It was a long while that she thought on it before Frigga told Odin of her suspicions.
She visited Loki. He snarled and spat. He told her little. But what little he spoke, and – perhaps more importantly to her practiced eye – did not speak, fed the misgiving that had been growing in her heart.
Odin looked at her with his eye inscrutable.
He told her such suspicion had long been in his mind.
"But can we do nothing?"
"Not unless he himself breathe word of it," Odin answered her, weight and weariness laced within the words. "You know as well as I of what he is capable. You know how already the people speak."
"If it were lie," she asked, "might he not have used it to win our sympathy? Even mine? Is not his very refusal of such things testament to their probability? Thor said that he was unlike himself throughout their time together."
"It cannot," Odin snapped, "be proven without his testimony."
He turned wearily away from her.
"Odin," she touched his arm.
"I dare not lead him." Squaring his shoulders, Odin raised his head, "He must bear the consequences of his obstinacy, at the very least. And it would be no bad thing for him to learn humility, as Thor has." She smiled a little, glancing down, and she heard Odin sigh, "I know well that look. Speak your thoughts,"
She raised her face to look more directly at him, "It would be no bad thing for all of us to learn to cherish that virtue."
He softened thinly, pressing her hand.
"Continue to visit him," he said. "See what it is he might let slip. Ever has he been more free with you. I know," he stepped away from her. Gungnir rang against the stone floor, as he went to the ledge looking out towards the cliffs, "you will say this is only the product of my own actions. But there is no changing the past now."
She drew up behind him. "He does love you, Odin."
Odin gave a dry laugh.
She laced her fingers with his. "He will remember it, in time."
For a while, Odin only looked out the great window. Then he nodded his head and without a word, he left her to see about his duties.
She went to visit her son.
