Author's Note: Hi everyone! I don't have time to write a long Author's Note today because I am literally about to walk out the door to go to my Aunt's to watch Dark World. To my beloved reviewers, I don't have time to respond individually, but I figured you would rather have a chapter now then wait two more days so that I can respond to reviews. I will catch back up to them in the next chapter, I promise! Also, I didn't have time to proofread this so please forgive any mistakes you find. If there is anything that is just unbearable or doesn't make sense, either message me or leave it in a review so that I can go back and fix it when I have some time! I am also sorry this is so short! XD From the sound of this Author's Note I seriously sound like I am just sorry that this chapter exists at all!


Sigyn had awoken sometime late in the evening from her fainting spell in her own bed. Normally she would have asked herself a million questions about this.

What time was it?

Why ask when she didn't care.

How did she get there?

It hardly mattered so why bother wondering.

Who had bandaged her hand?

She knew why they had to bandage it, and that was enough.

Instead of getting up, she lay motionless in her bed. She supposed she could call out to have one of the servants bring her something to eat or to fetch her parents, but she didn't have any desire to do so. The only thing she really wanted was Theoric, and it was the one thing in the Nine Realms she couldn't have. He was gone, and he was never coming back all because she had felt the need to save the day. How was it that even when he wasn't trying to, Loki managed to ruin her happiness? Sigyn turned over onto her side and caught a glimpse of the dagger she had given Theoric sitting on her nightstand. The thought of taking it and ending her own misery flashed through her mind, but that was simply a coward's way out, and Sigyn was no coward. No, she deserved to live with her pain and guilt. She had gotten Theoric killed, so she hardly deserved to join him in death. Sigyn continued to stare at the dagger blankly till she finally drifted off to sleep.

A knock on her door woke her sometime the next day, but she didn't call for the knocker to enter.

"Sigyn, are you awake?" Frida's voice asked through the door. "It is almost time for lunch, and we all thought you might be hungry…"

Frida waited for a reply, but Sigyn gave her none. She wasn't hungry, and she certainly didn't want to sit at a table with her happily married relatives.

"Sigyn you don't have to come down if you don't want to. I could bring our lunch up here." Frida offered.

Why didn't Frida understand that she didn't want lunch?

"I'm not hungry." Sigyn replied.

"Then how about I just bring my lunch up here and sit with you a while."

Sigyn didn't reply. All she wanted was to be left alone.

"Sigyn, please talk to me." Frida pleaded.

Frida waited for a response of any kind, but she received none. After a few minutes Sigyn could hear her sister walk away from the door to return downstairs. Sigyn rose from her bed and went into her bath chambers. She ran a hot bath and sunk into the water wearily. She remained there quite some time thinking about absolutely nothing. Her mind seemed to be just as foggy as the mirrors in the chamber. Sigyn got out of the bath only once the water had turned cold. She wrapped a towel around herself and went to pick out an outfit from her wardrobe. Fortunately she didn't have much debating to do. She pulled out the first black gown that caught her eye and slipped it on over her head. She then pulled out the deep purple and silver gown that had been her intended wedding dress. She fingered the beautiful material forlornly. She was practically a widow before she could be a bride. Three weeks. She had been three weeks away from the happiest moment in her life, and instead she would now spend the next seven days in mourning. What a cruel trick of fate. She held the gown in her arms and just sat on her bed to cry. She cried and cried till she had no more tears to shed at which point she folded the dress up and placed it in a chest. She had no desire to see the garment ever again, but she also didn't have the heart to give it away or destroy it. That task done, Sigyn left her room and made her way downstairs. Her family would be done eating by this point, but there was a chance that they might still be conversing in the sitting room. She softly knocked on the door, and her father called for her to enter. It appeared that everyone had left already since her mother and father were sitting alone in the room.

"Sigyn, how are you feeling darling?" Signy asked in a pitying tone.

"Not all that well." Sigyn admitted.

Signy rose from her chair and went to her daughter.

"Let me go get you something to eat." Signy offered before giving Sigyn a hug and leaving the room.

Sigyn still wasn't hungry, but she wasn't going to stop her mother from at least trying to get her to eat. Her father turned on the couch to face Sigyn and beckoned her to come sit next to him. He put a comforting arm around her shoulders and she rested her head on his shoulders.

"All the wedding plans will have to be cancelled, I suppose it is a good thing that there weren't that many yet…" Sigyn noted.

"Don't worry about all of that Sigyn, your mother and I will handle it." Halldor assured.

Sigyn just nodded her head in reply.

"You just take your time to mourn."

And take her time she would.

Loki's eyes flickered open and a white light blinded him.

"Finally…" he thought to himself.

It had certainly taken him long enough to die. He tried to sit up in order to take in the surroundings of wherever he had gone after death, but pain shot though his body. He lay back down and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

"What in Odin's name!?"

Did his wounds follow him to the grave, or was this some sort of punishment for the mistakes he had made in life?

He waited for the pain to subside before opening his eyes again. The bright white filled his vision, but it slowly faded to more natural colors till he could see the ceiling that he was staring up at. He turned his head to take in the sight of the chamber he was currently in. He might be dead, but this room certainly looked like his mother's sitting room. Loki could hear the rustling of a dress from across the room, but he wasn't able to turn his head far enough to see who or what it was.

"Loki, darling." His mother's voice cooed.

In a moment Frigga was sitting by his side running a hand over his forehead to check his temperature.

Ok, he wasn't dead.

"I must speak to the AllFather." He rasped out in a gravelly voice.

"He just left." Frigga informed him.

"It is urgent." Loki pressed while trying to sit up again.

Frigga placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him from rising.

"The battle has already been fought and won Loki." She assured.

Loki rested back on the couch once more.

"I thought I was dead." He remarked.

"You almost were, but you are on the mend now."

"How long was I unconscious?" He inquired.

"About a day." Frigga responded while stroking his hair like she used to when he was sick as a child.

Loki thought that his mother wanted to know what had happened and how he had gotten caught, but at the moment he was just too tired to talk about it. Sensitive to her son's emotions, Frigga gave his hand a squeeze.

"You get some rest now darling. I'll wake you in a bit to eat."

Loki nodded and closed his eyes. He doubted he would actually get any sleep, but the dark stillness aided him in going over all the facts regarding what had happened between Theoric and him.

The whole mess had begun after Loki had started looking into Theoric's past. He wasn't surprised that Theoric had noticed his watchful and judging eye, but never had he dreamed that Theoric would be so unnerved that he would betray him to an enemy. Loki was a bit surprised that Theoric had such little faith in Sigyn's love for him that he found it necessary to kill his only rival in it. Loki had certainly been jealous of Sigyn's love for Theoric, but even he hadn't tried to go to such drastic lengths.

"Only because you didn't think of it." Theoric's voice reminded him.

No.

The thought of killing Theoric had certainly crossed his mind, but only in moments of unthinking rage. Loki would never have actually gone through with it…and yet he had. Of course it was forgivable since it had been in self-defense. Keeping Sigyn from Theoric had just been an added bonus.

Still though, how could Theoric be so untrusting of Sigyn? Loki had never known a more faithful companion. Theoric had heard her come to his defense rather aggressively with his own ears and he still didn't believe her.

"She says that she can let my past stay in the past, but you know Sigyn, she is curious. Someday that curiosity would get the better of her, and she would try to find out what secrets I held."

Yes, Sigyn was inquisitive, and she would have dug into Theoric's past on her own some day, but why did that matter? Even if she were able to find anything out, which was unlikely, the knowledge wouldn't have dimmed her love of him. That was assuming, of course, that her love of Theoric was more than a passing fancy. Surely Theoric hadn't missed the fact that she loved him, so he must have feared that while she loved him, she loved Loki also. It was an understandable fear. She and Theoric had not even known each other a full three years, while Loki had known her intimately for at least a few decades. Her love for him was the more grounded of the two, and Theoric hadn't wanted to risk that she would indeed return to her first love. Even so, why betray Loki to the rock trolls and risk Asgard's safety? Surely Theoric could have come up with another way to dispose of him.

Trying to work his way through the dead man's thoughts on the matter would be pointless since any theory he would come up with would be just that, a theory. That just left him with one more detail to think on.

The daggers.

How ironic that each of their undoing's came about through their daggers. Loki had been too surprised when Sigyn first pulled out her new dagger to connect to whom it had originally belonged to. It had taken a few moments for his surprise to fade away, but when it did, he realized that he had seen a dagger identical to the one she was wielding in the headquarters of the rock trolls. As he had told Theoric, he knew that Sigyn hadn't been there, so that meant that someone had given her the dagger and that they had been to the rock troll base without authorization. At that point it became a process of elimination. There were only four men of note in Sigyn's life who could have given her the weapon: Halldor, Hallsteinn, Markus, and Theoric. Halldor was a member of the War Council so he would have had the opportunity and the knowledge to betray Loki, but Halldor carried a distinctive knife inlaid with his house colors of silver and midnight blue. He knew Hallsteinn wouldn't give Sigyn a dagger since he didn't think she had any use for one. Markus only carried one dagger in case of emergencies on the battlefield, so he wouldn't give his only one to Sigyn. That left Theoric. Loki had seen the warrior use a dagger in battle before, but during the heat of the fight he had hardly paid attention to what it looked like. Seeing Theoric wrap his hand around Sigyn's however, confirmed that it was his dagger. The handle, which was really too long for Sigyn's little hands, was designed specifically for his measurements. He did know Theoric kept at least two daggers on his person at all times, which meant he had more in case one was lost or damaged. Leaving a dagger in the troll headquarters had been a stupid and clumsy accident on Theoric's part… almost as stupid as using the same dagger in the presence of the rock trolls as you used when you were the Prince of Asgard. Loki chided himself for his own stupidity. He had been so careful in his shape shifting for all that time, but failed to think of switching out daggers? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Oh well, there was no beating himself up about it now. The mistake had been made, and there was nothing he could do about it at this point

So why had Theoric even shown the rock trolls his own personal dagger in the first place?

Probably to prove that the dagger he was claiming to be Loki's was not actually his. That was the only logical explanation, and yet it was nothing more than another detail that didn't really matter anymore. They had both made their mistakes, and they both had paid the price for it.

His mother had said that he had been unconscious for a day, which meant that Sigyn knew of Theoric's death by now. Loki couldn't help but wonder how she had taken the news. He knew she had been with his mother the day of the incident, but she had probably been long gone from the palace by the time he was brought back by the Crimson Hawks. While Loki couldn't help but feel smugly satisfied that Theoric was out of the picture for good, he was sorry that he had to force Sigyn to suffer yet another death to accomplish it. He comforted himself in the fact that Theoric had forced his hand in the matter. Sigyn was now free from Theoric, which meant that she could be with him once more. The only question left now was what he was going to tell Odin and the War Council about his capture.