So I like to joke to my mister that I'm his bedwarmer. Some months ago he mused, 'I'd like to brand you with a belly ring.' My imagination abounds with impure thoughts.

* Revised May 2018 with an expanded chapter of debauchery that no-one asked for *

Prologue

'When do we start?'

With a nod to his untrustworthy ally, Thor answered, 'Another holds the key for your release – as soon as you convince her to use it.'

His terms met, the Crown Prince retreated from Loki's cell without another word, signalling for the emergence of an enrobed figure from the corridor. The prisoner's eyes narrowed suspiciously as he peered up at the slight sorcerer Thor had enlisted to disable the cursed walls containing him. It was not like his brother to play games.

As the hood was pulled back, Loki's expression froze. He became freshly aware of his haggard appearance slumped on the floor, surrounded by broken furniture and shattered glassware. His head turned back against the wall, eyes drawing closed as melancholy swelled up to engulf him again.

She was the last person in all the Realms he could suffer right now.

'Truly, I've become a captive audience for all the grievances in the Realm,' he remarked dryly, as his raw eyelids parted to stare numbly at a broken chair. She was silent. He cleared his throat with a sniff. 'I trust you've learned much in Vanaheim?' he enquired more politely.

'I made you something,' his old pupil answered her master in a whisper.

Loki's hand curled into a fist at his side. 'Show me,' he echoed, his lips reminiscing a smile of pride.

The sorceress reached into her straining bodice, and produced a delicate glass key, which she had forged in fulfilment of Thor's caper.

'It's beautiful,' he recited, silver tongue getting the better of him in her presence. He stilled it with a scowl, and turned his concern to the bottom line. 'What do you want for my freedom? I've nothing but the clothes on my back.'

She sank softly onto the topmost stone step before his cell, bringing herself to his level. She was blinking back tears at the memory he had evoked of their first meeting, just three years ago.

'Why did you cast me away?'

Her voice intoned a forlorn melody. It pained him into malice. Parched laughter hissed from his cracked lips like smoke.

'That's my price,' she insisted with quiet determination.

His own voice was hoarse with menace. 'I'm the Prince of lies, my tongue knows not the taste of truth.'

'Then lie to me.'

How she knew him. Loki twisted to face her and oblige the invitation with all the venom that was expected of him. 'You were a toy I tired of. An unfit consort for a King.'

The words he could not say spun so easily into lies. Suddenly, Frigga's expression of dignified hurt sprang into sharp relief in his memory and a scream spasmed in his throat.

In contrast to the now-departed Allmother, his companion's lips curved with satisfaction. She rose to the task before her, laying her hands to the invisible barrier between them. Her fingertips read the ensorcelled glass as delicately as they had once traced his skin. Finally she located the weakest point in the Allfather's bindings. There, she wedged the glasswork firmly.

The entire web of seidr illuminated from corner to corner in resistance, and then glimmered, falling dim.

Loki rolled to his feet, scraping himself up off the floor. She watched him surreptitiously as he adjusted himself, raking his lank hair back behind his shoulders. Her eyes flicked to his wrist as she glimpsed a strange streak of blood beneath his torn sleeve – and then the sight was gone. His tattered clothing shimmered as he refashioned his armoured leather surcoat – a sleeker iteration, stripped of the wide metal accents and better suited to the subterfuge of the task ahead.

Finally he drew his hand back sharply behind him, fingers spread, and whipped his arm forward. The motion hurled a toppled-over table through the defunct glass with savage force, and the sorceress stepped deftly aside as it shot past her in a hail of shards.

The vengeful creature who stepped from the cell was alltogether a different man to the playful Prince she had served.

And he knew so. As they faced each other Loki's calculating gaze flickered across her in fleeting strokes that avoided her own. He observed the midnight fall of her hair, the fair curve of her cleavage, the silver embroidery threading her plum-hued gown. He could not bear to speak her name, so split was his tongue. But he owed it to her. Loki drew breath deep into his gut.

'You have my gratitude, Sigyn.'

Then his jaw sealed shut; he would say no more. She glanced away in resignation, and turned toward the staircase at the end of the passageway. He followed, presumably to be met with Thor. At the foot of the stairs she held back to admit him. 'After you, Highness,' she offered with the old formality.

Repressing a twinge of nostalgia, Loki ascended. Then he felt her fingers slip the key into his, and a mischievous grin leapt across his face. 'Not part of your bargain with Thor,' he guessed under his breath, sliding the key beneath his sleeve.

'I repay my debts in full,' Sigyn declared tenderly at his back.

He could never again be contained here. Loki's pulse quickened as possibilities for new schemes weaved in the back of his mind, picking up the threads of abandoned ambitions.

'You don't happen to have a dagger in that bodice do you?' he ventured.

She did not reply, and he glanced behind him to find her gone.