He watches her sleep beside him, his eyelashes landing almost on his cheeks.
Her body is sprawled out, totally relaxed like she shouldn't be, joints almost loose enough to let sunlight through. She trusts him too much, he thinks, and puts out a hand as white as her skin to cup her jaw. She's a heavy sleeper, she won't wake up, not even when he leans over and puts his lips to her cheek. His thin dry mouth slides sensitive over soft marble, pressing down on thinly veiled bone and over a thread of gold hair leaking over her face.
"It's all right, I'll leave you alone now," he says to deaf ears stuck through with pearls, and drags his hand off her cooling shoulder.
Straightening, limping away, leaving red footprints, Loki walks the rest of the hall. Core-rotten selfish, affected by only one of the thousand murders his army has committed today.
If he'd known, he might have led the attack from another side of Asgard.