Loss of a Child
“Once, twins grew in my womb,” Nalla begins their – her? – tale, somewhat reluctantly and rather painfully, after Emilia relocated us to the suite. “War suddenly broke out, on three fronts. I had to lead my people. One of the combatants managed to bash my belly with a mace. It was a special mace. It broke most of my protections. The twins had to come out, half to term.”
She?… is unable to speak for a long moment, overcome once more by emotions. I feel rather nauseated, myself.
And then she tells us – or me, rather, judging from her eyes never leaving mine – about her spouse’s younger child spiriting the newborn named Loptr to a temple, while the elder child did not manage to save the other one, named Loki. About Loptr no longer being there inside the temple when she dragged herself out of her sickbed to check.
About Asgard’s royal family gaining a newborn prince by the name Loki without the queen-consort being pregnant beforehand.
It was a millennium and two-hundred-and-ninety-four years ago.
`The war. It must be the Asgard-Jötunheim war.`
My parents lied to me.
They are not my parents.
I am a jötun. I am a monster.