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When Jotunheim reluctantly surrendered, its king lying on the floor of his temple with Odin holding Gungnir at his throat, the Casket was not the only treasure Asgard stole. Odin was relieved that Laufey had at last surrendered. Jotunheim would be more subdued with a defeated king on its throne than with a new one who might inspire new hope among his people.
The einherjar claimed the Casket from the dais and took it away to Asgard, to join the other relics Odin had stolen from throughout the realms in his weapons vault. Odin was about to leave as well when a sound drew his attention to the altar.
A baby’s cry.
The Jotun infant was small for a giant’s child. The curving lines on its face proclaimed it to be the child of Farbauti, Laufey’s queen. Odin pulled back the blanket which covered half the child and was pleased to find that it was a girl. A Jotun prince would have been far more complicated to make use of.
Odin learned the baby’s name - Loki - from her father and announced that the princess would be Asgard’s hostage for Jotunheim’s obedience. “And if she grows up to be obedient and chaste,” Odin added, to Laufey’s helpless rage, “she can be my son’s bride when they are of age.” Unless Vanaheim or Alfheim provided a more advantageous match, but there was no need to say that out loud. The other realms would be dangling princesses before Thor as soon as he was old enough to take notice of them in hopes of winning more favor from Asgard. Whether this Jotun princess married Thor or not, her mere existence at Asgard’s court would make her useful.
Farbauti was, after Jotunheim made many concessions it might otherwise have balked at, allowed to live with her daughter at Asgard’s court. The frost giants were unhappy about the entire arrangement, but all had to admit that granting Asgard hostages allowed that realm to be a kinder conqueror. One day out of each year, a battalion of Asgardian warriors brought the Casket to Jotunheim to revive the realm. Otherwise the realm would have slowly died, more Jotuns starving each year as their planet slowly crumbled into the void.
Frigga, who had wished for a daughter, spent hours every day with the Jotun princess. Loki was pretty and charming, and as she grew older Frigga discerned her talent for magic and instructed her in its use. Meanwhile Loki’s own mother strove to impress upon the child the need to advance Jotunheim’s interests when she had the power to. The safety of the realm relied upon the wiles and loyalty of a little girl who had not seen it since infancy.
Thor saw Loki rarely as they grew up, mostly at state occasions. They knew they were betrothed. For Thor his eventual marriage to a Jotun princess was an accepted fact of faraway adulthood. For Loki, instructed by two queens, Thor was the most vital thing she studied. As she grew older, she understood that her own fate as well as that of her realm would depend upon how well she understood the man to whom she was to be given.
When Thor reached adolescence, his boisterous nature and inattention to his lessons began to concern Frigga. One day after observing him start an all-out brawl among boys his age and older during what was supposed to be an orderly lesson in swordplay, she left other adults to try to quell the melee, retired to her own chambers, and summoned the Jotun queen and princess.
“Are you still fond of reading, Loki?” Frigga asked, not looking up from her loom as they approached.
“I am, my queen.” Loki’s voice was sweet and respectful. Frigga knew the girl was sly, clever enough to pretend respect she did not feel, but Frigga also knew that such slyness was useful to a queen. She herself had been forced to marry the king who had conquered her realm. Subterfuge had kept her alive and enabled her to advance Vanaheim’s interests, so long as she was careful in this.
Slyness would be especially useful for Thor’s queen, given that Thor was unable to restrain his own feelings in the slightest.
“What do you read, other than magic books and adventure stories?”
“Everything, my queen.”
Frigga nodded to herself. “I am engaging new tutors for you, Loki. Tomorrow your lessons shall commence. You must have the sort of education we give to a crown prince or princess.” Her eyes met Farbauti’s in understanding. Both of them wished for peace for their realms and happiness for their children. Their husbands held these things in lower esteem than power or riches. The queens must see to their objectives for themselves.
Frigga could see Loki turning this over in her sharp young mind. “But I am not a crown princess, my queen. I have two elder brothers.”
“No, but your future husband is high-spirited. He will need someone at his side who was…” Frigga searched for a word which would not signal disrespect for Thor to the princess. “…sedate enough to remember all that royalty must learn.”
Loki curtsied. Frigga thought she understood the situation quite well. “I shall strive to serve both our realms well, my queen.”
“See that you do. After your lessons, come to me and we shall discuss them.” Someone had to supervise the education of the future queen of Asgard.
In the later years of their adolescence, Thor and Loki never saw each other. Loki was kept in the quarters allotted to her and her mother, leaving only to attend Frigga, which she did almost daily. Thor had discovered the fair sex and explored it with the same boundless enthusiasm he brought to sparring practice. Ambassadors from other realms coyly brought pretty young princesses and duchesses to Asgard’s court in hopes that one would catch Thor’s eye. Their efforts were wasted, not because none of the girls caught Thor’s eye, but because nearly all of them did. If not for Odin’s powerful enchantments restraining Thor’s fertility, the Nine Realms would have soon been overrun with yellow-haired bastards.
Various kings had tried to persuade Odin that they could offer a better alliance than Jotunheim, but Jotunheim had been difficult to subdue and Odin was anxious to keep it docile. Besides which, Thor was also difficult to control. A betrothal he truly wanted would serve Odin’s ends admirably.
Accordingly, Odin arranged Thor’s first sight that really mattered of his bride with care. Thor’s first battle was also chosen carefully - it was imperative that it be a success, but Asgardian warriors could not possibly lose against Nidavellir, so to Nidavellir Thor was sent - and afterwards in the ceremonial bestowing of awards and dividing of spoils, Princess Loki of Jotunheim was assigned to present Thor with the winged helmet his father had created for him in recognition of his first blooding.
She was beautiful and graceful and holding out the symbol of his new status as an adult man and a warrior and she was destined to be his. Thor had no choice but to fall in love.
Odin insisted on putting off their marriage for a few more years, despite Thor’s protestations, but the young couple saw each other often now - always properly chaperoned. Thor drank in the princess’s beauty and laughed heartily at the harmless pranks she played with her magic. During their first few meetings, Loki was demure enough that he felt that he must woo her, and so he showered her with gifts he brought back from the realms on which he battled, compliments he hired a popular bard to craft for him, and unwavering attentiveness. She responded by becoming almost as besotted as he was.
All of her life, Loki had been given to understand that Thor was her destiny and the center of her universe. Two queens had instructed her, one openly and the other subtly, in how to enchant a man. Thor was handsome and bold and craved her as he had never craved any of the dozens of women who had passed through his bed.
Loki could not have said how much of her infatuation with him was born of necessity and how much was a ripe young woman’s response to a virile man who was desperate with desire for her. It mattered little; her feelings served everyone well. Farbauti was even pragmatic enough to pretend to be fooled when Loki occasionally used illusions to steal a few precious moments of genuine privacy with Thor. Loki allowed him enough liberties to fan the flames of his lust for her, but she was too shrewd to allow him the one which might have lessened her value - and his interest. However much she yearned and Thor pleaded, she would marry with her virginity intact.
Loki attended the feasts and royal audiences of Asgard’s court and showed herself skilled at charming anyone and everyone. Odin’s gambit required that everyone concerned - Loki’s blood relatives, her future husband Thor, those with whom Thor associated who could influence his opinion - esteem Loki, so he spoke to her kindly before others and punished those few who spoke rudely to her for being a Jotun. Whatever her attributes, Odin would have praised them. Since her attributes were the properly feminine ones of intelligence, magic and cunning - all ergi qualities Odin would have been disgusted to see in any son of his, but fortunately Thor showed no sign of any of them - these were the things he praised, and the court followed suit.
Such was her guile that she was allowed to take part in Asgard’s diplomacy. Had she been a prince rather than a princess, the Aesir would have despised her cleverness at finding solutions to disputes between the realms that did not involve killing people, but unmanly methods were only to be expected of a woman, and so the king and his advisors praised her efforts instead of scorning her effeminacy.
Had she been permitted to go adventuring with Thor, Loki might have tried to persuade him not to use battle as his first, last and only solution, but although like many royal women she had been given some training with a sword, a maidenhead as valuable as hers was not going to be allowed to roam the Nine Realms unsupervised and a royal womb was not going to be risked in battle. This was fortunate, as Thor loved battle and anyone who tried to deprive him of it would have become a thorn in his side, always resented. If Loki feared that her betrothed might fall in battle without her at his side to calm his hot blood, she said nothing of it to anyone, not even her mother.
When at last they married, they did not emerge from their chambers for an entire week.
When Odin had to Sleep and Thor had his first regency, Loki already knew the best way of keeping her husband out of trouble. She made certain that some petty rebellion on Haragon, one of Asgard’s vassal worlds, caught Thor’s attention. A single Asgardian regiment could have put it down, but without his father to say so Thor rushed off to quell it himself, leaving the tedious business of diplomacy, sitting in judgment on disputes, and innumerable decisions about minutiae in the hands of his queen. Loki dealt with these matters competently and with patience, never having expected to savor the glory of battle. The royal advisors had hoped that their future queen would be able to attend the matters they knew their future king never would and were relieved to learn that they had been right. They framed their compliments to her with care not to insult Thor, but as a hostage princess she had never expected or even hoped to receive open fealty, so their oblique loyalty was precious to her. Thor returned to Asgard shortly before Odin awakened with no more understanding of what ruling a kingdom involved than he had had the day he found the first down on his chin.
When Loki was one hundred years old, Farbauti was permitted to return to her homeland, and Loki was granted permission to accompany her mother and see the rest of her family for the first time since her infancy. Odin reversed the transformation that had turned both of them warm-blooded for the past century and sent them home through the Bifrost. Loki spent a month talking to her father and brothers and traveling through her native realm.
She returned, so far as anyone could tell, unchanged. But she began, with a delicate but persistent touch, to ask for more concessions for Jotunheim. After a few years of debates and discussions, the prince of Asgard made an announcement that diverted everyone’s attention: his lovely Jotun wife was with child. Feeling kindly towards the realm which had given Asgard such a charming and capable princess who was now doing her duty to the succession, Odin’s advisors persuaded him to negotiate a new treaty with Jotunheim. The Jotnar put a legion of warriors at Asgard’s service in exchange for being allowed to use the Casket for an entire month out of each year. Conditions on that world improved, the age-old hostility between Aesir and Jotnar eased, and civilians throughout the realms began to hope for permanent peace between Asgard and Jotunheim.
A galaxy away, a monster who was in love with Death salivated at the thought of retrieving the Tesseract from Midgard and using it to rampage throughout the Nine Realms, sending new subjects to his mistress. However, only an extraordinary cosmic event - the Bifrost being destroyed, perhaps - could have opened a wormhole from the Nine Realms to Thanos’s world, and no such disaster occurred, so Thanos was doomed to impotent longing for the Cube.
Meanwhile, on Asgard, a Jotun princess gave birth to a strapping golden-haired Asgardian boy, and two worlds rejoiced.