XXXI

Jane braced herself for a dangerous unknown, so when they emerged from Loki's portal onto a bare expanse of slick obsidian rock, the land about them harsh and windswept, and the sky above them empty save for a scattering of stars so bright and lonely her heart ached to see them, she was surprised and pleasantly relieved.

But her surprise, and the unknown, were both only momentary situations. Her mind's new-acquired knowledge told her that they were standing on a rogue planetoid, sailing somewhere through a part of space too far from Earth to have a human name, but one which she knew nonetheless. Her tongue couldn't pronounce it, but she knew how it sounded, knew how to write it in a language she had never seen or traced. The Aether told her of who had once lived here, a nomadic group of travelers accustomed to the planet's thin, milky atmosphere and volatile magnetic field. Eons ago, these travelers had arrived on the planetoid as it sailed through their original solar system, risking the unknown beyond the edges of their stellar maps in search of adventure.

They had drifted too close to a star once; it had overheated the atmosphere, boiling it off into space's infinite frozen wastes, and they had all died, unable to escape the star's gravitational pull in their tiny, aged spacecraft.

A whole race of intrepid interstellar voyagers, gone. A race which had chosen, in some distant, forgotten past, to live on a rock ricocheting through uncharted space. Dead and gone, their wisdom lost before humans had even crawled out of Earth's primordial soup. The Aether knew of them, remembered them. Did anyone else?

Jane stared at the stars, eyes misting with tears, overcome by the unbearable melancholy of memories that weren't even hers. She blinked hard, clearing them, and turned around. Loki was a dark shadow against the horizon, his silhouette uncertain through the tears that still veiled her eyes. He was standing quite still, hands resting at his sides, but there was a tension in his body that Jane—and the Aether—could read. He wasn't at rest. He was poised.

Jane swallowed. "Why did you bring us here? No one lives here anymore."

He stepped closer, cloak rippling. "No one has ever lived here. Look around you; this is a lifeless rock."

Flinching, she suppressed an odd flash of anger at his ignorance, which had been her ignorance and would have remained her ignorance if she hadn't been suddenly possessed by an all-knowing space parasite. "It wasn't always like this," she murmured, shaking her head. She remembered—or rather, through her the Aether remembered—families gathering to watch the stars, children playing a game with the pebbles scattered under their feet, and lovers meeting on the high hillsides, shielded from view by the sharp outcroppings of jagged rocks. "But never mind. Why are we here?"

"I thought we could use a moment to discuss what comes next."

"Okay," that was actually a very good idea; Jane had a lot of information about the universe bouncing around in her head, but still had very little idea of what Loki was thinking from moment to moment. "I'll be asking a lot of questions then. That's all right with you?"

"Very well. I have several of my own."

Jane shrugged. "Fine. Then where are we going first?"

"We will not go anywhere. Not until we have an understanding between us."

Jane stiffened. That was a definite threat; she knew it, and so did the Aether. She could feel it rising in her, and this time she wasn't very much inclined to keep it contained. But she held it beneath her skin, simmering there, hot and ready to erupt. She stepped back a pace, but kept her face neutral. "An understanding about what, exactly? We know what we're doing, don't we? Going for your allies, marching on Asgard, getting you on the throne so we can get me back to Earth?"

"That was the plan. I wonder if it is the same as the one you made with Laufey."

"I didn't make a plan with Laufey," it was the truth, but barely. Laufey had, after all, made the plan entirely on his own before he brought it to her. "What are you talking about?"

A sneer curled his thin lips. "I am the God of trickery and lies, Jane. Do not hope to turn my own talents against me. You are not only too honest, you are not talented enough for deception. You were speaking to my father before we left Jotunheim, and there is no reason for either of you to speak privately unless the conversation concerned me. What other conclusion am I to draw than that either you, or he, or the two of you together, has hatched a plan to be rid of me?"

Jane had often wished she had the power to stop time, for both beautiful reasons and banal ones. Wouldn't it be magical to stop time and hold a solar eclipse motionless in the sky for hours? Or freeze the clock long enough to sneak away from an insufferable coworker? Or just expand a minute to an hour, giving herself the peace and quiet needed to solve a tricky engineering problem? But here, now, where her future with Loki balanced on a pin head, she finally had the power to make her wish come true.

Time telescoped, stretching like matter streaming into the inescapable event horizon of a black hole as the Aether gave her space to consider her options. Loki froze in place, a perfect statue, neither flinching nor blinking as Jane closed the distance between them to study his tense, furious face.

She paced, considering. As far as she could tell, she had three choices, and a world of time in which to decide which one was best.

First was to be honest and commit to their alliance, which would lose her any advantage if she did want to double-cross him and probably lead to Laufey's death once Loki took his revenge. Despite having at last reached an understanding with him, Jane wasn't in a hurry to throw all her autonomy away. Having the Aether on her side gave her more balance in their twisted, uncertain relationship, but not so much that she felt at ease with it.

Second was to be honest and fight Loki then and there, and though Jane was no longer certain she'd be dead the instant she raised a hand to him—in fact, she could probably kill him then and there and he wouldn't even have time enough to feel betrayed—she wasn't sure she either wanted him dead or wanted to be the one to kill him. In addition, would it make sense to kill him before assembling his allies? Even Laufey hadn't suggested that. Loki was still necessary, though afterwards, well…that was a decision she couldn't possibly make yet, give her all the time between now and the heat death of the universe.

Finally, she could lie. She was terrible at lying.

She was terrible at lying. That was the reality of her, of what she had always been. But if she could know things no human—or Aesir, it seemed—had ever known, if she could slow time, then surely she could change that, too.

Jane rooted herself to the spot where she had begun, and let time resume its normal flow.

"Don't be so paranoid," she scoffed, letting a part of the Aether seep through her skin and into his mind. Don't be so paranoid, she'd said, and suddenly he wasn't; he never had been. Confusion puckered his forehead as he reconsidered why he had ever flung such an accusation at her, and Jane might have laughed if the moment weren't so tense and her sudden influence over him weren't so terrifying.

"Laufey was asking if I would help him use the Aether to restore parts of Jotunheim too damaged for the Casket to repair. I said I would after we'd taken over Asgard." She wasn't speaking, none of the words were hers. They came out of her body and were true.

"I thought I was doing you a favor," her voice dropped, wounded, shy. "I wanted to help keep Laufey on our side."

Emotions flitted across his face, each one fleeting as a butterfly, but with confusion and shame predominating. Loki was struggling to reconcile what he vaguely remembered having felt and how much he now trusted her. After a pause, he said, "A…sensible compromise. You are right, we should not antagonize Laufey until our object is reached. Do you truly intend to help him?"

"Maybe," she shrugged, still aghast at how well her ploy had worked. How much farther could she take this? If she could alter Loki's thoughts, why not the rest of Asgard's? Why not the entire universe's? "If you don't want the Frost Giants trying to invade Asgard, and if I don't want them coming after Earth, it makes sense to keep them happy with us, doesn't it?"

"Very true. Jane, I…" he paused, tension showing in the lines around his mouth and the way his fists clenched. Was he fighting the Aether's influence, sensing that something might be wrong? Jane's fingers flexed, putting just a little more pressure on his mind, and the tension eased. "I must apologize," he said, shaking his head, "I do not know how I came to mistrust you in this matter. I should have relied on your good sense."

"I—It's all right." Her throat was suddenly very dry. An apology? Had she made that happen—or rather, the Aether—or was he truly that ashamed that he was voluntarily offering her an apology, despite how much he hated admitting any flaw or weakness? Either way, Jane was suddenly afraid of her own power, and she stepped back again, as though distance would change the influence she'd exerted over his mind. Blowing things up was one thing; that at least felt…honest? At least it was a power everyone had, the power to destroy. This, though. This was manipulating the thoughts in someone's head, gaslighting them without even the possibility of getting caught, because now what she said became part of reality's very nature. She wasn't just lying, she was unmaking the lie itself by altering the truth, stretching and twisting it between her fingers like a piece of warm taffy, and bending it into whatever shape suited her.

This was wrong. Jane's stomach churned, nauseous and ashamed at itself.

"Let's just," she gestured faintly, "move on, okay? Where should we go first?"

"Yes, of course," still avoiding her eyes, Loki conjured them a pair of low chairs; they sat facing each other, the only two living beings on a graveyard hurtling through space. Jane's skin prickled at the thought, but Loki's next words distracted her quite well.

"My most powerful allies are the Fire Giants of Muspelheim. From their Realm springs the fire of creation, the light that made the rest of Yggdrasil possible. Some legends even say all life emerged from the mixture of fire and ice still to be found in Ginungagap, the primeval and eternal void at the heart of the universe. Their people's changeable forms, renewing from the fire and lava of their world, make them formidable foes against the Aesir. Many times Odin and his line have waged war against them, and each time they have been forced to retreat."

As he spoke, Jane could see what he was talking about, vivid as though she were watching a movie. Muspelheim was an old, old world, one of the first to congeal from the cosmic gunpowder left over from the foundation of all reality. Ginungagap in particular…the Aether knew it well, knew its endless fall through space, a portion of the universe from which all energy and matter had expanded, leaving an unimpeded void at the center of all creation. A remnant of the Big Bang, expanding in emptiness as the universe fled away from it. The void was a patient, waiting mouth; once the energy from the Bang finally expended itself, someday the void would reclaim all it had lost, and the universe would begin anew. The cosmic scale of that thought was almost too large to fit in her mind, no matter how vast it had become.

She shuddered.

"If Odin's invaded so many times, and if they have such an advantage, why haven't the Fire Giants gone after him?"

"Unfortunately, they have neither the magic nor the technology for interstellar travel; none, at least, that would allow them to wage a war on any measurable time frame. And like the Frost Giants, they have been too wary of trusting me."

He paused, as though expecting Jane to throw in a pithy comment, but she had far too much on her mind for quips. So he went on.

"Still, now that we have other allies and an Infinity Stone committed to our cause, I do not think Surtr will require much convincing."

Surtr. The name, though unheard until an instant ago, sparked an avalanche of memories. Surtr, guardian of Muspelheim, carrier of a flaming sword forged from some of his galaxy's very first atoms. Past and future swirled uneasily in Jane's mind.

"You're not worried about the prophecy about Surtr? Ragnarok?"

Loki laughed. "I see the Aether has been telling you bedtime stories. Muspel propaganda, I assure you. Could Surtr make a mess of things on Asgard? Yes, and it will be to our benefit if he does. But destroying the Realm Eternal will take something a little greater than a very large sword, else Thor would have done it himself by now."

Jane shifted in her seat. His flippant manner did nothing to put her at ease, but if he wasn't worried about Asgard's safety, she supposed she shouldn't be either.

"So then, we'll just go to Muspelheim and let Surtr know the plan?"

"Essentially. He may ask you for some demonstration of the Aether's power, but that should be a formality only. Once you have walked on his world without immediately bursting into flames, he will know you are no ordinary mortal."

"Right, right," her heartbeat lurched. She hadn't even considered how stepping onto a volatile alien world might, you know, kill her in an instant. "Do you mind if I take some time to practice for that, then? Maybe you can make some lava or something and I can try using the Aether to get me over it safely, or something like that? I just don't want my first time to be my last time, you know? Actually," she grabbed a hasty breath and plowed on, "maybe you could just keep me under a spell, like you did with me and Darcy on Jotunheim; honestly, I think I'd be more comfortable with that, because—"

She ran out of air.

Loki cocked his head, a smirk curling his lips, but he had the good grace not to laugh. "If you would pause for more than a moment to think, you would see that none of that is necessary. You know where we are, where this is. What do you think you have been breathing for the past half-hour?"

Her first thought was air, because what else could it be? But then she remembered; this planet had no atmosphere. Even when it did have an atmosphere, nothing meant that atmosphere had to be friendly to human lungs. So what was she breathing?

Nothing. She wasn't breathing anything. Her lungs expanded and contracted, because that's what her body was programmed to do, but the phantom oxygen filling them was just the Aether, providing her with the breath she was expecting to need. Changing reality without her even thinking of it, just because she had not thought the world would work any other way.

Breath, but not breath, rasped in her throat, as her breathing which was not breathing accelerated. No atmosphere, no air, but that also meant no warmth, no pressure. Her body should have come apart in any number of ways by then, because this was an unsheltered rock spinning between stars, and she hadn't once thought of how or why she was still alive.

Jane blinked—wondering how the moisture in her eyes hadn't evaporated or frozen, and which would come first if she were really unprotected, out in space—flopping back in her chair like a faint Victorian damsel. "Oh," she said, and then again, "oh."

"Yes," Loki nodded, and his smirk twisted, "I suppose I should be flattered. You thought I was keeping you alive all this time?"

"I," she hesitated, because the answer to that question, though she hadn't considered it, was yes. Why would Loki take her anywhere dangerous without telling her or protecting her first? That would be out-of-character, or at least, out-of-character for him now. Reconciling present Loki with past Loki in terms of his treatment was a headache she wanted to avoid. "I suppose so."

"Thank you. I am honored with your trust, but in this matter, your power exceeds my own. All I can do is mitigate the effects of natural forces. I can shield you from cold, pressure, and heat, but I cannot do away with them altogether. You, however…all you have to do is think it, and the fabric of reality will bend to your whim. The power you wield can, quite literally, change the world. What we will do with that power, you and I together."

Jane did not like his tone, wistful and greedy all at once. Despite not liking the methods she'd needed to use to deceive him, she was suddenly very glad she'd done it. Loki was fundamentally a man who could not be satisfied; once the throne of Asgard was within his reach, who could say whether he'd set his sights on gathering the Infinity Stones next, including the one she carried? And if she had to stay attached to the Stone, what did that mean for her future?

No, she couldn't let her guilt control her. She had to remember, and keep remembering, how dangerous he could be.

"We are not going to do anything besides make you king of Asgard," she snapped, "and once that's done, I'm going right back to Earth to fix the mess you and your siblings left behind. Anything else you want to do, you'll have to do on your own."

"Such a pessimist! Thankfully I remain more optimistic that our paths may cross again in future. There is much you do not know about your power, and someday you will have need to learn. My libraries are always open to you."

"Thanks." She did not want to think about crawling back to Asgard, hat-in-hand, looking for a favor, but he was probably not wrong. The image made her sick to consider. "Anyway, should we get going? The sooner we act, the less time Odin has to prepare any defense against us."

Loki stood, extending a hand. Begrudgingly, Jane took it, allowing him to lift her to her feet. He vanished the chairs beneath them.

"Off we go. Now, be warned. Surtr and I have a longstanding agreement, but mortals never entered into it, even Infinity Stone wielding mortals. He will be suspicious of you, and I will have to say several things that you will not appreciate hearing. I tell you now, because it is best we present a united front."

"What things?" she had a horrible suspicion.

"I thought I would tell him that we have a more…formal alliance between us."

Ugh. Suspicions confirmed. "What kind of alliance?" she ground out, trying to tamp down on her irritation so the Aether wouldn't blast Loki off the cliff face. Of course, it wouldn't kill him, so maybe she'd allow herself a little violence. As a treat.

Loki's grin was the very definition of 'shit-eating'.

"I thought I would tell him that once we have conquered Asgard, you and I will unite our mutual powers in marriage. It wouldn't do for Surtr to think the Reality Stone will just go waltzing off into the universe in the hands of an ordinary mortal woman, after all. He will want to ensure he knows where the power is based."

Jane didn't blast him. She stomped her foot and cracked the stone beneath them both in a ten-foot radius.

"Goddammit," she buried her face in her hands, "Damn it. Fine. But if you try to kiss me, I will burn your lips off."

"I wouldn't dream of taking such liberties. But I am afraid I will have to hold your hand. And you would not deny your betrothed the pleasure of singing your praises in company, would you?"

"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

"My dear Jane," he kissed her hand and winced as she followed through on her promise, covering his pain with a laugh, "this is giving me a fresh reason to live."

Note: I'm back! Had to take a little diversion through the world of James Bond after seeing No Time To Die, but I'm back on board because it's NaNoWriMo, baby! So fingers crossed I can get through a big chunk of what remains of this story. Hope you liked this chapter, let me know if you did, and thanks as always to you guys being the best!