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Chapter Text

“Where is she!” The warrior prince screamed in front of them, her spear swinging violently and precisely in the general direction of the Jötun royal family. Laufey said nothing, and instead smirked at the fiery redhead, her hair a fierce contrast to the barren backdrop of ice and snow. He knew exactly what the Vanir was talking about, and yet he simply sat and watched as she paced back and forth, in front of his bound children, servants, and then him.

Loki however, had no idea what was going on. He had been awoken to the sound of heavy knocking on his bedroom door, throwing him from his sleep, and then crashing, as 10 Vanir soldiers wrestled him down and bound his wrists tightly behind his back, a knife held to his throat preventing him from fighting back in any way. He just growled and followed them, eventually encountering his younger brother, Konungr, who was trying his best to break free of his bounds without being noticed, to no avail.

They had been thrown down into the courtyard, where they had seen a mop of red pacing in front of their father, small as she was, threatening him with a particularly pointy stick.

“I asked a question, Jötun, one that you will answer if you value your life.” Silence still fell upon him, a playful glint twinkling behind his blood red eyes.

The prince shouted in frustration and turned to one of the protruding rocks, about the height of Loki, and tossed her hand at it nonchalantly, before a bright array of green light blasted from it, cleanly cutting it in half and leaving an impressive gap between the two.

“I will ask you again,” said the prince, turning her body so that it was facing the brothers, still bound, rather than the king, “Where. Is. She.”

Laufey’s smirk had fallen from his face as his eyes flitted from the rock to his son’s tied up and staring defiantly at their possible demise. All this for nothing, for power, and yet it would simply get his family killed. Though Laufey could be accused of being cold and distant to his people, as a father he was more than willing to die for his children, and yet he wasn’t even being given that chance.

“Stop threatening my son’s and maybe I’ll tell you.” He said, trying to find a way to get that destructive hand aimed at him.

instead, it began to glow an eerie green.

“Speak faster or there might not be anyone left to aim at.” She growled back, allowing the light to get slightly brighter, enough to make Laufey’s breath hitch in his throat. To tell the truth might kill them, but to hide it might release another wrath entirely.

“Dead.”

She paused, the light instantly fading from her hand, and turned towards Laufey, who now had his head hung in shame.

“What?” She said, a small element of vulnerability.

“She’s dead. I killed her.”

Silence followed. No crack of murderous magic or scream of anger, but pure and unadulterated silence hung over the fields of Jötunheimr, even just for a moment it seemed the wind itself had decided to hand silently in the air.

Expecting to look up to see a vengeful goddess, Laufey was taken aback when he peered at the girl in front of him, and he said girl because her face was no longer fierce and angry, but rather devastated, complete loss and pain coating her features, and tears building quickly behind her eyes.

“Dead.” She repeated quietly, her voice cracking dangerously with not a single acknowledgement of the others around her.

One of the tears fell from her eye and slowly made its way down her cheek. It seemed to be the only warmth in the cold of the ice giant’s land. As it fell towards the ground Laufey saw the prince’s expression change to complete disbelief, and then anger. Complete and true, all enveloping and seeming to make the air hotter than it had ever been. Laufey could see it clearly written upon her face, could see it in her quickly glowing hand. Could tell with every millisecond what was coming. And so he closed his eyes.

In one quick movement, Loki remembered seeing his father’s head fall to the ground, followed swiftly by his detached body. The prince simply stood there, her hand enveloped in the green glow which had halved the rock, and as he began to struggle against his bonds, shouting and screaming in protest, he was silenced by her glare and the horrid sound which came from her mouth. It wasn’t a sound he could describe well, nothing he had heard from animal nor person. It was a growl, a shout, a sob, every bad emotion he could think of was in that horrid noise. Not for the way it held sheer bloodlust like no other creature he had ever seen, but the fact that the entirety of her eye was enveloped in pure, complete green, in the same way his eyes were red, giving the prince a sheer animalistic look.

“You bitch!” He struggled against the guards which were holding him down. He tried his hardest to push against the four men whom had taken hold of his arms. One of them cried in pain and lurched backwards as a stalagmite of ice impaled itself into the guard, drawing blood which coated the snowy white landscape. That was the only blood Loki wanted to look at, and refused to glance in the direction of his now fallen father. Instead he glared and cursed at the woman in front of him, who was simply stood, staring at where the previous king of Jötunheimr was knelt.

She turned despondently towards Loki, her rage having filtered from her completely, instead she simply looked lost, and walked slowly towards the struggling crown prince. He growled as she came nearer, now trying even harder to remove the guards off him, his entire being begging him to tear her limb from limb.

She turned and looked at Helblindi, who was still kneeling, however he wasn’t struggling, but instead was staring at the ground in complete shock, trying to understand what exactly just happened. then, she looked back at Loki, his gleaming red eyes boiling with pure unadulterated rage which burned deep within, saw his bared teeth and pure anguish, saw the violent and deadly king to be.

She finally got to Loki and held his chin between her forefinger and thumb, smiling unkindly towards him, absolutely no warmth of a normal smile making its ways to her eyes, instead they were almost blank. She pushed his head up so that he was looking directly into her eyes, watching the looming figure who had just murdered the king.

She scanned him quietly, not allowing any emotion to register behind her eyes to give her away. Loki tried to pull himself out of her grip, however the prince simply tightened it, enough to allow for a bruise to eventually form.

“Him.”

The guards pulled him to his feet, not caring if he found his footing and instead dragged him forwards. Helblindi looked up and saw his brother being dragged away, struggling still against the iron grip of his captors, before looking down upon the blood pooling at the base of his father’s body from where he had been so cruelly and swiftly ended.

And yet, he could not find his voice, could not protest or shout at the woman who had her guards dragging his brother away, he couldn’t find any way or heart to say anything. His brother, who had three men both holding him down and moving him forwards had gone to cursing her in Jötun, old spells and damnations, cursing her to the lowest field of Niffleheim.

“You cowardly cursed wench, horrid putrid pustule of white flesh, you disgusting murderous hag!” He screamed and shouted in her direction, the words not lost in translation as he tried to break free of the many hands which still gripped him with bruising force.

“Your whore mother resents the very day she birthed you.” The prince froze, her entire body having gone rigid and refusing to move forwards in any way.

“What.” She hissed, turning her head barely enough to glare at him in the eye.

“Your whore mother,” he repeated, in Vanir instead, “Regrets your birth.”

The prince began stomping towards Loki, her face filled with rage, before raising her hand and bringing it down upon his cheek with an almighty crack, which echoed around the almost empty plains, ever Helblindi could hear it, and to him the party had reduced to people the size of a pinkie finger.

Loki smirked, his cheek blossoming a dark purple mark which throbbed painfully. Gods how she wanted to just rip him to shreds and be done with it, but humiliation was so much more fun than murder.

“A weak prince? How will your kingdom survive with you as the king?” She raised her hand again, ready to strike, before taking a deep breath and letting it fall to her side.

“I’d rather have you silent than conscious.” She said, before placing her hand gently on his forehead and watching as his body went limp. Helblindi, from the distance, only saw the blue form of his brother going limp, not knowing if it was that he had been killed, or simply struck unconscious. However one look at the pool of blood from where his father’s body was, Konungr highly doubted that the warrior queen would leave his brother alive.

Had he been focused on the group, he would have seen them simply vanish when they reached the lines of caves which surrounded the empty plane, their forms seeming to dissolve into thin air, however the tears in his eyes and on his cheeks were blurring his surroundings and breaking his mind.

The party in question had taken one of the many unknown portals from Jötunheimr to Vanaheim. The caves were used often for small escapades to slip from realm to realm without having to face the Asgardian watchman’s annoying condescension. The prince had often slipped from Vanaheim to Alfhenheim to meet with representatives sons and daughters, sneaking kissed before running back into the caves giggling as she left them blushing.

This time however, she was returning home with someone in tow, but not the someone she had wanted. She hadn’t wanted to bring back the future king of the frozen wasteland behind them, however rage had blinded her judgment, grief for who she had lost.

They slunk through the caves, the guards weighed heavily by the runt of a Jötun in their grasp, the king, the hiccough, the inbred creature that was destined to rule the frozen throne, and yet here he was, unconscious and unresponsive to them carrying him across the floor.

Light began to stream on to the stones of the cave floor, the multicoloured crystals which allowed them passage gleamed reassuringly, welcoming them home after the cold and arduous journey. The small beams of sun which hit on the traveler faces warmed them and wiped away the chill which had been onset deeply in their bones from the cold.

The prince could feel the atmosphere warming up, her brow beginning to realx slightly as the spring warmth of Vanaheim greeted her, chasing away any sort of frost which may have previously been there, and yet as she walked out of the cave, she no longer felt the sun beating down upon her, but rather a deep ache which was slowly growing and making a knot form in her throat.

The guards brushed past her, dragging the body of the Jotun behind them, his feet sliding on the floor as two of them held him aloft from his armpits.

The prince could see the many birth lines running down his back, swirling and arching over muscle and skin in a pale dance, though meaning-full and for reason, as a way of identifying, any uneducated onlooker could truly appreciate its beauty.

“Stop.” She said, waiting for the guards to obey her orders.

They turned towards her and waited expectantly.

“Go to the palace and put the Jötun in the detainment rooms, make sure not to use anything he can freeze his way out of when he wakes up.”

“And where are you going M’lady.” One of the guards questioned.

“I need some time.”

They nodded in acknowledgment, before turning on their heels and walking away, still dragging the unconscious man between them. She watched their forms slowly retreat into the distance, eventually getting to the tree-line of the forest where their horses awaited, before mounting them and eventually riding away.

As she waited, the lump in her throat slowly grew till it was almost suffocating her, and the sobs which were threatening to take over her had already made themselves present, making her look like she was laughing, or trying to hold in a laugh.

As soon as she was sure they wouldn’t turn back to look, she dropped to her knees and gave a heart-wrenching sob, tears instantly springing to her eyes and dropping into the soil. She tried to cover her mouth to dull the noises, but the prince found that it only stopped her breathing and made her fainter. So instead, she allowed herself to cry. She cried, and screamed and begged for the one she had lost, and yet they didn’t come back.

Her cries and begs echoed through the clear spring air, never quite making its way to prying ears, and yet the entire guard, those who had followed her to ice and back, knew exactly why she had told them to keep going, knew exactly what made her wait and want to be alone.

They’d want to be alone if they’d just found that their mother had been killed.

Eventually, the prince’s bellows and begs simmered down to a gentle sob, every so often followed by a whimper or a plea. She wasn’t sure who she was pleading to, maybe to the Valkyries to guide her mother safely or for them to return her, but either way she eventually was silenced, tears tracking down her reddened face now unaccompanied by any words of grief whatsoever.

When she finally stood herself up and dusted the dirt off the tears had dried yet her eyes were still red and puffy. She took in a shaky breath and began to take the track towards the tree-line, hoping they had left a horse for her. Of course, Myrkr was waiting faithfully as ever by the tree-line, whining when she got close and bucking his head up and down, accepting her gentle hand as it rubbed his snout.

“Hello my beautiful boy.” the prince whispered to him, her throat sore and her voice somewhat broken.

Myrkr whined in greeting and nudged the side of her shoulder, as if trying to comfort her. The prince often found that when she was down, Myrkr would know, and would slowly try and comfort her in any way possible.

“Lets go home.” Myrkr nickered and snorted, before standing still enough that the prince could throw herself on to the black, saddle-less stallion, and then slowly turning around to head in the general direction of the palace.

Myrkr had been on this rout enough that the prince didn’t need to steer him. He remembered the exact way to get back and the easiest way to do it. Myrkr set off at a calm walk, not wanting to rush, and if his rider didn’t feel the need to go any faster, the horse would have much preferred it to stay at this pace.

The prince just sat. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, simply let her horse guide the way home and trusted him enough to get her there. She couldn’t appreciate the cool breeze which rustled through the forrest, or the gentle green light of the sun shining through the leaves. She couldn’t understand how the sky was so blue when it should have been crashing and breaking as she was. There was no poetic and ironic weather imitating how she felt, that only ever happened in novels. How she wished this was a novel, something she could close and instead run to her mother and talk about it with, but it wasn’t, and she couldn’t.

The path below them was well worn, the dirt now so compact from centuries of use that the hoof marks which would normally appear in the dirt didn’t register. The birds were singing, perhaps to a loved one, or even to themselves, and yet all the prince could hear was the blood rushing through her ears, drowning out any sort of noise which might be made apparent.

slowly, the trees started thinning and the path diverted in different directions, one to the palace, one to the outlying town and villages, and one to the pools deeper in the forrest, where children and adults alike would run to the natural hot bathes, warmed by the crystals beneath, and enjoy themselves. In the winter, when snow was coating every surface, those bathes would still be a warm comfort to anyone who desired it.

Myrkr instinctively kept going straight, directing himself towards the palace, and started going on a gentle trot, eager to get back to the paddock and enjoy some hay, or perhaps some sugar cubes to munch on.

The prince just sighed and looked down as they passed through the gates, trying to avoid the gaze of everyone who turned to look at her. Of course they were looking at her, what did she expect? She had sent her guards ahead and they had arrived with the son of Laufey rather than the king of Vanaheim.

She took in a deep breath and slid off Myrkr, before patting him towards the paddock, and the horse simply snorted and walked off towards the smell of fresh apples and the buckets of water.

She could see, out of the corner of her eye, stable boys glancing towards her and quickly turning back, not wanting to look in the eyes of the prince. Some of the elder workers bowed their heads slowly, unsure if it was proper etiquette or not. No one bowed to a prince, only to the King.

Anew she felt tears spring to her eyes and yet she did not allow herself to run. Instead the prince kept a steady pace and walked through the courtyard with a stoic expression, only contradicted by the tears which had resumed tracking down her face.

At the palace steps she saw her handmaiden, Amora, standing towards her with her hands clasped and a worried expression written upon her features. When she started going up the steps, the prince hoped that Amora would not bow like the rest, would not acknowledge her as king, but rather as she wanted to be seen as, simply a grieving daughter.

The prince stopped and stood at the top of the stairs, looking into the great hall and willing with everything she had that she’d walk in and see her mother sat upon the throne, giving her a playful glare for being late. But no.

She saw Amora begin to start bowing.

“Don’t.” She said harshly, trying to keep her voice somewhat even.

“Sigyn-“

“No, just, don’t. please.” She said, almost begging.

Amora sighed and stood, before taking Sigyn’s hand and leading her past the halls, towards one of the doors in the side of the great hall, and pulling her through and guiding her through them towards Sigyn’s room. She knew that Sigyn wouldn’t want to be going to the King’s suite right now, not when her mother had been there just a couple of nights before.

She could feel the silent sobs which were taking over Sigyn’s body through their hands, as if it were shaking her very being. And as soon as they made it to her room and the door was shut, Amora instantly brought Sigyn into a fierce hug, holding her as tightly as possible.

For the second time in what was probably two hours, Sigyn collapsed and cried, except this this someone could hear her. Hear her blame and hate and anger. And her sadness. Amora heard that one phrase that Sigyn kept repeating over and over again, through chokes and sobs.

“I was too late.”

Chapter Text

Loki could hear faint voices outside of the corridor, fading in and out of earshot every once and a while. She was vaguely aware of her own breathing which rung around the room, like a bell toll in her head. Everything was somewhat blurry and her entire body ached. Whatever that prince had done had taken its toll on her, making her mind feel weighted as if it were lead, rather than simply a brain. Perhaps it was some sort of a sleeping spell which inhibited her from thinking properly. She tried to stretch, letting her arms extend above her head and arched her back, letting herself groan a bit. The comforting weight on her chest, both familiar and not, made her smile a bit. So she still had her magic. good.

She sat up against one of the walls, sinking comfortably into the cold stone which encompassed the entire room, save for a glass wall which sealed her comfortably into her little nook. She couldn’t see a conceivable entrance or exit and so she set about wondering how they got her in?

She stood and groaned, her entire body aching in protest, before padding quietly towards the glass which allowed minimal light in. As she looked out upon the rows and rows of cells, she saw them almost completely empty, save for one man towards the end of the cell block. He leered at her, his eyes fixating on her half naked state, enjoying the view. Loki growled and glared, making him flinch back slightly.

She looked in front of her at the glass wall holding her back, trying her hardest to strain to listen for some sort of electric buzz or humming which would indicate that she would get hurt by touching it, and yet nothing. Loki smirked slightly and walked towards the glass, letting her skin steam and feeling the comforting frost spread slowly along the floor. Of course the King hadn’t foreseen having an ice giant in her dungeon. Damn this would be too easy.

And yet, rather than begin climbing up the glass, the frost simply stopped at the foot of the front of her cell, as if hesitant. Loki growled slightly and tried to concentrate on the glass, imagining every single molecule freezing and the wall shattering, and yet nothing seemed to happen whatsoever. The glass stood defiant and frustratingly so.

Loki groaned and turned away, padding back to the end of her cell, hoping that perhaps the lack of light which had previously served as a distraction, would simply allow her to focus more, enough to break one of the walls or perhaps the seeming impenetrable glass.

When she turned back and the glass was still there, she screamed in frustration and went up to the cursed material, battering her fists against it loudly.

“Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!”

She was frustrated, completely out of here element. Sure there were moments where her ice magic hadn’t worked on certain things, but usually those things were a beast on a hunting field she could easily shoot down with a bow and an arrow, but this? This was some sort of enchanted glass which was taunting her at every opportunity it could possibly muster.

She huffed and turned further back into her cage, not wanting the other prisoner leering at her in her state of half dress. This change, and the way she was dressed was normal in Jötunheim, but she wasn’t there anymore, she was in a strange place with strange people.

Loki slid down the wall and sighed, brushing the hair which had gone onto her horns right off, and out of her face. So she was trapped, in a dungeon not on her world, whilst Laufey was dead and Loki had been presumed to be in the same state. Of course they would think she was dead, when did anyone like the King have pity?

So everything would fall to her sibling, young as he was, and she would be left In a dungeon alone. She sighed and shifted, trying to get comfortable in some way on the stiff wall behind her.

Maybe someone would come along and look for her? She remembered when her brother, stupid as he was, had gotten trapped in Asgard against Laufey’s wishes, and still they had gone to save him. But that was her brother. And her father was dead. Waiting surely wouldn’t do anything.

Slowly, ice began to encapsulate the room as Loki got further and further into the recesses of her own mind. What would her funeral look like? The one without a body. Would they cry? Would they mourn? What would her brother do alone? He had always been the immature one, unable to handle the slightest of responsibilities let alone the responsibility of an entire kingdom!

The cold that was encapsulating her cell was a comfort. Like a slice of home. It felt more like her room, with its vast white ceilings of frosted stone and her icy bed, rather than a cell on an alien planet.

She didn’t want to think about her father. That was dangerously overemotional territory that she would be straying into. It wasn’t something to be dwelled on. Even if she did think about it, she knew she wouldn’t be overly upset.

Laufey was somewhat distant in his parenting. Coupled with the fact that Loki had been a ‘runt,’ whereas his second born was a fully formed Jötun had made him somewhat bitter. Sure, Loki was fierce and skilled, sure Loki could turn someone to dust with a simple look and a quick spell, and sure, Loki talked to the people and made sure they were comfortable with her, but Loki was a small. A runt. Even if Loki had held the entirety of Jötunheim in one hand, and fought with the other, Laufey would have found her disappointing. Why? Probably for not for growing a 3rd arm.

Parents were complicated.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that Loki didn’t hear the clicking of heels walking cautiously towards her cell, until she saw a blob of colour in her periphery. She turned her head to be greeted by a pair of striking blue eyes which were staring Loki down. She was tall, for a Vanir, around about the same size as Loki. Her hair seemed to have been hastily styled and there was a wet patch around her shoulder, as if someone had poured half a glass of water over that one specific area.

Loki stood very slowly, stalking over to the glass like a caged animal, with every intention to outstare whomever had decided to bother her. She didn’t want to have to talk with the woman in front of her. In fact she didn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone if she was honest.

“I was sent to check if you were still alive.” The girl said, scanning Loki as if she were something awful that the girl’s shoe had ended up in.

Loki didn’t reply, and simply stared at her blankly. Yes, she could understand Vanir, and yes she could have easily replied in the girl’s language, but for sheer stubbornness, Loki decided that the conversation, should it unfortunately happen, was to happen in Jötun or not at all.

The girl just sighed and rolled her eyes, before turning and starting to walk away. Loki had almost believed that she was leaving, before he saw her stop for a moment, considering something.

“If you understand me,” She said, her words echoing around the empty dungeon, “Then understand that you should be every bit as afraid as your father was when her hand was facing you.”

Loki didn’t reply, and simply watched her walk away.

She would never admit to it until the day she died, but in that moment Loki shivered. And it wasn’t from the cold.

Sigyn wasn’t even sure when she had fallen asleep. It was an odd feeling, to suddenly wake up and realise that at some point you had just nodded off, and still not be able to identify the rough time that sleep had overtaken you. So when she woke up, Sigyn felt an odd inability to place the date or time in that moment. She also felt, for some reason, an unexplained pain in her throat and an unbelievable amount of guilt settling so nastily in the pit of her stomach. There was something preventing her from breathing properly. Of course, she thought, my mother’s dead.

She couldn’t find it in her to cry. The shock of the revelation had already left her and her knee jerk response of tears had evaporated as she had sobbed. Now, she just felt numb. As if someone had put a blanket over her emotions to hide and mute them. They were there, she knew that, but she couldn’t quite see or hear them properly. The lump was still there in her throat, she still had a faint stutter in her breathing from crying and her cheeks were still puffy and red, but that was the only hint that she had felt any emotion.

Sigyn was grateful that it wasn’t the Kings suite that she was led to. Laying in her mother’s bed, where she had done so many times as a child, would have been too much to bear in that moment. Not because of the room, but because of who would be absent from it.

Instead, she slipped off of her own bed, her feet gently landing on the wooden floor. She gently padded over to her fireplace and placed two wooden blocks into the stone grated divot in her wall. True, it was spring, but the nights were still far too cold to simply rely on a blanket for warmth.

She simply gestured at the blocks, and they were set alight with an alarmingly green tinged fire, which eventually settled into the typical blue fire which came from burning Tyanha tree wood. She grabbed one of her many blankets sat on the end of her bed, before dragging it back to the chairs surrounding the fireplace, before settling down and tucking herself in, allowing her to be lost in her own thoughts. Staring at the fire was the only thing she was truly capable at that moment.

She didn’t want to do anything in particular in that moment. Sure, her mind was racing, and every single possibility of what could have happened to her mother was passing through her mind, but she couldn’t find any motivation to even tear her eyes from the fireplace.

She heard Amora creep in, slowly opening and shutting the door and padding over to the only occupied chair. She felt the gentle touch on her shoulder, and still she found herself completely engrossed in the dancing flames which flared every so slightly.

In books, grief was something that was a simple notch in the story. It came in a firestorm of tears and left after a day. The characters occasionally felt a small bout of melancholy, but apart from that, they tended to simply stop crying and move on.

But grief was so much worse, and Sigyn knew it.

Grief, from what she remembered when her Ama died, was something which was both all consuming and completely uninvolved. You would go about your business with it weighing on your mind, and you chest, ever so slightly. Then one word could make it all come crashing down. A damn of emotions could easily break and leave you with sobs wracking your body and tears blurring your eyes. It was something which could make you feel equally elated and devastated in the best and worst of occasions. It was something which made you so irrational and so unlike yourself, and yet when you followed its calling, you found yourself learning more and more about the person who you were.

But for now, grief, and everything else, had seemed to abandon her.

“The Jötun’s awake.” Said Amora gently, rubbing a thumb reassuringly over Sigyn’s shoulder.

Sigyn just nodded in response, still feeling nothing.

“What should we do with her?”

Sigyn just shrugged, her eyes never leaving the fire. At the moment she didn’t care. Politics, prisoners and propriety could wait until the morning, where Amora would knock anew on her door and lead her to the King’s Suite, but right now, Sigyn was comfortable waiting in her childhood bedroom. There was nothing left of her Mother or Ama, save for the warmth of the fire, the blanket and memories, but for now that would do.

A few levels down, Loki was staring at the frost which had coated each surface, save for the glass in her cell, in the same blank way.