Ice forms outwards and breaks inwards. Details like this seem unimportant, not the province of a god.
The devils lie in details, in every world of the realm.
Ice is blue in Jotunheim.
Loki had thought he was in Asgard.
.
It is only fear and fear again until Odin knows.
Then, it is betrayal.
.
For this Loki has always known: you do not strike a match unless to light it, you do not whet a blade unless to wield it, and you do not raise a son unless to love him—
But this he knows only now: he has never been a son.
.
Forget, forget, Thor would tell him, if Loki still told Thor what is inside him. (If Loki had ever told Thor.) That cloyed and cloying lion-heart, that laugh, that carefree righteousness.
To Thor, kingship is a promise, not a prize.
Loki cannot forget that.
.
(How much longer to doomsday.)
(How much longer to doomsday.)
He is the one counting, so it cannot be very long. But he wishes that time did not have to be as cold as everything else in his world is. The very seconds seem to frost the air. And his greed as well as his want—are they the same thing—spirals in crystal patterns over the walkways, over his armor, over his hands. He shakes it away, he hides it, he keeps it close.
How much longer.
.
The match is struck, the blade is whetted.
The monster finds it easiest to keep to shadows, away from sun and son.
.
Without Thor, the kingdom is empty. Like gray hollow night in the hours just before dawn—shapes, whispers, waiting. How might it be better? If Thor was prisoner, if Thor was disgraced, if Loki could make his rule known?
Everyone knows, but nobody trusts. Nobody expects it to last. That is the trouble with ruling at the end of time. (How much longer to doomsday.)
.
Defeat is something he can touch. He has craved his brother's anger, craved his notice, more than he dares admit.
He has to remind himself that he is not a brother.
He has to remind himself to fall.