Author's Note: A big, big thank you to everyone who has read this, and a special thanks to my reviewers, who give me hope that this might be going somewhere not suck. XD I won't deny I'm terrified of this chapter, and I hope it worked out in the end. Anyways. On with the show~!
"Oh, this festival is nothing more than a silly excuse to drain more of our mead, my dear," Queen Frigga answered tersely, her fork stabbing promptly into the remaining piece of meat on her plate. Carthrine turned to her own meal, nodding in understanding; there were plenty of useless holidays in her own homeland, although much fewer when compared to the level which the Asgardians believed was normal.
"But there must be a story behind its title," Carthrine pressed, "The Festival of Dawn. Is it a celebration of the season?"
"No, much darker meaning, I fear," the queen answered, "but very few know or care. The only who would were the gods and goddesses that were alive during the wars with the Jotunn on Asgardian soil-,"
Carthrine dropped her fork, curiosity overwhelming her need for food. "There was war here with the Jotunns? Beyond the realm of Midgard?"
"Oh yes," Frigga's eyes clouded over, as if remembering something usually stored at the very back of one's memory, something only fit to be thought of in the deepest hours of night. "Their quarrels originally began with us here. Back when they were in full possession of the Casket of Ancient Winters and would wield it against us quite viciously. The festival was a day of remembrance for the first act of heroism in those dark, dark times." She gently trailed off, as if trying to the best way to word her upcoming story. Carthrine waited patiently in her seat, sipping from a glass of bitter red wine that seemed to set the tone of the tale on its own.
"There was a girl," Frigga began, reminding Carthrine of a bedtime story, "a young servant girl who had fallen asleep against a tree near the southern border of our great city. A garden so beautiful and serene I can very well understand her blunder." Here, the queen chuckled, which brought a similar smile to her company's face. "Well, the girl was awakened to the sound of marching and pounding, the sound of trees in the distance collapsing one by one. And through the remaining trees, as the sun rose on the horizon, she saw the shadow of the approaching Jotunn army."
"Ah," Carthrine said, "So she was a martyr. The first to die for her kingdom."
Frigga shook her head. "Not in the slightest. The young girl ran as the forest fell around her, protecting herself and speeding her gait with the magic she learned from her master. Truly an impeccable bit of sorcery on her part. She made it all the way here, to the palace, where the king was able to rally his forces in time to meet their threat."
Carthrine felt warmth in her stomach, a friendly, familiar warmth that reminded her of the heroines she loved on Vardheim. Few women seemed to be given the chance to show their merit here in comparison, and this story (as well as the warrior Sif's, she reminded herself) was a beautiful exception; she found herself congratulating the girl silently for her bravery even though she knew it would not be heard. "And what was her fate?" she asked. "Did she receive anything in return for such bravery and skill?"
"Well, the king provided her a new dwelling, with a family of powerful sorcerers for her to practice with," the queen continued, "and a promised spot on his personal staff as a general in his army. However, she chose otherwise by then. She left Asgard for some reason or another and has never been seen since."
Frigga rose from her chair. "But enough of history, and more of the looming present. I fear I must rejoin my husband, as he will no doubt wish to be part of the festivities. I pray you find something worthwhile to do as the rest of us collapse around you in a drunken stupor."
Laughing, Carthrine rose as well, curtsying quickly before following the queen out of the dining room. If there was one thing she could not imagine, it was both Odin and Frigga drunk.
As Thor often dined with his warriors, and Odin as often with his personal guards, and Loki, who seemed to avoid social interaction altogether, Carthrine found herself turning to Queen Frigga as her source of company for dinner each day. It wasn't a matter of simply wanting female companionship; rather, Carthrine would much rather learn about Asgard from its (more or less) most reliable source. Knowing a culture's customs and attitudes was one thing; learning the why behind them, the history they stemmed from, was by far another. Piece by piece, Carthrine tried to fill as much as her mind would allow with the many stories Frigga would tell her each evening, hoping it would grant her a better understanding as to why this land was considered to be the very essence of 'peace'.
She would write to her father sometime tomorrow, she decided as she continued her walk back to her room, and tell him of her efforts. It would make him at least a little happy to hear she was trying her best.
As the door to her chambers swung open, her small gaggle of handmaidens, being Rionne, Selkynne, Marian, and Clarin, rushed dutifully up to her upon her entrance.
"Is my lady attending this raucous festival of muscle-toned warriors tonight?" Rionne asked politely, the look in her eyes betraying her disapproval; Selkynne stifled a high-pitched laugh against the back of her hand.
"I might as well attempt some civility, much less than what you have offered them. Wench." Carthrine sniffed haughtily, maintaining her composure long enough for Rionne to look genuinely offended before bursting out into laughter herself. The girls all lost their propriety then, behaving as old friends together for the first time in years.
Which, in all actuality, they were. Carthrine's current handmaidens were introduced to her when she had just breached childhood, and, all being of the same age, the camaraderie they had formed between one another was a truly unbreakable force. Rionne was Carthrine's voice of unreason, Selkynne her tutor on patience, and Marian and Clarin her co-conspirators on many an ambitious project.
Fondly, Carthrine recalls the times where she had wished these amazing women would be her equals. But blood, she knew, had to be blood, and they had never held her status against her. Not once. And for that, Carthrine would always be grateful.
"Oh, and by the way," Rionne produced a letter from her sleeve with her mistress's name written in careful script across it, "Tall, dark, and marginally-handsome-but-far-too-busy-brooding left this for you not a moment ago. We have greatly resisted the urge to read it, so you may as well do us all a favor and tell us what it says."
Carthrine took the message, gently opening its folds to reveal a short, yet beautifully scribed letter. She read:
"My princess, I inquired of my mother what your plans for tonight might be, and she has given me sound assurance that you will be doing nothing worthwhile thus far. I beg you, instead of galloping around on my brothers arm (however tempting it may seem, believe me, he is hard enough to stomach sober), for your accompaniment in my own celebration of this grand holiday. The choice is entirely yours. Your prince and-,"
Here Carthrine began laughing so harshly and abruptly, she was unable to continue reading. The maids looked startled.
"What is it?" Marian said, clipping the message out of Carthrine's hand and reading it aloud herself. "Your prince and personal voyeur, Loki." She turned to Rionne. "What does voyeur mean?"
Rionne did not answer, merely quirking an eyebrow to her mistress that promised questions to be asked later, a look to which Carthrine grinned sheepishly. "Well, then. You have a date. And it is our job to see you ready."
Gathering herself once more, Carthrine nodded, and proceeded to follow her maidens into her dressing room, ignoring the giggles of the younger two as they skirted behind her happily.
Tonight was going to be much, much more fun than she expected.
Loki checked the sky again.
Black, still black. Far enough from dawn that he needn't worry. But still, the wait outside this woman's room was beginning to scratch at his nerves with each passing moment. While his mother, if she even knew he was there, would chastise him for being impatient, Loki expected the princess to be a little more… eager, so to speak. And thus ready at a much faster pace.
He checked the sky once more.
Finally, as if the darkness was an answer to a question he had been holding since his vigil began, he knocked heavily on the door. Within moments, it was opened.
"My mistress is nearly ready, your highness," the young blonde maiden said, her voice sounding as light as harp strings as she bowed her head in reverence.
"I fear that I must hurry our dear princess along myself, else I be waiting here all night. Excuse me." And without a word being allowed in edgewise, Loki pushed his way past the open-mouthed handmaiden and into the room.
Carthrine looked abruptly up from her position in front of the mirror. Luckily, she thought, she was fully dressed (this time, her inner self hissed, and she stifled the blush from creeping up her cheeks). She was wearing a simple black gown, one that fanned out from her ankles into a wide oval across the floor. Her hair was being secured to the back of her head in a tight ponytail by Rionne, who was staring at the prince in a blend of shock and approval. She observed the look that the two royals were giving one another, and immediately decided that this was not the time and place for her nor her friends. Her mistress would want to be left alone.
"I believe you are finished with my part in your preparation, my lady," she said carefully, and motioned for the other handmaidens to follow her out, quickly, as if a second longer would cause the floor to fall out from under them.
When the room was filled once again with silence, Carthrine turned herself around on her chair to face the prince head-on.
"A few moments, my lord, for me to finish?" she asked, gesturing to the contents of the table beside her. Loki settled against the wall, his impatience masked flimsily as he tapped his foot against the stone ground.
Suppressing a giggle, Carthrine turned back to her things. A long brush was sitting out, prepared for her by Selkynne; grabbing it by its handle, she swept it across her cheeks, her pale skin gaining a hint of pink with each stroke. The irony was not lost on her as she realized the pointlessness of the routine; she would be blushing enough tonight, she thought, without any help. Placing it back on its stand, she continued with her practiced hand, painting small swirls across her eyelids in the way she had been taught as a girl. Blacks, so many different shades of black, yet all coming together to form a shadowed painting across her face, one that she was proud of being able to produce under the pressuring gaze of the man behind her.
She picked up another brush, this one smaller and thinner, and held up two creams, showing them to the petulant prince. "Red, or purple?" she inquired, motioning to her lips.
"Purple," he answered almost immediately, his eyes meeting hers.
Smirking, she dipped the brush into the red.
"Princess, you are far too difficult for your own good," he expressed, screwing his eyes up to the ceiling, the perfect mixture of amusement and annoyance. "Now put on the other or else I will be forced to wipe that red off your lips myself."
"And who is to say that you would not have done so anyway, no matter the color?" she asked, innocence nearly dripping from her words as she turned back to the mirror.
"With me, darling, there are rarely such guarantees."
The words came from so close to Carthrine's ear that she jumped, dropping her brush and paint to the floor in an unnaturally loud clatter. He was beside her, and his hand grabbed hold of her jaw roughly as he pressed his lips onto hers.
After a brief moment, the shock subsided, and Carthrine kissed back.
I cannot believe this is happening. Those were the words stamped across the back of her eyelids as she pushed into him with the same roughness he was forcing onto her. His lips parted, their kiss deepended further, and their faces seemed to mesh; and, once Carthrine had regained control of the rest of her limbs, so did their bodies. With a swift jerk she pressed herself onto him, her entire form shifting them roughly across the room until she felt his back hit the chamber wall with enough force to clank their teeth together.
"This won't do," she heard him murmur, and with a tug, spun her around so she was the one pinned to the stone, unable to do anything but allow him to ravage her with his-
Silver tongue, her mind screamed, and yes, this was more or less just as amazing as she dreamt it to be. His kisses travelled down her jaw, sucking on the soft of her neck, then back up again, until Carthrine was lost in a sea of warmth where she couldn't even tell where his mouth was.
Then, just as abruptly as it began, he pulled away, his knee still holding her fast in place.
"I want to apologize for my previous insults, my lady," he said plainly, his eyes devoid of any kind of fluster. Secretly she hated him for it, but then his words finally registered in her head.
"Oh," she managed to gasp out, "Um, then, you have my forgiveness."
He smiled. "Whore was not the word to describe what you are, especially when you would give yourself up so enthusiastically."
Well at least h- wait.
His eyes grew unbearably dark.
Carthrine attempted to jerk away, but his hands lashed out and held hers tight, and the pressure she felt from his knee increased till she felt herself hiss in pain. Still, even as she struggled, she could not arch away from his mouth as it pressed back onto her neck, muttering into her skin.
"At least whores ask for payment." His tongue licked experimentally up her throat, and she stilled, her breath completely halting at his touch. Gently, he began kissing the outside of her ear, as if nothing had been said, and for some stupid, stupid reason, Carthrine told herself, she did not want him to stop. "What word would you believe is better fit?"
What was this man? What was he thinking? What in hells name was he doing with her earlobe? Carthrine tried to draw herself away from him, to think, to try and understand how someone could seem so willing one moment and then completely demanding and cruel and vulnerable the next. Or…
Carthrine felt as if it were a bolt of lightning hitting her skull.
She was his equal. And he was doing everything, everything in his power to shove her as far as he could beneath him using all the strengths he had and in every way he possibly could.
She was a princess, he a prince. Both of high intellectual standing. Both with developed, unique talents. Both physically appealing to the right eye. Equals, in every sense of the word, but that was far from what Loki wanted.
And just sex, she recognized, would never be enough. Allowing him to have her was not the victory he wanted; no, he wanted her to feel like a nonentity beside him, or rather, under him, like an obedient servant who should be honored that his attention ever graced her way.
He wanted power over her. He wanted to rule her.
Her mind was forming words for her, though, and before she could think them through, they were there, escaping from the haze that was her judgment and into the air.
"Slut." she whispered, the Midgardian word heavy on her tongue.
He paused, easing back. "What?"
She looked him in the eye, saw the pain and lust and that everlasting demandingness, and, lacking malice or even hesitation, said:
"I would say... I am a slut. I have no doubt you know what that means, being as well-read as you are."
His grin. His wicked, wicked grin. It overtook his face along with a passion Carthrine could not believe.
"Much better, don't you agree?"
And once again, their lips met, and she knew she was lost, had lost. For if there was ever a battle to be won, she realized, it was merely one of time. How long it would've taken her to fall for him, and how long this prince's patience would have lasted. Every kiss and every touch was suddenly weighed down with the thought that she was making some grand mistake, a mistake of a thousand lifetimes, as well as the knowledge that she would do nothing to change her path in the slightest. Armed with her willingness, he kissed harder, faster, until-
"Come," he said, pulling away; Carthrine nearly resisted, but allowed him to slip out of her arms reluctantly. "We are going to miss the dawn."
His hand grasped hers, tight fingers around her own that spelled no escape tonight, and she followed him from the room without a single glance back at her reflection.