Page 15 of Competing Against Thor

"That's because I am a witch," he responded. "Kind of."

"Right, because you used to be mortal."

He nodded. "I probably can't do much more than you can, magic-wise. So nothing to worry about in the competition."

"You say that, but you also have two thousand more years of experience than I do."

"Well technically, one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five," he responded.

I snorted. "Your flirting went too far, no way do you believe I'm twenty-five."

"Twenty-six?" From the twinkle in his eyes, I had to assume that he was joking.

"Try adding ten years," I responded. "But I'll take the compliment."

"You should, you look great. And if it helps, a lot of the beauty gods like to stay looking in their thirties."

"So you get to choose your appearances?" Without meaning to, I raked my gaze up and down him. His clothing was practical but did nothing to hide the strong physique beneath.

"Not really. But as far as I know, most of them are able to do a few wrinkle removal spells."

"Ah." I had to admit that wasn't what I expected him to say. The stories of the gods made them sound so powerful and like they had a lot more magic than the rest of us. Maybe Thor shouldn't have been telling me about the way it worked, though he didn't seem to be acting in a way that suggested anything he was telling me was actually confidential.

That only confused me more.

The bell sounded that signalled we were about to start filming. Thor smiled at me and downed the rest of his coffee, throwing the cup into the bin at his station.

Knowing that I'd already lost valuable time, I headed into my own, finishing my coffee and checking over the equipment so that at least the basics were in place. Without knowing exactly what the challenge was, there wasn't much else that I could do. There were a few things I was expecting but hadn't come up yet,including a challenge where we had to team up with one of the other competitors.

My gaze slipped over to Thor's station next to me. I supposed that could be worse. From what I'd seen of how he worked, I don't think I'd mind being paired with him. But it hadn't come up yet, so it wasn't something I should be giving much thought to.

"Could all of the competitors come down to the floor?" Rosie called.

I took a deep breath and straightened out my shirt so that I looked the part.

"As you might have noticed, we've lost one of our competitors," Duncan said. "Mike has had to withdraw from the competition for personal reasons."

Thor scoffed beside me, clearly not believing the blatant lie. While Carlos looked confused, probably because he'd heard from Mike and knew he'd been dismissed.

"We wish Mike all the best," Rosie said. "But it's not going to stop the competition. This week, we want you to make flowers."

Excitement rose within me.

"It's up to you how you do it, but you have to use a technique that you've never used before," Duncan said.

I looked over at Thor who had a pleased expression on his face. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I was going to be trying the same thing. It turned out that our impromptu swapping of techniques was about to pay off. There was no way I was going to be able to make anything as good as he did with his cloud, but combined with everything else I knew about creating flowers out of metal, it was going to make a big difference to my chances in this round.

"What are you waiting for?" Rosie asked. "Your time starts now!"

Six hours appeared on the countdown timer behind us and I took a deep breath. It wasn't a huge amount of time, but I could work with it.

"I hope you don't mind me trying what you showed me," Thor said as we made our way back to our stations.

"Of course not, because I'm going to do the same," I responded. "And I look forward to what you do with it."

He snorted. "I might not go that far, I'm probably going to butcher it."

"You're not," I assured him. He was far too talented for that. "But if the metal is resisting, a little bit of magic can do the trick."