Disclaimer: The characters and original story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me; this story is not for sale or profit.
A/N: Hard work (and dangerously elevated level of caffeine) pays off in the end! And alas, I'm still posting this a day later than I planned! My muse is a twisted little slave driver, never ever satisfied, and I actually had to split this chapter in two again. As anyone who read my story "Creatures of Sensation" knows, I'm a notorious and shameless liar when it comes to the number of chapters I'll post. What can I say? I can't keep the drunken monkey off of the keyboard... Hopefully it paid off though. I'm still not satisfied, but if I waited to post until I was totally satisfied, we'd be here for decades. (Just ask anyone who's read my story "An Offer She Can't Refuse" – to my chagrin, it is not an exaggeration).
Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, you have no idea what a help and a joy you are! I was pleased to see some really great predictions about what is coming (some were accurate, others less so – but all great ideas!) I was also please to see that Loki has earned a bit of some anger! *chafes hands together evilly and channels Emperor Palpatine* Good, good, let the anger flow through you. Muwahahahaha!... ahem, down boy… what I meant to say was, I am so pleased you are still sticking with the story, even though Jane is so confused and Loki is being a jerk. The coming chapters should answer all! Well not all… there are still three more planned sequels after this story. You know what I mean. I am going to stop my long-winded, coffee-fueled rambling now and let you read. Please enjoy!
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"Love's the devil counting teardrops in the rain
To the sound of a chalkboard symphony played with nails.
For what it's worth, I don't want to see you hurt,
Any more than you have to…
Once you lose yourself entombed,
I promise you love the hardest way…
- H.I.M.
.
The king cast one last, longing look down to where his mortal goddess wandered, lost in her own darkness. She feared. And though he would not entertain it, he feared for her. But while she searched for the answer she didn't even know she was seeking, he had his own work to do.
"Nothing is born without pain," he whispered to her from light years away, and then turned his eyes quickly away from her suffering and descended from his golden throne.
The king hid his royal face and form, and in the guise of a traveler in a hooded cloak, walked from the gates of the golden palace. He traversed the ancient shining streets, hidden in plain sight amongst the people. He moved through them like a boat on the sea, gliding silently through their midst, immersed but apart. Sights and smells drew him in a hundred different directions, begged him tarry for just a moment, explore and remember, despite the danger of discovery… The traveler ignored their siren song, refusing some sudden descent into sentimentality simply because his heart had begun to awaken again. Duty called him on. He would not be distracted or turned aside.
He made his way through the city and out through the inland gate, and traversed the inward road toward the Hinge. The journey was quiet. Uneventful. It made the traveler uneasy. Too much time to think with too little distraction. His eyes wandered out over the grain fields and meadows, the thickets and deeper woodland reaches that climbed to the border mounts in the distance, and beyond, to the veiled twinkling of starlight through the realm's thin atmosphere. There he found peace. Everything he saw reminded him of her.
The gold of the stars was a fierce flash of warm brown eyes. The singing of the birds in the forest rang like her sweet laughter. The gleam of midday on the swaying grasses was the shine yellow sunlight on soft hair. Even the swells and dips in the landscape, in his imagination distracted with longing, became the soft curves of her body, which he dreamed fervently of one day learning and knowing as he had learned and knew these hills – an intimacy born from years of exploration. Even the distant bend in the Silver River brought to mind curve of a full, sweet mouth smiling at the secrets unfolding inside the dancing curiosity of a dexterous mind. A mind like his, but tempered with a goodness and integrity that could not fail, and veiled coyly behind a modesty born of innocence.
Temptation personified. A light in the darkness.
The hours passed quickly in this sweet torture of fleeting memory and wild imagination, until at length his lonely hike up the inland road ended at a small, squat keep – the Hinge. It sat, dull and square-edged compared to the artistry of the Eternal City he had so recently left; deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous. Camouflage to hide the jewel at its center.
He paused within sight of the wall, careful to hug the tree line, and observed the patrol. He saw only two guards moving along the battlements. With the main body of the Einherjar called to the perimeter, only a skeleton guard would remain here. And they were sure to be lax. No one had ever attacked the Hinge. It lay at the heart of Asgard, directly above the Core. Asgard had never been threatened by a force that could invade deep enough to reach it.
Until now.
The traveler tightened his fingers into tight fists with resolve. He intended to make sure it never came to that. It was why he was here. Well… some small part of why he was here. She was why he was here. And she was the best chance this realm had. He believed in that. Despite the detonator still concealed in his cloak.
The traveler did not bother with the gate. There was an excellent chance he could talk his way past the guards without incident, but he might just as easily be detained. It was trouble he did not need.
A memory of his mortal with a knife in her hand flashed through his memory, and he closed his eyes against a surge of panic. He was eager to get back to the golden throne.
So instead, he made his way carefully around the keep's outer wall, clinging to the shadows, until he came upon his goal; an old, slime encrusted drainage canal. Brackish water stood stagnating in the basin, concealing his goal: at the bottom, several feet under the murky water, the heavy iron grate had rusted through and been eaten away over the centuries, leaving just enough room for a lithe and flexible form to dive down and squeeze under.
The traveler pursed his lips, eyeing the greasy looking morass. It bubble slightly, though there was nothing alive in its befouled depths.
"You can't say I never did anything for you," he muttered with a long suffering sigh.
Minutes later he was pulling himself out of the drainage ditch on the inside of the wall, moving quickly for cover behind one of the outbuildings, grimacing at the trail of filthy water he left dripping in his wake. A few quick incantations later saw him clean and dry, though he now had another reason to speed his return to the palace. He had not the least doubt that his spells had removed every trace of the muck, but as with each previous time he'd made this trip, he knew he would not feel quite clean until he'd bathed.
"…not the same anymore."
The traveler stilled, then pressed himself tighter against the building, letting the shadows of the eaves conceal him as two Einherjar guards moved past on their patrol.
"It cannot be helped," the second guard replied over the rhythmic, almost musical clang of Asgardian armor. "Queen Frigga is gone to Valhalla, and in the end, a king is but a man, even in mourning."
"It would be well if he took a new wife soon," the first rejoined thoughtfully. "A king needs a queen to soften his wisdom, and a man needs a woman to soften his wrath. Now that Prince Thor has relinquished his claim…"
"As he has done many times before," the second interjected pointedly.
"Ah, not like this time," the first countered. "Edain was patrolling nearby when the prince spoke with the king, and heard him speak the words. Where before the prince spoke in petulance, now there was only wisdom and certainty."
"So you say he will not return this time?"
"I say it is so."
"Ten gold pieces on it then, for I say he will be back within the decade."
"On my honor, I will take that wager."
"Well, and done."
"But as I was saying, even if it be not permanent, the Allfather should take a new bride before…"
Their voices faded as they moved around the bend and out of range. The traveler emerged from the shadows, scowling disgustedly after the pair. He was tempted to follow and learn their faces. He would have dearly love to have them flogged for such a display of insolence. But their incompetence was so undeniably convenient, and he was on a mission. He smirked darkly as he moved out along the back stretch of the keep. It mattered little. This whole place had grown soft, rotting from the inside out with ease and complacency. All of the guards would soon feel his unwedded wrath in a brutal tightening of discipline - once he was finished exploiting its weaknesses, that is.
Leaving the guards to their own devices for the moment, he progressed quickly and quietly around the keep, and made his way to a narrow window with a loose latch, half hidden under the thick blanket of a climbing vine that had overrun the back walls. The window was set level with the ground and led down into a dusty old storage room that was stacked with rows of old wooden chairs under drapes, and let out into a dim, narrow servitor's passage. From there, it was a simple thing to slip through the back stairs and utility corridors, moving ever downward until he reached the bottom of the keep, ten levels below the ground.
He emerged from a service door into the Hinge Well, the ethereal glow of the Core lighting the shadows under his hood from beneath. With only a moment's hesitation, he descended into the Core of the world. Bare minutes later found him in the first cavernous vault at the heart of the Archive, ascending the Circle Stair.
There was no need to hide his presence here. Any he encountered would presume he had every right to be here. Even that pompous troll, Amundson, should he deign to descend from the Grand Terminal where he held his little shadow court, would give him no trouble. The Nethermount was completely secure, and therefore completely open to all Asgardians.
He ascended through the ancient halls of stone and scrolls, moving indirectly, but riding the lift platforms whenever possible. He knew a path through the poorly-charted lower halls to the Academy levels above on foot, but it might take days to climb through the endless honeycomb labyrinth of caverns and tunnels to reach his goal.
In his youth he had haunted the halls of the Nethermount for days and weeks at a time, playing at having adventures and discovering strange relics and ancient tomes of lost knowledge. He'd adored the illicit mystery of it all, discovering buried and forgotten treasures that no one had seen in an age, ignoring Odin's stern warnings to stay away. In the past unwary scholars had lost themselves in the Archive, never to be seen again. It had never deterred him. As a young man he'd returned and spent several decades mapping the rooms and cataloging their contents as a kind of hobby, though he had not explored even a hundredth of the catacombs and chasms. He felt at home here.
If he coveted a return to belonging in the uplands, here, amidst the dust and scrolls and remnants of the wise and glorious dead, he had never lost it. This was perhaps the only place he had ever felt he truly belonged.
Now, however, he had no time to explore or wander the ageless rooms of relics; better to risk an errant apprentice's officious questioning than to brook such a delay in reaching his destination. He intended to be back upon his golden throne before the sun set in the uplands.
Even so, it was half an hour before he reached the White Stair. He climbed it without hesitation – perhaps even with a measure of anticipation – and emerged onto the gleaming summit of the Nethermount.
Into the striking beauty of the Garden of Idunn.
Granite flagstone paths and meandering little streams edged with thick, downy mosses wound between soaring crystalline spires, some tall as trees, some slender as a needle, others half as tall as the mountain itself, and half again as thick. Unlike in the uplands, there was no sphere of atmosphere here, only the narrow biosphere generated by the plantlife and maintained by the slight static charge of the crystals. The stars were always bright against the velvet sky overhead, day or night. Each spire collected the cosmic light and concentrated it, so that the garden gleamed bright as day with cold starlight in the eternal night of space.
From the peak, the cloudscape surrounding the Nethermount was visible, stretching away into oblivion on all sides in the distance below, a rolling plain of swirling mist that looked almost solid enough to walk upon – and was, up to a point, beyond which there was only emptiness under the mists; the only way to discover the location of the undulating edge was to step over it and vanish in an instant into the void. No one without a death wish dared test the limits of the Field of Eternity; those who did never lived long enough to tell its secrets.
Amidst the crystal citadel grew and row after broken, crooked row of robust, dark-leaved trees, their heavy headed boughs hung thick with clusters of golden apples. The apples of Idunn.
The garden needed no tending; it was self-sufficient by design. The Gardener herself was long gone, her standing stone nestled firm and tall amongst the spires to guard her domain. Effective enough, in truth, for none ever came to this sacred ground if they could help it.
The place was neither locked nor forbidden. There was no danger, no trap, ward or pitfall to bar admittance. Any Asgardian was welcome here.
It was simply that few could bear the high, lonely weight of the ageless garden. It was a place of new beginnings, and a source of great and terrible loss.
But the king, the traveler, the one who stood here now, whoever he chose to be, knew no border or boundary – and he knew more than anyone about loss. His domain was wherever he chose to walk, and here, amongst the sweet scented swirling winds and starlit crystals, he walked unafraid and unburdened, because he was no Aesir to have lost what the apples took in exchange for their immortal gifts of strength and magic. With his bite, he had gained without losing, and he was content here, where even the fearless dared not set foot.
He stepped further into the garden, lowering his hood. The face that he had worn when he donned the hood was not the face he wore now. Here he would wear no counterfeit face. He did not deign to acknowledge the fact that his accustomed face was also a counterfeit; his purpose was respite, not integrity. So the familiar lines of pale flesh, angular features and dark hair smoothed away all artifice, and the form he had known from birth lay over him like an old familiar coat that fit just right.
More himself than he had been in a long while, he moved out amongst the trees, along familiar paths, letting his fingers trail distractedly along the glass-smooth gleaming crystal, over the rich, moss-soft earth and through the fragrant apple leaves. He allowed a calm to steal over him.
This was a lonely place. Hollow as any other. But it was safe.
Or safe as he was ever allowed.
Deeper and deeper into the garden he roamed, losing sight of the White Stair and the standing stone, until at last he came to his destination. Here a wall of dusky rose quartz ringed a stand of trees on three sides, leaving the fourth quarter open for passage into the inner garden. The leaves of these trees were darker and hardier than the surrounding foliage. Most of them clung to the perimeter of the quartz boundary, close enough together to weave their branches together, mingling their fruiting fronds and crowning the circle in fragrant shadows. These he ignored, and approached the single tree growing at the center of the circle.
The tree before him stood taller than the others, more robust, its branches more expansive. Its wood was thicker, and its roots broke the flagstone path that ran around it with new cracks and fissures. And its apples hung heavier and shone a darker gold than the fruit of the other trees. It was beautiful to behold, almost too vivid alive to be real.
He laid his hand along its rough-edged, smooth-textured bark, his green eyes falling closed in concentration. Slow, sparkling tendrils of green light flowed down his arm, curling around his wrist and fingers before sliding into the grooves of the bark. The tree pulsed languidly, flowing golden sparks radiating from the points of contact to drift lazily on the soft breeze.
A deeper pulse rocked the garden, but its beat rose from within his mind, tilting the world alarmingly as it thrummed for release.
Abruptly his eyes flew open, and for an instant, they flashed with a pale, icy blue fire. He snatched his hand away from the tree and recoiled, pressing a shaking fist to his chest as he battled back the blue flame.
The flame fought him, and the echoes of its influence swam under the surface of his mind with the familiar reminders.
You are chaos. You are fear. You are pain, destruction, misery. You are fire. You are ice. You are a monster.
This is who you are.
"Yes…" he hissed. "I know. I don't care. I am a king. And I will… I will not allow…"
He clenched his teeth, corralled the boiling rage that rose with the whispers, conscious of the nearness of the tree. He could not allow it to be corrupted, not this, not again… He mastered himself, pushing the intrusion away, isolating it in the darkest, deepest, farthest corner of his mind. Controlling it. But unable to banish it completely. He was caught in a web, too tangled to escape. Even so he would not suffer himself to be prey.
As it subsided, the he breathed deeply and refocused on the task at hand. The tree's magic flowed strong within the trunk, rushing through the branches to each pulsing fruit, but not as strongly as it should. It needed feeding.
He reached into his cloak and withdrew a glass phial. The reason this journey was necessary. He had spent his youth and young adulthood exploring this mountain inside and out; he knew countless secret ways that connected the Archive with the Palace directly. But this sample was the last he would be able to collect, and he would not risk contaminating the contents of the phial with foreign magic. It was too precious. Too important. He pulled the stopper, and a metallic tang tainted the sweetness of the air.
Crouching beside the great tree, he tipped the phial carefully so that a single shining drop of ruby red blood welled on the lip and slid over. It splashed against the tree's exposed root, where it sizzled and ate into the flesh of the tree. He stoppered and stored the phial. There was no need to touch the tree again to feel it – the pulse of energy was palpable from where he stood, the apples fairly glowing with renewed vigor.
"How did it go again? That Midgardian myth…" he mused aloud. "Hmm… yes… "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die". Humph."
He stepped back, examining the tree he'd fed on human blood from a sapling with a critical eye.
"Fools. They make it sound like a bad thing," he murmured with a kind of thoughtful disdain. "We all must die eventually. How else can we be reborn?"
Shaking his head at the folly of mortals, he turned, raising his hood once more, and left the apple tree to thrive. A long journey home lay ahead.
.
Jane sat alone in the quiet of her lab, trying to find a balance between the ringing in her ears and the sourceless scent of rain that kept wafting under her nose. She was afraid to look at the clock. She was afraid to know how long she'd just been sitting there, staring into space, while her emotions and her body swung between extremes. Trying to find her way out of the haze of confusion and fear.
Trying to figure out what the mark on her forehead was doing to her.
It was just as Erik had said, to her dismay and sometimes her despair. She didn't always understand that that something wasn't right. Sometimes… she forgot… But when she realized it was…
It was her. But wrong. Like she was a jigsaw puzzle, and all the pieces were still there, they were just put together wrong.
This is who I am.
"But it' not… it's not…
"It doesn't change you… it reveals you… it tears down every wall, every inhibition, every doubt, until the ugly, unbalanced core of you stands naked…"
Tears started in her eyes.
"…at the mercy of whoever has the knowledge to lay hands on it…"
"You said you wouldn't control me…"
But he wasn't controlling her. There were times when it felt like no one was controlling her, least of all herself. She felt like she had one foot on either end of a seesaw… no… a balance scale… that was what she pictured when she felt it. She was swaying dangerously out of control on a balance scale, and each time she tried to right herself, she simply swung wildly in the opposite direction.
If she kept losing her balance…
Eventually I'm going to fall…
She reached for the golden disc in her pocket. Drawing it out, she ran a finger over the golden rune for the sun. Lately, each time she did it a warm little glow started up in her chest that felt dangerously like hope.
"Loki's love is like a goldfly… you can catch it, but you can't keep it, because it dies after one night, and leaves only a bit of gold behind…"
Jane was shivering. Why?
"Because he's an evil alien invader," she whispered spitefully to the quiet. "He's the bad guy that the heroes fought and beat. He's the man who leveled Manhattan. He's the monster everyone says he is…"
Her chest constricted painfully. The words didn't feel right in her mouth. They followed the trend, but ignored the outliers.
I am a gullible fool.
This is who I am.
"N-no…" Jane whispered, and the whisper retreated. "No, the data doesn't lie…"
In her mind, she saw the man she'd met on Asgard, the man who'd protected her on the Dark World, the man Thor had described, the man who had fascinated her, who had understood her, who had haunted her thoughts even when she thought he was dead.
Tears fell down her cheeks.
"Why did you…?"
She remembered Thor's words. "… I don't know if he could have been saved…"
Loki couldn't be trusted. Why was she trusting him? I don't trust him. But she was...
"I would never hurt you…" he'd said. As he held her airway closed… "At least, not more than I have to."
More tears rolled down her face she reached up to clutch the rune pendant around her neck like a talisman against a surge of fear.
I have to tell Thor…
The ringing in her ears spiked at that, before she breathed deeply a cool rush of rain-scent that chased the ringing back with a thought-killing calm.
Telling Thor meant hurting Thor. He was so happy and carefree right now… it was so good to see him cheerful and relaxed, not fearsome and forbidding and fighting for the fate of the world.
Thor's words echoed in her head again.
"I don't know if he could have been saved… but I never would have stopped trying…"
She couldn't bring herself to destroy that hope.
Tell Erik…
The thought of what Erik's face might look like if she explained everything to him made something inside her freeze with cold and go numb. She recoiled from the thought, welcoming the pressure that swelled behind her eyes as she rejected that idea. Erik would never forgive her for keeping Loki's secrets. She couldn't lose him...
Tell mom…
That thought stilled her. Her headache tried to surge higher, to drown out the idea in her head, but she ignored it.
Mom's a doctor… a neurosurgeon even… and she's got no real stake in this.
Jane didn't count the fact that she was her daughter as a 'stake', because she wasn't sure her mother would. The ringing in her ears spiked again and she shivered, remembering her mother's cold, disapproving look last time they'd spoken.
I can't be such a coward. I am dating an Asgardian prince, they have a thing about courage… Jane grimaced then, realizing she was basing this life altering decision on whether or not her boyfriend would approve. Have I always been that weak willed…?
Weak-willed. Gullible. Frightened. A coward.
This is who I am.
The thought was like a punch in the gut, resonating through her physically. She had snatched up her cell and was dialing the phone before she had a chance to think about it. It was only after she'd hit the green button that she realized what she'd done. She stared at the little vibrating phone symbol, hearing the faint buzz of it ringing. Swallowing hard, she pressed the phone to her ear.
Go to voice mail, she pleaded. Go to voice mail. Go to voice mail. Go to…
Click.
"Nancy Foster," said a cool, clipped, professional voice from the other end of the line that made Jane's stomach drop. "Hello?"
Jane cleared her throat. "Yeah, um… hey, Mom. It's um… it's Jane."
"Hello, Janey," her mother said crisply. "How are you? I didn't recognize your number."
"Oh… um, yeah, I had to get a new phone a few months ago."
"A few months? How nice of you to call me before now to let me know I couldn't reach you at your old number. What if there had been an emergency?"
Jane closed her eyes at the critical tone, trying to remain calm, breathing deeply, trying to relax...
"And is it really necessary to say "um" in the middle of every sentence? You're a PhD, for goodness sake. I will never understand why you insist on speaking like a high school dropout."
Jane's eyes snapped open and she gritted her teeth, her brain buzzing with irritation and her gut twisting with anxiety that had no correlation to the ringing in her ears or the pain behind her eyes. It was just the effect her mother had on her.
"Mom, I really needed to talk to you about… something kind of important," she said, suddenly even more uncertain. How did she explain this? To her mother, Nancy Foster, superdoctor? She'll think I'm crazy… I can't show her any evidence… she'll tell me to go to a psychologist… hell, she might even send people to… Jane cleared her throat again. Courage. "Where do I start… well, the guy I'm seeing… he's… see, his brother… um…"
"You're seeing someone new?" her mother interrupted, a shade of real interest in her voice. "That's great, Janey. You know, I ran into Dr. Blake last week at a conference. I mentioned you to him, and he was very polite about it, but he didn't seem at all interested. So is it serious?"
"Um…yeah, I mean, I think so…" Her stomach tightened further at the mention of Don, her ex. Why did her mother always have to bring him up? The woman was an expert at casually rooting out every one of Jane's insecurities and poking them with a sharp stick.
"Oh dear… He's not some townie from that little backwater out in New Mexico is he? Jane, sweetheart, you can do better."
"No, Mom! I'm not even in New Mexico right now, I'm…"
"Well, where are you?"
"London! I was…"
"You're using my lab, aren't you?"
"…what?"
"Jane, I told you, I don't mind, but you need to ask first. Are you there studying that alien invasion?"
"Yes. Well, no, not exactly at the moment, because…"
"What? Why not? You've spent years going on and on about wormholes and all that nonsense. Now you've got some hard evidence to work with instead of just wild theories. You could really make a name for yourself with this. I bet Dr. Blake would sit up and take notice then."
"Mom!" Why had she thought this was a good idea? "Can I please just…"
"There's no need to take that tone with me, Jane. I am just trying to show some interest in your life. You never call, and when you do it's only ever because you need something. You really can be selfish. Maybe it's my fault you turned out that way, but I can tell you right now, no man will stand for it. If you're serious about this new man of yours, you need to remember to think of him first once in a while."
Jane felt herself wilting under the harsh light of her mother's criticism.
I am selfish. Weak-willed. Cowardly.
This is who I am.
Jane squeezed her eyes shut as the thoughts all but body slammed her. It hurt. Not just emotionally. Physically. Her head felt like it was about to burst, and she could barely hear her mother's chiding tones over the ringing in her ears. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose, relaxing her abdominal muscles, and let the smell of rain wash through her, taking the edge off of the pain.
"I'm sorry I bothered you, Mom. I… shouldn't have. I'll call you again later."
"Now, just a minute Janey." Her mother sounded exasperated now.
"Bye Mom. I… um… I love you."
"There's that 'um' again! Why can't you…"
Jane hung up the phone, her head spinning. Then she turned it off for good measure, wincing as she thought of the sheer volume of angry voicemails she was going to have to sort through when she turned it back on. People did not hang up on Dr. Nancy Foster and live to tell about it.
"Five minutes of my life I can never get back," she told the dead cell phone with a rueful sigh before she slid it back into the pocket of her jeans not containing the golden disc. It took a long, painful few moments to shove thoughts of her mom and her ex back into their boxes, and for some reason, the memory of her father's kind smile and the wise, knowing gleam in his eyes…
Her eyes stung and her nostrils tingled with a prick of tears. For an instant she smelled it again, that distinctive tinge of English rain, like an echo of a scent rather than a true smell.
It means something… something important…
The ringing in her head spiked again, then faded.
She frowned, blinking hard. Why had she called her mom again…?
"Stupid. That was stupid. Never ends well…"
.
On the mortal's brow, the magic pulsed, boring deep into the fabric of the mind. So close. So close.
But the balance scale swung back. A pulse surged, whiting out the mortal's memory once more. The magic recoiled, pulling its tendrils back, clearing the mind it haunted. Careful. Careful.
The process was slow. The shape it wore was unwieldy. Unless it pushed harder than it should, the mortal would not fall. If it pushed too hard, she would break. The task was near impossible.
But with each push, it was learning. The whispers brought down the walls from the inside, gently singing them to ashes with poisonous truth: This is who you are. This is who you are.
More new strands of magic, delicate and incarcerating as spider's silk caught and bound with each passing day, carrying it closer to the vault of buried treasure hidden in the deepest recesses of her mind. Not long now. Not long now.
Gently it began again.
But the rebound from the magic's recoil traveled back along the strands of the spider's web woven so tightly around the mortal's mind.
They hummed back to their source, and beyond.
.
The traveler was nearing the palace gate, when a wave of pain and dizziness struck him full force. He swayed and staggered to one side, catching himself against one of the gatehouses.
"Are you alright, friend?" a passing merchant called, moving closer. The traveler pulled his hood lower.
"Too much mead!" he said in the cheeriest voice he could muster, taking care to slur his words slightly. The merchant gave a booming laugh at that and slapped the traveler on the shoulder.
"Best get home then, friend!" the merchant chuckled as he moved along. "No doubt the missus will be waiting to scold you!"
The traveler rested against the wall for a moment, dazed by the unexpected magical rebound. Usually the might of the golden throne protected him from the backlash… he hadn't realized it had grown so strong.
"Waiting to scold me?" the traveler parroted, looking up at the palace where the golden throne and a view of his beloved awaited him. He slipped back into the concealment of the shadows. The droop of his hood concealed the wisp of a pained smirk. "Of that I have no doubt."
.
TBC...
.
A/N: So the plot thickens a bit? Maybe? Hopefully this chapter didn't drag too much. As I re-read, Jane's mom almost seems like a caricature, but that conversation is actually based on one I overheard once between a mom an daughter, so believe it or not, she's legit. Anecdotally, after Loki's little mini-quest, I was tempted to write the bath scene, just so we could covertly watch Loki taking his clothes off, but I resisted - sorry.
I finished proofreading this at about 4 am (aka, my brain is falling asleep in a puddle of drool on my computer desk while the muse moves my fingers around the keyboard) so hopefully there aren't too many crazy errors, but if you spot any, let me know, since I just now, after like 15 years, discovered that its possible to fix and replace chapters on this site.
Lastly – I took a break from Within Temptation, so the song I listened during this chapter is Love the Hardest Way by HIM. Go listen to it, I love the imagery they use, and I think it nicely describes in metaphor Loki's way of overcomplicating his perceptions and machinations to some degree; in the end, he's making everything harder than it probably needs to be for both of them. But he'll just have to figure that out the hard way *chafes hands evilly some more*
Can't wait to hear from you! Please forgive the loopy rambling (I have seriously had too much coffee) and let me know what you think! More chapters are forthcoming very soon!