20.

. . .

Loki felt the hard slam of the stone wall into his back, knocking most of the air from his lungs, but his gaze stayed focused on the arm braced against his throat. Under the sleeve of her evening tunic, he saw the peek of a hard black leather bracer. More than that, he felt its rigidity pressing implacably against his throat. It was hard to swallow past it, his mouth gone instantly dry and desperate. The smell of the Queen's incense was on her fingers.

But there was no threat from the dagger. His gaze slid to it, waiting. It was in Kara's other hand, yes, but it was also not pointed at him. Not yet. He wouldn't look at her face, though it was only inches away from his. He could feel her stare. That was enough to tell him how the temperature between them had changed.

"Why did you say that?" The words were breathed at him, her voice modulated in a clinical, monotone way that made it harder yet for him to struggle. She still had complete control, even in her fury. He realized how much that disconcerted him, that strength. It typically meant the anger underneath it was dangerous enough to demand it.

"I told you," he choked out. "Because it's the truth."

The bracer against his throat increased in pressure. "You were in your cell. I know that much. I wasn't here, but I know that much." He was thumped against the wall again, harder yet. His lungs scraped hot for breath, blood thumping in his ears. "You weren't let out till later. So how in Hel can you tell me this and say it true?"

"I ca-" He was fighting for air, unwilling and instinctive panic beginning to tingle cold through his body. If she were going to kill him this way, it was going to be slow and unpleasant. His scalp began to crawl. "Can't-"

The pressure lessened on his throat, slightly, but the wall still threatened to crush his spine. She was smaller than him, of course, but he could feel trained musculature and how she carefully, quickly moved into firmer leverage against him, making sure he couldn't break free. "Now you can."

"I told the dark elves where to go." He gasped it out, more truth, more now than he'd wanted to give. Was she going to make him relieve it? "I sent them to her."

He could see the knife tip, and despite that control, it shook in time to her words. Mocking fury. "What, so you sat there during their riot and drew them up a tour map?"

"I di-"

"What exactly did you say?" The bracer shifted downward, creating a sense of almost explosive pressure against his breastbone. "Quit fucking around and tell me precisely what you said."

"They wouldn't let me out. Wiser than that. Knew what I was. I was angry. Angry with them, angry with Odin. I said-" She thumped him again. "I said 'Take the stairs on the left.'"

"And?"

And what? What else is there? He was fighting a howl of a laugh, choking on its grandness when he had no long breath for even a gasp. Words kept stuttering out of him, each one scrabbling against his throat. "How the fuck do you think they got to her? One wrong turn in this place and Gods know where you might end up, and with just a little nudge from me, they ended up with her."

Kara slammed him again against the wall, the hardest attack yet, tearing all the rest of the air from his lungs and leaving him with burning nausea and a thumping headache. She left him to slide down to land on his ass, unsupported, and he was in her shadow. Again. Loki didn't look up, busy rubbing at his throat through the tangle of his hair stuck fast to his sweaty neck, trying to remember how to breathe. He could hear her doing something similar, that tight control fading into the ragged sound of some mix of deadly emotion. "I-"

"Shut up." She stepped away from him. "Not another word. Not from you."

He coughed instead. Felt saliva come back, tasting like gravel.

"You think this your fault." He saw her booted ankles go by, beginning to pace. Her words were a whisper, thoughtful, still harsh. "You think you did this. You think you're the one that deserves judgment."

Loki dragged in a breath. She swatted at his head to fend him off before he could say anything to that, fingertips dragging across his brow in a warning. No harm, all threat. He kept his eyes to the stones, looking at the web of cracks in the mortar. No marble for the storage rooms, and here the age of Asgard began to show.

"Now you try to drag everything down around your ears. Tear apart what it means to be a king. Get me to take you instead of Odin. I was her weapon, prince. I'm not yours. You don't get to use me. Gods, I thought you were buying time. You're trying to buy a death. You utter bastard. I'd almost accept that as clever except for the part where I'm absolutely fucking furious with you."

Another cough. He kept his head bowed, no longer trying to speak. What could he say? He hadn't even known it was the raw truth, until moments ago. The hate was that strong.

You're so perceptive about everyone but yourself.

"The Queen, you absolutely daft excuse for a noble's son, would never ask me to turn a hand against you. Never. Not for your shit mistakes, or your rubbish judgment. All the monstrosity in the galaxy, the one thing any person under this roof knew for singular fact is that you wouldn't ever turn on her."

Loki's face blazed up at her, ready to scream that that was exactly what he'd done, betrayed her trust straight into the arms of Death.

Kara bent and slapped him before the first word could form on his lips, clean and sharp and full-force, straight across the face. He slumped against the wall, defeated. "Declare your guilt to a priest or a whore, I'm not your confessional. I'm not your tool. My contract was to the Queen, and still I serve it. She would never turn on you, nor hate you, nor ask for this. I have no choice but to honor that faith of hers."

He reached up and touched the hot mark that emblazoned his cheek, feeling his skin sting. He wanted to know what her opinion was, if she finally hated, but the words weren't going to come.

"I'm done with this. I'm done with you. Carry your guilt for a foolish word spoken, that's your burden. You still didn't commit the worst of it. The man that did, he stood between me and my duty. He refused to listen. To her. To me. The elves were coming. We knew they were going to strike, weren't certain how. Wanted Thor's girl, but all of you were safe in the palace." Kara was pacing again, and now she sounded off balance. He watched her as best as he could with his lowered gaze. "The king demanded I run message to Vanaheim to regather the Einherjar posted there, so they could strengthen the holdfasts in the city if the ships came. I knew the fastest route. If Heimdall sang warning, he wanted all to be mustered. I protested the command. In full defiance of him, smelling threat, I said no, Your Majesty, I plead to stay. And you know what he did?"

Loki coughed, his skull still thumping, hearing the trap in her words. He stayed silent, and he listened.

"He rejected me outright. All of you were in the palace, and the palace is safe, he told me. Nothing's ever safe, prince. Here I am to prove it.

"I fought him, and I fought, and he roared me down for my insolence and chided me again for my consistent poor attitude with him while the Queen was away looking over the human girl. How safe they would all be with the king at their side. And given no choice I went and took a horse and a fast path to Vanaheim, and while I stood in a guardsman's stinking office in my useless handmaiden's dress, the Queen bled out while her son and the self-same king that sent me away stood over her."

Loki looked up at her, and saw the black eclipse of her face. Her eyes were full dark, and her lips were twisted in the sneer of all her furies. That fine control was gone, and he saw her. She bent down and hissed at him, and he saw. "I should have been here. And you cower at me and try to force my hand, and now you stand between us, and play your games with your own guilts." She rose and turned away again, heels softly padding towards the door before he understood everything else he'd seen in the shadows of her face. He sat there, shocked, as she continued to spit. "I am done with you. I am done with this. Suffer yourself. If it's not to gain me Odin himself, then I waste my time."

"Wait," he managed to croak, looking at her back. "Please."

"No," said Kara. She slipped through the door, shutting it behind her with paradoxical calm.

He waited, still slumped on the floor, but he didn't hear the lock. He didn't hear anything. It took him several minutes to struggle up to his feet, his body hammered by her rage and his exhaustion. He managed to limp his way to the door, his hand on the handle, and found it opening easily in his hand.

With a nudge, it swung wide and let him see the other half of the hidden lair. It didn't matter much now. He saw the bedroll she'd been using, and a clean and open box where she'd undoubtedly kept her notes and her maps, and there were likely hidden nooks all around him. But almost all the traces of her presence had vanished.

At the end of the bedroll was a place in the dust where the imprint of a bag had left its mark. Whatever she'd carried with her to this lair had been there, and now it was gone, too. Loki lifted up his head to look at the far end of the room, with its other open door. Beyond it was a snarl of old tunnels. Kara had disappeared, slipping away as she had that first night, and now she left him no trail to follow.

Gone. Maybe forever.

On her face, that last expression. He knew that expression well, worn it himself, a rictus of vengeance and anger and that bitter old friend, self-loathing. He understood more than he was supposed to know. Another secret stolen, and he hadn't meant to. "It's not quite wholly Odin you hate, either, is it?" Loki said to the empty bedroll. He nodded, slow, his head an anvil at a busy forge, and he said nothing else.

. . .

He stood in the silence of Kara's abandoned room for a while, looking around, wondering if she might have left anything behind in the hidden places. Loki traced his hands across the walls, feeling a loose stone here or there, but behind them was nothing. Always nothing. She gave him no piece of herself to keep, and that was all he deserved anyway. He put the stones back, and after one more pass through the room, he sat down on the cold bedroll and thought about how much he didn't want to go back to Odin's chambers.

Ever, if he were going to be honest. Here in the dark, the candles in the other room, and silence once again his only friend, Loki could afford that piece of honesty. Just once. He wanted none of it any longer, remembering that long ago, if only for a while, he'd been true when he said he never wanted to be rightful king of Asgard.

Well, the truth was still his to claim. He was not here by earned right. Nothing in the palace was his, and even his old rooms belonged to some long dead ghost that yet had more substance to it than he did right here and now. He had failed. He was no king, just another shadow. The kingdom was going to fall from his grasp in fast dwindling time, and here in the silence, he knew he deserved that much and more. That was his destiny.

Wasn't it written in all those foolish books of mortal myth? He tried not to laugh. The humans might like this outcome, if they knew. They'd defeated him again, and this time with the kinds of stories that had been his only refuge.

Another hour passed, and he got up and went back into the room with its shrine to watch as the candles guttered down into darkness. Loki didn't have the heart to blow them out, only to wait until they disappeared with a puff of smoke in his nostrils, and the blackness of the room closed all around him. It was almost comforting. Almost.

He picked up those dead fae-flowers in the remaining gloom, feeling the last of the dry pollen sprinkle onto his fingertips. He thought to crush the tiny bouquet into dust, but he couldn't do that, either. He couldn't make another corpse of a better memory, a different end for that memory already finished at his hands. He set them back down instead, right where Kara had put them, and he knew she had known who he was that night. With all she was capable of, of course she'd at least suspected then, and maybe another reason why she wouldn't kill him. Just perhaps. But that was ago, and ago was the palace of the dead.

The shrine would be left in peace. He could do that much. He turned and went back into Kara's hidden room, and saw that of course it was still empty. She was a woman who kept her word. She was not going to come back, let him lie at her some more. She would never be a friend, much less would she ever be more, and that was his doing, too. At the very least, maybe he had finally won her hate. Better for her, he thought again. Safer, at least. Get her well away from what remained of the last family of Asgard, before it fully destroyed her, too.

Loki bent and patted the flat pillow that was part of the cheap and simple bed. He laid down this time and put his still-hurting head on it, curling up like a child, wondering when the councilors and Thor and furious Heimdall would come to pull the false king down from the throne, and for the first time in months he slept deeply and well.