21.

. . .

Accepting the coming defeat and a night's true rest made the illusion of the king wear lightly on Loki for once, and he passed silent through the halls where the Einherjar knew not to look the All-Father in his one good eye. He walked with new ease to the room where the councilors gathered, where almost always at least one or two stood by to discuss the issues at hand, and this morning he found the grand hall empty.

Loki, as the king, stepped with empty serenity to the head of the long table, where wars had been planned, and lands were parceled out to worthy lords, and where rites of succession were rewritten plain when new royal babes were born, and he spread his hands on the ancient slab of knotty wood and felt the coolness of the morning air under his own skin. A good feeling, if hollow. A flutter reached his ears and he looked up, but there were still no councilors come to heed him. He didn't expect any of them, but nor did he find anyone at all.

He looked right, towards the broad and open window and its silken curtain, and he saw one of Odin's twin ravens sitting there on the sill, looking at him. Of course they did not speak to him, and Loki never cared for them much, but still, they flew around Asgard on their terms, seeing what they would and thinking what they liked. "Which one are you?" Loki asked the raven in his own voice, knowing the birds always saw his truer face anyway. He thought it might be Huginn, but he also thought he could be wrong. "Little shit or bigger shit?"

The raven cawed once at him, low and harsh, and he cheerfully, madly assumed the response translated to eat shit. There was a clean and empty goblet near to hand, and he whisked it up and promptly flung it towards the window where it clanked hard against the sill. He wasn't aiming for the bird, mindless harm to animals not something he enjoyed, but it cawed insult at him again and winged off, like he wanted.

The rest of the table was bare. No daily papers sat, no pile of scrolls, and Loki already knew what that meant. He stood there for a long time, staring at the far side, and thinking of all the dead men he had met in life, and all the ones he had killed.

The footsteps of an approaching guard told him to put his mask back on, and unwillingly he did. The Einherjar wore the full gold armor of his role and a tense expression under his helm, and Loki knew what he was going to be told before the man said it. "Your Majesty. There has been an incident in the cells."

Loki inclined Odin's bearded face, the gesture telling the guard to continue.

"A crack in the walls of the Vrellnexian quarter. It fell to pressure from within and-"

"And he is gone. Heimdall." Loki leaned his rump against the table, feeling the gold robe whisk against his legs. He nodded, slow and peaceful, a man told of his fatal disease and accepting it with the grace of one who has been long ready for it.

"We've sent patrols into the woods to follow him, sire, but we're having trouble keeping trail."

"He will see you coming." Loki chuckled, Odin's old and amused rattle. "As he sees all who come for him. Tell the patrols to do their best, but it is in the hands of fate now. I accept their failures, and the men should not fret."

"Your Majesty?"

'Odin' waved the young guard off, turning back to the table.

"Your Majesty, should I summon the councilors?"

"Don't bother them." Sedition and conspiracy needs silence, if not speed. Which side gets to me first? Him, or them, and will it be today? He laughed again, and he heard the guard's armor creak, uncertain at the sound of it. "I will be in the libraries. There will be no need to consult me for some hours."

"Of course, my King." The footsteps marched off, firmer again.

He still had his books, and the riddles, and the magic. All the dead things Frigga had left to him, not knowing what had been made with them. He also had his silences, and his solitudes. Loki thought he might at least return to those old comforts for company, before he saw the flames of his end lick at the horizon.

. . .

There was an answer in the books, always had been if he were going to be honest, but it wasn't the one he wanted. All the years studying the paths between, like Frigga taught him, all the paths between planar dimensions and multiverses and the grey line between real and false, order and chaos, and the answer was simple enough, after all. Just not the one he thought he needed, his centuries spent looking for an alternative in the words of madmen and outcasts.

Falling was simple. Loki had already done so countless times. The landing, now that was sticky. He closed the old tome, another sorcerous heresy dug up from the dustiest parts of the libraries where only he knew the paths among the convoluted stacks now, and he thought about dying, and he realized he wasn't ready to face that again. Not by the hands of others he didn't trust, who would want his pain more than his death. But there were few options left, and Kara would not strike him down in a gentler way, and besides, she was gone. He wasn't ready, but it was going to come.

The hidden thing inside said Kara was already missed, but it was a whisper, and he didn't deserve to feel anything about her, so he buried it again.

Loki kept only the books in his thoughts, and the scent of Frigga still in the ancient air. Loki sighed, knowing sunset was crawling towards him. Maybe one more dawn was left to him in freedom, while decisions came, and final plots took shape. The councilors almost certainly didn't yet know the secret lurking in the palace, they were working on the assumption that the king was too old and broken to lead effectively. What the hell, he figured, still oddly calm. They were right. If this struggled on too much longer, there would be left behind all new cracks in the realm that would need expert healing. He hadn't intended to break the entire kingdom, despite what Kara accused. He'd only wanted to finish breaking himself.

Now, Heimdall knew the truth of what hid in the golden towers, but Heimdall would also be alone. The councilors wouldn't believe him outright, not without proof. He had been cast into the cells as a traitor, with more than one decision against a given order not weighed in his favor. He would sway them, of course, but it would take time, unless there was another factor.

And that 'other factor' was obvious. Thor. Everything hinged on Thor, who had seen for himself the unsteady king of Asgard. If the councilors were working on him with their pleas, if Heimdall made his way to his side. Or, as Loki expected, considering the weight of judgement due for what he'd done, it would come down to both factions baying like direwolves for his own pale neck.

It would be Thor flinging open the grand doors to the throne room, tearing him down and demanding the mask torn free. If he himself chose to wait there, for the end of it all. It was fate, Loki decided. Sooner or later most worlds had a story where one sibling felt he had no choice but to destroy the other. And he was the one who belonged on the altar of slaughter. He thought of Karnilla's death, and was envious that she had died in something almost like peace. After first enduring what hell she had earned, to be true.

Loki took up the few books he had left to study, a tall flask of a good wine, and the sealed letter he'd retrieved a few hours ago in response to a formal word of his own, and then he brought it all back to one of the royal wings high in the towers. Not Odin's room, not his own. He chose a small but pleasant residential lounge that had been used by one of the Queen's handmaidens for a century or so before rotating on for novelty's sake, spreading the books on a slender golden table, and then setting the letter aside, wondering what he was going to do with it. It amounted to a proof of his last royal command, and he was content with it, but this copy also had no place to go.

"Heimdall found Thor in the city this afternoon. His disguise was simple but good, yet I still saw him. Expect he saw me just as plain, but it didn't matter. I wasn't going to interfere. I trailed them both to the edge of the hunter's forest, and they went deeper in. Torches later. Two, maybe three of the fiduciary lords of the council taking the same paths. I didn't recognize them, except for their livery. Younger men. Still hot-blooded, no doubt."

Loki licked his lips as he traced his fingers across one of the books, thinking at first that he was hallucinating again. Voices returning to haunt and harry, like they had before Kara came. But they'd never sounded like her before. He realized this was real, and he was still awake, and she had come back. Despite what he'd seen on her face the night before, the idea that he had finally won her hate, she was here now. He didn't know why. There wasn't anything left to him to hunt. "Go away. You said you were gone, so best stay that."

"If they find you here, they're going to kill you. Thor isn't going to be able to stay the hand of every outraged lord. If he tries, they'll go into the city and rile everyone till all know what actually happened here. They'll tear you to pieces. Right now I expect the lords yet act as if it's just some shameful secret, for his sake. A little like Odin did to start all of this. I know you know that. Is all that what you actually want?"

"Go. Away."

"I can't, prince." She sounded tired, her voice echoing against the space of the window. Like usual. Already a familiar, now strangely comforting thing, and Loki couldn't turn around. "I said a thing in anger, and it was my turn to lie. She asked me to promise her, a long time ago. She kept my contract long after the war, despite the price the House asked for such retainment, and I stayed close and I served all this time, because she wanted to be sure someone would look out for her family, no matter what. She wouldn't want you to die, and I have to at least try to honor that promise. Because she asked me to, and it's really all I have left to remember her by."

He knew about the contract, yes. It was in Odin's private files, the ones locked beyond a library cellgate, wedged in deep under a box of dull scrips that marked personal purchases from the galaxy beyond. Easy for Loki to find once he thought to look for it, because he'd broken in many times before out of curiosity and that need to know what was not meant for him to know. "It's over, one way or another. I hope you didn't think you were going to be able to save me."

"You'd have to want to save yourself. I'm good, prince, but I can't do miracles. You made it plain last night to us both. You want to die."

"I've been dying since I fell from the rainbow bridge, Lady Kara." He laughed, thinking back to a year of hell itself. "They forced a quick pulse back into me while that son of a bitch watched, but I'm not sure it counts for a new life. Not for what I've done since. Not for what I am."

"You regret it."

"Regret what? Living? Dying?" He turned, looking at where she sat, her gloved hands folded on her lap. The blades were still at her hip, clasped tight in their sheaths. "Being born?"

She looked back at him, and her face was pure sorrow. "All of it."

He nodded, tired again. "Maybe I do."

"It wasn't all horror and hell. Couldn't have been."

"No, but it's where it's been ending."

"If you let it."

Loki scoffed. "It's no longer up to me, Lady Kara. Might've been it never was. I don't think I can escape this destiny. Even if I tried, it all leads back to some other shape of that old Ragnarok. I die, we die, it all falls apart. The center cannot hold. I read that in a human book, of all things, while I was waiting to see how the minions I'd forced together under my control were going to help me betray their own. I am that rough beast they wrote of, and my hour is here. But not to be born." He looked back to the desk, reaching out for the old heresy and feeling the corners of its pages flicker against his thumb. "I tried to rule them. Humans. Small and simple, I thought. But they have a vengeance in them fit to match Asgard's, and not all their words were dull."

"The Queen had a number of opinions about misjudging the people of our realms. I'm sorry you forgot them."

"Yes. I did." He heard her shift. "Don't go."

Still tired, now Kara also sounded wry. "Well, I'm confused. What do you want?"

He knew. He didn't know. He didn't have any right to ask, and his hand kept toying with the edges of the last book he had on the forbidden pathways. "I owe you an apology."

"Or five. This has been a complicated set of encounters, prince, and I still seem to be leaving with the short end. Such goes these deals made with you. I'd be lying again if I said I were overly surprised."

Loki laughed and shook his head, and it felt oddly light as it rose out of his chest. For one, it was genuine. "No, I… well, you probably are owed at least so many. I meant one in particular, and an old one."

"I grow more confused. At the least, prince, you have my attention."

He looked at her, saw her watching him, and she was calm again. Whatever storm he'd caused within her last night, she had it well hidden now. "I did you a wrong, a long time ago. I saw something I was not meant to, and I'm sorry for that."

Kara's brows furrowed in as she shook her head, and her lips curved, the silent question written there.

"Before the festival, where you were followed by a shadow. The other girls were taunting you." That, he could tell, she remembered. Something glinted in her eyes. Old hurts. He knew what those looked like. "There wasn't much I could do, of course. So I thought."

"You'd have just made it worse if you tried. Cut close to the edge toying with them pair as you did." She snorted, looking out at the sun where it was cut in half by the horizon. Clouds broke the sky further, purple and hazy smoke. It was a pretty night coming, and a long one. "I still appreciated it, though. They were small respites, when you picked a fight with the other girls."

"You went to the gardens later, after this one such fight. I saw you, from one of the high windows where I'd been reading, and I hid when you looked for watchers." Loki watched the side of her face go smooth, the mask imperfect. She was startled, badly, and he took no pleasure in it. He no longer wanted to win points off her. "Proving the girls wrong. No little barbarian in any realm would dance the way I witnessed. I didn't think what else it might mean, I was too surprised. Your true secret remained safe, but I'd stolen this small one by accident." He shook his head with another small laugh. "The most elegant fuck you I've ever seen. I never forgot the hour you stole in that garden, meant for no one but yourself. I tried, because I knew I wasn't supposed to see, but I didn't forget. I kept the memory. Like a shadow."

Kara stayed quiet for a long time, watching the sun fall further yet. The hazy sky began to sprinkle light with stars. Like fae-flowers, in full bloom. "Thank you for the book. The Queen waited a while to give it to me, if you found it when I assume. She chose a good time to do so. I did not tell you that part of the tale."

"I'm glad. I've never had a chance to read it. The Misadventures of Princess Redalia Milkwyne, Her Cat Guard, and the Royal Hand, wasn't it? Silly sounding thing for a history. Very Elvish. Probably a great deal of fun." He remembered all that perfectly well, too. "I should have tried to do more."

She spoke in a whisper, and he couldn't hear clearly the emotion in it. Just that there was some. "You would have been told not to."

"I was told not to. I should have tried anyway. There would have been consequences, and maybe even some of them would have made it worse than I might have intended, but I could have at least tried to fight." His throat felt thick. "I could have used an actual friend, then. I might have tried. But I didn't."

"I told you, I'm not a confessional." She inhaled, and the words didn't have the same force as the last time she said them.

"I'm not trying to confess. I'm sorry. Because there were moments I could have changed what my life turned into, and I missed all of them. Now it's nigh on too late." He pushed a hand through his hair, tired again, but not heavy. "I don't want to hurt you. I know what I am. That's why I told you to go away."

"What do you actually want?"

"I want you to stay, but I can't ask for that. I can't change what I did, and I can't change what's coming next. It's all falling apart. There are countless moments where it could have been different, and none of them happened. I have no right to ask anything of you. What I am supposed to do is wait out this last night, alone, and see how they come for me in the morning. It'll be better for them then. They say daylight cleanses all the shadows, although they'll never think how waiting behind the sun is just more darkness."

"You didn't ask me for anything this time, prince. You didn't set any bargains. I asked the question, knowing what I was doing." Kara sighed, not looking at him. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm not being clear about what I want." Gods, he ached clear through to the bone. It was a raw thing, born of being miserable and alone and unwanted. "I am not one to be honest when I need to be honest the most."

"I still heard you. I'm not a fool, Loki. Almost everyone looks at their possible death thinking about how to steal a little more life." She was still looking at the sky. "I keep thinking you were someone else then, but you weren't, not really. You're the same person. Maybe that's the problem. It's harder for princes and kings and queens to change, because the rules are so much older. Little cages, all pretty and gilt, keeping you all bent inside. I didn't envy it. The other girls clamored for cages of their own, earning them by how strong they clung to such similar rules. I saw enough."

"Didn't you have to change?"

Kara laughed, small and sour. "I feel like I haven't been anyone since I was a child. I am my own mask, Prince Loki. I fit where I have to, to do the job I'm bid. I don't have these problems."

"You were someone back then, though. Ago. I remember. Enough a person that it felt the same seeing you again. You are not hollow. There's ghosts and shadows filling Asgard, but you're not one of them."

That made her quiet again, and this time he heard the emotion plain. "Thank you."

Loki remembered the wine he'd brought with him from the libraries, reaching for the tall flask and looking around for goblets. A shadow passed over him as she stepped down from the window. There was a cabinet in the corner, and she found a pair of old but clean goblets easily in it.

The last edges of the fading sun reflected in the wine, red and dark, its own echo of a blood moon. They drank a while in silence, waiting for full night, and it was pleasant, in its way.