#Amora: *fist over her heart* respect T-T

[writernotwaiting]

Fallen Angels, ch. 23

Chapter 23 – Before: “Seven for a Secret”  Chapter Summary: In which Loki and Sigyn have some issues they need to work through. The action here picks up immediately after the events of chapter 22 in which Loki embarked on a campaign to teach the Aesir some respect, Sigyn was none too pleased with this, and Sigyn was “invited” to take up residence in the palace proper. Rating: E for the story overall; M for this chapter. If you are under 18, go read something else! Characters: Loki, Sigyn, Thor, Anna (ofc), Balder (might-as-well-be-omc), Amora (a might-as-well-be ofc), Odin, Elli (a stone giantess and might-as-well-be-ofc), Cyril (omc), Tyr Story Description: a post-apocalyptic, MCU-Norse mythos mash-up; science fiction/fantasy

I will re-blog with the tags.  I would be glad to add to or remove from the tag list at your request.

Bless you, again to @icybluepenguin, without whom this chapter would be a skeleton of its current self.

I would like to dedicate this chapter to my readers in Texas: @marvelousmissfit, @indomitablemegnolia, and anyone else whom I am unaware of. I hope this serves as a temporary distraction to What Mother Nature Hath Unleased Upon You.

Ch. 1: Walking with unblest feet

 Ch. 22: Never Say that I Was False of Heart Ch. 24: ?

One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told. Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss, Ten for a bird, You must not miss. [yes, I totally stole the idea to use this folk song from @incredifishface -- sue me] 

Norns, I’m tired. Loki rubbed his temple hard as his horse ambled up the road toward the lodge, and he sighed with deep relief as soon as the house came into view. As he got closer, though, his brow furrowed at the dark windows and smokeless chimney.

Sigyn should be home at this time of day.

His quick eye darted around the landscape, taking note: he could see lights in Anna and Torvald’s cottage, their older children still outside bent over a game in the fading light, Fenryr sprawled out next to them, but everything at the great house was quiet, even though the grass was trampled on the front lawn.

Maybe she stayed in the village with a patient. It was not unheard of, though it happened less often out here, because of her dislike for the local officials. Even if she were with a patient, though, that didn’t explain the great divots in the grass.

He turned his horse toward the cottage.

The two children stood as he got closer, and the taller reached up to take the reigns while Loki dismounted. Fenryr trotted over to nudge at Loki’s hand, wuffing softly for a scratch.

“Leif, where is Sigyn? Will she return soon?”

The two children exchanged worried looks before the boy answered, “She’s gone back to Asgard, Master Loki.”

[read more cut here]

“Back to Asgard? When.”

Before the child could answer, Torvald came out of the house, and Loki repeated his question. “Torvald, where is Sigyn?”

Torvald frowned, his brow scrunched in confusion. “Einherjahr came two weeks ago, master, and escorted her back to Asgard. They said she was to live in the palace.”

“What?”

“Did you not know?”

Loki shook his head as a sick feeling settled in his gut. “I’ve been away, and no message was sent.”

Torvald gestured to his son to take the horse over to the stable. “I am sorry, Master, I thought perhaps you were at court and had been told.”

Loki shook his head once more and drew close, “No. This is news to me. Is she ok? Who was the captain? Did they treat her well?”

“She is fine, though none too happy at the summons,” Torvald smiled ruefully as he said it. “The guard were led by Tyr. He was very respectful. They only just left four days ago.”

Loki dragged a hand through his hair as he contemplated what to do. “Tyr? I thought better of him than to carry out such a frivolous summons.”

Torvald shrugged. “He had the decency to apologize for it.”

Loki scoffed, “Pfft! What good is an apology like that? Empty words to ease a guilty conscience.”

Torvald shrugged again, implying that he expected no less, before he got a twinkle in his eyes. “She at least made them earn their pay before they left.”

Loki quirked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“She told them they might as well be useful while she packed up her things, since she wouldn’t be here to winterize the house. She put three of them to work cleaning the stables, and another raked out Anna’s fallow kitchen garden. Two of them hauled the carpets out of the parlor and beat the dirt out of them in the yard there. They loaded the wagon, then she made them unload it and re-pack everything before loading it all back on. Then she remembered a few more things that she could not do without. Then she had them dig through to the middle of the pile for a book she decided ought to remain here.  It was quite the thing to behold. They won’t forget their stay anytime soon.”

“Ha! I wish I had been here to see it.”

Torvald sobered. “I wish it, too.” He thought for a moment, staring at the dirt at his feet before looking up once more. “Where have you been, Master?”

Loki’s eyes flashed darkly at Torvald’s implications. “Are you forgetting something, Torvald?”

Torvald paused a long time before he answered, carefully taking in his master’s face. Loki had changed since they first met, back before the couple had moved to the city, before the fight with Thor, before the children had died. The mischievous glint in Loki’s eyes had lost much of its mirth, and while he had always been lean, what few curves he once possessed were now hardened into sharp angles.

Torvald’s voice grew heavy with melancholy. “No, Master, I know my place better than most, I imagine; it’s just that—“ Torvald lowered his voice considerably,  “it’s only that we are worried—Anna and I. Something is wrong out there. We know this. But something is wrong here, too,” and Torvald held a knotted fist to his chest, before reaching inside a breast pocket to pull something out. Loki began to turn away angrily, but Torvald risked a hand on his arm, and placed an emerald ring in Loki’s palm. “She left this here, in the kitchen. She thinks she is alone.”

Loki pulled his arm away, though not with the anger Torvald expected. He clutched his fist tight around the ring, jaw muscles working as he struggled for control. After a few short moments, Loki turned back to him, eyes hard as an ice floe. A decision had been made somewhere behind them.

“I will sleep a few hours in the lodge—just enough to make sure my horse is rested—then I will leave for the court—before light breaks if I can.”

Torvald nodded, watching Loki as he strode up to the big house before he went himself to check on his son’s work in the stable. As he did so, Torvald thought to himself that he was glad not to be counted among his master’s enemies. Loki had hardened into a glacier during these last few years, and to lay in his path would be to face certain obliteration, either in the explosive crash of an avalanche, or in the slow, inexorable crushing of ice and rock over the landscape. There was no longer any mercy in him.

*****

The first thing Loki did when he reached the city that clung like barnacles about the royal court was to go to their house to see if there had been any damage. There was. Of course. As soon as he turned into their street he could see the scrawling marks of vandals on the walls. He did not expect the guards—two at each door. These informed him that his “necessitous effects” had been removed to his palace suite, while the Allfather placed a few other items “in protective custody.” Loki leveled a look at the guard that nearly caused him to wet himself, though he somehow managed to hold his position.

*****

The second thing Loki did was confront the Allfather.

“I do not owe an accounting to you or anyone, Loki. I feel it safer for you to reside in the palace itself, and if the only way to accomplish that is to invite the healer, as well, then it shall be so.”

“My wife—she is my wife, and her name is Sigyn. Refusing to speak her name will not alter that fact.”

Odin continued as though Loki had not spoken, “I ordered that your personal items be brought from the house in town to your rooms here. All of your books, your bottles, concoctions, clothing, tools—along with all of the items she requires to ply her trade—everything was carried here in complete safety.”

“And what did you keep back?”

“There were some items that I deemed sensitive, and so placed them in secure conditions.”

“And these are?”

“A silver knife, some jewelry that seems to carry some sort of enchantment, a few papers, and Laufy’s dagger.”

“You have no right!—those jewels were wedding gifts from the dwarves and Utgard. Those blades are our house weapons.”

“I have every right! I am your father, Loki, but more than that, I am your king. They are in the vault, and there they shall remain as long as I see fit.”

“For what reason?”

“Safety.”

“Whose safety are we concerned about?”

“Asgard’s.”

*****

The third thing he did was to seek out his wife. He found her in an inner parlor, sitting rock still next to a balcony whose doors stood wide open. She stared into the middle distance, doing nothing. He leaned against the doorway. As he stood there, he closed his eyes briefly, just breathing in—the smell of a fireplace yet to be re-lit for the evening, the smells of the palace kitchen wafting in through the open balcony, the smell of the honeysuckle Sigyn must have brought from the lodge, and smell of the sage and lavender Sigyn used to launder her clothes and scent her bath. The ache in his heart grew.

At long last she addressed him without turning around, her voice flat, her sentences clipped. “Did you know about this?”

“No.”

“Where were you when the summons came?”

“Learning things.”

“When did you find out?”

“I spoke to Torvald. Apparently I only missed you by four days.” Loki smiled stiffly. “He tells me you made the Einherjahr earn their keep while you packed.”

She did not smile as she replied. “It was the least they could do.”

Loki remained in the doorway during the long pause that followed, anchored there by the cold pit that had settled in his core ever since he realized the full extent of the ugliness that had settled on Asgard. The weight in his chest intensified as he looked at his wife across the distance. He wondered what sort of Hel he had condemned her to, what sort of Hel he would willingly walk through in order to make her safe, to make everyone pay for her suffering.

Was it a half hour? An hour that they remained just so? It certainly felt like it. At long last, he crossed the room, sinking onto his knees next to her, hand on her thigh. He could feel her tension. He couldn’t, in fact, remember the last time his own shoulders hadn’t felt like strings on a guitar tuned too high.

He squeezed her leg gently, looking outside as he spoke next, “What has it been like here? What are you permitted to do?”

She snorted, lip curled into a snarl. “They tell me that I am granted complete freedom of movement, and I can come and go from the palace whenever I please. They tell me that I have open access to all public places within the palace, even the kitchens!”

“However . . .”

“I am shadowed.”

Loki’s breath hissed at this, but he nodded as though he rather expected it.

“Oh, it’s at a discreet distance, mind you, but omnipresent, and close enough that it was noticed by several of my patients and at least one shopkeeper who asked that I not come back—it makes people nervous.”

“Yes.”

“He took our wedding presents.”

“I know. I went to the house before coming here. The guard also said something about some papers?”

“Your letters.” Sigyn’s fists clenched tight on the arms of the chair. “They took the letters you wrote to me while you served as ambassador.”

“I should have guessed. Not yours?”

She smiled innocently, eyes wide. “They must have been lost when we moved. Oops.” She shrugged.

He chuckled and squeezed her leg once more. He shifted then, and began an inventory of the room. This was not the suite he had occupied growing up, but the rooms were still vaguely familiar. He had played enough games of hide and seek as a child to have been in and out of pretty much every corner and closet in the complex, and as an adolescent, he had made it his business to discover every nook and secret passageway. These rooms were much as he remembered, though the furnishings were perhaps not those that would have been laid out for more august guests. At least they had used his colors, rather than Thor’s.

“You have not been shielded.”

“I assumed not.” She patted his hand patronizingly. “Don’t worry, Loki, I have been a very good girl. Hardly any broken knick knacks.”

“Hmmph, that’s not why I asked.”

She shrugged and looked back outside. “You thought it.”

Loki sighed, then closed his eyes, mumbling as he started to work a few protections into the walls and ceiling so they could at least speak more freely. The room resisted these at first, which worried him, but gave way with more effort. When he felt he has assured them of some modicum of privacy, he looked up at Sigyn and smiled weakly. “I am sorry, Sigyn. For my long absences. It was not fair of me to leave you alone for so long.”

Sigyn shifted in her chair to face him. “It is not your physical absences that bother me. We certainly endured plenty of those during your exile. It is something else that I have missed. What has happened, Loki?” Her eyes searched his face as if reading some cryptic algorithm. “I hardly recognize what you’ve become—this creature consumed by vengeance. You have buried yourself.”

He dropped his gaze to the floor and knotted his fists. Of course she knew, though they had never spoken of it outright. She knew what he had been doing. Even when he answered, he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes, gazing out past the balcony as he spoke, his voice barely audible. “I burn, Sigyn. I am full of rage. Every time I see my golden brothers hailed as the source of all that’s great and good, every time Odin leans over to ask Amora’s opinion of some matter of state, every time I hear some whispered slur—” he broke off, and finally turned to look up at her directly. “They must learn to respect me, to respect you.” He took up her hand. “You have more power in your left hand than Amora will wield in her entire lifetime! If you would only learn!”

“Stop.” She extricated her hand from his.

It was like arguing with a stone. His shoulders sagged. “I feel as though a net is tightening around us, and all I can do is watch. I have been tracking Balder and Amora. She has established a cult on Midgard, hundreds of little mortal sheep that she has duped into worshipping her with a little “faith healing” and prophecy. She drinks in their adoration, feeds on their worship. I have seen her intoxicated with it—quite literally. And when she returns to Asgard, she uses that power to create her golems. It takes tremendous amounts of energy to create the semblance of life. On her own, she would be lucky to have one or two of them, but she has created dozens, and she has convinced the All-father to utilize them in all sorts of places where an Einherjar would be too expensive.”

Sigyn ground her teeth. “Prophecy? When did she become a seer?”

“She has an artifact, a stone—I could feel its power even as I perched in a tree outside the temple. I do not know where she stole it from, but the stone gives her limited glimpses into the future. That is my next goal—to find where she keeps it hidden. Without it, her power will be greatly diminished.”

Sigyn scowled and across the room something shattered. “Why does He not do anything? Travel to Midgard is strictly prohibited. How, in all his infinite wisdom and all-seeing might, can he not know? What about Frigga? She knows everything?”

Loki couldn’t help but laugh under his breath, despite everything. “Do they keep replacing those as you break them?” then ducked swiftly to avoid the palm that nearly connected with his head, throwing his hands up in surrender before he continued, “Amora is a clever manipulator, and Odin sees only what he wants to see. . . As for Frigga . . . she has withdrawn from court. I have barely seen her in months. It’s as though she has retreated entirely. Have you seen her since you came here?”

“I have not seen her.” Sigyn hesitated. Then reached into a pocket of her breeches to pull something out wrapped in a bit of paper. “I did, however, find this under my pillow on my first night here.”

A pin for a cloak, decorated with a flock of magpies, seven of them, but space where one more had clearly been broken off.

“Is that all? No message?”

“On the paper.”

Perhaps you should do more research about your ancestry.

“Well that’s cryptic.”

“Yes.”

Loki handed the bundle back. “Have you?”

“Have I what?”

A smile spread over Loki’s face. “Done any more research?”

She scoffed. “How? That trail is long cold.”

“How long has it been since you’ve been to the library? Over 50 years? Well, guess who now lives in the palace with free access to all public places?”

“Oh yes, along with a free escort, to boot!”

His voice became all-over sweet. “But you will merely be researching your ancestry.”

“But I don’t know what I am looking for!”

“Look in your hand. I am the magpie—you know that. It has always been my favorite form for quick travel when I wish to avoid prying eyes. Frigga knows it, too. And there is an old Midgardian children’s rhyme about magpies: One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told. Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss, Ten for a bird, You must not miss.”

Sigyn looked at the brooch once more, fingering the empty space where the eighth bird had been broken off. “So . . . no wishes?”

“The time is past for wishing. We must do something. And that book of the Norns—it is full of secrets. I’m sure she believes we will find something there. ”

“So Frigga  . . . ?”

“Perhaps she also watches. She is a shapeshifter, and now that I think about it, I’ve seen a cat lurking about the temple that seems to have a double at Amora’s estate.”

Sigyn narrowed her eyes, the bitterness heavy on her tongue. “Then let Frigga do something about it. Why us? We are already living on the edge. Have we not paid enough for her husband’s blindness?”

“It is precisely because we are on the edge that we can act. Odin’s bureaucracy is too entrenched to take down from within. It must be demolished from without, and its corruption must be laid completely bare.”

Sigyn looked once more at the brooch, still playing with the empty space where the eighth bird was once mounted. “One for sorrow,” she looked at Loki and grimaced in frustration. “What trouble will that bird fly to? Loki, Amora wants to destroy you.”

Loki swallowed hard and closed his eyes.

“You are not the only one who burns with rage, Loki.” Her fist clenched around the brooch tight enough to draw blood. “I’ve felt its simmering from the moment Balder invaded our house after our wedding. Coal after smoldering coal has been added to that fire ever since. If Amora takes you from me, Loki, I will explode. And I promise you, a good deal else will burn right next to me.”

Loki picked up her hand and pulled it to his face, brushing the back across his own cheek. “Sigyn, I am so very sorry. I allow my obsessions to close out everything else. Never doubt, however, that you are the very bedrock for everything I do—you are my breath, my blood, the spark of seidr that brings them to life.” He brought out the emerald ring Torvald had given him. “Will you wear this once more? A second pledge? I cannot promise that I will not fight her, but I do promise you are my lodestone, and I will always return to you.”

Sigyn put the ring on her finger and grabbed hold of Loki’s hand once more to squeeze it tight, and he pressed the knuckles to his lips. “I am so sorry, my love.” A tear dropped onto her hand and rolled away.

“Oh Loki.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he would not relinquish it, pressing kisses to each joint, turning her hand over to press his lips to her palm and each fingertip, guiding it to cup his face as he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch like a cat.

Sigyn set the brooch aside and ran her fingers through his hair, scraping his scalp gently. “I have missed you, dearest,” she whispered. “So much.”

He turned his head to place soft kisses on her wrist, running his other hand up her thigh until the thumb rested at the base of her hip. “It has been,” he agreed, “so very long.” He flicked his tongue over her pulse point, closing his eyes as he opened his mouth to suck gently and savor the taste of her skin. He heard her breath quicken, and he shifted to kneel between her knees.

Sigyn raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to make it up to me? I might allow you to worship me for the evening.”

“Oh you might?”

“I think I deserve a bit of pampering after what you’ve put me—ahh—through.” She gasped as he pushed up her loose sleeve and nipped at the soft flesh inside her elbow.

“I have always enjoyed paying proper homage to your flesh, dearest.” As he stretched up to bury his face in her neck, Sigyn’s gasp at being tickled morphed onto a low moan as he placed soft wet kisses under her ear, across her jaw, then back down her neck to the hollow at its base while his hand moved over her waist then up her ribs just beneath her breast. He felt her heart rate increase and her breath come faster.

“So beautiful.” He crooned into her flesh as he breathed her in, “Have I told you how much I love this waistcoat?” He tugged at the laces and insinuated fingers between the garment in question and the linen shirt beneath. “It hugs your curves in precisely the right way.”

“And what way is that?”

“In precisely every way that scandalizes the social parasites in these halls.” He rubbed his face over said curves for emphasis inhaling deeply as he went. “Intoxicating.”

“Oh . . . ahhh! You always did have a weakness for leather.” The words now coming breathy and low.

“Mmmmm . . . leather, and seidr, and herbs, and you.” He nosed the waistcoat aside to nibble at her breast through the shirt.

Sigyn’s hands moved up his arms over the lean muscle of his shoulders and then anchored themselves in his hair. As his attentions became more intense, her back arched up and her feet hooked behind his legs, the heels of her boots digging into his thighs, dragging herself to the edge of the chair and pulling him closer.

Loki took one more lingering suck before pulling back with a low chuckle. “I think I remember hiding in these rooms with Fandral on occasion.”

“Oh? He always was trouble, wasn’t he?”

“Hmm . . . back then? He was the best sort of trouble. I wonder if the bed is just as comfortable?”

Sigyn flashed a genuine smile at last. “Time to investigate, then?” She sighed.

“Definitely.” Loki picked her up as he stood in a single, fluid movement and headed into the bedroom.