I've endured too much grief. And most of all, I don't fall in love. But then you came along, and two and a half centuries of rigorous efforts went down the drain in a matter of weeks."

My chest clenched painfully, and I looked away from him in the hope that he wouldn't see the way my eyes glistened with tears. As much as I wanted to disregard everything and throw myself in his arms so he would hold me tightly and make all this pain go away, I couldn't deny the reality of the situation.

What kind of life could we have? He would never age, never die, never fall ill, while I would go through all those things, year after year. What of children further down the road? Would he put his reluctance aside and allow it? What would happen once I was sixty and old and wrinkled, and he was still his dashing self?

And beyond this future together, what of his past? I wasn't equipped to handle a man who was old enough to have known Marco Polo, Elizabeth the 1st, Galileo... The mere fact that he was centuries older than any of them made my head spin again.

"I need to go," I repeated, slithering myself out of the bed.

My legs were unsteady as I stood, but I used all the will I held within me to force them to carry me to the door. "Mila, please," he called behind me.

I ignored him, swinging the door open. Yuko, standing right behind it, holding a tray filled with cookies and a steaming cup of tea, startled me. She looked embarrassed, remorseful, even.

"Miss Mila, I so sorry. I should not have leave the keys on counter."

"It wasn't your fault," I said, shaking my head. Then I turned back to Ulrik, who was standing a few steps behind me.

All of this was my fault, and deep down, I wished I'd never discovered the truth and basked in content obliviousness for a while longer. But the cat was out of the bow, and there was no putting it back in there.

Before she could move, I slipped between her and the wall to hastily walk to my room. I shut the door as soon as I was there and leaned on it, taking several deep breaths. Was this really all happening, or was it some insane lucid dream?

Without even thinking about it, I pinched myself hard enough to send a jolt of pain up my arm. This was reality, as insane as it sounded.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I mumbled to myself as I took out my bags and threw them on the bed. I'd fucked around and found out, and now everything was ruined.

Two armfuls of my things had already been thrown into the bigger bag when someone knocked on the door. "Who is it?"

"It's me."

I froze from head to toe, not sure if I wanted to see him or not. He'd lied to me this entire time, perfectly aware of what it meant to be with someone like him. a literal demi-god. The subterfuge was too big to discard—or maybe I just wasn't in a state of mind where I could forgive him.

Because I didn't want him in there trying to change my mind, I walked up to the door and opened it. There he was, all tall and handsome, the perfect illusion of a modern man, youthful and healthy, despite being older than most of the castles in Britain—which were built against Norman invasions, against the very thing he used to be.

"What?" I asked, doing my best to sound cold and detached.

His jaw ticked when he spotted the suitcase on the bed. "Is there anything I could say to make you change your mind and stay?"

I shook my head. "No. What I need right now is time and a safe space."

Clearly, he was hoping for a different answer, but he didn't protest, biting back whatever plea he wanted to utter. "I understand. I'll take you to the airport whenever you're ready."

"I would rather if...it was someone else."

This time, he wasn't as good at masking the pain my words unleashed. I wasn't hurting him on purpose, and I took no pleasure in seeing him beg. Also, this wasn't to make him grovel and beg, as I knew he would probably win me over if he did.

"Alright, I'll see if Jakob is available. Otherwise, I'll call you a taxi."

I was thankful that he respected my will so much, but it made things that much more complicated. He was a great man, even with all that. But he'd broken my trust in a way that surpassed using Yuko's key to open the room. He'd lied about who he was from the very start. And I couldn't disregard that.

"Thank you," I replied, looking away.

There was a long silence during which I considered stepping back and closing the door. My heart was breaking, torn in half by my desire to stay and my need to go.

"I never wanted to hurt you, kjære," he whispered. And I believed him. Not because of the sincerity of his tone but because I knew him. Obviously, not all of him, but I knew that much.

Everything in me wanted to wrap my arm around his solid frame and ask him to hold me tightly. But I wasn't sure that he would let me go if I did that.

And I probably wouldn't let go either...