The Valkyrie Read Online Free PDF Page B

restraining order on
Apollo yet? I’m worried he’s going to try and have you shot by
Artemis or you know, propose. Poor George Gordon banished to the
continent to die of a paltry fever.”
    “He keeps
writing poetry for me. How the heck do I get out of it unscathed?”
Liberty asked.
    “Lie back and
think of England. Actually no, don’t think about my mother. You’re
going to have to let him fuck you again which leads to three
scenarios:
    1. He knocks
you up. You’d have adorable, musically talented children and
eventually he’ll get bored and will wander off to women new as long
as you don’t shag other people for a while.
    2. He shags
you, doesn’t knock you up and gets as equally bored.
    3. He shags you
and puts a ring on it and then you’re stuck with him forever.
    The first one
is probably the most likely statistically speaking.” Glory said.
This was something that she’d clearly considered before.
    “He’s such a
freak: a hot freak but a freak nonetheless.”
    “Talking about
freak, I’m thinking of getting a GoPro for my vagina.” Glory said
deadpan.
    “Sometimes I
forget how classy you are. I’m going for a walk.” Liberty blew
Glory a kiss as she walked to the doorway. She hesitated before
continuing “Glory, everything changed today.”
    “Everything
changes every day darling. Life is infinite variety disguised as
the mundane. Enjoy your walk poppet.” Glory said, attempting
profundity for a change. It didn’t suit her.
    ***
    Liberty trekked
upstairs to her room and switched her shoes to a sensible pair of
Nikes. Glory’s suggestion that shoe choice is a vital one in
escaping rapists had disturbed her. Not that wearing heels was
inviting rapists, but there were enough amoral immortals out there
that she felt the need to give herself the best possible head
start. Heavens forbid that these gods would have gained respect for
females (immortal or mortal) over the centuries. Goddesses were
just folly to gods, let alone the poor mortal women. Some were
consorts most were conquests (willing or unwilling), all were
victims. Or were they? Was Liberty being too fatalistic? She
fucking hated men.
    ***
    Despite her
flippancy Glory too knew that everything had changed that day, but
the seismic nature of the change and its consequences were as yet
unknown to her. She had felt the new epoch begin too, although she
decided to play dumb until anything concrete appeared. Glory
checked her phone and saw that she had a further text message that
she didn’t know how to respond to and she still hadn’t even dealt
with the first. She could feel everything escalating. Glory went to
her room, sprawled across the bed, read her copy of The
Collected Works of Wilfred Owen and felt guilty, again, maybe.
Every time her name came up she felt a wave of despair crash about
her and drag her further into the swell. What is glory but a
triumph at the expense, rightly or wrongly so, of another? Everyone
mortal and immortal wants to be glorious, all those wretched
marriage proposals were testament to how many wanted to have Glory
to themselves and yet here she was, desolate in her own very
nature. Eventually she got up and stood on a chair opposite the
elegant full length mirror and having memorised the stanzas of the
poems that implicated her personally, screamed them at her own
reflection; a paean to her own vile conceit:
    “ If you
could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling
from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    Obscene as
cancer, bitter as the cud
    Of vile,
incurable sores on innocent tongues,
    My friend, you
would not tell with such high zest
    To children
ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie;
Dulce et Decorum est
    Pro patria
mori.” 

The Changing
Rooms
    A few hours later
Honour and Bea were sitting on the wooden benches in the Valkyrie
changing rooms in Valhalla. A gentle steam was wafting in from the
showers and they could smell something floral: like how an Herbal
Essences advert looks like it should