You awaken with the amber glow of dawn moving across the room. Your body aching in the way you had come to know all too well, telling a tale of the adventures the night before. Thor had been loving and gentle, had even watched you while the two of you made love. Told you you were beautiful, told you he was so delighted you were his and his alone.
Only he was wrong. He couldn't be more wrong.
You belonged to another and that you were no-one's.
Your mind turns to Loki and his wit and his charm, and the feel of his cold hands to the way your stomach flips to when you see him without him noticing.
You had spun a web of lies even the king of lies would be ashamed of. And the worst part? No-one knew of your predicament; and you had noone at your back, no confident, no shield, nor army. You and you alone had lain the foundations and built your lies tall.
Thor's warm hand makes a journey down the notches of your spine and your skin tingles from the minimal contact, quashing all other thought.
You take breakfast in the solar, Thor insists on holding your hand and touching and kissing you on the journey there, batting his hands away, embarrassed and anxious about who might see.
You enter first, your hands by your sides, demonstrating a quick curtsey to the King and Queen before taking your seat opposite Loki.
Loki does his best to greet you, gives you a mischievous smirk before moving to serve himself seeing as no one else was doing it.
Thor thunders in soon after, distancing his arrival from yours for several moments as per your suggestion as to not arouse suspicion. He booms about how brightly the sun shines and how his sleep had been the best slumber he had experienced in centuries. You find yourself having to stifle a laugh, looking up from your plate you find Frigga doing a little of the same.
Your day is promptly filled with horse riding lessons, taught none other that the sweet lady Sif wearing a darker, more lightweight leather garb and hair scraped up, and off her beautiful face. She leads a horse with a slack rope while you get used to the movement.
Every Princess must learn to ride.
She grins and praises you at every achievement you make, obviously proud to be a good tutor, and you, her intelligent student. Baring no ill towards you, yet clearly having some history with your husband to be. You had begun to wonder as to her kindness and if it was all a farce or was born or truth.
Your mare snorts and brays, as you grow accustomed to her heavy body, her strong legs, her thick and rough mane.
Sif eventually lets you walk untethered, not confident yet to gallop or canter, you walk the circumference of the palace gardens, Sif trailing behind on her stallion.
…
You feel his eyes on you without even having to turn around. You had rode him particularly hard, for reasons known only to you. Filling yourself with him instead, in all ways made sense to you. Diminishing Thor and his efforts, cleansing and breaking what you both had done together.
Apologies and guilt, also, known only to your own mind. Jaw slack and sated, time crawls by within the sugar coated bliss. Several long minutes afterwards, you turn over, "I love you." You say carefully, to yourself more than to him, the vowels feeling jagged on your tongue, horrible and wrong.
"Oh, I know that." His mouth twists into an arrogant grin and you suddenly want to smack the life out of him. He begins to trace the outside on your thigh with the backs of his fingers, something he knew you enjoyed, oh, so much.
"No." You whine, a pitiful sound, roughly pushing his hand away. You look around the room as if the four walls and furniture would supply with you courage. "You don't." You fight tears, not wanting to appear weak.
He holds your gaze for several lengthy, uneasy moments, unblinking. "Has something happened?"
"I don't want to tell you...yet."
He keeps a hand at the small of your back, moves to sit up and holds you against him, how he could flit from aroused, enraged and curious baffled you at times.
"As long as you know what you're doing?" This time, he reaching to touch your arm, a reassuring and familiar gesture.
You bite the inside of your lip, refusing to taint yourself with more lies.
"I slept with Thor." You say tightly.
His back stiffens, and in the pale, cold moonlight, you can only make out the outline of his angular face. Hard and taught. "How so?" He asks, effortlessly.
"What?" You say, unable to hear him over your own beating heart.
"How so?" He repeats. "How did you sleep with him?" His voice is wavering, yet controlled, slick and it almost scares you. Your heart, racing for all the wrong reasons.
"I rode him like a horse...till I broke him." you say. Lies. Thick. Never ending.
His face finches. Like a mouse caught in a trap, Loki turns to face you, his face unreadable. Of all your time spent together, you had barely cracked the surface of the man.
He pinches the hem of your dress and it feels like eternity passes before he speaks again, it makes your eyes water. Ragnarök comes and goes. The moon could have waxed and waned for all you knew.
"You wear his colours, a reflection of your heart, I wonder? Hmm?" He wasn't wrong. You'd chosen to wear a clinging dress, made out of the finest blue silk, cut in a sweetheart neck and flowing sleeves, with a scarlet wrap for your arms.
Currently lain out on the chaise, Loki had practically torn it off you. "Stop it." Your chest tightens while your mouth runs dry, you close your eyes, refusing to look at him and the betrayal on his face.
Your stomach twists into what feels like a figure eight, the corners of the walls pressing down on you, you want to leave, to run and never ever look back, snap to somewhere else in the nine realm
.
"Princess." He says, non-committal. Your spine prickles and you act on sight of him at the corner of your eye.
"Loki." you reply, flatly. you face the archway leading to the little courtyard, watching where the Warriors Three train with various weapons on some unfortunate Einherjar.
In the distance, Thor announces something in his booming voice, Volstagg and Sif laugh and close in to add their thought on whatever joke he just shared. The others train proudly, humbled by both yours and Thor's appearance. When you first approached, Fandral had waved and bowed at your presence, typical, you had ought. thought
"You're more powerful than all of them combined." His voice is like a lullaby, and his words are a poem. "You know it to be true." Voice suddenly higher, you hear the wetness of his tongue, you turn to look at him only to find him staring.
"And is this the part where I say "It's all thanks to you"? Or something similar?" You quip, with difficulty, in the sunlight his skin is paler and his eyes are brighter. Someone so infuriating shouldn't be so beautiful.
"It wouldn't go amiss." He grates. You turn yourself back to face the Warriors and their efforts, unlike them, you didn't need to practice, you didn't have to correct your posture nor need to watch your centre of gravity or shift in balance. Your mind was your weapon and Loki had taught you to use it. And he knew it.
"Have you been well?" He asks and your fists clench at your sides, mercifully disguised by the flowing sleeves of your dress. Was this the game he was playing now?
"I have." You say, resisting the urge to bite the inside of your mouth.
You hear a thud and look up to see the start of a commotion amongst all the armoured bodies, in the sea of gleaming silver and gold, you make out the figure of a very smug lady Sif helping a less than graceful Fandral off the ground with one hand, spear in the other. They grin at each other with admiration and understanding and your stomach twists with jealousy.
Lest, Loki had treated you as a person and Princess in equal parts. Appearing to be the only person who had fathomed you could be both. Comforted by the ties of your past and dazzled by the prospect of becoming royalty. Maybe he saw a little of himself in you. Maybe he had sought an ally instead of a lover the day the both of you had met.
"Belligerent fools." He grinds, reminding you of his presence and your skin prickles, becoming increasingly aggravated.
"Why are you here?" You fully turn to look at him now.
"You know why," through the dresses delicate material you feels the backs of his fingers trace your elbow and forearm. Heavy and gentle.
"No." You bite, sharply, teeth clenched together around unspoken words as you wrench your arm from his, your dagger is in your hand and at arm's length in a split second, a lethal diamond in the raw sunlight, your chest, tight like your corset had been laced too tight, knowing fine well it hadn't.
"Go on then," he half whispers unfazed as he leans in so the tip of the knife stresses the leather. "I'd like to see if you can." He says, calmly, kindly, like a gentle breeze, taking a step forward, forcing you to bend your elbow towards yourself. "Right here." He instructs and grasps your fist and the hilt of the dagger, up and round into his throat, the tip, now pressed right into his main vein, ready to gush precious scarlet.
"No! Stop it!" You hiss between heavy breaths and your eyes water, your voice strangled and horse from strain. At this distance Thor wouldn't be able to see you. But would he hear you? "Why can't you find someone else?" The words are agony, wanting the easier path is not foreign to you even if it meant sacrificing someone else's happiness.
"Because I don't want someone else. I want what I already have." He snarls to you, much like if you were a child.
But she belongs to another..." You swoop the dagger down and out of sight, it suddenly such an offensive thing, your eyes filling with hot, angry tears. Born of hatred and misery, of yourself and the both of the them, the beauty of Asgard and the emptiness it holds for you. " Go find Amora.".
"Amora," he echoes, like he was trying the name when the skin between his brow wrinkles. "Why, so I can expect a dagger in my back?" He scoffs, emphatic, he tilts his head to one side where you had left a benign but small mark.
True friends stab you in the front….
"You two have...history, though." The word feels heavy, and your lips move around it like they would hurt you.
He snorts loudly. "Pleasant isn't exactly what I would care to call it, mind."
You don't say anything, too ashamed to be crying, too hurt by his words. "Let me go," you say, and he looks at you questionably as if you crying in his presence offends him.
"No.". He says, sharply beginning to squirm to try and get away but to no avail as his grip only tightens, against your feeble 's so close, you can feel his hot breath on your face, smell the rich leather of his clothes.
"Thor loves me." You say.
"As he should," he says and half smiles and he pinches the hem of your dress and raises it hip high his hand suddenly out I'd sight. The cold metal of your dagger kisses your inner thigh, trailing it upward. He sets it in your thigh scabbard, a thin, slight thing no bigger than your hand.
Your belly tightens at the sensation, his fingers dance towards the girth of your thigh, around the underside where the skin was paler, more sensitive. His hand twists so his knuckles touch you instead. "You deserve to be loved." And just like that he vanishes, leaving you wanting,eyes wet and waiting.