Chapter 8
Your parents both agree to walk you down the aisle.
You must admit, you ask them more out of obligation than any real desire. Yes, it feels good to have their blessing, but their behavior makes you feel more like they’re giving you permission to get married, which is….frustrating, to say the least.
Still, the peace you’ve forged is so new, so tentative. Surely this is a small price to pay for such an important truce. Surely you can play at being their little girl for one more day.
And besides, none of that seems to matter when the doors to the hall swing open and the music plays and you see him.
The sleekly cut tuxedo. The impish grin. The way his eyes look a bit glossy, as though he can’t quite focus on your face, as though he is beginning to tear up already. Perhaps he is. You know you certainly are. You’re suddenly grateful for the support of Mom and Dad on either side of you, because he looks so damn good that you're pretty sure your knees would buckle even without the extra nerves.
This is why you’re doing this. Why you want this. Four years of hope and heartbreak and healing, all leading up to this moment, to the day you can finally call this main (God. Alien. Whatever.) yours.
Each step closer to him has you feeling further and further from the ground, the slight dizziness you’ve been feeling all morning suddenly transformed into an almost euphoric high. About halfway down, it seems as though your heart might nearly beat out of your chest with sheer adoration. His sharp-tongued grin. His near-translucent skin. He looks dreamlike. Too good to be true.
Like, actually too good to be true. Because the closer you get, the more you realize how his skin has an almost unearthly gleam to it, and there’s something unfamiliar about the look in his eyes.
You’re just approaching the altar when you hear the commotion amongst the guests: several loud gasps, and a collective wave of rustling. And before you can even twist your head around to see precisely what it is they’re gasping at, you realize what was off before: Loki isn’t looking at you.
He’s looking behind you.
You swirl to face the entrance to the hall. You take in the scene in bits and pieces before your mind is able to comprehend the whole. The white dress, stitched with diamonds instead of pearls. The loose-hanging hair. The elbow-length gloves. All of these unfamiliar details stand in direct contrast with the face, though, every line of which you know by heart, save the glassy look in her eyes.
In your eyes.
Your parents each link their arms more securely through yours—the next immediate sign (as if you needed more) that something is very, very wrong. You use your full weight to launch yourself out from their grip. The force of it takes you back a step or two, and your heel catches in the train of your gown. You turn your head to look behind you, throwing out a hand to try and catch the fall. But when your fingertips brush Loki’s palm, he doesn’t take the opportunity to steady you. He can’t. Not when your hand passes through his like it would through a cloud of steam.
No.
The dizziness strikes again as soon as you hit the ground at his feet. It’s stronger than before, immobilizingly strong. Your pulse is hummingbird-quick. You hear screams and other, worse noises. Crashes. Gunshots. But the sudden exhaustion is too heavy, too powerful for you to do much more than lay there and watch the not-Loki above you smile languidly, his gaze trained on your clone still floating down the aisle, both of them completely oblivious to the chaos.
“Stand cover!”
Fingers on your wrist. “She’s steady.” A hand on either side of your head. “We’ve got you, Miss. You’re going to be safe now.”
You manage to let your head loll to the side. You see the shoes of Loki’s clone vanish in a puff of silvery-green mist.
You don’t remember anything after that.