The moment Frigga sees him, she knows. Knows that something has changed, that something has shifted and fallen into place.
She rises from her seat on the high throne and her husband, King, All-father; he who certain in all things, who does nothing without reason, regards her from the lowest step with bewilderment in his one remaining eye and she knows. Something has changed.
"I knew not what to do." He makes no move to embrace her, to fling his arms about her as she's imagined him doing so many times since that first day he left to shed blood in distant lands. Instead he pulls a tiny bundle from the sheltering crook of his arm and offers it up to her gaze, cautious as a little boy cradling a foundling bird. "I could not leave it."
A baby. She spies it's fingers peeking out from the fabric's dark bulk, tiny and pale as moonlight. She goes to him, limbs moving as if of their own free will and reaches out to take it.
"Frigga," her husbands says, voice warning and she pauses, hands grasping empty air. "Frigga," he says again, "it is Jotun."
Jotun. Oldest and most feared of all their people's enemies. Oh Valhalla, she thinks to herself as she slips her hands under the bundle and gathers it to her; what strange patterns of destiny the Norns are want to weave. In her arms, the baby sleeps deeply, dark lashes heavy on its chubby cheeks. So small, even for an Æsir child.
"A runt," her husband answers, reading her wondering gaze. "I think that is why they left it."
"What?"
"In the temple."
"How could they do something so monstrous?"
"Their's is a harsh land," he says, words little more than a tired sigh. "They probably thought they were doing it a kindness, not letting it linger."
"How awful." Cooing soft nonsense to it, she pulls the baby close to her chest. Tiny life, she thinks, tiny bones, abandoned so carelessly to suffering and death and yes, she can feel it still, those cloying threads of fate. Can feel them tying her heart to this unwanted child's.
"I cast a spell to make it appear Æsir," her husband says, "and another to hide it from the men's eyes on the journey home. Had they seen it, had they suspect what it was, they would have wished it killed. But, my love," he hesitates, something she has rarely known him to do in their many ages together, "it had the royal markings. The lines of inheritances. It is Laufey's."
Laufey's child...
Impossible and yet, certainty weighs heavy on heart. "No."
"No?" her husband stares at her, confusion and surprise wrought on his weary face.
"Not Laufey's. Ours. He will be our son." Gently she takes takes one of the baby's hands in her's and raising it, presses a kiss to the tiny fingers. "He will be mine. "