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Chapter 2


Loki woke to find his bedwarmer gone. He furrowed his brow groggily, sure he had not yet rung the bell to dismiss her from his chambers.

He sat up and glanced around to find Sigyn sitting curled up in the adjacent window with her knees folded beneath her, cushioned by the emerald drapes as she rested against the ledge. She stared out at the sunrise from behind the glass with the wistful resignation of a bird between the bars of their cage. For a moment something tugged at him – guilt, for imprisoning her in service beneath her talents. But he was selfish, and her freedom did not suit him. He just wanted something of his own. He just wanted to sleep.

He watched her in silence for a few moments, reflecting on their meeting the night before. She had appeared so demure, but within a few exchanges he had drawn out a thrilling flavour of poison. It was delicious. He liked her; already she had proven different to her predecessors. He had slept soundly for the first time in months.

It occurred to him to greet her with a prank. A smile playing on his lips, Loki reached out and conjured an illusory serpent onto the floor beneath her dangling foot. Turning his wrist, he sent it slithering up her leg. Sigyn jumped sharply, emitting a cry of fright and cowering against the window. His laughter was arrested though, when she threw out her hand and vanished the snake.

Loki's eyes narrowed. She had dispelled his illusion. She simply undid it.

Sigyn was staring at him now, stunned, her chest still rising and falling in time with her pulse.

Loki decided to test her ability. Without a word he summoned something bigger. Something monstrous.

Sigyn's gaze widened to take in the sight of an enormous Frost Giant as it expanded in the middle of the Prince's bedchamber and towered over her, scarred and scarlet eyed. Pursing her lips in concentration, she banished it easily, peering at Loki through the dissolving structure with a confused expression.

'You're remarkably good at that.'

'I seem to be much better at unworking seidr than casting it,' she replied. 'May I ask the purpose of these tests, Your Highness?'

'My own amusement.'

'Oh,' she snorted. 'How else may I amuse you, Your Highness?' she asked playfully, daring a dark glance from beneath her lashes.

Regarding her with raised brows, Loki slipped from the sheets, his nudity shimmering into raiment. He approached her resting place, snatching up a few grapes from the tray on the table as he crossed the floor. Intent on a slow but sure pursuit of her affection, he declined to continue the flirtation. Instead he said, 'It would amuse me to see you smile, instead of staring out that window like you want to jump from it.'

Her eyes fell. 'I don't want to jump out of it,' Sigyn sighed with a shake of her head. 'I suppose I just want to keep stretching my wings ...'

Loki registered the yearning in her voice, and found such a kindred desire hard to ignore. It was nothing to teach the girl a few tricks. In fact, it could be quite an amusing venture. He spread his hands. 'Then let's start.'

She lit up immediately, agape with disbelief. 'You mean it?'

'I do.'

'Aren't – aren't you busy?' she enquired.

'Not til the afternoon.'

Loki broke off a bunch of grapes and proffered them to her, and Sigyn stood to accept them. As he considered a worthy test of her skills, she asked, 'What's the most complex illusion you've made?'

He stilled, and his lips twisted into a smirk. Then as he stood before her, a smooth voice uncoiled around her ear. 'You wouldn't know it if you saw it.'

Sigyn whirled around to find Prince Loki – a second Loki, standing behind her wearing the same smirk, his hands clasped behind his back.

Loki watched Sigyn's face become rapt with delight as she smiled up at the duplicate he had conjured, her educated observation roving every detail of the illusion. Her smile was like a ray of sunlight through winter cloud, and it warmed him as it did her stark features.

She turned back to the real Prince to find two more, and her eyes widened. Backing away, she jumped at the sight of another beside her. Soon, everywhere she turned more Princes had appeared until the chamber was populated by identical grinning Princes, more illusions than she could undo filing around her as she tried to determine which set of eyes to face.

Finally His Highness emerged from the crowd and stalked toward her while the others closed in around them, fixing her with a stare of such intensity it drove a shiver up her spine. She knew him by the pores across his nose and the shadow of stubble beneath his shaven chin as he drew close. He began to chuckle, light and melodious. Sigyn's breath caught in her throat as he leant in to her, his fine lips parting to catch hers, and her eyes fell closed –

But she felt nothing … except for a pair of hands drawing her own behind her back, and then cool metal encircling her wrists with a click. Her eyes flew open to find what she'd thought was the Prince gone, along with every other illusion that had pressed in so suffocatingly just a moment ago.

'You've a gift for breaking spells, Sigyn,' said the Prince at her back. 'Let's see you break these.'

He circled around her to watch his captive, her bodice heaving as she struggled against the cuffs, even as she sensed the thrum of seidr within their locks. With a scowl Sigyn gathered her will and sent out her sorcery in a frantic lash, clawing at the locks, but they seemed to tighten at her attack. She swayed and sank to her knees before him, sweat prickling upon her brow.

'Sorcerers will try to fortify the weakest point in their enchantments,' he guided her.

Sigyn reached deeper into the enchantments she sensed at her back. She hissed a steady breath as she began to map out their structure in her mind's eye as she sealed closed her own. With a tendril of will she traced the strength of each point like the links in a chain, seeking ...

There, she felt a knot of seidr binding a fragile link. Narrowing her will to a needlepoint, she began to pick at it, teasing the fortification apart. It frayed under her working, until at last the weakness it patched was exposed. She was so close. She struck at the enchantment, its current fizzling –

Sigyn released a gasp, and felt the cuffs loosen around her wrists. She pulled her hands free triumphantly, dropping the clinking cuffs at the master sorcerer's feet.

Loki could not help but smile down at his student as he watched relief and satisfaction rush into her expression. Where he could not offer her freedom, he gave the illusion of escape. A meagre comfort, he knew, but comfort all the same. He extended his hand.

'Clever girl. You've earned your next lesson.'