They told her he had returned, that he was marching across the Bifrost in victory, and the armies of Jotunheim lied defeated. They told her he had been wounded, warned her one of his eyes had been taken from him. They told her he commanded her to wait for him in her rooms, that he desired to see her as soon as he reached the palace. But they did not tell her to expect an infant's wail.

Frigga rose from her seat on the bed, recognizing the cry of an infant's fear. The door had been pushed open slowly. To her surprise, it was he who entered, not some maid coddling her frightened child. Her husband, the great Odin of Asgard, filled the doorway. Her eyes scanned him, taking in the grime of war clinging to his clothing and the empty socket where his right eye should have been. She had steeled herself for his appearance, so she did not cry or fret over him as a lesser woman would have done. He would not want her pity. Besides, her curiosity had been piqued at the squirming bundle he held in his arms. She approached him slowly.

"Husband," she greeted. She stopped in front of him and put a gentle hand to his right cheek, looking him full in the face. "You suffer."

"I needed to see you," he explained in his direct way. He glanced down at the bundle. Frigga shifted her gaze. A pale child with eyes shut cried in terror. Instinctively, she reached her hand out to him, running a finger over his left cheek and then resting it on his naked chest. His eyes opened. Her breath caught in her throat. His eyes were like her son's, blue. They brimmed with tears and she moved her finger to one of his tiny hands. He gripped it automatically, sucked in a shaking breath and hushed.

"Who is this child?" Frigga questioned.

"He is the offspring of a Frost Giant," Odin spoke quietly. Frigga's head snapped up to her husband. "The son of Laufey."

"Laufey?" Frigga questioned. She flicked her eyes to the infant grasping her finger for dear life.

"I found him in a temple abandoned to die." Odin reached down to his wife's hand and pried the infant's hand from her finger. As he walked towards the bed, the wailing began again.

"He's hungry," Frigga commented, speaking banally as she worked to comprehend what her husband had revealed to her. He must have cloaked the infant in Asgardian skin. But why?

"No doubt," Odin responded. He arranged several pillows on the bed to surround the child. "I have sent for a wet nurse."

Frigga stared at Odin's back. He was a good man, capable of compassion. But he was also shrewd. She did not think he had rescued a Frost Giant out of simple charity. "What is this child to be for you?"

Odin continued to stare down at the crying child. "I am not certain yet." He turned to Frigga. She noticed how weary he suddenly looked and he brushed a hand over his face. "Come. It is late and I am tried. Accompany me to the Healing Room."

Frigga glanced over Odin's shoulder at the infant's hands flailing above the pillowed fence. "He should not be alone."

"He will not be. The nurse will be here soon."

As Odin headed for the door, Frigga stepped closer to the bed, peering again on the pale infant. His fear was palpable. She reached her hand down to him again and at her warm touch, the crying descended to whimpers.

"Frigga?"

"I will stay until she arrives," she said, aware that she was shunning her husband for a tiny Frost Giant, but unwilling to leave the infant in such a state.

"Very well," Odin consented. Frigga heard the hint of a smile in his voice and turned to look at him, but she caught only his back as he exited.

Frigga turned her full attention to the infant. She reached down with both hands, lifting him up. He was light. Not what she had expected from an ice child. He whined and she spoke softly. "Shhhhh, little one. Shhhhh." She cradled him in one arm as she rearranged the pillows and sat back against them. She adjusted the infant's blanket to cover him, recalling how being so swaddled comforted her own son. "Food will come soon," she assured the infant.

He continued to whine and Frigga stared into his wide, sad eyes. So blue. But as a Frost Giant they would be red. She wrapped her hand around the infant's left wrist. Odin had more magic than she, but her skill matched his. She concentrated and sensed and finally pushed ever so gently. The infant's hand and wrist faded to blue, then the color seeped up his arm to his shoulder. Frigga broke her hold, the blue receding. She breathed out slowly. She had not doubted her husband's words, but she had wanted to see for herself, to confirm that what her eyes beheld was a covering.

The door opened. "My Queen?"

Frigga looked up to see a young woman hesitating. "Enter." The woman came forward to the bed and looked down at the little one. Had she been told? "Do you know why you are here?"

"Yes, my Queen."

"Do you know who this child is?"

"I assume he is yours, my lady."

Frigga raised her eyebrows. So she had been told nothing but that her purpose was needed. The young woman's head had bowed and her cheeks flushed. Ah. So she assumed Frigga had born a secret child and had been unable to nourish him.

"He is..." Frigga stopped mid-sentence. She meant to correct the young woman, to clarify this one was not hers, but felt it better to say nothing. She did not know what the Allfather intended. And she certainly was not about to reveal to this woman that she had been called to nurse a Frost Giant. Better to explain later than invite unwelcome questions.

"He is in need of you," Frigga corrected. She handed the infant over to the young woman and stood, intending to join her husband in the Healing Room, but the infant immediately howled. Frigga turned back and helped situate the young woman on the bed. The infant would not nurse. He continued to scream. Finally Frigga joined the woman on the bed.

"Come, little one. You must eat," she coaxed. She wrapped her slender hand around the child's even thinner one. The crying descended. The woman held him to her breast and he began to suckle.

Frigga meant more than once to leave, but every time she rose, the child cried out. She determined to stay until he had been filled. When he finished, he calmed only when she touched him, so she wrapped him tightly again and held him against her chest, dismissing the nurse until she was called for.

Frigga settled in against the pillows. The infant squirmed for a time, whimpered and pushed into her chest. Eventually he gave in to much needed sleep. Frigga contemplated his pale skin, his dark hair, his thin body. How long had he lain in the temple before Odin found him? What cold hearts did the Jotuns have to leave a helpless infant to die?

Frigga's mind wandered to her own son. He had always been large, well fed and rolling in chub. He'd also become quickly independent, pushing her away as soon as he could crawl. Frigga considered the sleeping eyes of the infant in her arms that flickered in dream. This little one, he needed her.

Frigga lay her head back and closed her eyes. She would hold him just a little longer and then seek out her wounded husband.

A gentle, yet firm hand shook Frigga's shoulder. She blinked a few times, then looked up. Odin stared down at her, his face clean and his eye covered with a patch. She pushed herself up quickly, but remembered suddenly the sleeping bundle in her arms. She glanced down, afraid she'd disturbed him, but the infant slept on.

"I see you have warmed the son of frost all night," Odin commented.

Frigga felt chagrined. "Husband, I am sorry. I meant to come..."

Odin waved a dismissive hand. "The nurse tells me he would not calm for her."

Frigga nodded her head to the infant. "He was anxious. I believe I was a comfort to him."

The corners of Odin's mouth curved slightly and Frigga remembered his voice from yesterday as he'd left that hinted at a smile. She grew suspicious.

"Why do you look at me this way? Why do you seem to know more than I?"

Odin leaned over her and laid his lips against her cheek. He pulled back and whispered in her ear. "I know you, my dear. You are hard as a stone in a fight, my backbone and as robust as I. But there beats within you a tender heart."

He stood to his full height and she looked up at him, truth dawning. "You knew..." she whispered.

Odin inclined his head slightly. "I assumed. I was not proved wrong."

"You wanted me to stay here all night."

"I missed you by my side in the Healing Room, but what you have done pleases me."

"Why?" Frigga asked, now wary. She should have guessed at his smile last night. He always had a purpose for what he did and he had shown her the child first, before he even tended to himself.

Odin reached down to her arms and skillfully extricated the sleeping infant. He held him gingerly and stared down at him. "Because this one will no longer be a child of ice. He will be son of Odin and Frigga."

Frigga's heart sank and then leaped. She would mother a Frost Giant, she thought, but another thought overwhelmed her first: I do not have to give him up. Odin was looking at her expectantly. "You thought," she spoke slowly, "I might reject him." There was a tinge of hurt in her voice.

Odin spoke carefully. "Is he not the monster Asgard has feared for years? Would you let a Jotun grow beside your beloved son?"

An image of her toddling Thor appeared before Frigga's mind's eye. She tried to imagine a blue giant running and growing alongside him; it was an impossible vision. She looked at the babe in Odin's arms. But this little one did not look Jotun. Odin had masked him well. If he had not told her and she had not tested the magic herself, she would never have known.

Frigga shook her head at Odin. "You have played me well, husband." She rose from the bed and stood beside Odin, running a hand over the baby's silky dark hair. "I cannot give him up. He will be our son."

Odin nodded and his tone changed now as he spoke, weighing with authority. "We will say you have felt ill for a time. You will go to the Isle of Hvile for a few months and it will be announced that..."

"You mean to hide his origin," Frigga spoke, her tone disapproving.

Odin looked to her, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "Of course."

"You mean him to be ashamed of who he is."

Odin tilted his head to her, clearly not expecting such an argument. "I do not want him to be ashamed. But he cannot know what he is, not until it is time."

"Time for what?" Frigga asked, anger rising in her chest.

"He can unite our worlds," Odin said, lifting the baby in his arms slightly. "He can solidify the peace between Asgard and Jotunheim. When he is ready for a throne, then he can know."

Frigga stared at her husband. So this had been his purpose all along. "So he is a means to an end."

Odin sighed. "I did not mean to imply that. I want him to be our son. I want to love him like Thor."

Frigga visibly relaxed.

"But this is an advantage I cannot ignore. He can bring a lasting peace."

Frigga understood, still... "But we do not have to keep the truth from him. If you mean for him to know who he is, tell him from the beginning."

Odin laughed ruefully. "Do you think Asgard can accept a Frost Giant prince? Do you think they can so easily forget their fathers and brothers and sons lost to war?"

Frigga firmed her lips. They wouldn't be able, she knew.

"Time must pass," Odin said. "They will be ready some day, but not now."

"But to lie to a child," Frigga continued to argue. "There should not be secrets in a family. They can destroy as surely as a sword." Had she not seen the damage done in her own family? Odin knew of her past, her father dead, her brothers scattered.

Odin shifted the baby into the crook of his right arm and gripped her hand. "If we do not keep this from him, he will feel he does not belong, that he is not of this family. This is for his good as much as Asgard's."

Frigga stared into her husband's good eye. He was sincere. And he was right even though she hated it. She nodded her assent.

"Then, as I was saying," Odin went on, enumerating his plan. "You will go to the Isle of Hvile. We will let it be known you have felt ill. I will announce in a month you have given birth to the second prince of Odin. They will think we meant only to protect our privacy and they will accept him as their own."

"What of Thor?" Frigga asked.

"He will stay here."

"He could get to know his brother," she asserted.

"If you are ill, he would not come along."

True. Odin passed the infant back over to her. Frigga held him carefully as he began to stir. "What is to be this prince's name?" she asked.

Odin had headed towards the door. He opened it, then paused to look back at her. "Pick whatever name pleases you."

Frigga had been afraid her time on Hvile would pass slowly, but time swept by too fast. Every day she was caught up in the growth of her new son. His fear melted away and his eyes began to dance, his mouth to turn up in playful smiles. He was most taken with her face, reaching out every time she held him to poke at her cheek or squish her chin. He was certainly not like Thor. Thor had met the world head on. He had pounded objects with his fists, slapped her arms and clapped vigorously. He had giggled at the slightest strange noise. Life had filled him with all its vibrancy.

This one, this Frost Giant turned Asgardian, generated a control unlike his brother. He took his time to consider an object, a face, a toy. He concentrated when she held anything up to him, compartmentalizing and incorporating it into his world. Frigga began to wonder if someday she could teach him her magic. If he continued this way, he might have the nature to learn what Thor was too impatient for.

By the time Frigga returned home, her second son was as much in her heart as her first. And when she stepped off a boat onto the dock, she could not help but feel a sense of loss. She would no longer have the newest prince to herself. Now she would have to share him with all Asgard.

Thor came careening towards her, already physically strong at two and a half. "Mother!" he exclaimed as he flung himself around her knees. She laughed aloud and tousled his blonde hair with her left hand.

"Hello, my son."

"Brother?" Thor asked.

Frigga smiled. She heard footsteps coming down the dock and glanced at her husband, grinning at his oldest son's antics. She crouched down to Thor's level so he could behold what she carried. "Here is your brother."

Thor blinked his blue eyes. Then he jabbed a finger into the baby's cheek, pressing hard. The baby's forehead wrinkled and he shouted shrilly.

"Gentle!" Frigga demanded. "Careful."

Thor furrowed his own brow. "No fun."

A deep laugh signaled Odin had arrived. Thor was lifted up onto his shoulders. "He will be. He will grow and you will play together. He will be more fun."

Thor gripped his father's neck and squealed, now unconcerned with his tiny brother.

"And what is Thor to call his brother?" Odin asked.

Frigga met her husband's expectant gaze. "Loki," she spoke quietly, then with more vigor. "Loki of Asgard, son of Odin."

Odin inclined his head, accepting the name and its consequent identifications.

And so begin the lies, Frigga thought to herself. They would weave a web to protect the little one from hate and from truth until the time came.

Odin walked back from the dock, still carrying Thor. Frigga glanced at her son, her Loki, as she walked. I cannot be entirely honest with you, but my love will always be true. You will have as much of me as my firstborn. I dedicate my life to your well being. He could not hear her, but maybe in some way he could sense the thoughts of her heart. Maybe he would trust that she could make up for every lie she would ever tell him.

As they approached the Hall of Asgard, Frigga heard the rumble, their people awaiting the presentation of the new prince. Odin paused before entering, lowering Thor to the ground and taking his hand. "We must let them see your brother," he explained. He pulled back a curtain and stepped through. He had carried Thor in his own arms at Thor's presentation. This one he left to her.

Frigga paused. She locked eyes with her pale son and whispered as she gazed into his blue depths. "You are my son. You will never be anything less. You are of Asgard." She pushed through the curtain meeting the roaring of a joyous crowd.