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Laufey’s son…
Incredulity had momentarily knocked the air from my lungs and I repeated the name in a whispered breath. The time it took for the realisation to take hold in my mind seemed to take an eternity, yet it was no more than the shortest of heartbeats. It could not be true…
Son of Laufey, the offspring of a Frost Giant, our hated enemy.
I didn’t believe it.
I didn’t want to believe it.
In that moment I wanted nothing more than my father to lie to me; to tell me it was a joke and that he was fooling me, but he wasn't. With a single word he confirmed my suspicion, ruthlessly so.
Yes.
My world shattered in that second, splintering to small remnants like broken glass.
My mind still screamed that it must be a lie, I shouldn’t believe it, yet I saw the truth in his eyes. Even more so, I had seen the truth etched on my skin. I couldn’t escape this fact, no matter how much I willed and wished it with all my heart and soul.
My life was nothing but another lie - one of so many.
Within that one second, with that single word, I fell from Prince of the realm of Asgard to the legitimate heir of Jotunheim; something I wasn't able to wrap my head around in that moment because other matters and questions and revelations were more urgent.
I had been raised to view the Frost Giants as worthless creatures, deserving of nothing but death, and nobody would care if they died. They were animals, locked in their pathetic realm where they would stay and rot until the end of their days or until somebody showed mercy on them.
Monsters, the sworn enemy of Asgard…
I stemmed from that monstrous race!
It made me a monster and the revelation explained so much.
I wasn’t worthy. Not worthy of the throne of Asgard, not worthy of love, or even life. I wasn’t even worthy to be on Asgard - a cast out, a nobody, as I have always felt.
It explained why I was different and why my father had treated me different. Thor, always the golden boy, and me, the scapegoat of the family. Rightly so, because even I could not phantom why someone would treat a Frost Giant with respect or could be able to love them.
How had my mother done that all those centuries? Had her love even been real? I suppose it wasn’t and hadn’t because otherwise she would have told me.
My own father turned out not to be my father. The blood running in my veins nothing akin to that of Thor, my brother. The blood in my veins not Frigga's.
I realized that I was nothing, that I am nothing and would never be anything. I was worthy of nothing and that I would never be. I hadn’t been deserving of anything and nothing had been taken from me, but there was one thing I did deserve; a swift and painless death, just like those of the race I stemmed from.
Why was I even still alive? Why had Odin taken me in and raised me as his own instead of killing me? What was his bigger purpose? I could be nothing more than a pawn that was part of a bigger game which I knew naught about.
My father had manipulated me before, but I saw no reason as why he would manipulate to bend me to his will with this. I had already concluded he wasn’t lying, my heritage as a Frost Giant was true, so this couldn’t be another thing he could use against me.
I feared for what my purpose as his pawn would be or had been. Part of me didn't want to know, and yet I needed to know.
For all the lies that I had spun myself, for all the lies that I had been told, in that moment I needed the truth. I didn’t care if it would hurt me - at that point I doubted if anything could hurt me more than this - and I didn’t care if it would destroy me.
I needed to now!
Whatever would happen, I would get answers. If there had ever been a moment I wanted to beg, this was one of those rare moments because I craved the truth.
Why?