XXVI

It was a matter of not inconsiderable pride to Jane that she made it to the great golden doors of the throne room under her own power. Despite the breakneck pace her escorts set, along with how many times they jabbed her in the back with the sharp ends of their spears, she didn't falter or flag. Did that mean she was calm? Hell no. Her heart was galloping along like a runaway horse, and her panicked breathing whistled through her narrow lips like steam in a kettle. More than one hot, sluggish droplet of blood was dripping down her back, reminders of just how little force they had to exert before they did her harm.

But she kept herself upright, and walking, and conscious, for her own dignity. Perhaps more important than that, she also kept moving for the hard drive tucked into her pants. If she tripped, fell, or let it drop, the whole game would be over before it began.

Jane's determination was enough to hold her, at least until the doors soundlessly yawned open and she had to cross that horrible threshold.

In daylight, Asgard's throne room was a vastly different sight than the hellscape she still sometimes found herself wandering in the worst of her nightmares, chased by scornful laughter that swirled around her like smoke. In fact, in the light of day, the chamber—while clearly meant to be imposing—was not intimidating. It was graciously grand, meant to awe its observers with a display of the might and power of Asgard and its royal family.

The room itself was a vast hall sticking out from the side of the palace, allowing tall windows to flood the room with sunshine. Beyond the clear glass, she could see the other spires of Asgard, jutting like a broken gate through the spires of which the silver ocean faintly glittered. The fires were not lit so early in the day, so only natural daylight illuminated the gleaming gold of the room's massive pillars, its ancient wooden carvings, and the shining marble of its inlaid floor. Bright colors on the ceiling dragged her unwilling eyes upward to take in the enormous mural filling the dome of the hall.

In stylized paint, Odin was both more intimidating—in black armor and a shining silver helmet, his golden spear massive—and yet more cartoonish. There was something almost earnestly exaggerated about the size of the army behind him, as well as the devoted expressions of his family members standing beside him. It read like a family taking staged photos at a mall portrait studio than the real people Jane knew and abhorred.

Hela was wearing her habitual twisted, thorny crown, but beneath its sharp halo the smile on her face was sweet and gentle. It was an expression Jane had never seen her wear, certainly not directed at her father. Beside the throne, Thor was on one knee, gazing up at Odin, and his huge hand clutched a battle ax Jane was certain was longer than she was tall. Yet Thor never knelt, she thought, not unless he was too drunk to stand. And Loki…well, there the mural rang somewhat true. He was depicted standing in shadow, not only behind his parents and siblings but behind the throne itself, well out of the direct line of succession, a position probably meant to show his state as the youngest child, but which struck Jane as an odd bit of premonition.

The man behind the throne indeed. Unseen, unheard, and unnoticed…until the day he should decide to topple it over, with the king still sitting on it.

Speaking of which…

Jane's eyes drifted downwards again, and she stepped into the chamber, footsteps echoing into silence as she led the way to the throne.

The Odin-family stood in almost the same formation as their painted replicas above. Odin on the throne, Frigga sitting at his side. Loki over his mother's shoulder, Hela standing before her. And then there was Thor, standing stalwart at his father's right hand. The only difference was that in the mural, Hela still wielded Mjolnir. In reality, Thor's massive hand thumbed the head of the great hammer, a shimmering hum rising from it at every sweep of his finger.

It sounded like a blade on a whetstone; it raised the little hairs on Jane's arms.

The room was otherwise empty. Clearly her death wasn't so important that it merited an audience. At least they had enough mercy not to force Darcy to watch her die, though she assumed that was because Darcy's presence was less contentious than Jane's. She wasn't the one raising all this ruckus between the princes, after all. Only Jane was so disruptive to the order of things.

The idea of Jane, plain Jane—who had never kept a man for longer than six months and hadn't had a man at all for the last two years—dandling two princes from her fingers, was so hilarious and incongruent and wrong that her breathing, already fast and faint, accelerated. Halfway through the hall, Jane came so close to hyperventilation that she started to see fuzzy black spots swirling in her vision. Cold sweat broke out along her forehead and she shivered down to her toes. She wasn't going to die, she wasn't, she was at least about twenty percent sure she wasn't, but even being in a place that held so much horror for her was enough to put her body in revolt. All she wanted was to crouch to her knees and hold still until the monsters went away.

Her pace faltered, feet dragging. A guard reared back with his spear and cracked her across the shoulders. Jane squealed and staggered forwards, pain sharpening her vision though it startled tears to her eyes. At the last moment she stopped her hands from clutching her stomach where the drive nestled into her like a baby bird, but she felt it slide.

"Hold, please," Frigga's light voice cut across the space, "I would not have her damaged prematurely."

Prematurely. Jane blinked back her tears, fixed her gaze on the toes of Odin's gaudy gold boots, and stalked forward. No, of course not. It wouldn't be as fun if their entertainment for the day wasn't in perfect condition.

They wanted to keep the pleasure of ripping her apart all for themselves.

The low, mean pettiness of it all, the useless cruelty…centuries and centuries these beings had lived, countless years to better themselves and improve, to become wiser and kinder…and they hadn't risen above a child's morality in pulling the legs off a spider before mashing it under a thumb, despising it for being ugly and lesser and weak. And her fear, her terror, was just extra spice for them to savor in her demise.

Fuck that, Jane thought, digging her nails into her palms. Fuck that, fuck that, and fuck you.

She reached the base of the throne and stopped, body trembling with adrenaline and rage, tiny, ineffectual fists balled against her sides.

"Put her on her knees," at Odin's order, her escorts' hands settled on her shoulders and forced her down. Jane wiggled a bit to keep the drive from falling between her thighs. "Leave us."

When the hall was empty and silent again, he spoke.

"Jane Foster. Your crimes you know. Today you will die for them."

She didn't reply. He wouldn't listen to any argument, and she wouldn't waste her energy on making one. Instead she lifted her chin, raised her eyes, and let every ounce of contempt she felt shine from her face.

Fuck you, her thoughts chanted, fuck you, fuck you, you deserve everything coming to you and I'm so glad I get to be part of giving you what you deserve.

Odin didn't need to be a mind reader to register the fathomless depths of her disdain. She didn't need to be one either to see that the sight of her defiance infuriated him.

He rose to his feet, armor clanking discordantly, breath wheezing through his nose like a wounded bull. Jane had never seen him standing before, so found it more amusing than intimidating. The great All-Father, hauling his superior bulk upright just to tower over a helpless, kneeling mortal woman. Pathetic.

Loki would see the humor in it.

But Loki had another role to play.

"You see now why she deserves the end I have in mind, Father?" Loki's voice was soft, placating, yet wheedling. "All that soft, warm flesh, those brittle little bones…imagine her in fragments under your feet. The cold will help her live, as you break her apart bit by bit."

Jane's stomach flip-flopped and she dropped her gaze. Unfortunately, focusing on the floor just made her imagine icy shards of herself scattered all over it, melting slowly back to grisly bits of skin, bone, and blood. A hot rush of bile flooded up her throat.

"All the while," Loki's voice slipped ahead, "she will have the pleasure of knowing her mind has given Asgard new advancements into interstellar travel. No longer will we be bound by the limits of a single Bifrost. With her science, my magic, and your power, Asgard will be able to place troops in any number on any world. Your dominion over Yggdrasil will be absolute and eternal."

She flinched, fighting for stillness and silence. Why was he saying this? He was giving their whole plan away! If Odin knew what they were capable of doing, wouldn't he suspect Loki instantly if any threat arose to his throne?

Or…a new, terrible thought trickled into her mind. Had this been his plan all along? Gain her cooperation by giving her hope, enlist her assistance in solving one of Asgard's greatest problems, and feed her whatever lies she needed to live with herself? Or die with herself, because keeping her alive had never been his goal in the first place? And all his dissemination, his confessions, the truths she'd pulled out of him, had they all been an act, a façade, assumed the moment he needed them and discarded the instant he didn't?

No. No, it wasn't possible. She had Loki's pledge, his promise…he couldn't hurt her.

But did he intend to? His exact words had been:

…as you break her apart bit by bit.

You. As in Odin.

Jane gasped, her rage cracking like an eggshell to reveal the ice-cold heart of fear within. No, no, he couldn't be doing this, it was all an act, it had to be! Because if it wasn't, then Jane really was going to die, and she was going to do it alone, in absolute agony, without saving her friend and having doomed her world and every world in the galaxy.

She clamped her eyes shut and huddled in on herself. No, no, no, no—

"No," she whispered, "no."

They heard her. In the great, gaping silence of the empty, cavernous chamber, every sound was a shout.

With a clattering creak, Odin resumed his seat on the throne. "Well," he drawled, lazy, indulgent, "Let it be as you will, then. Fetch the Casket from the vault. Let us see how much we can take from her before she dies."

No, no, she thought, listening as Loki's footsteps retreated behind her and panic gripped her heart. No. This wasn't happening. This wasn't right.

It wasn't right, was it? Loki was a liar, a trickster, he had been cruel and she wasn't so much of an idiot to think he wouldn't be crueler in the future. But she couldn't believe that everything he'd told her and everything he'd done—to her and for her—had been a lie. Time and again, he'd put his reputation or his life in between her and his crazed, bloodthirsty family. He'd shared things with her, secrets, truths. Things that benefited him not at all for her to know. He'd been hurt for her, weak for her, vulnerable for her.

After all that, Jane couldn't doubt him. She couldn't.

Could she?

She felt the Casket before she saw it, and not just because she hadn't dared open her eyes since Loki had vanished and the rest of his loathsome family had begun laying bets on how long she would survive. Thor thought she would endure both hands and feet broken off. Hela knew she could last until her organs were gone. Frigga declared herself too uninterested to wager and hoped the mortal would die sooner rather than later, but Odin tossed in a coin on Hela's side, joking that of them all, she knew her corpses. Thor followed this with a lewd joke, and all of them broke out into a sickening laugh.

But when Loki returned, they all grew quiet.

The Casket gave off the same aura of—not just cold, it was too overpowering to merely be cold—but dead stillness that Laufey had, yet magnified beyond what even the king of Jotunheim could produce on his own. In its orbit, life was impossible to sustain. Atoms, frenetic and overflowing with energy and life, groaned and slowed in its presence. Without any protection from Loki's magic, Jane's skin shivered, then blued, then bloomed with delicate lacy fretworks of frost. Her breath puffed into the air, and she tracked its progress, wondering how long it would take the tiny particulates of water to turn to snow.

Not long, was the answer. The air chilled so rapidly that soon humidity itself was drifting down on them in hard, anemic flakes of ice. How long would it take its power to begin terraforming the whole planet?

"Blasted thing," Hela said, conjuring a fur-lined cloak and throwing it over her shoulders. "We should turn its power back on the wasted Realm it spawned from."

"You could do that, sister," Loki's voice had harshened with the cold, and Jane wondered if he'd discarded his false skin of his own volition or if the Casket's magic had stripped it away, "if you wished to be a saint among the Jotuns."

"Sainthood is not for me," she grumbled, "I deal in the damned. Speaking of which, do you have an attachment to what happens to her after she dies?"

Loki stepped into Jane's field of vision, and the air around him was so intensely frigid that her teeth ached with it. His scarred, monstrous face looked down on her, meeting her wide, frightened eyes with blank indifference.

He shrugged. "If our father has no objection, let her be my gift to you."

"Odin is not your father," Thor put in, voice deep and menacing, "not when you have the gall to wear that face in his presence."

A tense beat passed between them. "My apologies," Loki said, monotone words accompanied by a bow just as stiff, "the All-Father's magic is strong, as is mine, but I fear in this instance, like calls too much to like."

"Then begin," Thor snapped, "so you might stop offending Odin by the sight of your abomination."

Loki grinned, sharp teeth shining. "Of course. Brother. I would not dream of insulting you by reminding you of the truth."

Thor stepped forward, Mjolnir singing hungrily. "Loki…"

He was ignored as Loki turned, kneeling in front of Jane with a dramatic flick of his half-cape. With his back to his family, he allowed a tiny smile to touch his thin, dark lips, and one of his shining red eyes winked.

Relief flooded her, so warm and overpowering Jane felt like she was being dragged under a tropical wave. It took all she had to keep her own lips from grinning. Using his body for cover, she slowly moved to clutch the drive to her stomach with one palm. Any moment now.

Loki caught the movement and reached for her other hand.

"A touch from me is enough to freeze even an Aesir's skin," he said, loud enough for his family to hear, as he inched his fingers nearer and nearer. "How much more, then, shall it hurt you? Shall we start here, on a more personal note, before we put you to freeze on the Casket?"

"Please," she forced the word out, hardly having to act the fear. Truth was, she already felt her skin numbing in his proximity, and sensation was bleeding from her fingertips. "Please don't do this."

"Oh, Jane," he tsked, "after all your defiance, I thought you would have more steel than to end your life with useless pleading. What a disappointment."

Closer, and closer still, as Jane babbled increasingly inane streams of please and don't and no. Meanwhile, the fingers of his other hand flashed a rapid pattern, and a cold blue candle flame burned in his palm. A signal fire?

She had no time to think about it, for in the same instant it flared up Loki's finger stroked one of the little bones of her knuckle, and her skin seared away. She shrieked, the pain so sudden and overwhelming that after the first cry she couldn't drag enough air into her lungs for another. She flung herself away from him across the gleaming marble floor, clutching her hand where the skin had grown a hard, white blister of frostbite. It was so painfully cold it felt as though ice crystals were spreading through her veins, freezing the rest of her hand solid and raw.

"Oh no," he snarled at her, gripping her ankle so hard his claws sank through her leggings. "No more running."

Jane wheezed, trying desperately to breathe and brace herself for the next bite of ice, but his cold didn't reach her this time. Were her leggings too thick? To stop a monster made of ice?

Actually, she was feeling pretty warm. Warm, then hot, then feverish, then…

She was on fire.

At least her lungs had thawed so she could scream again. This time, her shriek was met in an answering shriek of wind that whipped through a tear in reality's fabric. Beside her and Loki, a ragged seam of endless night opened in the air of the throne room, its darkness blighting Asgard's twin suns as they burned through the windows. Through this tear poured a stream of giants, their enormous feet cracking the pristine floor and tearing it away in jagged chunks of frozen rock.

"Jotuns!" Thor bellowed, "Mother, stand back!"

Faintly, through the ringing of her ears, Jane heard Hela screaming a challenge and Odin's ridiculous armor clattering as he rose to meet the onslaught. Her vision was warped with heat like a desert mirage, but she saw Loki put up a token knife to defend the Casket, only to have a giant knock it and him aside and into a pillar. Heaving the casket under one burly arm, the monster turned to grab her.

At first, having something so cool to chill the lava of her blood was almost blissful. But whatever power Loki had poured into her was too much. Jane was boiling from the inside out, skin swelling with heat. Another minute, and she'd burst.

A gong rang against the giant who carried her, and Jane tumbled from his arms to the floor, blood-flushed skin bruising with the impact. A gong? No, that was Mjolnir's voice, ringing intensely through the air. Jane had an instant to scramble away from the giant before his body—hole gouged in him from Mjolnir's blow—crushed the parquet where she'd huddled.

Around her the battle surged, heat, ice, and shadows surging from every side as magic and muscle clashed. The Casket had skittered across the floor when the giant dropped it, and was within a few feet of the interstellar portal, but no one could be spared from the battle to take it through.

No one. Except her.

Rising on her elbows, Jane blotted out everything—all the pain and chaos—and set herself to do what she could. Every place her swollen body touched the floor was agony. Every breath from her mouth was a flame. If she didn't get through that portal, she was done. One way or the other.

Closer, and closer still, the battle raged above her head, sometimes coming frighteningly near it, when a knife or a hammer or blast of energy whistled towards its target. Maybe she was a target. She couldn't stand to think of that. All she could focus on was the Casket and the portal.

In range now. She reached out her wounded hand, allowing herself one moment to prepare for the unimaginable. At least when she grasped the Casket, the cold was so immediate and intense she lost all feeling in her fingers and they locked like a claw around its handle.

She dragged it across the skim of ice on the floor, tearing her skin away when it stuck, leaving chunks of herself behind like gruesome breadcrumbs. Pain filled her body, night filled her vision, but both were her salvation.

Something struck her from behind, whiting out her vision in a blinding sear of pure torture. But her momentum had carried her too far, and the blow took her still farther.

She fell forward into darkness, taking the Casket with her.

Note: Y'all are the best. Thank you so much.