There's a God Under My Bed

Darcy glanced up from her notes as Loki stirred in his sleep.

Upstate New York was suffering from an early summer thunderstorm, the loud crashes of lightning sounded through the night causing Loki to be restless. Darcy didn’t think he was scared of thunder per say, but the noise bothered him along with the fact that it was a reminder of Thor and his mighty power of the storm that seemingly unmatched his own abilities.

She quirked a grin, standing from her spot on the floor to pull up the sheet that he had kicked away. He always did that. Darcy would wake up shivering because Loki had gathered all the sheets at the foot of the bed. Frank and Fenrir only made it worse as they often chased each other around in their dreams, rolling over Darcy and Loki like super heavy, overgrown tumbleweeds.

Frowning, Darcy watched Loki’s sleeping face, gently pushing a lock of black hair behind his ear.

Life had been hard for them the past few months.

It seemed for a while after they returned from their trip to Thryheim that Darcy’s anxiety had calmed down. She remembered sleeping so well their last night in Tyr’s home that Loki had to wake her up in the morning. Her mental health kept on improving through December and at the turn of the Midgardian year she felt the constant compress on her heart had lifted.

Then there was the trip to Skornheim.

Whenever a new law or decree was made in the capital it was customary for the royals to deliver the message to the people personally. They would travel to the different provinces to announce said declaration and then celebrate with festivities put on by the province. Loki and Thor were to speak in Skornheim of the recent developments of a special project erected by the Allfather’s small council. The group consisted of four members: the treasurer, the secretary, First Warrior of the Einherjar, and the Allfather. Sometime before winter, they made a decree to publicize sorcery in the lower class.

Originally it had been Darcy’s idea. She petitioned the Allfather for at least two seasons before he even bothered to read her research reports and finally, after enough pestering on her part, Odin made up his mind to test her theories in the capital. There was protest to the project from a select group of nonprogressive peoples, but so many reveled in having recognition for their magical accomplishments that production of enchantments and speed of artifact study increased by sixty percent.

Asgard had a shortage of sorceresses.

Lower class females made up most of the sorcery in the realm. They supported ingenuity and eternal-cultured magic styles. Because they were the main practitioners of magic, public organizations were paid for by the crown to fashion new weapons, advance Asgardian magic, expand on theories and methods for creation. Particularly astute sorceresses were given the Aesir version of grants to take a few years at a time to work on specific projects.

The problem was that none of this was publicized. No one knew about the sorceresses and the wonders of magic. Few pursued the field even though the demand for magic was high.

Darcy blamed Odin per usual.

He’d purposefully kept magic in the dark, degrading the art in favor of promoting warrior status. She understood why.

During the war with the Jotunns, they needed warriors more than they needed sorcery.

Odin’s dismissal of sorcery accompanied by Frigga dropping her throne in favor of a clandestine agency of spies left Asgard with an underappreciated magical community.

When Odin and his council pronounced that the publicity campaign would go through, Frigga insisted that Loki and Thor tour the provinces in order to formally present the decree. Of course Darcy would go along as well.

All had gone fine. They made their way through all of the provinces, conversing with lords and noblewomen, laughing with commoners and drinking with bards and musicians. It was a wonderful time. Darcy was humored by the men that tried to flirt with her. She found herself accepting more dances just for fun. She decided in Ringsfjord, after having the son of a noble trip over her feet, that if she ever did date anyone, she wanted them to be a fantastic dancer.

Loki also had a good time. He and Darcy never danced together, but as a Prince, Loki did his fair share of flirting with unsuspecting ladies. Darcy wasn’t sure if he knew he was flirting or he was just busy being himself. Either way, people liked him, even if he tended to revert to being an intolerant ass when discussing politics. He had no patience for debate and Darcy tried to guide him away from political talks in order to keep his public image in decent condition.

Loki never had any trouble speaking to an audience. In fact, Darcy believed he liked the attention. He was good at explaining things. He spoke formally, intelligently, and with a large yet understandable vocabulary. However, he was also a cocky little shit when he wanted to be. Darcy had to be careful as to how to create his public image.

She wouldn’t ask Loki to change his personality towards the public; they deserved to know who was ruling them. But she had to make him likable. He was admired by the people as a focused royal who leveled with his people through his studies in sorcery. They saw him as serious as a dry humored progressive and convincing debater. Darcy had built Loki’s image to be different, as Loki was very different from any royal yet to live, but she did so in such a mysterious and positive way that not one political article had anything bad to say about Prince Loki.

All in all, Darcy was pretty damn good at her job. She had connections all over Asgard, many of which she used to promote her causes. Whenever Loki went to meet with someone, she was typically by his side, her hand nestled in the crook of his elbow. They often spoke together, Darcy beginning a statement and Loki adding onto it as she went, saying especially annoying or comical things. His playful humor went a long way to draw in the favor of noticeable figures from across the realm.

Needless to say, by the time Darcy, Loki and Thor got to Skornheim, the second prince and his advisor had the favor of over half of Asgard.

Darcy stood through Loki’s speech on Skornheim smiling to herself thinking about how that night would go: dancing, food, moderate drinking and falling into Loki’s bed exhausted.

It was that moment before the people of Skornheim - that second of absolute complacency - that Darcy blamed for the horrible events that ensued toward the end of Loki’s silvertongued discourse.

In the middle of thanking Skornheim for its hospitality, he stopped speaking. Darcy watched him, confused, as she felt the tingly sensation of his magic wash over the platform at which they stood in the center of High Lord Hardvaar’s courtyard.

Suddenly, he turned on his toe to face the balcony behind them just in time for a gold tipped arrow to imbed itself in his shoulder. If he hadn’t moved, the projectile would have shot through his heart.

Darcy’s world fell to pieces in less than a second. Her knees went weak as she made her way to Loki’s side, instantaneously giving commands to the Einherjar that had accompanied them throughout their tour. Her voice was shaky and her insides were trembling, but her words were strong. She instructed them to arrest the assassin and to keep him alive.

Let it be known that Darcy Lewis was ready to tear apart anyone who dared to take Loki’s life.

After her directions had been given she melted, pouring over Loki in frantic distress. He dislodged the arrow from his shoulder and healed the wound in no time, but the sight of his blood dripping from the golden tip made her sick. She began babbling incoherently at her friend, trying in vain to make sure he was still alive and his recovery was not a figment of her imagination.

She couldn’t breathe. A heavy weight settled over her heart putting a damper on her lungs. She gasped for air, touching all of Loki she could just to make sure he was still there.

She didn’t think about the audience of Skorns watching her mental state collapse or Thor presenting to her the assassin that had tried to kill her prince. She didn’t think about anything but Loki and how he had almost been gone from her. She could count on her fingers the number of times they had almost died.

But those were times when they almost died together and on life threatening adventures. This assassination happened in a protected environment. It occurred to Darcy that Loki could be gone from her at any moment. There were so many forces that could take him and she was only a mortal.

Loki had gently pulled her to his side murmuring some quiet condolence against her temple, but it was no use. She couldn’t breathe the air around her unless it carried his scent and the only sight that wasn’t obscured by fear was his face. With manner of nonchalance, Loki thanked everyone for their patience and told them to enjoy the festivities.

He led her away to her chambers where the return of her tireless anxiety came with a vengeance.

Wrapped up in a blanket and quivering with shock, Darcy sat in Loki’s lap by the fire, her head resting on his shoulder while he held her legs and kissed her face. She undid the front straps of his armor so she could feel the shoulder that had been impaled by the golden shafted arrow, running her fingers over the smooth healed skin.

They stayed like that for hours until she could speak properly again. Darcy wanted to interrogate the assassin but Loki suggested that they wait until morning. He’d given Thor brief instruction on entertaining guests and asked that the would-be murderer be kept in Skornheim’s dungeons.

Darcy was so worn out and anxious that she agreed and Loki held her through the night. Neither of them slept, choosing to converse in soft whispers about things that had nothing to do with politics or family. Loki magically projected himself onto her, explaining secrets of the universe he’d discovered simply by watching the stars. Darcy didn’t know how much was theory or if he had actual proof. But his words were so beautiful that Darcy could listen to them forever.

By the time morning came, Darcy could have sworn her entire being had been put through a wringer. Loki returned to his rooms just before handmaidens arrived to help Darcy dress for the day. She didn’t really need their help, but they did a much better job at styling her hair and covering up the dark circles under her eyes.

Darcy dressed for war. The sniveling wreck who lost her wits at the very sight of her friend’s blood was gone. She was Advisor Darcy and she was prepared to do whatever necessary to ensure that no assassin ever came anywhere near her prince ever again. She would deal with the public’s reaction to her open affection for Loki later. An attempt on Loki’s life could not be passed off as simply an angry citizen attacking royalty. Especially with the impending war with Vanaheim that Darcy was no closer to figuring out than she’d been a few months ago.

No. There must’ve been something more to the assault than some peasant’s suicide mission. Attempting assassination of a royal was to risk one’s life.

Loki must have fallen asleep when he returned to his rooms and Darcy ordered the staff not to wake him.

With her shoulders back and head held high, she made her way to the dungeons flanked by two of the Einherjar. Her swords were strapped to her waist over her dress and the light silver of her armored breastplate and wrist guards contrasted drastically in the dank light of the underground chambers.

She didn’t care how tired she looked, she was getting answers and she was getting them directly.

Or so she thought. The cell was unlocked, the solid door swinging open to expose the fresh corpse of her new obsession.

Darcy could not recall ever being so livid. Red clouded her vision and she personally saw that the body was wrapped and taken back to the capital.

Without even asking permission she began a realm-wide covert investigation. She examined the body personally, having to reference a collection of forensic books she’d read a few years earlier. She questioned guards and noblemen, cooks and peasants. She walked the halls of Skornheim over and over again and she analyzed every aspect of the bow and arrow that would have taken Loki’s life had he not been as astute at magic.

Much to her utter devastation, what she found was hardly of substance. The ‘assassin’ was a common farmer named Gorif Jurgnelson with no children, no spouse and very little money. He was a hunter and good with a bow. He died from orally consumed poison commonly used to eradicate vermin from any given area. All the guards were clean along with Skornheim’s citizens.

Any normal person would have said that Gorif Jurgnelson was just a disgruntled man with nothing to lose. Even Loki, who had assisted in the investigation at Darcy’s persistence, claimed that Gorif’s motive was likely only bitterness towards the throne. Darcy would have been tempted to agree if it were not for the arrow.

The golden arrow.

It was crafted from a compound of gold and a type of Asgardian steel that was refined by crushing gemstones into the metal while it was hot. The method was perfected by Baldur, Asgard’s most renowned blacksmith, a few thousand years ago and the metal soon become one of the most desired substances in all the nine realms. It was extremely difficult to craft and the only one capable of such a feat was Baldur himself.

Darcy spoke with him about the compound as well as the arrow. He called the material “Valkyrie Hide” because it was strong and gleamed like the skin of gods. When he first began making weapons with the metal, which he admitted he had not oft been inclined to do, he created twelve arrows belonging to a single quiver. The arrows were scattered and he assumed they had been lost in the war. The smith told her grimly that he had not crafted any such substance in the past few millennia. When Darcy presented him with the weapon of Gorif Jurgnelson, Baldur’s heavy brows lifted in amazement.

Darcy was onto something. She didn’t know if it had to do with Lord Bjarte and the Norns, the Vanir, angry peasants, or a vicious cult lurking in the pits of Asgardian society, but she was going to find out.

From that fateful day on Skornheim onward, Darcy felt like the world was crushing her. Her breaths were shallow and her throat was always thick. She couldn’t bring herself to eat anymore than a few bites per meal because her stomach refused to settle. Sleep was impossible. Every time she closed her eyes the dwelling sensation of dread seeped into every crevice of her soul until she was forced into a wicked bout of repressed shivers and groans of pain. If she did manage to sleep she was haunted by nightmares more vile than ever before.

She was suffering and she couldn’t stop it. Loki was worried about her, but she refrained from telling him about her suffocating anguish. In part, she felt ashamed that one incident would cause her to react so severely. Darcy figured that if she could just ensure Asgard and Loki’s safety as well as solving the Vanaheim-War puzzle then everything would be fine. The worst would be over and she could sleep without seeing all of her worst fears swimming in bleak darkness.

Loki was so much to her. Calling him her friend was an understatement. He was the best thing to ever happen to her and the one person she couldn’t lose. She had to find the power to keep him alive. She would resolve the fantastical mystery that was soon becoming her life.

Darcy sighed, lightly squeezing Loki’s hand that was grasping her pillow.

A bright flash of lightning lit the room and a few seconds later a rumble of thunder sounded through the walls. Loki shot up like he’d been struck. His sudden movement caused Fenrir to turn in his sleep which ultimately led to Frank slithering about for a few seconds until they were comfortably wrapped around one another.

Loki was breathing heavily, his eyes clenched shut and his hair was a mess. Darcy scooted closer to him, secretly hoping that he was up for the day. It was six thirty and she wanted to talk, preferably while he held her. She had been needy lately, so much that she was verging on being clingy. But when she was tormented everyday by thoughts of him dying and the Nine Realms falling to ruin after she failed to locate all six infinity stones and win the war with Vanaheim.

With a tired yawn, Loki pulled her to him and she didn’t hesitate to snuggle as close as possible, putting herself in his lap and burying her face in his neck as he leaned against the headboard.

They sat in comfortable silence listening to the rain crash against the roof. Loki ran his fingers idly through her hair while she played with his collar.

Finally Loki broke the silence, his hand slipping down to rub heat into her cold arm. “Did you sleep last night?” his voice was soft and quiet, matching the air in the slowly lightening room.

A bitter taste wet her mouth as she lied to him. “Some.”

She could feel Loki’s grimace at her vague and slightly untrue response. He moved his head, looking to the mess of notes and journals spread around the floor. “Darcy?”

She replied timidly, concerned that he might be mad. “Yeah?”

“Are those my notes?” he asked, lips brushing the top of her head.

Darcy picked up his hand, fidgeting with his fingers. She may or may not have picked apart his notes last night.

Her world was falling apart and she had very few solutions to a great many problems. Wherever she looked, more kept popping up.

Take last night for instance, when she was searching through Loki’s notes for magical reference to include in her report to Odin about the advance in magical studies over the past season when she happened upon one of his research journals. Loki was constantly in the habit of taking notes even if he didn’t need to. He did it for her because she liked to keep up with his many magical experiments.

This journal was focused on speed. Pages and pages of slanted green writing depicted theories on what one must do to penetrate the spatial barrier between the Nine Realms and the Galaxy Beyond. Somewhere in the middle of the book, amongst a series of equations, he found a way.

It still amazed Darcy, even though she had known him so long, that Loki could be as clever as he was and still underestimate himself. When he spent days working on a project, he never did it for the realm, money, fame or power. He did it for science; because Loki liked to know how far into the universe he could get without causing Ragnarok. And on occasion, he did some of it for her, just to make her happy.

But the way out of the galaxy was impressively done. It wasn’t a portal. Not really. In his conclusion he stated that ‘speed, when increased to the point where it tests infinite potential, will form a lapse in the space between Yggdrasil and the Galaxy, allowing for the object(s) generating the speed to pass through’.

She read through all of his notes, checked over his flawless calculations and scowled at his methods for collecting data (i.e. jumping out of longships from great heights). According to Loki, they could use a longship to get out of Yggdrasil if they gained enough speed to pierce the Asgardian atmosphere without drifting into space.

“Maybe,” Darcy mumbled tiredly, shifting to go put away the mess she made.

Loki held onto her, halting her retreat by keeping her securely in his embrace. “Leave it for now. Tell me what you think.”

She gave him a halfhearted smile, leaning her head back on his shoulder and lifting her chin so she could look him in the eyes. “I think your hair is messy.”

“I would be willing to wager that it is,” he smirked, taking advantage of his position behind her to wiggle his fingers over her ribs effectively spurring a series of breathless giggles from her tired lips. She elbowed him in the stomach a few times before he stopped, snuggling back under the sheets and playfully tugging her with him.

Another rumble of thunder reverberated through the room and Darcy hugged Loki just a bit tighter as he ran his fingers down her arm. Closing her eyes, she inhaled his scent, trying to staunch the worrisome thick feeling in her chest. She didn’t know how to stop it; so she just let Loki hold her and hoped that it would go away.

“Darcy?” Loki asked quietly, pulling the covers up around their shoulders. She hadn’t realized how cold it was in her room until the heat of their bodies was trapped under her purple quilted bedspread.

It was almost difficult to respond because of how tight her throat felt. “Loki.”

He took a long second to ask his question, twisting a few strands of her hair. “What is wrong?”

Her heart was reminding her insistently of its presence in her chest as she thought about the prospects of telling Loki of her unreasonable fears.

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked her if she was okay or if there was something wrong and she was constantly catching him staring at her like she was going to collapse at any minute. She felt awful for keeping him in the dark with no explanation to her aching want for closeness and endless need of distraction. But she didn’t know what to tell him. What could she say?

That she was scared he was going to get assassinated? That the Nine Realms were going to fall into nothingness unless she did something? That she was worried for the sake of worry and she couldn’t solve any of the problems that were set before her?

He would think she was crazy or tell her that she was being stupid. She knew she was just being petty about the whole thing. She should be able to do these things…she just couldn’t.

“I’m only thinking,” Darcy said, clearing her throat to dispel some of the tension there.

Loki was silent for a moment before he slipped a finger under her chin, tentatively asking that she look at him. She complied almost shamefully. Green met blue, seeking out the truth she was unwilling to give.

As a person, Loki was a bit different than most when it came to pulling off the impossible. He was nonstop in his endeavors and Darcy knew from watching him work that it was because he never really felt accomplished. It was part of why he undermined his discoveries and intelligence. She always figured it had something to do with his need to equate with Thor.

From what she’d learned of Loki’s past, he was a really sick kid and he couldn’t go fight like his older brother. He had no interest in warring and battle. He liked his mother and magic and reading. But in the war cultured society his father had created, Loki’s small achievements like mastering a new spell or finishing a particularly detailed tome were overlooked and even laughed at because Loki was a boy studying a woman’s art.

It broke Darcy’s heart to think that because of this, Loki never really considered that he’d accomplished anything. Every task he completed was seen as only a step to something greater.

With this insatiability also came impatience. Loki had no tolerance in discussing magic with anyone who couldn’t keep speed with him academically and he hardly bothered to be anything but cocky to anyone who spoke with him lest it be Darcy or Frigga. It was fairly entertaining to listen to Loki’s witty, sarcastic one-liners get the best of people, but the contrast between his reluctant forbearance to society and his leniency to her was vast.

Loki wanted to listen to her; he cared about what she said and how she felt. He liked to know things, but he had the patience to wait for her to tell him.

Darcy wondered now, looking into his eyes, how long that patience would last.

His brows came together, one of them cocked just a bit higher than the other. It was the Loki version of the sad puppy dog look. It had the unavoidable power to bend her will no matter the circumstances. Sometimes he did it on purpose and other times it was completely involuntary. “What are you thinking about?”

Rain beat against the window and another clash of thunder made Darcy flinch. That was another effect of the stress; it made her jumpy as Hel. She smiled weakly at him, looking back to all she’d done last night. “I’m thinking about when you were going to tell me that you found a way out of Yggdrasil along with the possible location of another infinity stone.”

Loki pursed his lips, turning his gaze upwards to study the ceiling. “I do not know if it is safe or if it will even be successful.”

“Oh,” she said lamely. She hadn’t gotten that from his notes, but she knew Loki well enough to know that if he said something wasn’t safe, they’d best not do it.

They were silent for a few moments, Darcy focusing on Loki’s heart and trying to match her own frenetic beat to his.

“When do you leave for Culver?” Loki asked, his hushed voice melding in perfectly with the sound of the pouring rain.

Darcy bit her cheek, wondering how he might take the truth.

During the late winter seasons, Darcy had sent in an application and an essay to Culver for a special summer long program they were offering to ten students from around the world. If chosen, said students would go to Culver University at the beginning of summer and study under a few of Culver’s most esteemed professors. They would stay in dorms, speak with Culver students, and attend seminars for their intended major.

Surprisingly, Darcy had gotten in. Her essay on the abolishment of political labels must have been a success because she even won a scholarship for merit.

But now that summer was here, she had decided to cancel her trip. Her mother told her to think about it before she was to leave in two days time.

“I don’t think I’m going. Too busy,” Darcy managed as a flash of lightning lit the room for a bare second. They waited for the sound of thunder, its low rumble shook Darcy’s every nerve and she moved to get out of bed. She had to work on something…anything.

She sat up, swinging her legs out from under the covers and trying to breathe evenly. What if she never changed anything for the better? What if she never made a difference? What if Loki got assassinated and because she couldn’t figure out who that damned arrow belonged to?

Her heart was skipping beats and the t-shirt she wore to bed during the spring and summer months seemed too thin. Suddenly, Loki’s arms were winding around her, one of his palms pressing into her chest right where the tension was the thickest, right over her heart.

“Darcy,” he said against her hair, his thumb rubbing smooth circles over her collarbone. “Darcy, you are ill.”

She shook her head frantically. She wasn’t sick. She just needed to find a way to deal with everything that was going on and she would be all right. Inhaling deeply through the nose, she answered him on her exhale. “Loki, I’m fine. Relax.”

His thumb stopped its gentle path and she felt him shake his head. “Please do not lie to me, Darcy. I am not the one who needs to relax.”

Outside the loud ring of a storm alert howled through the skies and Darcy shot up at its shrill cry. “Let’s go anyways,” she spewed out in a hurried voice. Usually she wasn’t so frenetic, but today she felt like she was going to snap in two unless she did something. “Let’s go out of Yggdrasil,” she said, turning to Loki who still sat on the edge of the bed with his tousled black hair and expressive eyes.

He looked her up and down, with a worried look that was growing aggression in its wake. “No.”

Darcy halted in collecting the notes from the floor and organizing them again, flicking her gaze to him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Loki began, his voice the tiniest bit strict as he snapped his fingers and made all of the loose papers and cluttered journals on the floor disappear, “I don’t think it would be a responsible decision for us to go on any adventures right now.”

She smirked at him, snorting satirically. “Oh yeah, I forgot. Loki Odinson, Prince of Mischief, Chaos, and Lies and responsibility.” She stepped towards her chest of drawers, finding a pair of fuzzy socks in the depths and sitting down to put them on.

“Darcy, I am being quite serious,” he said, his tone verging on frustration as a clap of thunder struck loud enough to make Frank and Fenrir squirm.

Darcy flinched again, standing up and striding to her window, yanking the drapes shut with ferocity and effectively entrapping them in the darkness. “I’m serious too, Lokes,” she whispered, stumbling to find her way back to him. “We should go.”

Frigga wanted the stones found. If they could just get down to finding them, then perhaps one of Darcy’s puzzles would be solved.

But there were other reasons Darcy wanted to find the stones. It made no sense to Darcy how such powerful objects could be so unknown to the Nine Realms. Surely someone would have found a stone and discovered its potential. She refused to believe that there was not some being out in the forever expanding universe that had not also gone searching for the infinity stones.

The idea was intriguing, yet terrifying. Darcy knew, or at least had an idea, of the stones’ capabilities. And she spent enough time around power hungry people to understand that not everyone who found those stones would only want them for study. They were dangerous and she felt rushed to find them all before anyone else.

Loki’s arms found her again, holding her steady as she began to make out his features in the dark. Lightning flared outside, a streak of light slipping in from the crease in her drapes, illuminating the sharp planes of Loki’s face that cast shadows over his cheeks. The intensity of his expression and the otherworldly green of his eyes struck her speechless. This was the dreadful moment she’d foreseen where Loki reached his breaking point.

“Darcy,” he pronounced her name with a sincerity that could never be ignored as he cradled her cheeks in his palms. “I want you to go see Eir. Or a Midgardian doctor if you must.”

Feigning nonchalance, she offered him a quick smile, lightly grasping his wrists in attempt to escape his pained face. “Loki, I’m okay you big worry-wart.”

Despite Darcy’s efforts, he did not relinquish his hold on her, his thumb and forefinger slipping down to grasp her chin. Not forcefully, but with just enough power to make her meet his gaze. Guilt radiated from her scalp to her toes as he spoke. “You misunderstand Darcy. I am past the point of worrying. I was worried when you began taking extra work. I was worried when you replaced your breakfast with coffee. I was worried when you spent your nights tossing and turning in distress.”

He paused for a moment, his long fingers pushing her hair behind her ears and tracing her temples like he wanted to see into her mind. But he wouldn’t do that; she knew he wouldn’t.

“I am not worried anymore,” he clarified, “I am desperate, Darcy. I feel you falling and I have no idea how to catch you.”

Her bottom lip trembled and she willed herself not to cry. She hadn’t cried yet and she wasn’t going to. “Loki…” she fought for the right words to say around the growing strain in her chest. “I’m just a bit stressed... I guess. You know how it is.”

His features hardened and he took a step back. Darcy felt very much alone without his immediate presence. “No, I do not know how it is.  I do not know how to help you except to hold you and hope that whatever pains you disappears.” He looked away from her, studying the world map that hung on her one wall that was not overtaken by books. “But it is not enough.”

Darcy shook her head, trying to find the words to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. “No. No, Loki, please don’t say that. I’m not…we can’t…I’m all right.”

He turned towards her again, all princely composure broken and livid venom seeping into his tone. “And how am I supposed to believe that when you won’t even tell me what’s wrong?”

It wasn’t a shout. Loki hardly ever raised his voice. His words were soft yet they cut deeper than if he had screamed vile contempt in her face.

That did it for Darcy. She sniffed once, stammering out a few jumbled words before the tears started streaming down her face. And through their watery wake, she saw Loki melt.

He hugged her, stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head, apologizing over and over again. Each time he did, it made her cry even harder.

“Forgive me, Darling,” he whispered, holding her to his chest as she hugged him tightly, fearing the moment she had to let go.

They stood there, holding one another and listening as the storm outside quieted. The time between the flashes of lightening and muted claps of thunder was increasing as the rate of Darcy’s heart slowed.

Eventually, her sobs died down enough that she could speak.

“Loki,” she sniffed, thinking hard about how to relay the truth of her feelings to him.

Pulling away only slightly, Loki looked down at her. “Do not, Darcy,” he pleaded, wiping away a stray tear. “Please do not feel as though you owe me an explanation. What I said…I was being selfish. I only want you to feel better.”

She swallowed hard, forcing back another wave of tears. This was her way out. Loki was reminding her that she didn’t have to tell him anything. He was always her support. But Darcy had already made up her mind. Loki was so important to her and she to him, it seemed unfair that she would let this anxious downfall hurt him as it did her.

“It’s okay,” Darcy said, bringing her hand to Loki’s face and running her fingers over his thin lips. “I’m scared, Loki.”

They turned into a frown and his breath tickled her fingers with his reply. “What scares you, Darcy?”

She bit her lip, contemplating how to phrase the vast answer to that question. “So much.”

After a few more hesitant remarks from the both of them, Darcy began to tell him about everything she’d neglected to say over the past few months: her anxiety over his safety, Asgard’s potential collapse, her failure to do anything of true value. She even elaborated on some of the inexplicable feelings of dread that caused her heart to race and her breaths to become short. She told him all that she could and he listened the entire time, moving them to her bed and wrapping a blanket around their shoulders.

When Darcy finally got to the end of the torturous account of her feelings, she searched his carefully composed face for a sign that he wasn’t disappointed in her. She cleared her throat just to fill the silence. “Don’t be mad.”

Slowly, his expressionless demeanor faded in the presence of a sad smile. “Why would I be angry, Darcy? If anything, you should be angry with me for not saying something before I did.”

“Don’t be stupid, they were closet emotions. They only just came out,” she joked lamely and Loki gave her a pointed glare.

It felt good to tell him. She felt less guilty and talking it out…it helped. But the idea of going back to Asgard and going about her duties brought on a whole new bout of anxious nerves.

Loki scrutinized her every inch, taking in her messy hair, her oversized t-shirt and purple pajama shorts, her small hands and bright blue eyes. “Go on your trip to Culver, Darcy. You worked hard for it, you should see it through.”

“Loki, it’s a summer long program,” Darcy reasoned, taking one of his hands and linking their fingers. “I don’t really have the time to go.”

His jaw clenched and he looked like he was preparing for a resurrection of the storm that had just begun to pass. “Consider it an extended holiday.”

It took a few seconds for the pieces to click in Darcy’s mind, but when they did, she started to protest.

“You’re firing me?” she managed in a high pitched voice, letting go of his hand,

Loki’s gaze turned princely as she stood up and paced the floor. “No. I am simply relieving you of your duties for the summer.”

“You’re firing me,” Darcy confirmed, irritation settling in alongside betrayal. Loki wanted to send her away? He wanted her to go? She couldn’t help Asgard is she was at Culver. What if Loki got assassinated in the weeks of her absence?

“Just for the summer.” He sighed in frustration, rubbing his brow. “What would you do if you were in my position, Darcy? I know how important your duties are and I know how dedicated you are to them.” He stood up, grasping her upper arms in earnest. “I love you, Darcy, and seeing you in such a state is excruciating, especially when I see no way to help you. If I can’t, maybe some time away could.”

Darcy gaped at him, not even trying to hide her disbelief. She felt too many things: fear of leaving him, betrayal at his intended abandonment, sadness, anger, shock…all of it was hitting her full in the face.

“So that’s just it then?” she said bluntly, turning away from him. “You can’t decide what’s best for me and what I do with my life!”

“I cannot stop you from doing what you like,” Loki snapped bitterly, “but I can limit your opportunities if I think it is best.”

Enraged, Darcy whipped around. “You cannot! Last I checked I was still a leading political figure of the Asgardian court!”

Loki reflected her anger, meeting her challenge with a growl, “I can because last I checked I was still your friend and your prince.”

His remark stung and Darcy, with her ever present impulsive tendencies, said the first spiteful thing that came to mind. “Check again, your highness.”

It was clear her retort had shocked them both, but Darcy was too emotionally worn to take it back and she bitterly stormed from her room, slamming the door behind her.

She stood outside her bedroom, shaking with more emotions than she had sense. When they began to recede, she cursed herself, opening the door again to apologize. She hadn’t meant it. She really hadn’t. But by the time she re-entered, Loki was gone along with Frank and Fenrir. The rain had finally stopped.

                                                               ***

Loki spent the next week after his and Darcy’s fight being a complete wreck.

He abandoned all his duties, ignored anyone who spoke to him, and chose to brood in especially excluded areas outside the palace with Jörmungandr and Fenrir running worried circles around him.

Grief sat on his tongue, the last words of their argument adding to the sour aftertaste of his hunger for her company. He’d gone back to Darcy’s room on day two of their time apart, but when he arrived all that awaited him was a letter written in purple pen. It was a heartfelt apology from the only person he ever really cared to see again save his mother.

Darcy’s note told him that she had gone to Culver and that he was right; she needed to go figure out how to manage her stress. She told him she loved him and there was a small smudge of ink on the ‘L’ of his name where one of her tears had fallen.

It was the saddest thing he’d ever read. He should know, for he’d read it a thousand times. It made the empty feeling in his heart bigger every time he recited the precious verse of her farewell. He distracted himself with other reading materials, but the words of even his favorite texts turned into her note.

Darcy Lewis was in every line he read, every color he saw and every step he took. He didn’t want to be away from her any longer.

But he also wanted to wake up while she was fast asleep beside him. He wanted to hear her laugh without him having to tickle her. He wanted to see her smile, not some rundown mockery of its true glory. He wanted to sit with her and do absolutely nothing but watch the sky while she ran her fingers through his hair and teased him about being a little shit.

Perhaps he wanted too much.

On the eighth day of his self-sentenced isolation, Thor found him in one of the smallest collegiums, sitting in a window with a book he wasn’t even bothering to read propped open in his lap.

“Brother, you are harder to find than scraps after a feast with Volstagg.”

Loki would have been surprised if he could have mustered the energy, most of it was being spent on mourning the potential loss of his and Darcy’s friendship. “Yet here we are.”

Thor rolled his eyes and approached his brother exasperatedly, dropping Mjolnir to the floor, the stone tile beneath it cracking. “Come now, there must be a reason that you’ve been subject to the wiles of solitude, for surely it is not as pleasurable as you deem it to be.”

Scowling, Loki snapped his book shut. “I am simply expending my rights as a prince.”

“By avoiding your duties? It is unlike you,” Thor said and Loki nearly pushed him out the window for choosing now to show fraternal care. When he didn’t respond, Thor continued with a knowing smirk. “Is it Darcy?”

“No,” Loki answered quicker than he should have and Thor gave him a triumphant grin.

“It is Darcy. She has left you,” Thor persisted, rejoicing when Loki squeezed his eyes shut and let his head fall against the stone sill he sat in.

Fenrir wagged his tail and made a sound reminiscent of a hiss at Thor’s arrival. “Oh, and you took the children as well. I am beginning to see why you insist on being alone.”

Fed up, Loki tossed his book aside. “Is there something you wanted other than to intrude on my privacy?”

Thor held up his hands in sincere apology. “Loki, I jest. I only found it amusing that we should both be tormented by women for two entirely different reasons.”

It was Loki’s turn to roll his eyes as he swung himself from the sill, landing easily on the balls of his feet and safely stowing Darcy’s note in his armor. “Darcy has not left me.”

“No?” Thor challenged teasingly.

“No,” Loki confirmed, bitterly slipping the book back onto the shelf he retrieved it from. “Moreover, we are not, nor have we ever been, together despite popular belief.”

Thor’s blonde brows hit his hairline and Loki noticed that his brother was wearing more casual attire. His armor was gone, replaced by a tunic and pants. “Truly?”

“Truly,” Loki repeated tartly, examining a shelf of books with a keen eye. He’d read them all, that or he believed them to be drivel and the author had no idea what they were writing of.  “She is taking the summer for herself and if all goes well, I should see her again next season.”

Thor crossed his muscled arms, giving his brother a humored expression. “Ah, I understand.”

“Good.”

“She left you in favor of solitude and now you are embittered and punishing yourself with the same treatment,” he said, as if he’d just solved the greatest mystery Asgard had ever known.

Loki sighed, tilting his head back and offering his pained expression to the tall, vaulted ceiling of the collegium. “If you insist. Is there anything else you desire other than to remind me of my torment?”

“Yes,” Thor responded merrily, stepping between Loki and the books, his brilliant smile reduced to a small grin that was accentuated by the beard he was beginning to grow. Loki had facial hair at one point as well, but it was miserable and he hated it. Also, Jörmungandr detested it, so he chose to cast it away. It would now only grow in if he wished it to. “I wish for your company. We have spent little time together these past few years and, admittedly due to my own faults, a great many before that. We are almost adults, Loki. We should enjoy life.”

Loki grimaced at what his brother could possibly mean by ‘enjoying life’. Although, he was right about a couple things. They hadn’t spent much time together and they were almost adults. The last time they’d done anything particularly memorable was after Thor’s engagement to Sigyn.

Loki had taken them out on his longship, intending to do some of his studies in speed. The most effective method to test his theories was to magically enhance his ship and fly it at increasingly dangerous velocities near different portals in attempt to break the seal between Asgard and the Galaxy.

He never would have imagined that he and Thor would have had such a marvelous time. His brother was skeptical at first, especially after Loki sent them careening over the Derid Sea and crashed the ship into a boulder, but they leapt out in time, so it all worked out in the end. From there on out, they spent the night diving from the ship at different heights and terrains just for the risk. It became progressively more entertaining after they started drinking. However, that did result in him and Thor cracking a few ribs and spraining a few muscles.

Luckily, even drunk, Loki managed to cast decent healing spells and they continued on their merry way until Loki decided he must return to Darcy. He fixed his longship, cast sobriety spells onto both him and Thor, and then returned to his friend in Thryheim.

Darcy would murder him if she ever found out and he made Thor swear upon his life and all of Asgard that he would not tell her.

He cursed himself for thinking of her again. He would not survive the summer if he constantly allowed her to infiltrate his thoughts.

Relenting, he faced his brother and his beard. “What exactly would you classify as ‘enjoying life’?”

Thor laughed, clapping his brother’s shoulder in victory. “That’s the spirit, brother! Enough sulking over women! This summer, we’ll live like the royal bachelors we are!”

The heavy weight of dread dropped in his belly and he instantly regretted his agreement to Thor’s proposal. “Gods help me,” he muttered to himself as Thor pulled him away from his brooding sanctuary and towards the palace.

                                                               ***

Darcy hated Culver the first week she was there.

It wasn’t anything to do with the spotless campus, or the gorgeous dorms, or the food, or the never-ending library. It had to do with the fact that she’d never felt more lonely in all her life.

The letter she left for Loki had been her one hope that he wouldn’t leave her for the rest of her life. The longer she spent alone in her bed at Culver, restlessly tossing and turning through the night without Loki, her beloved pets, or even a distraction from her aching loneliness, the more she thought back to her revelation with the Aether.

Control. It was all about control.

For seven sleepless nights she recited to herself over and over that she could not control everything. She told herself that she would have to trust Loki and trust the realm that had been thriving since before her race had evolved into primates. She focused on giving up her overpowering need to be involved in everything.

It hurt. Sacrificing the mindset she’d worked so hard to achieve and giving up what little control she thought she’d gained.

Loki wasn’t there, nor were Frank and Fenrir. There, in her dorm bed’s thin mattress and her own fluffy pillow that smelled of Loki’s skin, she was reminded of what she was.

Human. Darcy Lewis was only human. A human girl, with human needs, and a human lifespan could not withstand the pressure of gods.

She realized in a moment of peace, when the empty feeling of Loki’s absence subsided and for the first time in forever she felt the sweet whistle of the Sandman as he passed her bed, that she wasn’t being petty or meek by feeling anxious. She wasn’t shameful or pathetic for feeling stressed. She was just another person and people were prone to anxiety.

After several of her nightly rituals had passed, Darcy felt well enough to eat an entire plate of pancakes chased by a glass of milk and one cup of coffee. She focused on her studies, took notes at lectures and met several of her and Loki’s favorite authors.

Darcy spent a great deal of time with a girl named Sharon Carter whose dorm was just across the hall from hers. Sharon was very pretty in Darcy’s book even if she didn’t particularly like blondes. But she was very sharp and extremely athletic and the two of them could talk easily and after all of their classes and seminars were over, they went out for lunch and to go shopping.

Sharon was going into her senior year of high school and claimed that she wanted to be a part of national security to make a difference in the world like her aunt. Darcy thought that was really sweet and she told her so.

As the days went on, Darcy’s thoughts of Loki and Asgard were reduced to only short pangs of longing. She missed Loki more than anything and she often dreamed that he might suddenly show up and she could jump into his arms and he would catch her, spinning them in circles until they couldn’t see straight.

It never happened though, and although the daydreams were pleasant, Darcy found it was easier to distract herself with Sharon.

In truth, Darcy was awed by the girl. She was strong willed and a few days ago  when they went on a morning run together, Darcy started to wonder if Sharon was secretly a goddess. Darcy trained with gods and she could almost keep up. Sharon would have been able to spar with Sif and hold her own, at least for a few minutes. That was more than Darcy could ever hope to achieve.

When Darcy wasn’t hanging out with her new friend or listening to different people’s perspectives on politics (so much of it was bullshit, but there were a few very intelligent speakers who had less biased things to say about the evolution of government) she was at the library, indulging in her favorite pastime. She only wished that Loki was there with her.

Fifteen days after Darcy arrived at Culver, she was sitting in the library, reading a copy of a science journal that Loki had found particularly interesting a few years back. It explained an interesting take on Gamma Radiation as depicted by Dr. Bruce Banner. Loki practically swooned over anything Banner related. But to each their own. Some people liked movie stars, other people liked scientists who accidentally create chaotic experiments.

Of course, Loki was a prince of such things, so she really shouldn’t be surprised.

As she read through the journal, she was washed with a wave of melancholy followed by a quick rinse of regret. Why did she have to say those things to him? Why couldn’t she hold her tongue?

She made an irritated sound in the back of her throat, pouting like her life depended on it.

“You okay?” asked a polite, soft voice from down the aisle.

Darcy looked over her shoulder to see the librarian, a kind faced woman with brown hair and the beginnings of smile wrinkles around her blue eyes. She smiled, approaching Darcy’s table and gesturing to the empty seat beside her. “May I?”

Not wanting to be rude, Darcy nodded. “Go ahead.”

The woman took off her glasses and pointed to the book she was reading. “Not your favorite then?”

Darcy chuckled a bit, shaking her head. “Actually, it is. But my friend…my best friend, he adores the author.”

The librarian’s brows raised to her hairline. “Really? I don’t hear that often, especially around here.”

Offering her a half-hearted shrug, Darcy closed the book. “Yeah. He’s a bit weird really. He likes it when things go kablooey.”

The librarian laughed good-naturedly, tilting her chin to glance out the window. “Well, you can tell your friend that he has good taste in scientists.” She sighed, putting her glasses back on. “Back to work then. I just noticed the book and thought I’d drop by.”

Darcy let a tiny grin tilt her lips as the librarian walked away. Quickly, she turned in her chair to say one last thing. “I’m Darcy, by the way. Darcy Lewis.”

The librarian turned around, her attractive face beaming in return. “Betty Ross. I’m librarian this summer. I’m usually at the desk if you need anything.”

As Betty Ross disappeared around the corner, Darcy smiled at the book in her lap. Maybe that summer wouldn’t be so bad after all.

                                                               ***

Three weeks after Darcy left for Culver, Loki was feeling better. At the very least, he was not sitting by himself in isolation pondering all that was wrong with the world. He still missed Darcy dearly, but Thor was proving to be an excellent distraction.

His brother had taken to waking him up in the morning, somehow even less gracelessly than Darcy. He would charge in to Loki’s room and shake him vigorously until he saw stars. They would go to breakfast together and then head out to the fields and train like they were fighting to the death.

Surprisingly, Loki found it fairly therapeutic. Getting beat to a pulp by Mjolnir was somehow more appealing than his own mind tearing him apart. They worked with spears and swords, hand-to-hand combat and flexibility. But for the most part, they practiced their strengths. Loki learned a long time ago that he was not capable enough to match Thor’s strength head-on. But overtime, he had become stronger. His brother’s might was no longer a terrifying thought and he found that he was satisfied with his own abilities.

Illusions were a key component in defeating Thor. If Loki were to make duplicates of himself, Thor would never know which one was truly his brother.

They trained until they couldn’t stand anymore and Loki’s muscles were begging him for a hot bath.

With this new life of combative training came an appetite unlike Loki had ever felt before. He was starving every moment of every day. Hunger was ever present and he could eat almost anything at any given point. He almost ate more than Volstagg one night in the feasting hall and Fandrall congratulated him on finally acting like a man.

Loki then congratulated him on how charming his hair looked as snakes.

Of course he didn’t actually change Fandrall’s hair to snakes, it was merely an illusion. But he shrieked all the same, so Loki didn’t feel like it made much of a difference.

In almost no time at all, Loki had to make himself new armor because of his sudden muscle growth. He still wasn’t burly like Thor, he was leaner and wiry and Loki almost liked the way it made him look. It suited him.

As much as Loki missed Darcy, he was glad Thor was there to distract him from her absence. He was only really given time to think of her as he laid in bed and longed for the soft comfort of her beside him. He always dreamt of her, be it her smile or laugh, her pouts or that look she got when he did something especially annoying.

He hoped she was faring well at Culver and pondered if she was thinking about him as he was thinking about her.

It was in the middle of his third week without her that Thor woke him up by pouring a pitcher of cold water over his head. Loki swore under his breath, willing himself to be unphased by the wet, cold sheets that clung to his skin.

“Good morning, brother!” Thor greeted, clapping Loki on his wet shoulder.

Loki glared at him, green irises gleaming through small slits. “You are a heathen and the spawn of Hel.”

“It is a family trait,” Thor said as Loki bitterly stood up, stretching out his stiff limbs that were still recovering from the night before.

Thor smirked at Loki’s bare side, acknowledging a small red mark made from Mjolnir that had yet to fade. “Feeling well today, Loki?”

“Quite. How fares you?” He replied simply, waving a hand to magic his armor on. He swiftly kicked Thor on the ankle that he’d made sure to do some damage in their last wrestling match. Thor eventually won because Loki unfortunately fainted from asphyxiation, but he made sure to give his brother a few painful reminders.

Thor visibly flinched. “All is well.” He chortled a bit as he and Loki departed to go get breakfast.

“I must admit, Loki, I have never known anyone who could fight with me for as long as you have. I underestimated you,” Thor said truthfully, and then beamed. “Even if you are still a feather in the wind.”

Loki snorted in good humor, now accustomed to his brother’s jests.

Most of his friends had been women for the longest time and Loki had learned that they were not quite so rough in their affection as men. Thor’s idea of showing that he cared about his brother came in the form of hitting him with a hammer, having his ankle broken and then laughing about the wounds later.

In Loki’s opinion it was an extremely dumb bonding technique. Even so, he enjoyed it. Using his muscles, straining himself to put forth all his power, fighting with all he had. It felt good, unrestrained, and like he belonged on Asgard just a bit more.

Loki and Thor ate breakfast, both of them ravenously devouring all they could reach. Under normal circumstances, Loki would have exercised more self-control, but it wasn’t happening that morning. Sif gave them a disgusted look, tousling Thor’s hair and fondly telling him that he was a pig. Thor told her that he loved her as well before the warrior departed looking happier than Loki had ever seen her.

Fandrall joined them not a moment later. “So, do the two of you plan on trying to kill each other again today or are we going to make use of Thor’s few remaining bachelor years?”

The younger of the two princes nearly choked on his bread at the openness of Fandrall’s statement. He implied that Loki was going with them. He was purposefully including Loki in his and Thor’s troublesome escapades that caused the formidable betrothal between Thor and Sigyn.

His brother chucked, took one last gulp of his cider that they often drank with their morning meals and stood up, beckoning for them to follow. “Fandrall, be at peace, you dog. Loki has been practically married for years now. We had to give him time lest he fear infidelity.”

Loki battled away his initial shock with a scowl. “Thor, need I repeat myself again? Darcy and I are not—“

“—together, nor have you ever been together,” Thor finished for him mockingly. “We know. You never fail to remind us.” They exited the palace, Thor leading them through a narrower path that was more discreet in entering the city. “And since you are not Darcy’s and I suspect you never got any farther with Sigyn than a few chaste kisses, you have yet to see Valhalla.”

Fandrall laughed, giving Loki a friendly shove. “By his own hand perhaps!”

That was another thing about having men as friends; they blatantly talked of sex more often than not. Sigyn often said witty things pertaining to sexual actions. Even Darcy made the occasional jest, but it was subtle. Fandrall and Thor were not quite so eloquent with their speech and they teased him constantly about being a virgin. Loki did not really care if he was a virgin or not. He wasn’t saving himself or any horse shit nonsense like that. He just hadn’t really been given the opportunity nor had he found anyone that he truly desired to couple with.

Sure he had needs, but they were really more annoying than anything. Nevertheless, he couldn’t honestly argue against Fandrall’s accusation.

“So, by your word, Fandrall,” Loki began pleasantly, “I am missing out on absolute paradise simply because I have yet to get my dick wet?”

And he’d also taken to using more vulgar language. It was quite liberating actually. Foul words added to all of his cocky retorts. Of course, he would not use such terms in professional settings.

Thor and Fandrall smirked at one another, turning their obvious expressions onto Loki.

“Clearly,” Fandrall said as they made a turn onto a wider stone path framed by tall, untrimmed shrubbery. “If you had, I doubt you’d be so uptight.”

“I am not uptight!” Loki protested and Thor hooted with laughter. “I’m not!” he insisted again.

Thor messed his brother’s hair. “You say that now, but afterwards, you will understand.”

Loki considered arguing that he did not want to have sex. Yet, he could not deny that he was curious. The higher class turned intimacy into a secret act of self-indulging transgression. Loki wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

He suspected that they were going to a brothel which Loki had only one problem with and that was spending royal money on sexual pleasure.

Unlike many of the Midgardian horrors of prostitution, on Asgard it was an honorable middle class profession. Brothels were privately owned and the men and women were all applicants who wished for the job as their occupancy. Darcy had done a thorough investigation on all of Asgard’s whorehouses to discover any wrongdoings. But she found nothing and no Aesir ever had issue with selling one’s body if it pleased them.

Also unlike Midgardian society, Asgard’s healers kept any diseases from the realm’s citizens and preventive-contraception potions and spells were paid for by the crown. The middle and lower classes were so lax about coitus that the officials thought it better to look out for its people the best they could. And with eternal-youth a viable option for anyone Idun chooses to grant an apple, something had to be done to prevent overpopulation.

Loki decided he would allow himself this one time because he rarely spent money on anything and he didn’t plan on hiring any more prostitutes. He liked to think that in the future he would go to bed with someone who wished to lie with him for other reasons besides money.

After Loki was secure in his decision that he was going to at least try sex to see if he liked it, Thor led them to the entrance to a large, beautifully sculpted building of stone and gold. Fandrall proclaimed it to be the best in the capital, and perhaps all of Asgard. Loki did not want to think of the number of brothels Fandrall would have had to visit to know that this one was superior.

They entered and before Loki knew it, he was standing alone in a room with a wide circular bed shrouded with deep colored sheets and patterned cushions. There were two tall windows with long, billowing drapes that flitted in the wind.

As far as rooms went, it was a decent one.

But as Loki stood there, waiting for his paid bedmate to arrive, he began to feel unsure of himself.

He’d never been to bed with a woman before. He’d never been to bed with anyone before, unless Darcy counted. But she didn’t; he never had sex with Darcy. He was quite sure he’d have remembered that.

Obviously he understood the basic principles that applied and evidently such act was intended to be pleasurable. But Loki had not the slightest idea how to make it so. Had he ever thought about it before? Vaguely. It wasn’t something that frequently occupied his mind.

Perhaps he should ask Darcy. She was a woman.

He shook the thought from his head. What was he thinking? Darcy hadn’t had sex.

Not any that he knew of at least.

Besides, he remembered explaining sex to Darcy, and she was repulsed. She hadn’t had sex. She was on Midgard having an enchanting time without him and she would never know that he had stepped foot in a brothel of any sort.

He must learn to reach the end goal of coupling that was not intended for procreation. He must bring both parties participating in intercourse to climax. Yes. That is what he read in that book all those years ago that he never bothered to pick up again. It was naught but a book that explained the anatomies and the general process.

Hurriedly, he tried to recall all that he knew so that he would not make a fool of himself. Or any more of a fool than he had to be.

Before he could come up with a conclusion as to how he might succeed at intercourse, the polished door to the room swung open to reveal the woman who would be Loki’s first.

She was lovely, Loki supposed. She was blonde with blue eyes and a thin frame. Her dress was thin and pink and it made her skin glow. Loki also noticed that she seemed younger in demeanor, perhaps eighteen or nineteen in Midgardian years. Of course one never truly knew how old any Aesir was unless they asked.

She smiled coyly at Loki, stepping inside the room and letting the door shut behind her. “Your highness.” She bowed slightly and an unpleasant taste filled Loki’s mouth. The last time anyone had referred to him as ‘your highness’ was when he and Darcy fought.

He didn’t say anything and so the woman took another step towards him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder, her fingers slipping under his collar to stroke his clavicle. He didn’t know if he liked it. Darcy often did that, except her hands were different and her intentions in doing it were not of sexual nature.

He desperately wished that Darcy would stop entering his thoughts while he was trying to focus on the woman who had been talking cheerily to him, though he was not paying attention to her words, and slowly attempting to remove his armor. Cautiously, he took her hands, easing them aside.

“Please, allow me,” he said prepared to do away with most of his armor magically when he remembered to at least be a courteous guest and ask before performing magic. It was only polite. “Would you object to my use of magic?” he inquired.

The woman gave him a genuine smile, shaking her head. “Not at all.”

At this, he cast away his armor, save his trousers, and returned the woman’s grin with a tiny smile of his own. She wrapped her arms around his neck, standing on her toes to kiss him.

A few things flew through Loki’s mind before her lips could touch his.

Firstly that he had not kissed anyone but Sigyn unless kissing Darcy’s face could be credited.

Secondly, she was one of two women to see him shirtless. The only other being Darcy, however this encounter was much different than those nights in Thryheim.

Before she could kiss him, Loki stepped away. “Wait.”

She raised a prettily shaped brow at him. “Your brother said that this was your first time, but I did not think that a prince would be so hesitant.” She smiled, clearly humored by his tentativeness, and sat on the bed. “Please, Your Highness, I know what I’m doing.”

Loki studied her for a moment with his eyes narrowed. He didn’t know how he felt about his brother speaking to the first woman he was to lie with. “I beg your pardon, but what is your name?”

She cocked her head to the side, giving him a curious look. “Amora, your highness.”

“Please,” he said, swallowing down the bitter taste of his and Darcy’s falling-out. “Call me Loki or Your Majesty if you must.”

Amora continued to stare at him strangely, though it was not with any contempt. Eventually she giggled, offering him her hand. “Very well…Loki. Come here.”

Taking his hand, Amora pulled him down to kiss his lips.

Loki did not know what he had expected, but this was most definitely not it. Kisses in his experience had not been so forceful or so wanton. Amora’s kisses felt like sex and he nearly leapt out of his skin when her tongue brushed his.

Loki remembered Darcy’s kiss with Idiot Boy and how she had been disgusted when he ‘licked her mouth’. Perhaps Darcy should have been kissed by Amora, because having her lick his mouth was quite pleasant.

Slowly, Amora settled back, laying down so Loki was on his knees between her legs, his arms bent on either side of her head as she kept kissing him.

Just as he was starting to feel more relaxed with the prospect of this new style of kissing, Amora’s hands slid down his chest, stroking his newly obtained abdominal muscles. Loki quickly snatched her hand before she could go any further.

“Wait,” he interrupted again, pulling away from her mouth.

Amora was pink in the cheeks and her blonde hair fanned around her head. She was alluring, but Loki resisted temptation.

“Are you shy?” she asked sympathetically.

Loki shook his head, numbly attempting to think of a way to phrase the thoughts going through his head.

The side of her mouth pulled down in confusion. “Then I suppose you are just different. Most men cannot contain themselves when I reach for them.” Her smile open and friendly and she spoke like they were merely discussing the weather. “Do you prefer men? I suppose that would be awfully embarrassing for me not to notice. But I can go find a man if you like.”

Loki considered that for a moment. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he preferred men or not. Did he prefer women? Did he have a preference? Why hadn’t he at least thought of these things before hand?

Being that he’d already gotten this far with Amora, he shook his head. “No, this is fine. I am just unsure of how to proceed. I understand the fundamentals of this, but I do not know how to be successful at it.”

Amora frowned. “Successful at what?”

“Sex,” Loki clarified, gesturing indifferently between them. He wasn’t nervous anymore now that he’d stated his apprehensions. Amora was a professional, perhaps she could teach him.

She giggled again, wrapping her legs around his hips and flipping them over. “Loki, you are adorable! Do not think about it so hard.”

She leaned over and placed a series of kisses on his neck, leaving miniscule chills in their wake. “Explain it to me then,” he breathed, as Amora removed her dress.

Loki suspected that Amora was a more expensive prostitute. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and a slight athletic body…she very much resembled a noblewoman. Perhaps she had been at one time. Beauty was something that Loki could appreciate in a body. Amora’s was beautiful in its own way. Her breasts were smaller than Darcy’s and her shape was less curvaceous. Even though he had not seen what Darcy looked like in the absence of her attire, he figured she would be just as stunning as ever she was.

Again he had to shove Darcy from his mind in order to lend his attention to the woman trailing kisses from his jaw to his temple.

Darcy sometimes kissed him there.

“It is not all that difficult,” Amora told him, moving her hips and Loki received a vague idea of what Thor and Fandrall meant by Valhalla. “You just know what you like, and I give it to you.”

She sat back on his thighs, tracing his chest again and making her way down to his pants. This time he let her. “Yes,” he agreed, struggling to keep his breath. “But what about what you like?”

Amora halted in her otherworldly ministrations to blink down at him. “I cannot tell if you jest or if you truly do not understand the meaning of prostitution.”

Loki made a face. “Is the purpose of intercourse not to achieve climactic pleasure?”

“It is,” Amora confirmed, “For me to give you. People do not come to brothels to give pleasure, they come to receive it.” She moved her hips to make a point and Loki gripped the sheets for dear life. “See?”

“And how is that supposed to be satisfying?” Loki inquired as she took his hands and held them to her breasts.

An involuntary moan fell from his lips and he instantly moved to sit up. Since when did he ever sound so wanton? Lost in need? For shame….

Amora grinned, her cheeks red as she pushed him back down. “That is how.”

“Yes, but what good is it,” he began, words cut short as he focused on not losing himself. He needed to know how to properly bring pleasure to his partner. Did Amora really expect that he knew how to already? Is that why she did not understand?

“Yes?” Amora urged him to continue while he gathered his wits.

Loki made to finish his thought. “What good is my pleasure if you have none?”

Amora stopped moving and Loki didn’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed. “You wish to pleasure me, Prince Loki?”

Loki wondered if that was strange that he should care so much that she received as he did. “Yes. I do,” he replied honestly.

She pursued her lips for a moment before her smile was back, this time with true delight. “It’s rare that I find a lover amongst the bunch.” She laughed to herself, kissing him once on the cheek.

“What?” he asked lamely, his thoughts muddled by sex, an action that was turning out to be better than he expected.

“Give me your hands,” Amora directed, linking their fingers and changing her position. “Wonderful,” she affirmed, her voice slightly higher pitched. “Now, breathe deeply, don’t move until you feel as though you will die of need and never stay silent unless you are taking risks where you ought not to be.”

Loki nodded, following her instruction the best he could and was immensely gratified when he could feel that she was now benefitting from their coition. They made sounds that went along with the noises sex brought about and Loki took vague note in the back of his slowly melting mind that, as a result of their pleasure, a mess was made.

At last, he reached the point which she had warned him of. Amora was quickly bringing about his end, and in response he lifted his hips to meet hers. She choked out what would have been another sparkling laugh if her voice had not gotten caught in her throat. “Are you ready Your Majesty?”

He wondered what on Asgard he would need to be ready for when he felt cool magic wash over his body. Every one of his nerves came alive. It was magic unlike any he’d ever experienced and he desperately wished he could study it more closely.

Sadly, the sensation disappeared as Amora writhed above him and he too followed suit, coming to the conclusion that he ought to try this again.

Amora sighed and she relinquished her hold, collapsing beside him in what was usually Darcy’s spot. Displeased by the idea that Amora had taken Darcy’s place, he sat up, willing it not to be so.

“And you said it was your first time,” Amora chided, running a finger down his spine and sending tiny bursts of colorful sensation through his veins. Again he felt a dull magical pull he easily identified as hers as she stimulated every nerve ending inside him. “But I shall keep your secret.”

Loki wasn’t really paying attention, his thoughts absorbed by the magic she cast. “Amora, what—“

He was interrupted by a loud bang on the door and the brash voice of his dear brother. “Loki! What delays you?”

The door began to open and Loki was truly horrified by the audacity of his brother. To avoid inevitable humiliation, he lifted a hand and cast himself away to his corner of the library in the palace where he leaned heavily on a shelf that Darcy frequently organized.

Would she approve of what he’d just done? Would she care? Would he care if she had done the same?

He ran his thumb over the spines of a few books, thinking of the magic Amora had used. He doubted it was involuntary since it brought about their completion. But he had never, in all his years of study, come across anything that matched the description of Amora’s spell.

Curiosity initiated the intelligent part of Loki’s mind that he’d left dormant the past few weeks. He was going to find out more about this new kind of magic if he had to read every book on Asgard.

                                                               ***

Darcy was slowly getting bored at Culver.

As an educational environment, it was far superior to high school. She was learning a great deal about interpreting other people’s ideas and found that her skills as an Asgardian advisor applied to Midgardian political debates. She held her own in their scientific worlds, invigorated by the power of her own acumen.

She hadn’t considered before how truly knowledgeable she was. On Asgard, she did what needed to be done and argued what she believed was right. The Lords and Ladies knew her by name, street merchants smiled at her as she passed and noble-peoples invited her to their homes to discuss business transactions. Getting to know the people of Asgard was something she took a lot of her time to do. Understanding what the people of the realm wanted, balancing their needs, planning ahead a few hundred years in advance…it was an essential part to ruling that she believed many Aesir failed to see.

Sitting in one of the lecture halls and listening to a very biased account of last election’s polls she became conscious of the fact that mortals could also benefit from widening their individual horizons.

Midgard was a much larger world in the political sense and Darcy believed it was because of the aggression. Asgardians, while they were a war-cultured realm, were fairly lax about politics. There were disagreements and Darcy had been in the heat of many, but if one was to look at a timeline of opposing viewpoints in Asgardian government, they would notice that the most drastic disagreement in the past few millennia had been the Norn’s rebellion a few years back.

Mortals battled with each other constantly. They were vicious, fought fire with fire, and specified their beliefs into the tiniest categories.

Darcy appreciated both methods of governing and during her time at Culver she wrote a series of philosophical papers that theorized an alternative government system. It was very rough in her opinion, but a few of the Culver professors that she took classes from read over her work and were currently in the process of helping her get the documents copyrighted and published.

Still, as much as Darcy was gaining from Culver, she was also becoming exceedingly bored.

Usually, she was Loki’s partner in crime. They made trouble together, took risks, went on adventures and so on.

She felt like she needed to do something mischievous just to alleviate the pressing, monotonous habitual way of life on Midgard. There were little things that just weren’t the same without Loki. No one startled her by suddenly appearing out of nowhere, her hair was unsatisfactory and she realized how long it’d been since she actually did it herself; none of the t-shirts she bought mysteriously turned green overnight and she didn’t have to barter with anyone to change them back; she didn’t have to wake anyone up and she had to find all of her reading materials by herself.

It was miserable. Her life was boring and Darcy was convinced that it was impossible to miss one annoying person so much. She felt like she’d lost an arm or maybe even something more precious like her breasts.

One night, after pacing around her luxurious and expensive single dorm, she finally got fed up with doing nothing and walked down the hall to Sharon’s door.

She answered after the first knock, dressed casually in a white sports shirt and yoga pants. Sharon was a fairly serious person and Darcy seemed childish in comparison. But she knew that Sharon enjoyed her company more than she let on.

They had a funny kind of friendship. Darcy had always been a really touchy person. She hugged people often, held hands with her friends, and cuddling was her second favorite hobby. It was just a casual part of who she was to bump her companion’s shoulder while walking or to use them as a pillow while watching a movie. She could tell that Sharon wasn’t used to that kind of thing. When they first started hanging out, she would jump every time Darcy touched her. Her reaction reminded Darcy of Sif, Sigyn and even Loki when she first met them. They just weren’t used to casual affection.

Of course, Darcy had a way of changing people. Sif and Sigyn were now some of the touchiest people she knew, especially with each other. Although, that probably had something to do with their clandestine love affair that, according to the sworn laws of sleepover secrecy, Darcy knew nothing of.  Then there was Loki who she was convinced needed cuddles to survive. He was so accustomed to touching her that he occasionally forgot that they weren’t alone and did things like squeeze her hand or wrap his arm around her for a quick hug.  Darcy was also guilty of this and she was reminded of it through the media, which still liked to believe that the prince and his advisor were to start a courtship any day now.

Sharon was well on her way to being added to the list of people converted to overly affectionate cuddle-bugs. They were at the point where Sharon was not only tolerating the physical aspects of Darcy’s friendship, but reciprocating. She would nudge her in the side if she was being particularly irritating and sometimes she would sit close enough to Darcy that their legs touched. They had the foundations of a blossoming friendship and because of this, when Sharon opened her door, Darcy asked in a jokingly deep and mysterious tone if she wanted to go have some fun.

Sharon was unsure at first, but relented, letting Darcy drag her away. They walked a few blocks, and then ran down a few sidewalks that ultimately led them to the Virginia coastline situated near the university. They stood at the public entrance to the beach, marveling at locked up drink stands, stretches of long sandy beach and the moonlit view of the high tide just coming in.

“What are we doing here, Lewis?” Sharon asked skeptically as Darcy strode to the shoreline, kicking off her shoes in the process.

Believe it or not, Darcy Lewis was a free spirit and after several near death experiences, she made up her mind that life was made for fun and one should take advantage of the opportunity to take pleasure in it.

Darcy winked at Sharon over her shoulder. “I’m crossing something off my bucket list.”

Sharon looked confused for a moment before Darcy started running towards the water, stripping off her clothes in the process. “Lewis! We are not skinny dipping in the middle of the night! Put your fucking pants on!”

It was too late; Darcy was already submerged in the ocean, the fresh, salty waves washing over her bare skin.

Darcy thought both Asgardians and Midgardians made too big a deal of nudity. They had dumb rules like ‘girls can see girls naked, but if a boy sees a girl naked there will be sex.’

As friend to Sif and Sigyn, Darcy knew first hand that girls seeing girls naked could also lead to sex. Sif and Sigyn weren’t to that point in their relationship yet, but Darcy still had to stop bathing with them because of how nauseatingly demonstrative they were of their affections. All that wet naked love so close to Darcy while she was trying to wash her hair was too much.

But besides that new development, Darcy was fairly confident in her body. She was fit, granted not as fit as she had been. At the height of her anxiety, she started losing weight and she was just now starting to gain some of it back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all coming back in the form of her varsity soccer player, all star muscles. Instead, it went to her hips and thighs and made her jeans fit a bit tighter.

Surfacing from the water, Darcy laughed at Sharon’s utter bewilderment. “Don’t love it till you try it!”

Sharon gave her a pointed glare. “You do realize this is public nudity, right?!” she shouted over the waves. “Do you even care?!”

To answer her question, Darcy dived back under water, hoping that the waves didn’t knock away her glasses. She hadn’t taken them off. When she came back up for air, Sharon had her head tilted back, giving the sky an exasperated stare. “May Aunt Peggy never find out about this,” she muttered to herself, lifting the hem of her shirt, stripping down to her birthday suit and splashing into the water after her new crazy friend.

“Jesus Christ, Darcy!” Sharon shivered, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s freezing!”

Darcy nodded in agreement, standing up and looking down at her breasts. “Yeah. I’m feeling pretty perky.”

Sharon gave her a withering glare. “This is stupid. We should go before we get caught.”

Sighing, Darcy glanced back to the shore and drifting a little with the wave that passed them. “I guess you’re right.”

“Yes, now—“

“But don’t you want to get a good sniff of the ocean first?” Darcy grinned wickedly, not giving Sharon time to realize that Darcy meant to douse her in cold seawater.

“Darcy Lewis, don’t you dare…oh Christ!”

It was too late, Darcy had already dunked under the waves, knocking Sharon’s legs out from under her, resurfacing and laughing her ass off Sharon sputtered.

Her blonde hair stuck to the sides of her face and she blew salt water out her nose. It was apparent in her eyes that Darcy had issued an irrefutable challenge. “I’ll give you five seconds, Lewis. Make ‘em count.”

Darcy really tried to make them count, but in the end, Sharon was the better swimmer and she found herself being dunked under the waves. They splashed around, trying to catch one another and laughing all the while.

Life was pretty great until the sudden sound of approaching cars and the telltale flash of white, red, and blue lights emerged in the parking lot.

“Shit!” Sharon swore, racing to shore and hastily picking up her clothes which were now full of sand. “Shit. Shit shit!”

Darcy followed suit, sifting through the sand for her sports bra and jeans. “Dude, relax.”

Sharon had pulled her pants on inside out and was glaring at Darcy as they heard car doors opening and closing. “Shut the hell up, Lewis! Run!”

Darcy had her jeans on and her sports bra in hand as Sharon pulled on her shirt, sprinting along the beach to find an alternate exit. Darcy kept up, though it was extremely difficult to run without a brassiere to hold one’s obnoxiously large breasts in place.

“Sharon!” Darcy shouted in a whisper as they approached a wooden flight of stairs that led away from the beach. From the other parking lot, a police officer with a megaphone stood by the water, shouting some muffled bullshit about how ‘the beach was off limits at this time’.

The two girls ducked down, silently trotting up the stairs while Darcy struggled to fit her damp breasts into her sandy sports bra. Her shoes were full of rocks and she’d left her shirt by the water. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most comfortable experience.

Finally, they made it up the stairs and to the parking lot and they crouched by the bushes, watching as a police woman exited the vehicle and also headed for the beach, leaving the car unattended.

Sharon silently gestured with two fingers for them to continue onwards. Darcy followed in her wake, matching her stealth as they crept from the parking lot and to the main road leading back to Culver.

As soon as they were out of the police’s vicinity, they stopped, leaning against a wall. Darcy sighed, letting out a victorious laugh. “Haha! Close call, huh?”

Sharon gave her a look more forceful than gunshot. “I swear to God, Lewis, I—“

Her speech was cut short by the roar of a revving engine and the sound of a siren.

Without question, both girls started running again, their legs, conditioned from their dedication to morning runs and afternoon yoga, carrying them at raging speeds around the block.

They kept running until the sound of sirens disappeared and they were back on Culver campus. With all the power that remained in their soaked, gritty bodies they shut themselves in Sharon’s room, leaning against the door and sinking to the ground in painful relief.

They looked to one another, panting and suffering from a mix of overheated exhaustion and damp coldness. After a few empty seconds of silence, the two broke out into a fit of hysterias.

Their lungs protested at the efforts of their humor, yet they couldn’t stop. They laughed and laughed, then laughed some more until Sharon was finally able to make out a few words. “Darcy…I hate you.”

Darcy rubbed her aching sides, her grin nearly splitting her face in two. “I love you too, babe.”

The blonde let the back of her head thump against the door. “You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“I know,” Darcy said, exhaling loudly as her heart went back to its normal pace. Loki called her ridiculous all the time.

She turned to face Sharon and became entrapped by the intensity of her eyes. In that bare moment, Darcy thought back to her first and only kiss with Nick Benedict in her bedroom. Loki still teased her about it and the idea that ‘idiot boys’ were nothing but trouble.

Darcy should have learned her lesson about acting on impulse by what happened with Loki and her recent dip in the ocean. But sitting on the floor of Sharon’s room, soaked to the bone and painstakingly curious, she tilted her head and softly kissed Sharon Carter full on the mouth.

Genuinely shocked by her own abruptness, Darcy pulled away, red in the face and battling a rolling wave of embarrassment. “Sharon. Shit. I…can explain…”

Sharon smirked, rolling her eyes and hushing Darcy with a short but sure peck to her pouty lips. “Shut up, Lewis.”

Darcy sure as hell wasn’t going to dispute such a convincing argument and she licked her salty lips, a slow build of excitement in her chest making her toes curl. “Yes Ma’am.”

And thus began Darcy’s first summer fling.

***

Loki was at his wit’s end.

He’d spent an entire day searching Asgard’s archives for a book on magic sexual practices and found not a damn thing.

According to the lack of books in his possession, no such magic ever existed or was ever practiced at any given point or time.

Loki, as a creator of spells and magic, knew from experience that the absence of recorded documents meant only one thing: The architect of said sorcery was still alive.

Loki didn’t really want to go back to the brothel. While he did want to have more sex, he wasn’t sure he wanted it to have it there. However, there was a maker of entirely new magical application at the brothel and Loki was incalculably interested.

He had never met any sorcerers or sorceresses that created and used magic as he did. But the technique used by Amora was vastly different from anything he’d ever felt before. It matched neither his style nor any other he’d come across.

At first he wondered why no one else had delved into research about the brothel’s strange magical conduct, and then he realized that he was most likely one of the few people on Asgard that would be able to identify such a subtle stimulation as a magical sensation.

He desperately wanted Darcy’s opinion on the matter. Then again, Darcy must never know about any of this. What would she say? Loki did not really wish to find out.

Instead of thinking about Darcy, he made up his mind that he needed to discover the creator of this new brand of magic. He wanted to see how they used magic and if it was anything like his own method.

And henceforth he developed a scheme.

There was no way in Hel he was going to be seen entering the brothel again. He was a prince and while prostitution was considered an honest and even noble profession, the higher class still tended to think obvious hire of whores was uncouth. Also, he was uncomfortable with spending the crown’s money on sex. Though they had much to spare, Loki didn’t know if it was worth another orgasm, no matter how glorious the first had been.

He would take the necessary funds with him, but for the sake of education rather than pleasure.

Being a master of illusion, Loki changed his appearance to that of a common faced man in bland clothing and used the front entrance, approaching the polished wood desk in the perfumed foyer where a woman with an inviting gaze greeted him.

He asked for Amora and paid the price for his visitation; his intentions were not what he led them to believe.

He waited in a room much like the one he’d been in the day prior. In hardly anytime at all, the door opened and in strode the yellow haired, pink cheeked woman who had honorably accepted his virginity. She looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t remember seeing you before. Yet you asked for me specifically.”

Loki shrugged in his different form. “You were recommended to me.”

She grinned saucily, stepping towards him alluringly. “Really? By whom?”

With a haughty smirk, Loki released the illusion he’d cast, revealing himself to her. “A prince.”

She gasped, her eyes glassy as she took in the depth of his spell work. “Again so soon, Your Majesty?”

“No, I do not think so,” he said, approaching her slowly, trying to decipher the magical power she possessed. Looking down at her heart-shaped face, he spoke clearly and directly so that his desires would not be misinterpreted. “At our last meeting, you performed magic upon my person; magic of which I have never experienced. It has taken my interest and I wish to know of its origins.”

Amora stared at him as if he was the strangest thing she’d ever seen in her life. Ever so slowly, her eyes brightened and she beamed at him with unequivocal glee. “Oh Loki! You are special, aren’t you?” she giggled, her cheeks flushing excitedly with color. Not bothering to hesitate, she took his hand and led him out into the hall. “Come, I will bring you to Angrboða. I cannot tell you what you wish to know unless she deems you worthy.”

Loki didn’t know whether to be grateful or fearful as she tugged him along the enticing halls that seemed to ooze sex.

Finally, they arrived at very tall and very wide double doors. Amora let go of his hand to grasp both handles, throwing them open and striding inside, gesturing eagerly for Loki to follow.

Uncertainly, he paced under a great stone archway into one of the most beautiful rooms he’d ever seen.

There was a bed larger than even his own, draped with light blue bedding and white furs, furniture littered around the room with sashes of fluttering fabric thrown about them, bottles of perfumes and wine were scattered on open surfaces and on the stone walls hung fantastical tapestries that reminded Loki of his mother’s work. A balcony extended from the chamber, ivy vines winding around the delicate railings, and leading way to a breathtaking view of the Asgardian skyline. Even at the distance at which he stood from it, he felt an overwhelming sense of majesty.

But the true source of Loki’s wonder was the woman Amora had brought him to meet.

With her back to him, she was a perfect silhouette against the rising suns of the Asgardian dawn, a dark heroine garbed in a black robe of mourning. She was a prominent shadow, a foreboding salvation, and a shrine worshipped by gods.

Loki was never speechless. He prided himself on his Silvertongue and quick wit, but this woman had stolen all his words.

Amora skipped to her side and Loki gasped when he realized that this spectacle of a person was a true giantess. Amora was unphased by the woman's greatness, taking her large dark hand in her small pale ones and kissing her sable knuckles.

“Angrboða,” she said adoringly, “Someone wishes to meet you.”

Loki listened, his throat thick with anticipation as she spoke.

“Do they?” Angrboða’s voice was musical and very quiet. With only two quaint syllables, she instilled tenderness in Loki like he’d never felt before. She was a chorus, enthralling with the full power of intense softness.

Amora nodded vigorously, her blonde locks brushing Angrboða’s exposed elbow. “Yes. He’s a lover, my lady. I can sense it.”

They were quiet for a moment and suddenly Loki feared rejection. Would she deem him worthy? He had not taken into consideration if he’d been successful at sex, the question of newfound magic distracting him from his initial anxieties. Perhaps Amora thought too highly of him.

At long last, Angrboða spoke, the mass of long delicate curls that hung to her waist swayed when she looked down at Amora. “Describe him to me.”

Loki prepared for the worst. His physical appearance, by Asgardian higher class standards was not considerably appealing and he did not want this woman’s impression of him to be based on image. While he no longer held shame or resentment for his black hair and wiry form, he was aware of that they were less than inviting qualities.

Amora cocked her head to the side, thinking intently. She fixed her gaze upon him, scrutinizing his every inch. “His eyes are green and he stands like a royal.”

Angrboða hummed and the sound vibrated his very soul. “What more?”

The blonde squinted as if she could sense even more from him than she already had. “He is very expressive even though he tries not to be. And he is quite gifted.” She paused to shoot him a cheeky grin and a quick wink. “Magically gifted, I mean.”

There was an unbearable stretch of silence and Loki wished very much that Darcy was there with him. He knew she would see Angrboða for the enigma she was.

“You are missing something, my dear.” Angrboða said and Loki wondered if she was smiling. “I will meet him.”

He braced himself, straightening his spine and relaxing his fingers, preparing for the face of his fascination.

She turned slowly as if she were her own world, obligated to nothing as she spun on the axis of her sculpted feet. Moons and stardust caught in her orbit, circling the curve of her hip and the edge of her shoulders. She held in her hands infinite space.

Finally she faced him and Loki considered kneeling. He had knelt for only two in his time. The first being the Allfather because he must, and the second being Darcy because he could not imagine truly caring for anyone as he did her. He knelt to her because she deserved it.

But Angrboða was another creature entirely.

She was pure. Her face was strong and exotic, thick lashes and full lips like Darcy’s. The skin of her dark throat shone, glimmering down past her collarbone and over her chest. A black robe hung on her body like a bride’s veil; temporary and obscuring from view that which anyone could ever hope to see.

He met her eyes, astounded by their near ebony shade that he could only determine from her pupils by the light of the sun. But what more was their melancholy. No eyes in Yggdrasil could have been sadder. Their darkened depths masked the detail of her anguish, leaving behind the face of timeless sorrow.

“A Son of Odin comes to my house to meet me and I have only an idea of what for,” Angrboða said in her mystic voice, snapping Loki from his entrancement.

He bowed his head respectfully, struggling to maintain what little composure he had left. “Lady Angrboda—“

She lifted her chin, her sharp gesture halting his speech. “No need for formalities. I am not a lady by class standards.” She looked him up and down and Loki checked to make sure he was not devoid of his clothing. “Then again,” she said in a voice as soft as her stance, “you are not quite like them, are you?”

“Perhaps not,” Loki corrected himself, focusing on his words as to not be distracted by the miracle of her existence.

Angrboða did not smile, though Loki found that her face was kind enough without the gesture. Anything he ever needed to perceive from her he could read in her deep eyes. She continued to stare at him as if he were a puzzle she’d already solved and was now trying to decipher the image she’d created. “You desire something.”

Loki nodded slightly. “I seek knowledge.”

The other worldly woman searched him again. “No. That is not it.”

This confused Loki. He knew very much what he desired and that was to learn of this inventive new breed of magic. Perhaps if he rephrased. “I seek to learn of a specific brand of magic.”

“Magic,” Angrboða said with humor chiming in her tone, a small smile setting the foundation for a symphony across her face. “I believe you seek magic, my prince, but perhaps not the kind you are thinking of.”

“Are you implying that I do not know what I want?” Loki asked, not with aggression, but simply surprise. How was a woman he’d just met to know what he wanted and what he didn’t?

“We rarely know what we want,” Angrboða said plainly, her stature unbending. “I am saying that while I can give you what you think you want, it will not satisfy you.”

Her words were riddles, each one with a different key that only she held. Loki could not unlock her meaning. Was anyone ever truly satisfied? Why should this make a difference?

“Do you still wish to know?”

Loki considered her question for a moment, fairly sure of its implications. “Yes.”

Angrboða tilted her head to the side in acceptance of his decision. “Amora, guide him.”

Amora nodded and Angrboða shifted again, her planetary demeanor returning as she brought her attention back to the Asgardian skyline, traveling to a world far away.

He accepted his dismissal and Amora took his hand, pulling him away, defying her lady’s gravitational force.

                                                               ***

Darcy spent the rest of her summer at Culver having a blast.

Her unexpected relationship with Sharon may have had something to do with it.

After that night when they sat by her door, grossly covered in sand and salt, Darcy headed for the showers and spent a good thirty seconds pondering her sexuality.

With a great deal of internal debate, she decided that she didn’t really care. She’d just go with it.

And go with it she did. Darcy had thought about kissing people before, but Sharon put all of her daydreams to shame. She was such a serious person, but despite her preppy dress and obsession with athletics, she appeared to Darcy as an unconventional ‘bad-girl’.

Sharon didn’t take anyone’s shit unless that one was Darcy, but even with her there were lines she would not cross. She was sarcastic and short with her words; and she treated everyone as her equal no matter their age or status. If they belittled her, she would bust their knee-caps to take them down to her height. If they belittled themselves, she offered a hand to help them stand level with herself.

Darcy found it incredibly attractive, especially when she could convince her to do absurd, uncharacteristic things like go skinny-dipping in the middle of the night on a public beach. She could tell that Sharon Carter had never done anything to just have fun just for the hell of it, taking risks because she could, or even breaking the rules just to test their validity.

Meeting Sharon taught Darcy that even though she typically chided Loki for his dangerous escapades, she was just as bad. She craved the excitement just as much as he did. The only difference was, Darcy could rightly identify where the line was drawn between ‘fun’ and ‘extremely dangerous’. For Loki they were often one in the same.

Sharon was a bit like Loki’s sullen, bored, political demeanor. Her lips were shaped a bit like Loki’s and she had no tolerance for anyone that couldn’t understand her perspectives straight away. She was irritable sometimes and even if she was frustrated with Darcy, she still would follow her around places.

She also had an undying propensity to ignore all social expectations and do whatever the hell she wanted so long as it was ‘legal’.

In other words: Their PDA was out of control.

They never officially established their relationship, it just was. Ever since their sandy night on Sharon’s floor, smiles came easy and kisses came easier. They laughed and did things together and canoodled. They actually did a great deal of canoodling. But there was an unspoken truth between them that their relationship wouldn't last. They kept their secrets and their concerns, enjoying the present as it were.

Before they went to their separate seminars, Sharon would grab her face and they would exchange a kiss that was far from chaste. If anyone cared, they didn’t say. At night, they got more handsy and Darcy scored her way through a few of the bases over the course of a month.

It was fun and Darcy was having a great time living in the moment while only thinking of Loki all the time.

Even though she and Sharon would spend great portions of the night together, kissing or just hanging out, Darcy couldn’t bring herself to ever spend the night in her bed or let Sharon into hers. It felt too much like she was replacing Loki, as strange as that sounded.

Maybe it was guilt. Maybe she just loved him. Maybe he was just being annoying from a distance by constantly occupying her thoughts. She hurt him and she only hoped that the letter she left would be enough to convey how deeply sorry she was. Would he forgive her? Did he think about her as much as she thought about him?

Thoughts of him were forever lurking in the back of her mind. No distraction could ever remove the idea that her friendship with him could be lost. She didn’t think about Asgard or Infinity Stones, her lessons with Frigga or the war with Vanaheim. Once she had Loki back she could start considering them again.

Since she didn’t have Loki, she focused instead on Midgardian studies. She caught up on the scientific studies she’d begun to abandon in favor of politics, she wrote essays and watched documentaries on obscure topics that a few college students on campus over the summer recommended to her.

Darcy also spent a lot of time in the library with Betty Ross.

She was quiet, intelligent, and was a low-key badass. Betty wasn’t openly abrasive like Sharon. For one thing, she was a lot older and was kind of like the cool aunt Darcy never had. But it wasn’t in her nature to be so forthright. She was more subtle, the brains to an underlying brawn revealed only by rage. Even so she got the feeling that the woman was fierce. Betty never openly stated that she had been in a relationship with Bruce Banner; it was tacit knowledge between them and Darcy spent enough time with Tyr to get that she was still in love with him even if no one really knew where he was in the world.

They didn’t say much to one another, but their quiet companionship was pleasant. It gave Darcy time to study and Betty always brought her new things to read. They discussed authors and science and art and literature. She was a sharp woman and Darcy appreciated her mind. Betty Ross was officially on her list of role models. As far as librarians went, she was the coolest.

At one point, Darcy called her mom and told her about the theories that were going to be published. It was rare that Mrs. Lewis ever cried, but she did then, gushing about how proud she was and how she was so glad Darcy had decided to go to Culver that summer.

The ‘heavy workload’ the university promised made Darcy laugh. While the nine other specifically selected high school students that got accepted into the program struggled to get the assignments done, Darcy had already flitted through them. Petty research papers and persuasive essays meant for simpletons were nothing compared to what she had been doing as advisor. She could do all those things in her sleep and to keep her mind busy she asked a few of the professors for extra work because she had nothing else to do except sit around and be a badass.

Darcy was reluctantly thankful Loki had inadvertently made her go to Culver. It was a wonderful place, the campus was excellent and the curriculum was rigorous. She only hoped that when she sent her applications in a couple of years they would accept her.

And she prayed to any god that claimed to exist that Loki might visit her while she was at college. One summer was bad enough; she didn’t want to go a whole year.

                                                               ***

Loki lay contentedly between two of his many new bedmates, Amora and Ain.

When Angrboða said that Amora was to ‘guide him’ what she actually meant was ‘teach him to be a whore’.  

According to Amora, the only person who could truly teach the magic to him was Angrboða and he couldn’t learn it from Angrboða until he understood how to properly bed his partner or partners.

When he asked Amora how much he would have to pay for such education she replied with the charming statement: “We don’t charge trainees.”

And that is how Loki came to be in his current situation.

Every morning Thor woke him up and they would go about their intense fighting and violent combat until high noon. Loki would then bathe and spend time with Jörmungandr and Fenrir who missed Darcy as much as he did. They whined at him and sat by the stables with Hel.

His horse was mad at him, which was one of the least gratifying experiences of Loki’s life. It was obvious that she took his denial to mount her and ride them to the portal was his way of keeping Darcy away from them. And therefore, Hel ignored him and moodily sat with Jörmungandr and Fenrir while they made noises at each other.

After the mournful time spent with his animals, he would magically transport himself to the brothel where Amora would take him by the hand and drag him off to some new people to couple with.

On rare days, she took him to Angrboða.

These days contained some of the most confusing hours of his life.

Angrboða didn’t teach him spells like the Asgardian sorceresses did. She didn’t ask him to show her different enchantments and she didn’t present him with any reading materials.

Yet, he was still learning in a way he could not understand.

While Amora dealt with his physical capabilities, Angrboða focused his magical ones.

They sat on the floor on one of the deep blue rugs that hid the cold floor beneath. Angrboða would hold out her great, elegant hands palms open. Loki would place his hands over hers, watching her eyes as she passed energy to him and waited for him to pass it back. And with each transaction, he learned to pass the magic differently.

It was a conversation of sorts and Loki detected that it was a training device that gave him insight to Angrboða’s magical style.

It was different, just as she was different. Much like his own methods, she abandoned the popular configurations of modern sorcery in favor of a more effective technique.

But where Loki used magic as a muscle, a direct extension of himself that he had control over, Angrboða treated magic as if it were a liquid. It spilled from her being and swelled in waves over its recipient. Loki often felt as though he was being washed away and when he tried to keep the tumultuous roar of their silent conversation at bay, Angrboða would chide him gently, squeezing his fingers. She often said to him: “There is no control here.”

And directly after, their interaction would end and he would sit pondering how such an exchange began in the first place. Angrboða would return to her balcony to watch the sky like a statue, her black robe a mocking tarp that hid the masterpiece.

His time with Amora was less intriguing, however it was simpler.

She played games with him, Amora did. She had a particular fancy for guessing what he liked in a partner and what he didn’t as she claimed it was her duty at the brothel to deliver to their customers a person that suited their tastes. Countless sessions were spent with him pleasuring and being pleasured by sultry, experienced bodies, all which had once been foreign and exotic to him, he now could identify by taste.

It was a unique process of trial and error. Amora never told him exactly what to do, she just sent him in a room with people, or peoples, and Loki had to figure it out on his own.

Admittedly, it was all a bit like magic. There was no defined pattern or method to finding pleasure. Every person was different; they felt different and tasted different, they liked different things and had different quirks. The trick was to figure out what they liked, how they liked it, and where they liked it.

And after he knew that, all that was left was performance.

Amora claimed that everyone performed better with the kind of person they were attracted to. Say for example Loki liked men with red hair, such as Ain, Amora would try to pair him to a partner of his taste even though he claimed he had no particular preference.

This was almost true. Loki had quickly decided that he very much enjoyed sex and he no longer had any qualms about fucking every whore in the brothel. He liked watching his partners shiver and sigh as he tended to their needs and wanted for his attentions. It was magnificent.

But he had an undeniable fixation on curvier women. He liked breasts that filled his hands and thighs that could cradle his narrow hips forever. He didn’t have a very good reason for liking them more, he just did. They felt better, warmer…softer.

He also liked men for his own reasons. They reached parts of him that no woman ever could and he found them to be equally fine bedmates.

Amora sighed, stretching across his chest and Ain kissed his shoulder languidly. “Loki, I know now why they call you Silvertongue,” she said tiredly, as the sun was just beginning to set and they’d just had quite an athletic round of pleasure that tried his flexibility multiple times.

He smirked at her compliment; that was another thing that Loki especially liked about women. Getting lost between their thighs, making a mess of the sheets while they pulled his hair was often more rewarding than being inside them.

“Mm,” he hummed, lightly caressing her back. He’d become quite fond of Amora. She was excitable and accepting and claimed her reason for becoming a prostitute was because it made her feel powerful and she got to meet new people all the time.

Ain chuckled, propping himself up to offer Amora a humored grin. “Amora, you should really be careful about what you say in bed. Do you not recall the unfortunate events of yesterday?”

Her pale face turned bright pink and she threw her pillow at Ain. He laughed aloud, standing up and walking to a table against the wall, pouring himself a glass of wine and Loki watched him, licking his lips where the taste of Amora remained.

In a house where the sole purpose was pleasure, clothes were optional. Loki had suddenly become more confident of his body than ever before. Having countless lovers achieve climax by his hand brought to light that he need not be muscular like his brother to please someone. And so he found himself naked more often than not.

He sat up, facing Ain with a sly grin. “Care to elaborate on said unfortunate events?”

Amora protested, kneeling behind him and putting her hands over his ears. “Do not tell him. He will never forgive me.”

Ain grinned ear to ear, falling back in bed and handing Loki his half full glass of wine. “Yesterday Amora was on duty…”

She groaned falling back against the pillows and covering her face with her hands. Loki leaned back as well, pulling her leg across his chest and kissing her knee. “And?”

“And she had your brother as a client,” Ain said, watching in delight as Amora shook her head in humiliation.

Loki grimaced. “I cannot imagine it to be that horrible.”

Amora sighed exasperatedly, not meeting his eyes. “No, it’s not ever horrible with him—“

Loki made a disgusted face without meaning to at the thought of Thor and Amora. It was not something he wished to see again. “Is that something that happens often?”

“He’s tickled her fancy,” Ain said, snorting loudly and Amora threw another pillow at him. “Amongst other things.”

Releasing Amora’s leg, Loki sat up swallowing the contents of his glass. “No more. By the gods, no more.”

“That is not even the best part!” Ain cackled as Amora tried to cover his mouth. He fought her off, delivering the rest of his tale through breathless hysterias. “After they coupled…she told him that your hammer was larger!”

Loki didn’t know whether to feel pride or disgust. He went with both. “What part of ‘no more’ do you not understand?”

Ain went to go get more wine and Amora smacked him affectionately on the rear. “Leave this place, you dog. I need to speak with Loki.”

The red-haired man chuckled, waving farewell and taking with him the wine.

Amora looked at him, embarrassed. “I am sorry—“

“Amora, do not...” Loki warned, trying to avoid more talk of his brother.

“I won’t,” she assured, turning on her side and watching him with a steady gaze. “You are exquisite in bed.”

“Indeed,” Loki agreed, settling down in the bedding to face her. “I learned from the best.”

“Indeed.” She giggled, reaching out to touch his hair, but he stopped her, taking her wrist and moving her hand to his shoulder instead. He missed Darcy far too much to let Amora run her fingers through his hair. She gave him an odd sort of look, but continued speaking. “But you have yet to make love.”

He smirked, stretching his arms behind his head. “I think you might have contradicted yourself.”

She scooted closer, pushing him down and straddling his thighs. “I have not. There is a difference between them.”

“How do you mean?” Loki inquired curiously, trailing his fingers along her legs while she spoke.

“Anyone can get caught in the carnal throes of passion,” she shrugged, “but you must feel more than lust to make love.”

She licked his neck and Loki responded, lifting his chin to give her better access. “That is implied. I have not been given the opportunity.”

“But you will be soon enough. Angrboða offered to teach you if you wish it, Loki,” Amora told him seriously, a wondrous look in her eyes. “She would only do that if she saw in you potential.”

“Potential,” Loki echoed her, weighing the word in his mind.

Setting her hands on his stomach, she gave him more serious a look than he’d ever seen on her heart-shaped face. “Angrboða always says that being a lover goes beyond coupling. She says you could be in love with someone your entire life, not once sharing even a kiss, and be the greatest lover there ever was. They feel deeply,” she said knowingly, sniffing as an unexpected tear escaped her eye. “There is an unyielding ache because it hurts to love and a merciless need for air because all you have belongs to them.” She pressed a fist against her heart, squeezing her eyes shut as they spilled grief over her face.

“She saw that I am in love?” Loki asked, gently wiping her pink cheeks.

“No,” Amora shook her head, mused blonde curls bouncing in the process. “She saw that you are in pain. ‘Tis always the broken ones willing to give away all they are in the name of love.”

Loki never imagined a year ago that he might lie nude in a brothel, comforting his prostitute friend while she cried over a lover he knew not the name of. He didn’t ask her anything, letting her weep until the sobs resided and her eyes were puffy and red.

Eventually, she calmed down enough to speak, cupping his cheek in her salty wet palm. “Soon the time will be right and Angrboða will teach you the magic you wish to know. But she is right Loki.”

Amora stood, picking up her dress from the floor and sliding it on. Loki slowly arose, gazing at her intently, waiting for her to finish her thought.

At the door, Amora glanced back at him with wide, teary eyes. “It will not satisfy you.”

                                                               ***

Darcy’s looked upon her last day at Culver with a sense of nostalgic grief.

She would miss the campus and her expensive dorm, the beach nearby and the learning experience. She would miss the library and Betty Ross and her summer days spent with Sharon.

Darcy didn’t ask for Sharon’s number and vice versa. It was unspoken knowledge that their relationship that summer was not meant to last. It had been fun and now it was over; it was time to return to their lives and Darcy was glad to have meant something to Sharon, if not for only a few months.

“Try not cause too much trouble, Lewis, alright?” Sharon suggested with a slightly melancholy smile.

“Sure,” Darcy smirked, crossing her arms. “You try not to get your foot stuck when you’re busy kicking ass, alright?”

They shared one last laugh, kissing goodbye. And before Sharon walked to her parent’s car to head back home, she held out her strong arms for a hug that Darcy accepted with a sense of victory. She’d finally added Sharon to the list of converted cuddle-bugs.

When Sharon’s car disappeared down the road, Darcy decided to take one last stop in the library to see Betty Ross. She sat at the front desk, her feet propped up on the counter as she read a book. Darcy approached silently as Betty looked up from her heavy novel. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

Darcy shook her head. “I’m leaving in an hour, but I wanted to say goodbye before I left.”

Betty smiled kindly, the small smile wrinkles in the corners of her eyes adding to her radiance. “I’m glad you did. I have something for you.”

Stowing her book, she reached into a large canvas bag at her side and pulled from it’s depths a notebook that looked like every page had been used. Darcy accepted it uncertainly, flipping open the cover to read the name ‘Bruce Banner’ in messy scrawl. She gasped in shock, resisting the urge to read through the entire thing.

Betty cleared her throat. “Those are his original notes. This was the only journal he didn’t burn after..well…you know.”

…after he broke Harlem. Darcy added in her head. “Betty, I can’t accept these. He probably wouldn’t want some kid to have them.”

The woman shook her head, giving Darcy a steady, confident gaze. “You are not just ‘some kid’ Darcy Lewis. He left it in my possession and there is nothing in there that I don’t already know. I could recite the entire damn thing to you in my sleep. And between you and me,” she leaned forwards and spoke in a hushed tone that exceeded a libraries silent expectations, “it’s probably safer with you. If it is in your hands, I know that nothing bad will come of it. You’re a tame experimentalist.”

Darcy chuckled, looking down at the journal again. “Thank you, Betty. I know how much this must mean to you.”

Reaching across the counter, Betty squeezed her hand. “I only hope that it will inspire some of your more philosophical ideas about self-control.”

They smiled and bid the other farewell once more.

It wasn’t long before Darcy’s cab arrived to take her to the airport and it was not long after that she boarded her flight. The entire time, Darcy could think of only one person and she hoped they might be thinking of her too.

                                                               ***

The day before Darcy returned, Loki spent his entire day at the brothel, making his farewells. He did not intend to return once she was back in his life. His salacious new companions that hid sorrow in their passion had been the balm to heal the tear in his side from where Darcy had been pulled. They were the company to his misery and they bandaged his wounds with knowledge and pleasure, attempting to sate their love with his body.

His injury was a paradox. The gushing wound never needed their attentions because the reality was that he was not damaged. Distance was a silly thing, for no amount of space in the universe could separate him from Darcy.

He kissed them all goodbye and they congratulated him on being a proper whore. They laughed together over a few glasses of wine, passing the time with sighs and moans.

By the time evening came round, he took Amora’s hand in a soundless request to see  Angrboða.

They walked to her quarters together in comfortable silence and when they arrived at the massive doors, Amora stood on her toes to kiss him. They said nothing to one another, for there was nothing to say that could possibly be portrayed by mere words. She departed with one last crooked grin, her blonde curls disappearing around the corner.

After she was gone, Loki didn’t hesitate to open the doors and slip inside.

The room was illuminated by night. The prominent blues that shone during the day were soft in the moonbeam’s grasp. The entire chamber glowed with silver as if it were a memory, blurred around the edges and sharp with nostalgia of a time past.

A black robe, draped across the back of a shiny chaise, cast a hole of emptiness in the ethereal aura, leaving Angrboða to stand on her balcony as the lone, perfect silhouette against the stars.

With a steady hand, he magicked away his own attire, pacing forwards to stand at her side and bask in the glory of Asgard and the stars. It was lovely, but his thoughts remained on a short mortal girl who outshined his realm’s beauty without lifting a finger.

“Tell me what you see Loki,” Angrboða said in her musical voice that was softer than even the lightest down.

He watched Asgard’s capital, making note of the different buildings that Darcy often talked about, streets they’d walked together and collegiums that he sat in to mourn their severance. “I see a city that grows only by the hand of a careful gardener who has gone away.”

Angrboða chuckled and Loki refrained from turning to her, at least not yet. He would wait for her.

“When we look upon a place and it does not hold what we desire, it is unimpressive. The stars pale in comparison to the light of our lives.” Angrboða said as a warm breeze swirled around them, her hair brushing his arm. “Will you see her again?”

Loki’s eyes went to Angrboða’s melancholy face, carved by time and sorrow to shape a vision of eternal love. “Am I that obvious?”

“Yes.” Her full lips mouthed the truth which she had come to hold. “Amora was not lying when she said you were expressive. Your solace comes from your remembrance of her, but so does your pain.”

Loki did not argue the reality of his longing and chose instead to grimace at the sky. “I will see her again soon.”

“You are distraught that she is gone,” Angrboða murmured, lifting her chin to the skies and Loki believed that she was peeking at Valhalla from her great height, “yet you fear her return.”

Loki averted his gaze from the distant lights in the sky, quickly losing faith in their endless existence. “Her absence is the result of our fight. I fear she will not wish to see me again.”

He shocked himself with his admittance of worry. No such proclamation would dare slip past his lips to just anyone.

Angrboða chuckled again, a bit louder this time, the echoes of her cosmic voice making his blood sing. “She will.”

“How can you be so sure?” Loki inquired, searching for any reason why Darcy might not be upset with him and that all was truly forgiven.

Humming lowly, she answered him in a quiet tone that imitated the silvery room they stood on the precipice of. “Amora has met she who tears the weeds from this city that does not impress you. Only by watching day after day have I seen the growth of Asgard’s long docile seeds by her hand.”

Loki’s jaw slacked in disbelief. “She knows Darcy? Darcy has been here?”

At this, Angrboða gifted with one of her rare toothy grins, the shine of her teeth competed in fair battle with the stars. “Is that her name? Your advisor? I confess that time slips away from me. Often times I do not collect happenings. I only watch them.”

Loki was still coming to terms with the fact that Darcy had been to the brothel before him. Angrboða sighed. “She did not come for what you believe, Loki. She and a few attendants drank and passed around their humor until she was assured that we were not a place of violation.” She paused for Loki’s unintentional sigh of relief. “Amora professed she is lovely.”

“She is brilliant.” He was lost again, caught up in a mindless thought of him and Darcy coming back sometime to drink and share merriment with whores.

“You love her deeply,” Angrboða confirmed, turning to face him, her profound, melancholic eyes settling on his face. “But are you in love with her?”

Loki prepared to repeat the line he recited to Thor every day, and to tell her that he and Darcy were not together nor had they ever been. But he stopped himself, pondering the depths of her question with a sincerity he had yet to use. The answer did not wait on the tip of his tongue and no matter how far he dug into his mind, he could find neither a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to give her.

“I do not know,” he told her, confounded by his own words.

“You will,” Angrboða assured, gently running her long ebony fingers across his bare shoulder.

He accepted her invitation, placing a kiss on her defined collarbone, tasting the majesty on her skin. She cradled his face in her palms, bowing her head to kiss him.

Finally, Loki allowed himself to learn her body as he had imagined from the instant he first saw her. With musicians’ hands, he trailed his fingertips down her sides and over her breasts, curiously running his thumbs across scars. The faint marks on her skin mapped the untold story of her life and Loki chose not to read too deeply; he only navigated. There were small scars that freckled her arms and longer ones that stretched across her belly. He knew that carrying a child scared women’s skin, but the Aesir healed so quickly that they often disappeared overtime as his mother told him.

The marks added to Angrboða’s magical perfection. They suited her and when the two of them fell into her enormous bed he kissed them, wondering if he would ever have the opportunity to see such scars again.

They moved together in unhurried strokes, taking the opportunity to make love without the burden of consequence.

Loki released his thoughts of everything but his passionate dedication, not only to pleasure, but to Angrboða as the mysteriously glorious person that she was. And through their efforts he felt her magic douse him in its unique liquid transference. Only now it graced him with the magical pleasure he’d originally come to learn from her. He did not fight the magic as he had before, he only let it gather inside of him, and he completed the exchange by letting the sensation pour back to her.

And when Angrboða sighed, he felt the winds change direction.

They finished together and in the sharp clarity of his bliss he wondered when the unsatisfactory notion of the spell would come to him.

Their breaths slowed and their hearts calmed to keep time with the passing night. They didn’t lie across one another or become a tangle of limbs as he had with his other partners. Angrboða was a distant moon, a precious light made to marvel in the presence of, to feel and worship, but never to hold. In the still silence, Loki queried Angrboða’s origins. She seemed ancient, older than life itself, but she did not strike him as Asgardian. Perhaps it was her magic which was, as strange as it sounded, similar to his.  

Sensing his curiosity, she adjusted her position, turning onto her back and facing the glimmering stone ceiling. “Ask me.”

Loki rolled onto his side to watch her face as he openly spoke his mind. “You are not Asgardian, are you?”

“No,” she said after a moment, her dark, bottomless eyes focused on a universe that only she could see.

He waited, hoping that she might break their lover’s silence to tell him a story.

“I first came to Asgard from a world far away,” she murmured with a nostalgic frown. “I can hardly recall the place now, it was never my true home. I was visiting Asgard to help a friend seed her orchard. I was betrothed to a man from my first world and I begged my family at that time to give me a few years of freedom before I was subject to marriage. They agreed and I made up my mind to meet my friend. It was long ago and I have not seen her in an eternity, but we think of each other often.

“We were young and powerful.” Angrboða smiled in memory. “Older than yourself, but not as skilled in magic. We were fools, willing to sacrifice our lives for merriment. We spent years, which then seemed like forever, doing nothing but wasting time and searching for more of it. Eventually, we found more in a long forgotten place. Before then, I had imagined that time was a concept. Little did I know that it is a solid gem in our world.”

Loki gathered a pillow in his arms, stretching his legs behind him to absorb her words. “And being the ignorant youth that we were, we played with it and my friend developed the fruit of our labor. That was her great accomplishment during our travels. Mine was to come soon enough.

“For the final year of our adventures, we ended up staying at an embassy on Nidavellir before I was to return to the man who would be my husband. We drank with the dwarves and they educated us in the art of sculpting and architecture. It was there that I met my beloved.”

His eyebrows pulled into his hairline. “Your beloved was a dwarf?”

She hummed, a happy smile turning up her lips as she closed her eyes. “Yes. We met at a tavern in the capital city. I was ill from too much of the Dwarves’ strong ale and I emptied my stomach onto his boots. But he did not shun me. He was a strong dwarf and he carried me to the nearest inn and nursed my drunken self until I was fully well. His face was the first I saw when I awoke that morning as it would be every morning for the rest of my life.”

Loki tried to picture Angrboða drunk and graceless and found that he could not do it. But the idea entranced him as he listened attentively.

“I fell in love with him in mere seconds and I told him so.” Angrboða blinked at the ceiling, her face the epitome of sorrow. Loki knew she would have cried if her tears had not already been shed. “We eloped. I never returned to my old world and we lived as lovers for years to come. My friend returned to Asgard, matured and prepared to tend to her orchard that we seeded together. She left the cause of her future prosper in my possession.

“I lived in love. My husband and I owned a mine and a farm of great proportion and we looked after both by ourselves. We had friends and neighbors and moderate wealth. But mostly we had love. We were one and the same; he had not taken my heart, rather he became it. We made love like no two ever had and from that we made a family.” Her long fingered hand trailed from the skin between her breasts to touch her marked belly. ”We made a great family.”

Angrboða opened her eyes again, her eyes were entirely black in the silver night. “Years and years and years of happiness graced us before that war started over some tiny little world in the middle of Yggdrasil. I thought all would be fine, but the realms sided with one another, tearing our universe in two. Even Nidavellir was not safe. My dearest lover knew it was not safe for me when the armies began settling themselves on my world to kill one another.”

“He and our friends combined their power to change my appearance.” She brought her hands, sable and striking, before her face, inspecting them as if they were not her own. “Dwarven magic does not include illusion, but my beloved…the soul of my soul…he begged me to do this to protect myself.” Her hands fell to her heart. “So I let them change me as he and my children guarded our home. When I returned to our house, our mine was emptied and the armies had watered our fields with my family’s precious blood.”

Loki swallowed hard, Angrboða’s ethereal voice wavering with the heat of a tortured divine. “Angrboða…”

She was too far gone to hear him. “I buried their bodies myself and I took with me their names and my story that I would keep only for myself, because those cold corpses in the ground of my bloody land were no longer my home. I only left time behind, for I need not more than I have already. I only wandered. And after countless years, I came to the heart of that which I never wanted to be a part of and I watch for change. I teach others love as I have felt it, in hope that their souls might find homage in another. I wait for the weeds to be pulled from this land and I wait to forgive the place that took from me everything that I ever loved.”

Her lips parted in a contented sigh. “My grief shall not outlive my mourning, but I will forgive. And when I have forgiven, I will wander again.”

Loki was awash in sympathy, at a loss for all words. “Angrboða…” he tried again, but she hushed him, shifting to kiss him softly.

“Sleep, fair prince. This night is too long for you,” she whispered, brushing her hand over his face and closing his eyes.

Her words trickled magic over his lips and he drank her will with trust he reserved for only one. He fell asleep at her command and awoke by the absence of the moon.

At sunrise she passed, and Loki knew she would not return until this eternal day had run its course.

He arose from the bed that was no longer Angrboða’s and noticed that the beautiful blue room was void of black and the balcony facing the rising sun would no longer be for mourning. He remembered Angrboða like a distant memory, as the essence of her had all but disappeared from this place.

But her magic and that which she taught him remained. Frowning, he stared at his hands, finally understanding what Amora meant about satisfaction.

He had the potential to love with all that he was, to give pleasure unlike any other and to connect in a way that could not truly be defined by words. He could use the magic as Amora did for casual sensory.

But that was not what Loki wished to do. All this he now had was useless, for he had nobody to love as he so desired.

Heavy with the burden he now carried, Loki faced the Asgardian skyline to see the city grow and change at an accelerated pace, for its beloved mortal gardener was returning today.

Loki watched the sun outshine its distant brothers, trying to grab the day’s attention. He thought of naught but Darcy.

A seed was planted in his mind and had taken root overnight. A rose was yet to grow there, but he knew without a doubt that Darcy would tend to it.

His shadow was the final silhouette of dawn as he turned away, his veins coursing thick with all that he had yet to give.

Satisfaction could wait; he was going home.

                                                               ***

Darcy stood outside her bedroom door, heart racing, mind frantic with feelings she had no name for.

She had made it through her flight, entertained by the different scenarios of how she might greet Loki.

There was firstly the groveling for forgiveness bit that included a lot of tears and whining. Then there was the tackling hug idea, which was nice.

But it would suck if he rejected her while she was bearing down on him from above.

Finally, she resolved that she would bring a peace offering of duty-free Toblerone to gain his favor. She even put a green ribbon around the prism of delicious chocolate. Loki was a sucker for chocolate, he loved the stuff. Hopefully it would soften him up enough not to hold a grudge against the lie that ended their friendship for a summer.

After he accepted her offering, she would take him in her arms and he would hold her so close that she felt they were one and the same.

Swallowing her fears, Darcy gripped the monster sized Toblerone by its green ribbon and opened the door.

She didn’t even get to see if Loki waiting for her as she was swiftly knocked to the ground by two hyper-enthusiastic animals.

“Frank! Fenrir!” she gasped as they scurried across her body, licking every part of her they could reach. She swore through her laughter, playfully shoving them away so she could sit up and rub their bellies. It was apparent in their excited jitters and noises that they missed her as much as she missed them. “It’s good to see you too,” she said, surprised when her throat felt thick.

Standing up and taking a deep breath, Darcy stepped inside her room.

But there was no moody prince for her to hug and explain how sorry she was. A dreadful emptiness filled her chest.

She made to squeeze the Toblerone box again, but found that it was no longer in her hand. Frank slithered in front of her, his mouth gaping in pure joy. Darcy narrowed her eyes skeptically at him. She wouldn’t put it past her pets to eat a delicious box of chocolaty goodness that fell on the floor.

“Frank—“

Her speech was interrupted by the cockiest voice in all of Yggdrasil. “For future reference, I also enjoy Godiva truffles. However, this will suffice.”

Darcy whipped around so fast she nearly fell over again.

Loki, her Loki, was leaning against the now closed bedroom door and the opened box of Toblerone in his hand was already missing two triangles.

“Damn straight it will,” Darcy breathed; his presence moved her so strongly she felt sick.

Loki didn’t take the time to walk the short distance between them, magicking himself to the space before her, the box of chocolate falling to the ground with a small thud.

No sooner had he materialized than they were in each other’s arms, choking over words that they hadn’t been able to say in their time apart. Loki’s magic flowed through her stronger than ever before and for the millionth time she longed to reciprocate. She wanted him to feel all that she was and know that she loved him every second that they were apart.

It wasn’t just his magic that felt stronger, but his body as well. Even through his new armor, she could tell he’d gotten bigger. His arms were thicker and while his torso was still thin and narrow, he felt wiry.

She twisted her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, ignoring the cramp in her foot that occurred because she had to stand on her toes to hug him like this. They didn’t even mention their fight and Darcy realized they didn’t need to. There was nothing to say.

When she finally pulled away to meet his eyes, Loki tightened his arms around her waist, keeping them close. “Loki,” she sighed, lightly touching his cheek with her fingertips, “I missed you so much.”

He nodded, bumping their foreheads, his face reflecting her every sentiment. “The next time you spend a summer away, I will be with you.”

Darcy chuckled quietly as Loki flattened his palms on her back, letting her settle down on her heels. She kept her face angled up to his, taking in the shape of his brows and his cheekbones that somehow looked better than the last time they were together. His mouth was in that stupid smirk that never really went away.

Something lighter than air swelled in her chest and inflammatory heat burned in her belly as she felt the faint brush of his peaceful sigh over her lips.

In that moment, Darcy was overwhelmed with the desire to stand on her toes again and kiss Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard, right on his impetuous mouth.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t because she knew by the way he held her and by the beat of her heart that kissing Loki would not be like kissing Sharon. They would not kiss for the sake of kissing.

It would be more. He was Loki after all.

Her revelatory thoughts were interrupted by the sound of crinkling foil and contented noises as Frank and Fenrir dug into Loki’s Toblerone. She wasn't worried about them eating chocolate; nothing made them sick.

Loki made the most disappointed face and Darcy laughed, unable to help herself. “You didn’t really want that chocolate.”

“It was a gift from you, of course I wanted it.” Loki said with a pout that screamed ‘bullshit’.

She cocked a brow at him, waiting for part two, “Oh really?”

“Certainly,” he affirmed. “I suppose you will have to purchase some more, along with the truffles. And perhaps some of those squares filled with caramel.”

“There it is,” Darcy she said, an unstoppable grin meeting her lips as she rolled her eyes and gave him a playful shove.

He caught her hand, entwining their fingers and pulling her back to him. “Darcy?”

“Yes?” she asked, wondering to herself if she’d ever truly appreciated the unearthly depth to Loki’s eyes. They mirrored that depth at the pit of her stomach, making it hard for her to breathe. But in a good way. She cleared her throat to tame the sensation.

Loki touched her face and squeezed her hand. “Would you be comfortable returning to the palace? You need not if you do not wish it. But I do ask that you see Hel. She misses you terribly.”

Darcy nodded. She no longer felt the overwhelming need to have control. She was no longer desperate to figure everything out. Puzzles must be solved at different paces and she need not rush to fit the pieces together.

“Yes,” she told him with enough sincerity for him to know that she was not in the state she had left in. “I miss Asgard and Hel. Is she alright?”

Loki chuckled. “Currently she hates me. Your return should rectify that. But there is something else that is quite horrible,” he said, waving a hand to cast her double.

“Yeah?” Darcy questioned, acknowledging what her double’s butt looked like from the back. If one thing had changed over the summer, that was it. Cuz damn, her ass looked fine.

“Yes,” he confirmed, tugging her down and placing a kiss on the inside of her wrist. “I have not had chocolate for an entire summer and--”

Darcy elbowed him in the side as they slid under her bed. “Oh god, just get over it.”

                                                               ***

Thor was convinced Sif was angry with him.

He didn’t know why she did or when it started, but she hardly even looked at him anymore. And when she did, it was almost with contempt. Other times, she seemed to forget that she hated him and she would punch him affectionately or make a friendly jest at his expense.

That night he’d intended to bring to her attention her behavior and ask if he’d done anything wrong, but she wasn’t even there for Darcy’s return. His mother had organized a banquet at the heart of the city where nobles and commoners alike could talk and greet Darcy. Thor didn’t know much about what Darcy did, but everyone knew her. Children tugged at her skirts and she greeted them by name; she met with farmers and merchants and bankers and lords and ladies.

But she did not greet Sif because Sif wasn’t there.

Sif, one of Darcy’s good friends, was not there to welcome her home. Neither did Sigyn attend, which Thor was also disappointed by. Should they not be supporting their friend?

He thought perhaps Sigyn might think it better of her status not to prance with roughens…but Sif? Was she ill? Was she tired? He did not know what was happening, but he did not like it.

So, after greeting Darcy, who he was, despite all his jests, glad to have back and teasing Loki about the date of their future wedding, he set off to find Sif. He intended to resolve this rift between them before they ceased to be friends.

Most of the military was out in the city, enjoying the festivities and drinking with friends and he knew the barracks where they slept would be empty. Sif slept there out of pride. He’d offered her shelter in the palace, even if they were servant’s quarters, she would have her own space that wasn’t in the same room as twenty or so men. But she had given up her title to sleep in that room with those men. She would never accept his help.

That was the strong-willed attitude he befriended her for in the first place.

He made it to the barracks, walking along the corridors until he found Sif’s sector. Uncertainly, he opened the door, peering through the dark at the rows of cots.

As silently as possible, Thor eased inside, stepping deeper into the darkness and he began to hear noises. Perhaps it was a whisper. Perhaps Sif was sleeping and she was dreaming.

He approached Sif’s bed that was marked with her number and noticed that it was occupied.

Gently, he reached out and tapped what he thought might be her shoulder. “Sif.”

Someone gasped and Thor’s eyes adjusted well enough to realize that there was not only one body in Sif’s bed, but two. There was a great deal of thrashing about under the covers and Thor heard Sif swear multiple times. He recovered from his initial shock, a jest taking its place.

“Ha! Sif! You accuse me of succumbing to the temptation of flesh and yet you have taken a man…” he trailed off as the sheets were whipped away to reveal Sif, garbed in a linen shift, flat on her back with a pained look of horror on her face, and straddled by none other than his bride to be, dressed in Sif’s tunic and her blonde hair mussed.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

“Thor.” Sif held up her hands defensively as Sigyn crossed her arms in annoyance. “I can explain.”