Chapter 5

Astrid felt like she was floating in water, then she gasped and opened her eyes.

She was staring up at a bright blue sky and it took her a moment to register she wasn't dreaming; she had finally been freed from her dungeon of misery. But where had she ended up?

She was in a shallow pool of water that was only a few inches deep, the bright blue sky above her reflecting in the water all around her. She began to sit up and noticed her dirty torn up clothes were gone, leaving her exposed. She instinctively curled up to cover her naked body and take in her surroundings, the bright light overwhelming after months in a dark dungeon.

She was surrounded by a beautiful forest, many shades of lush greens and browns, with a small stream flowing into a small clearing surrounding the shallow pool she still lay in. She realized she felt rested and relaxed, something she had thought she'd never feel again. She looked down at her ankles, brushing them lightly; the skin had healed as if they were never chained.

The memories suddenly came rushing back; the baby, Hela, and she put her hands on her belly, but it was healed, as if she had never had a child. As though it all was erased, part of some long nightmare that disappeared the moment she awoke. But it hadn't been, and the feeling was unsettling.

"I'm glad to see you healthy and alive, my dear." A sweet-sounding female voice came from behind her. She turned and saw a tall, beautiful woman with royal blue and silver robes that hung loosely around her slender frame and long chestnut hair standing on the edge of the pool. She looked radiant and warm. "I know this can't be easy, but you are safe now… come, I'll help dry you off." She held out a long gray robe that looked like it was made from fine fabric, but Astrid hesitated. Her head was still spinning.

"Wh-where am I? Where is my baby?" She tried to stand but fell over, her legs buckling underneath her as if she hadn't used them for some time. The woman came over to the pool to help her up. Astrid flinched away at her attempt to grab her arm. "Who are you?" The woman looked down at her with a slight hint of concern and sighed.

"There is too much that I need to tell you, my dear, and unfortunately, we do not have the time. But I will start by letting you know my name is Frigga, and you are on Asgard." Astrid was stunned, this was the last person she was expecting to see, in the last place she expected to find herself. Frigga knelt down and helped her stand; this time Astrid did not flinch. There was such a feeling of nurturing and love around the Queen of Asgard, not at all what she expected from the tales she had heard. It was irresistible.

When she got out of the pool Frigga wrapped the robe around Astrid and sat her down on a nearby boulder so she could gather herself. She grabbed a bottle and handed it to Astrid, who felt suddenly very famished.

"Drink." When Astrid put it to her lips, she felt a delicious cool liquid go down her throat which instantly quenched her thirst and made her feel full at the same time. As she drank it down Frigga spoke.

"I will never be able to make up for what has happened with you and my … son, Loki." It was obvious she felt uncomfortable saying his name. Astrid stopped drinking and looked at Frigga, who looked down in shame for a moment, then met her gaze once more. "But I thought getting you out of that dungeon would be a good start."

"My baby, Hela took my baby." Astrid didn't want to talk about Loki, just hearing his name made her whole body tense up. Frigga sat down next to her and sighed, then turned and looked Astrid in the eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but hesitated and then smiled a bit.

"Hmm - well, I can see why he loves you." she said softly, caressing the hair out of Astrid's face. "You have such beautiful eyes, my dear, that just radiate strength."

Astrid stood angrily and threw the bottle against a rock, the sound of it shattering startling the queen. This was not what she wanted to hear. "I want my child back!" Frigga's look became much sterner.

"Yes, well unfortunately, that is not going to happen." She stood and walked over to Astrid, her demeanor remaining warm but more commanding, then grabbed onto her hands pleadingly.

"Look, I did what I had to, I couldn't just leave you in that prison with my grandchild. We both know what would have happened if I had." Astrid hesitated, not wanting to admit it but she knew she was right. She began to cry, snapping her hands out of Frigga's and turning away in shame.

"Hela is the only being who could come to you, and I had to make a deal with her. Which, by the way, was no easy feat, but it was the only choice I had ... it was the only way to get you out of there… I couldn't just-"

"Just what?" Astrid quickly turned to face her, suddenly livid with anger. "Leave me there to die?! To rot in my prison with my dead child until the end of my days?" Frigga just stared as she yelled, slightly taken aback. "YOUR SON had no problem abandoning me, knowing fully well what my fate would be!" she was shaking, choking back tears, the air around her suddenly becoming darker and heavier, "He never planned on leaving with me and he knew my father would throw me in that god forsaken dungeon for the rest of my life!" The air around them continued to darken as Astrid's demeanor changed and her breathing quickened; her eyes glowing bright red with fierce rage as she stared down the queen in a way very few ever had. "HOW DARE YOU SAY HE LOVES ME!" When she spoke, her voice took on a deeper tone, as if someone else was yelling through her, with her. Frigga began to cower in fear, backing away a little. Something about the way she frightened the Asgardian queen made Astrid take pause.

The moment soon passed, and Astrid's demeanor softened, as if she had been in a trance that had zapped her energy. She suddenly felt overwhelmed with deep sadness, sinking to the ground with her head in her hands, drained and broken. Her chest began heaving between sobs as tears rolled down her face. Frigga walked over, knelt down, and put her arms around her. Astrid wanted to pull away but didn't have the energy. Instead, she just cried as Frigga held her, trying to ease the deep pain and anguish that Astrid had been cursed with by her beloved son.

After a moment, when Astrid's breathing slowed, Frigga spoke.

"My sons mistakes are not the only reason you are here, my dear. We need to talk about your mother."

~oOo~

The following morning King Ivaldis called upon Astrid to come speak with him in his council room, who was awoken with the message by her maid Hilde. She immediately flew out of bed and got dressed as quickly as she could while still being presentable. Patience was not a virtue he possessed; it was best not to keep him waiting. She assumed he wanted to speak about Loki and the accident in the lab, and he would surely notice her change in eye color, so she was terrified to see him. She had absolutely no idea what she would say to him about any of it, as there were many details she needed to leave out or change so as not to raise any suspicion. Her father had grown increasingly unstable and paranoid as of late, best to try and stay on his good side.

Egil, her father's chief advisor and loyal friend, came to her door to escort her to see her father. When he knocked and called for her, she felt her stomach tighten even more. She never liked Egil; he was much older than her, and ever since his wife died, he had not hidden his desire for Astrid very well. He had never tried anything with her, just the occasional inappropriate look or exchange of words, but she had a feeling he would make his desire for her known any day now to her father. When she opened the door he smiled, his yellow teeth always repulsed her, but it was quickly replaced with a look of shock. He then reached out and grabbed her face by the chin with his bony unkept fingers, as though she were a child in trouble. He was staring into her eyes, studying her intensely.

"What have you done to yourself child?" he said, his breath repulsing her. She leaned back until his hand let go, staring angrily at him for treating her this way.

"They changed after the accident." she said bluntly, not really having more of an explanation than that anyway. He scoffed at her answer, as though it were not enough, and began to walk with her to her father's war council room, placing his hands back into the long sleeves on his black and grey robes as they dragged behind him.

"Your father will want more of an explanation than that." he said critically.

"What my father and I discuss is our business." she snapped back. Egil was never affected by her coldness towards him, a characteristic that annoyed her to no end. He simply shrugged.

"Indeed, it is, princess. I meant no offense." he said smugly. They both knew her father confided everything with Egil, and that he in fact knew more than Astrid when it came to her father's dealings as king. Eventually he would be told about her conversation with her father, but she didn't care, she needed to buy time to think of what she could say.

They shortly arrived at the large black wooden doors to her father's council room. The intricate carvings on them displayed the old history of the dark elves, before the light of the universe began, when her Elven ancestors ruled the never-ending darkness of the universe, until light came forth, the story continuing to swirl around the large red jewel in its center, representing the Aether. A great power given to the dark elves to hold, one of the six infinity stones, until it was abused by corrupted kings of the past and hidden. They were beautiful, and never ceased to catch Astrids attention with their elaborate details, the bright jewel in the middle always feeling like it was almost alive, pulsing with energy. When Egil opened the heavy doors, they let out a large creak.

King Ivaldis stood over his large black stone table in the middle of his war council room, staring at the map drawn out on it in deep thought. The large window behind him illuminated the whole room and made his tall stocky frame look somewhat small, even though he was wearing his royal black armor, his dark long hair in the traditional elven warrior braids, as he always was these days. He didn't look up when Astrid came in and simply commanded her to sit near him in one of the many chairs surrounding the table. He was studying the figurines on the map he and his generals had laid out and spoke without breaking his gaze.

"Leave us, Egil." he commanded, and Egil bowed slightly, his messy gray hair falling around him, then did as he was told. After the heavy doors clicked shut, Ivaldis spoke again. "Is Prince Loki healed yet?" he asked, moving some of the figurines around on the map.

"Not quite, father, but he is doing much better." she said, pausing for a response but there came none. "He should be fully healed in a couple of days." She added to fill the silence. Still, he said nothing, his stoic silence making her tense.

He finally looked up at her, made her shuffle in her chair uncomfortably. His light silver eyes intense with the look of war, a look that never ceased to give her shivers down her spine.

"That is good news." he said, not giving any indication in his stone-cold expression whether he noticed her eyes, even though they both knew he did, "Now, what of this accident I have been informed of? Miss Gertrud thinks one of your elixirs is the cause of another explosion that injured you and the Asgardian prince. She informed me he was in deep sleep." He spoke in a serious tone that Astrid was all too familiar with. She swallowed hard and thought on her feet, wanting to keep the suspicious red substance off her father's radar until she could find out more.

"As much as I hate to agree with that old shrew, I believe she is correct. It happened after I gave Loki an elixir for his headache. I've never given any to an Asgardian before, it must have had a bad reaction." she said, hoping her words sounded believable. "But he is not in deep sleep anymore, I was able to wake him with one of my potions."

"I see," he said sternly, pausing as if in more deep thought. Suddenly he backhanded her across the face so hard she almost fell to the floor. "FOOLISH GIRL! How dare you be so careless with a prisoner as valuable as the prince of Asgard!" he yelled as Astrid remained hunched over from the pain. "If he dies Queen Freya will be furious! And our standing in this war will be lost!"

"I-I'm sorry, father. It will not happen again-" He grabbed her hair and made her look up at him, his face twisted with rage. Her nose began to bleed and run down her face, a vibrant red against her pale skin, but he didn't loosen his painful grip.

"If anything happens to him under your care, I will turn you over to the Queen myself." he said with an uncomfortably calm anger, "Your careless pestilence will not be tolerated. Is that understood?"

"Yes, father." she said quietly, trying to keep her face as expressionless as possible, knowing if she showed any emotion, it just invited more pain. He let go of her hair and stood tall once more, his stance resuming his usual powerful authority over her. He put his hands behind his back, as though they had been there the whole time, but never broke his gaze from her. She stared down at the table, looking away from him like a frightened child, wiping the blood from her nose with her sleeve.

"You have been spared this time because you are my only daughter, and luckily for you Loki is alive and well. Any other healer would have been thrown in the dungeons to rot for such carelessness." He paused, and leaned down over her, putting his hand on the table where she could see. "Do not continue to test my patience with you, my child, or it will be your head." He spoke with finality, as though he were commanding his generals. Astrid dared not respond and just kept looking down, knowing fully well he meant every word he said.

As much as his threats terrified her, at her core they fueled something deeper, a venomous loathing towards him. She wanted to turn and scream right in his face, to tear him apart limb from limb, but knew if she didn't keep her mouth shut, she would regret it.

But this time…

Something was different…

Something wanted to get out, more desperately than it ever had in the past.

It took everything in her to keep looking down, keep her mouth shut, as the anger began to feel like it was bubbling up inside of her stomach, then her throat, painfully so. She could swear she was beginning to sweat as her father called for Egil to come in and escort her out, turning away from her and looking out of the window as they left. As Egil shut the door behind them, she bolted, not wanting the advisor, the snake, to see her act suspiciously and report back.

When she got back to her chambers she ran to the balcony and threw up over the edge, unable to contain it any longer, vomiting until her guts ached. The encounter with her father had been so much worse than she could've imagined.

But he didn't mention my eyes…didn't even flinch when he first saw me…

Her thoughts raced as she tried to calm had that strange feeling in her body that she'd had ever since the accident. It was out of control; she had moments where she felt better than she had in her entire life, and the next she would be dizzy and weak again. And now this… anger. It was exhausting. It was all so exhausting.

She slowly sunk down by the railing, wiping her mouth and feeling the light cool breeze on her feverish brow. On the bright side, she was in the clear from her father for the time being, and Lokis wounds were almost healed. She was almost positive he would make a full recovery, no more problems there.

On the not so bright side, there was the troubling fact that Astrid knew he must have noticed her eyes and not mentioned them on purpose.

Then I'm not the only one hiding something...

Despite her father's reputation for being unstable she still knew him to be an intelligent, tactful, and observant man. When he kept things from her it was always for a reason, and not usually an honorable one. She had a gut feeling that whatever he had used to capture Loki also had something to do with the accident, and this mysterious presence that seemed to be a part of her now. As much as she hated the thought, she was beginning to entertain the idea of going into Lokis mind once more, especially considering how desperate her situation had become, was becoming.

She stood once more and looked at the view of the kingdom over her balcony; the violet and soft white lights twinkling in the dark elf city below against the pale grey sky, with the dark rocky mountains beyond it, so tall that they disappeared into the clouds above. The view of the mountains always managed to calm her thoughts, even in the worst of times.

On top of everything that was weighing on her, she had to shortly face Loki once more to make sure he was still healing well. Would she confront him? Punch him? Beg him for help? Kiss him? Admittedly, she was the least sure about her feelings for him, as they had become increasingly complicated after their last encounter.

It suddenly struck her how just 3 days ago her life had been rather uncomplicated; developing new healing techniques for the soldiers in the war had been her main priority. She had her path, and she followed it.

Now, nothing made sense; some sort of energy force was inside of her that she didn't understand or have control over, she was thinking of betraying her father's trust, and she was developing feelings for an enemy of the dark realm who had wrought immense pain on her, followed by immense pleasure...

Loki, the centerpiece to all her troubles... a god who truly lived up to his title.

Wherever he goes, mischief follows...