Preamble

A lie, an absent musing, and some thoughts.

Like any good sabotage, staging one's own defeat offers two unique advantages. In the case of self-annihilation: one, that most people are disinclined to believe anyone lacks enough self-esteem to rig their own humiliation—good for me, I suppose—and two, that since adopting this tactic as my primary weapon, I have never met anyone able to look up from reveling in my defeat long enough to see the ruse.

To succeed in this ploy one has to know either what their target hates or what their target wants most in all the world. When you dangle hate or love in front of someone, they tend to lose all sense of clarity.

Agent Romanoff made a prime target, because I have known women like her—Sif comes to mind foremost—or myself, as it happens, when I am female—so this gave me insight into what lies I needed to weave around her head.

Mewling quim.

A pretty balm for after my torture.

A patronizing supposition that she, being a woman, must therefore be in love with her male counterpart.

Being a woman, her nature is of course soft and she must be aghast at the blood on her hands.

You see what I mean?

Romanoff, used to misogynistic male-shaped enemies, was only too happy to help me carry out my self-defeat. When the game ended, she walked away with the idea that I meant to use Banner against them and, meanwhile, I kept them from finding the tracking beacon her un-beloved Agent Barton sewed into my shirt hem.

Doing this has another advantage. 'What advantage?' I hear you not asking. Well, beyond sabotage's inherently simple children Disbelief and Misdirection, by giving up information through trickery I didn't have to withstand torture at the hands of a people who couldn't regenerate my body overnight.

Sabotage—sabotaging myself, better—works when other tactics do not.

Are you horrified yet?

From the moment Thor snuck into Asgard's dungeon to see me, I knew his ultimatum would end with my defeat. Only someone like Thor would try to recruit a prisoner by telling said prisoner their assistance would merely land him back in his cell. Hmm . . .

Difficult choice, there. Thank you, brother. Let me think on that. Shall I rescue my captors from an approaching enemy who might well set me free, or should I do Asgard a favor for the pleasure of spending the next four thousand years in prison? The mind, as they say, boggles. Really.

What could possibly have been going on in Thor's head? A bizarre, infantile desire not to trick dear Loki? A puerile need to be honest? A fear that hiding this informational tidbit might give poor, naive Loki false hope doomed to be ripped apart when the truth came out that I should be re-imprisoned? Despite Thor and his idiot friends' threats against betraying their cause, from the moment I agreed to the plan I knew the mission had to end with my heroic death. If I didn't want to face either a long life enduring soul-crushing boredom in prison or a short, panicky life on the run, Thor must live and I could not. And Thor—honestly, if Thor didn't deserve to walk straight into a ploy, the cosmos might as well open up under my damned feet and suck me back into the Void.

The last time I meant to ever see the great Thor Odinson came with me humiliated—again—on purpose. Flat on my back, curled up in Thor's embrace, dying from a make-believe poisoned wound that left me with the inexplicable ability to talk despite getting one through the chest. Hating Thor, I played my part with my best so that I could give Thor everything he wanted.

What did I say about hate and love? Here we go again:

I fed him the belief that I still loved him. I surrendered to my rightful place as the younger, unwanted brother who should give his life for the Crown Prince. I gave him a gratifying conclusion, cut no doubt from his darkest inmost hope, that I would just die with whatever honor I had left and leave him and his mother and father alone to go on with their better lives.

Thor and Jane were in a bit of a hurry, so I waited until the Convergence began to risk moving from my unconsecrated site. Give them time to find an opening . . . to, I'll admit, one of only three possible realms.

Asgard, Midgard, Vanaheim. Anywhere else and they could have fun creeping above a drop into either prison or death. Odin-King's empire is not the placid empire helmed by his fathers.

Funny, that. You'd think with a name like Allfather, Odin-King would be . . . I don't know . . . more father to the Nine Realms. Or something. Maybe that's just my own literal interpretation.

Then again, with a name like Liesmith perhaps it's my right to be judgmental. But that's just me. He's got the crown, after all. I don't have a crown.

But that's just me.

Chapter 1:

In which I learn that giving one's own eulogy is not all it's cracked up to be. Also, someone is causing trouble on Vorsgard and Thor gives me a present.

My funeral is not the grand affair one might hope if one were given to this sort of morbid daydreaming. The flowers are nice, and the sunset blazing hot red across the water is a suitably poetic cliché, and there are actually people in the crowd who aren't royal guards. But the banks are sparse, and the flowers aren't really fitting for a villain's pyre. The black stink coming from my boat overwhelms Frigga's spicy perfume although she's standing next to me. Next to Odin who is me. Frigga's mouth is a somber thin line. She is impossibly far away from my reach, even at my side, as we watch me burn. She won't cry. She looks serene.

For all the stench, the flames are beautiful. Red-gold roaring curtains engulf my body—well, sort of my body—in a warm spectral glow. I am cauterized from the Nine Realms.

I am vanished in light.

In truth, I feel less the vindictive sneak watching the proceedings and more a ghost witnessing his last ties to identity—however distasteful that identity might be—go up in flames. I am . . . Loki who is Odin-King who is watching a boat carrying Loki who is dead drift down a river to the end of the world. I am not any person anymore. I am a shadow under a mask.

This close to the pyre boat, I can see through the licking flames that someone has brushed the corpse's hair and painted the dark gray bruises from its skin with colored creams. My face—well, not my face—is ghoulish for its unnatural serenity. An imaginary death-by-poison left imaginary defects, since blotted out as if the fight never really happened. As if I fell asleep in my royal regalia and died. The creams are a petty illusion—no glamors for the dead; oh, no. We must face our ancestors as we are. Well, except for the creams. And, well, the fact that the corpse isn't actually me. But then again the ancestors we're sending him to aren't actually my ancestors, so maybe that's all right.

My skin itches. The mummified cleanness separates me from the thing in the boat, but I still don't want to see the disintegrating face attached to that effigy. I don't want to see the pristine sword clasped in my dead pale hands. (Who's sword is that, by the way? How did that conversation even go? "Ho there, fair citizen! Say, may I have your sword so we can burn it with the Crown Prince's younger brother? It's either that or his books—wasn't much of a warrior, you see, this man we're burning as a warrior.") I'm afraid that if I see me burning the prickly energy slithering up my chest will go through an alchemical shift when it hits my skull to become manic euphoria, which will make me laugh. I can't laugh at my funeral while I'm wearing Odin's face. The Allfather might not be much of mine, but he'll raise a court riot smirking at his son's death. I can't even smile. If I don't smile, the prickling will turn to a black hole instead—it's either flying free while laughing at what I've got or sinking into mire remembering what I've lost, and I'm not going to weep at my own funeral.

I am free. I am unburdened. I am avenged. I am vanished in light.

A lie is only a different kind of truth, after all.

Thor looks less happy about all this than I am, standing on my immediate right—my right-hand, my second-in-command, my heir—with a chiseled blank shadow across his face. His arms are stiff at his sides. His eyes are locked on the receding pyre boat, to the point that he doesn't deign to look at me although I'm sure he can feel me look at him. I wonder if he gave me that sword.

No, best not consider that.

The boat burns. The magic which is supposed to simulate a soul released to the glorious afterlife triggers on schedule; swirling blue sparks lift while, below, the boat and corpse sail on from the rimfall's edge into space. For the impressionable in the crowd this is supposed to signify that I have redeemed myself in death and been lifted up into eternity. For Thor, though . . . I wonder if he's remembering the day I showed him how the trick is done and we took turns immortalizing a toy boat, a fishing float, a dead bird, his left dress boot, and most of our picnic lunch.

Best not think about that either.

I risk a second glance in his direction and the expression on his face twists my stomach. From anyone else I would be comfortable knowing that expression is a mask; Thor doesn't wear masks. It's this as well as his short-sighted honorlust that will make him a terrible king.

I want him to be a terrible king. When I quit the Golden City tonight I want solace in knowing that I will have left them to ruin under a king who thinks leadership means hitting harder than the other fellow.

My skin burns. Hate is a good armor. Hate is an armor made from poisoned thorns, but it's better than no armor at all. Hatred, at least, gives my poison a direction.

Thor watches my pyre until boat and make-believe passenger are fallen into the mists below.

There is a feast afterward. We walk in procession up the glittering silver shoreline with smoke and ash trailing us in a summer breeze. The husks of funeral lanterns are left to swirl in wake in the water, where they will gleam along with the dock's braziers throughout the night until tomorrow morning. No one carries a spirit-globe. Those vibrant glowing spheres are released to join the departed as blessings in Valhalla only in the event that the dead deserve them.

Frigga's deep blue gown cuts a shadow in the growing dark, stark and grave against the shining city. Beside her now, Thor walks with his head bowed while his astrium dress armor winks with undiminishable light. They are joined in muffled silence, mother and son. I am no longer a part of their lives. Odin-King, whose face I wear, is somehow removed from this tie as well. I don't know if they have pushed him—me—aside, or if I have pushed them. I don't want to be part of this tapestry that will grow between them following my death. Their threads will go on: mingling, changing, growing. Mine stops short. For my own sake I know I can't be part of their new pattern. I can never weave back in as a scribe with a pretend face or—Nine Godless Realms forbid—stay on as a father and abjectly-celibate husband.

Do that, and I am finished.

Are they glad? They aren't now. They will be.

The palace looms like a gate between worlds, reflecting red against a purpling star-smeared sky. There are long banners shrouding the royal hall, which blazes with a primal chemical heat from one thousand black iron braziers. There are meats, stews, baked bread and blackened bread, tarts and spices and drinks from four different realms, edible decorations, and dancers wearing nothing but gold and magic fire. I ordered this because Odin-King would order it—personally, I'd have preferred to spend the evening thumbing my nose at the warrior's funeral on the balcony of my old suite, with nobody to bother me and the latest thaumatergical journal from Alfheim. That wasn't exactly a option for the after-party, though. Let's all go to Loki's room and take turns sitting on his balcony reading whatever he's left lying around. He won't mind.

Odin's court sits and Frigga sits and Thor sits once more on my right; I remain standing. All eyes are on me and there is a warm surge at being the hall's center. The last time I stood in this hall I was in chains. Now, I am the High King of Yggdrasil.

Odin's giant ravens flap down to join us—they are illusions, too—and their wingbeats flay the air as they circle to perch beside the throne.

My throne. My throne, above my high table.

The room hums with coiled energy. Every soul is focused on me, waiting to hear what I have to say. Everyone is silent: Odin's advisers, the proud warrior's council with their crimson capes, the court sorceresses, the lovely noble families in their bright astrium and lavish silks, the lofty stewards and attendants and palace guards . . . and Thor's idiot friends, who watch their ringleader like attentive hounds, trying to pretend they're sorry to see me dead.

This is the last time I will ever see them. Any of them.

What the hell. Let's send me off with a feast.

"Loki," I say at last into that glorious silence, and my words are heavy with grief that is a mask within a mask, "was many things in life, but perhaps never what he wished to be." I say it because this is what Odin would say. Easier if I could play-act Odin's shame rather than his summary. I would rather tear myself separate from my words by attacking me, but now isn't the time for shame. I can't hide in lies. What he knew about me Frigga would know—and I would rather eulogize myself than listen to what Frigga or Thor might have to say.

This is what Odin would tell his gleaming, golden court:

"Loki looked up to his brother the Crown Prince. Despite a preference for studying his books over swinging a sword, he was always quick to follow Thor whenever my older son proposed some ill-conceived adventure that inevitably led the two of them into battle. I cannot fail to remember a time when my sons were off writing their destinies across the Nine Realms. Although in the end he set himself as the enemy of Asgard perhaps it is fitting, then, that it was through his brother the Crown Prince that Loki found redemption. Loki died with blade in hand, fighting to defend Asgard's future king. It is for this reason that he sups with my father tonight. Let us join their feast of honor here. May our ancestors ever lead us onward into glory, for surely even Loki Odinson found his in remembering his family. We will remember him in turn."

I pick up Odin's golden goblet and drink his fine sweet wine. The court follows suit. Frigga squeezes the fingers of my free hand. Then there is food and music, so I don't have to talk to the people beside me.

I am grateful when Svaldir Eimrson approaches the high table to beg my ear.

"Speak, councilor," I say in a low voice. Thor has wandered off for the moment; he wanted air, I think, and I'm not feeling well enough to have Frigga join us. Frigga, who is supposed to be my wife.

"Allfather." Svaldir bows and he, also, seems to have a mind for the discreet as the bow is short to the point of awkward. As the Chief Councilor for Interrealm Affairs, Svaldir is a barrel-chested man with a booming voice and grandfatherly demeanor. He is usually the one to begin a council meeting by dryly announcing his fellows' names, as if a hammer-hard reminder about their proud heritage will force them to act like adults. It's disconcerting having the old man creep up to me during my own funeral feast liked a kicked apprentice.

"Speak freely, councilor. My son will not emerge from beyond the flames if we forsake our duties this one night."

Svaldir jerks a second bow, eyes low for my sake. My-Loki, not my-Odin-King. I knew there was a reason I liked him.

"I am sorry to bother your majesty," he murmurs. The councilor glances around me, but Frigga does not look up. "There has been an incident in the Red Tower. We have lost contact with our outpost on Vorsgard."

"Can you not have one of our sorceresses fix the connection?" Odin would preamble with Would you bother me with this? but I haven't the heart to do it. As the younger son I have only gotten a chance to preside over court once before, as Prince Regent who-is-called-King-in-his-father's-stead, so I'm not about to scoff this opportunity for all its brevity and ill-timing. "Ilda perhaps. She enjoys working with long-distance pararealm projections."

From the way his eyes dart again toward Frigga and his mouth pulls back in a self-deprecating frown, I can tell this is not the answer he wanted to hear.

"No, sir," Svaldir says. "I'm afraid I have not made myself clear. The trouble is not the connection. The trouble is on Vorsgard. No one at the outpost has responded to our demand for a report."

Heat sizzles in my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut. The news is serious enough to bother a king at his son's funeral, but of course even my death is less important than whatever mischief other people are causing. Of course they had to pick today of all days for—for—

"What does Heimdall have to say?" I demand. "Has this been brought to his attention? Has he seen what the trouble is?"

Svaldir is shaking his head. "The old enchantments were never stripped from the citystates after Vorsgard was abandoned. Heimdall cannot see any of what goes on inside the wards."

Of course not. Odin-King wouldn't waste resources stripping wards from a dead planet.

"Send a small containment force," I say. "Have Ilda go with them. If the trouble is communication she will resolve the issue. If not, I want the traitors brought back to Asgard for public execution. There will be no second colony on Vorsgard."

Svaldir slaps his ribcage with a fist and bows himself away.

Frigga touches my arm in gentle inquiry. I haven't the strength to take her hand, but neither do I flinch from her.

I do not like causing Frigga pain.

"A small matter," I say, joining her cover in trying to memorize the whirling, fire-clad performers. Better that than speaking to each other. "Of little import."

We keep our silence and our masks intact. Thor does not reappear until the night has wound to a drunken, sloppy orgy that has nothing to do with me at all: people shouting oaths at each other, scraping out from the desecrated tables to back up oaths with fists or weaponry, laughing, spilling or stealing drinks as they break away in groups to carry on with their lives. The dancers are long gone. Frigga has retired to bed. I don't know what I'm waiting for in watching my name be forgotten—nobody knows I'm here, nobody will stagger up to me this late in the night to say, Ah-ho, your royal majesty, I didn't want to wander off without confessing that I loved your son and will miss him for ever!

This is how Thor finds me when he requests a moment alone with my . . . I'll admit . . . partially sloshed majesty.

"Let us wait," I tell him, "until the hall is cleared." So we while the remaining minutes as the servants remove tables and recover unused food and drink for new life with the city's poorest; the few lingering nobles are helped to sleep off their over-enthusiastic mourning; the unconscious common folk dragged away by less-indulging guards. Daybreak pierces the long hall by the time we are alone. Blue dawn banishes the last fading traces where my life existed and cold, clear sunrise scours Odin-King's hall free from my ghost. Dawn will never break again for Loki.

"I wanted to speak with you today, my son," I tell the golden-haired glory of Asgard who liked to pretend he was my brother. "I did not expect to do so this early."

"I apologize for my uncouth disappearance last night, Allfather. I had much on my mind." Thor holds a lovingly perfect bow, with one knee on the floor and his head down, his red warrior's cape fanned out behind him.

"As did we all. I have been considering your role in this catastrophe: breaking a convicted prisoner from the dungeon, committing treason to smuggle a mortal from the city into Svartalfheim and so risking the lives of every being in the Nine Realms—" I expect Thor to start shouting, or arguing with me that he couldn't let Jane die whether or not her death would let us bury the Aether farther from the Dark Elves' grasp. He doesn't, though. He listens to Odin-King extol his crimes with his handsome face composed in quiet sobriety, head still down. He doesn't stand up. He doesn't break in to remind me that by drawing Malekith out from hiding he—and he alone—finally finished the war his grandfather began. His eyes are on the floor. His somber patience is eerie.

Thor is different.

Have I been remembering him wrong? All the years I spent drifting in the Void have changed my memories. Frigga and I spoke while I was in prison, and I am not sure any more what is real and what is an illusion. I am coming to terms with the truth that I am probably mad. I can feel madness lingering in the deep places of my mind.

No, I am not remembering him wrong. This is right. Thor is different from the Thor I knew.

And no, it isn't the drink that makes me think so.

"—ending the Dark Elves' threat for once and all," I finish, because he won't. Thor's brow softens although he still doesn't look up; yes, he wonders—in fair composure, even—if he is not about to be punished.

I want to laugh. A black hole opens behind my heart. The crazed euphoria pushes at my throat, trying to climb up into a grin. The drink almost lets it.

This lie I was about to say is supposed to be my parting blow. Isn't that what I am? Isn't that what I do? A liar. And this shining beloved cretin has stolen even this from me.

Very well. Asgard will have its king. Let Thor be king. I have no more lies to give him. We will face each other this one last time in poisoned, unadulterated truth.

The dangerous pressure is back. Don't you dare smile!

I am rigid, one hand gripping his golden spear tight enough that my hand aches. Laugh, or weep.

Possibly Thor mistakes my hostile demeanor for disappointment. All right. I can improvise around that.

"The last time you stood before me having defied my orders," I, Odin-King who is Allfather tell him, "I stripped you of all titles and banished you to a backward realm to learn humility. Today, you stand before me having won the war my father could not but it is humility I see in your eyes."

He looks up because he still has no ability to mask himself. At least he stays kneeling.

"Every realm on the World Tree witnessed you defeat Malekith in single combat," I say to that quiet somber face, "yet you will not boast of it and you do not defend yourself from my charges. Is this my son I am facing, or his shell?"

"I admit I defied your orders." Thor's head goes down again, at last. He remembers himself too late. "I did so because it was right, but I will accept whatever punishments you deem appropriate." Again, the eerie calm. Again, the sturdy composure.

"Every soul in my empire," I say, "saw you offer your life to save the universe from darkness." I take a breath. "What can Asgard offer its new king in return?"

Thor stares at his bent knee. "My life." He stands up without permission. His unmasked brow is tight, and while he meets my eye his emotions run wild across his face. "Father, I cannot be King of Asgard. I will protect Asgard and all the realms with my last and every breath but I cannot serve from that chair—" He makes his speech without pause, which tells me that he has been rehearsing exactly this from the moment he asked for an audience. He tells me that I—Loki—of all people deserved the throne above him. That I was better suited to be king. That I had the right of him from the start, that he is not fit to legislate and would serve Asgard better as a field commander than a ruler. He vows that this is a decision he has come to of his own, and that falling in love with a mortal has nothing to do with his abdication.

When I demand to know why, Thor turns my own eulogy against me: that just as the younger brother died with honor, so too will the older brother try to follow his example. Then he holds out his enchanted hammer for me to take.

I taste metal in the back of my throat. That great weapon and all it symbolizes dangles from his foolish grip, and I cannot take it. Odin-King—the real Odin-King—could take it, but for my lack whatever passed between us in that moment is gone. I can only wave him off, filling his head with more fluff and deceit.

Liesmith.

I am only a shadow under a mask. Even now, I am too weak to lift that hammer.

If I try to take it, he'll know. If I try to take it, he'll attack me with it.

There is nothing I can do but whisper more falsehoods in his ear, making him believe that he has made his father proud even as Thor abandons Asgard to who knows what fate should Odin-King vanish without a trace. And he will vanish without a trace once I have what I came to take.

"Thank you," I say to his shadow once he is gone. I am vindicated at last, after death. No, Odin's son is not fit to be king.

What then?

Let him go. Or let him change his mind and return. Let Thor chafe as king or let him start a civil war. I don't care. We all have choices to make, and Asgard is no longer a part of mine.

I cannot feel my body, with or without the mask. I am glad for the drink. This is my anesthetic.

As morning wheels upward and the rightful King walks boldly straight out the palace gates, I retire at last for the royal hall. My funeral is done. My good-byes have been made—such that they were. I must gather whatever I wish to take with me, and after that . . .

After that—

Asgard's weapons vault.