Asgard.
Asgard was as he remembered it. It was dark and the people were unhappy. They feared their sovereign and they looked to Odin with hope naked in the eyes of those too young yet to know better. Their elders scuffed their feet and did not lift their gaze from the road. What was another hot-headed ruler to them? Bor would be slain and sent to the ancestors. Then his spawn would take his place and all would be as it always had been.
The city was dirty and he hated it more than he had recalled as he led his bride through it.
Frigga's eyes were wide. Everything was strange to her and she did not understand it. Bor made no secret of his scorn for her. But she carried it proudly, like a queen, and Odin was proud of her. She learned the way of the palace, and, gradually, she began to speak to him again.
On the night of his coronation as Asgard's king, she even smiled at him. Beneath the surface of the table at the feast, she touched his hand.
Bestla had been committed to the ancestors some days before. Odin had seen her body. Cold and white as ever she had been. Her face stern in death as it had been in life. Nothing showing of the speed and cunning, the flash and laughter that had colored her when he'd been a boy and he had loved her. All that remained were the jewels about her throat. They were beautiful as she was – even in death. And every bit as cold as ever she had been. They caught the light of the torches that flickered above her body and they reflected it outward from her breast.
Frigga asked him about her, some days later, when she found him and he was alone, thinking of his mother. And he told her things that he could recall. And Frigga sat beside him, and she held his hand.
And after the coronation, Bor left Asgard, crashing through the great doors of Odin's study, furious that his son would not follow him in his new vision of conquest.