Chapter 16
You wake with the dawn. At least, you think it’s the dawn—until your eyes flutter open to an unfamiliar ceiling, your head resting on a pillow that is not your own, and you realize that the glow bathing the room isn’t sunlight, at all. It can’t be; there are no windows in this room, a detail you’d noted last night and immediately forgotten. The light is too bright to be candlelight, too, and all the candles must surely have melted by now.
You sit up and swing your legs over the edge of the bed, allowing yourself to drop down onto the plush bedside carpet, and you look at the wall nearest you. The textured stone of the walls appear to be threaded through with a soft seam of gold, a detail which you’d noted last night and immediately forgotten. Now those same fibres are alight with a delicate shimmer that is at once alluring and frightening. You refrain from pressing your palm flat against it, but you do draw closer, fluttering your fingers an inch or so above one particularly bright spot. It doesn’t emanate the heat you’d been expecting. Instead, the air seems to chill the closer you get. It’s cold enough that, were you to touch the wall directly, you half expect your fingers would freeze.
You look around for something you can use as a barrier, a way to touch the wall by proxy. The sleeve of your robe will have to do. You fold it over your hand, and take one more step towards the wall, leaning, leaning…
But just before you make contact, the glow fades. The chill is gone. You have to stifle a scream as the room is plunged back to darkness; you practically leap back into bed, though in your blind panic you end up face-planting into the mattress. Even in the dark, with your face shoved into a pillow, you squeeze your eyes shut, as though that were a viable protection against any kind of threat.
A few seconds pass, and no demons or warriors or shapeshifting aliens of any kind have appeared to kill—or rescue—you. You suppose that’s a good thing. You push up onto your hands and knees, then sit back into a kneeling position. With the walls de-illuminated, and the candles decidedly finished, the only hint of light left in the place comes from a corner opposite the bed. The door, you realize.
As you make your way across the room, hands held up in front of you lest you should trip (or need to otherwise defend yourself), you can’t help but have a chuckle at your own expense. If only the tabloids knew that Lady (Y/N)—the young woman who spent the last four years having her life upended time and time again, once fought off a pair of bloodthirsty Chitauri, and at one point in time was set to be queen of the entire planet—was still nursing a childhood fear of the dark. Ricky Morgenstern and Ashley Marino would have a field day with that little tidbit, you’re certain. It’s been so long since you’ve thought about it. At the palace, since the end of the competition, you’ve rarely slept alone. And even during your unfortunate homecoming of the past two weeks, you were sleeping in familiar territory. But here, without Loki by your side…
No. You refuse to be bogged down by sentimentality. Not now, when you’re expecting to see your sleep paralysis demon pop up out of the corner of your eye at any minute.
Expecting? Hoping, more like. At least a sleep paralysis demon would be something of a familiar face.
The thought brings up another string of quiet laughter. Until you stumble directly into the chest of drawers you’d pushed in front of the entrance last night, at which point your sniggering quickly turns to a hiss of pain, and a decidedly un-lady-like string of curse words. You keep up the whispered cursing to yourself as you shove the chest of drawers to a spot that you hope is out of the way enough for you to open the door. If the door has even been unlocked, that is.
To your delight, when you try the knob this time, it turns without resistance, magical or otherwise.
Part of you wants to tread with caution. But the part of you that is thoroughly creeped out by the prospect of lying awake in your pitch-black room until someone comes to fetch you? That part has you moving rashly to push the door open. It takes a bit of shoulder work—everything in this palace really is as heavy as it looks. You suppose that’s what comes of building everything out of real gold—but you succeed, and step out into the hallway.
The rush of daylight is a bit jarring, but not in an entirely unpleasant way; it wakes you up in a manner reminiscent of a cold winter breeze. Once your eyes adjust, you’re able to more properly take in your surroundings: the ivory and bronze. The tapestries. The vaulted ceilings, so much higher than the ones back home, and seemingly made of glass. In fact, there are windows everywhere—they bleed down from the ceiling, reaching the floor in between tapestries, flooding the palace with the soft light of the Asgardian sun.
The hall isn’t empty. Down in either direction, you see pairs and small clusters of people, walking in different directions, or paused to chat. Nobody is close enough to pay you any mind; with the sheer vastness of the halls, it’s difficult for the groups to avoid spreading out. It seems as though the entire palace—or this wing of it, at least—is completely antithetical to the cold claustrophobia (weird random glowing walls notwithstanding) of your room.
Speaking of your room, you hear a heavy thud behind you.
You flinch, and turn to see the door has swung shut. Which is not too alarming on its own—you do take a moment to glance furtively at your surroundings, but nobody appears to have taken notice. What does alarm you, though, is that the door refuses to let you back in. No matter which way you turn the knob.
You’re fairly certain you’ve yet to spend a full forty-eight hours on Asgard, and already you’ve managed to get on the Allfather’s bad side, cry twice, be separated indefinitely from your fiancé, and lock yourself out of your room. In a busy hallway. Wearing nothing but an oversized bathrobe, no less.
Well. At least it can’t get any worse from here, right?
“Who let her out?”
Annnnd I definitely spoke too soon. Lovely.
“Newcomer.” The speaker is the shorter one of the pair of guards walking towards you.
“You shouldn’t be out before you’re summoned.”
“Majesty’s orders,” the tall, carrot-headed one adds. You cross your arms over your chest to hide the way your hands itch to curl into fists, your muscles tensing automatically.
You do not have a good track record with guards.
You do note, however, that these two don’t appear to be leering, or particularly intimidating at all. If anything, they look to be your age, or even a bit younger. If it were in any other context, you might find this funny. It’s like being reprimanded by a slightly older, slightly better-dressed version of Carlie.
The ache that hits your chest at the thought of your sister is sudden and acute. I miss you, Carlie.
I’m so, so sorry.
“Hello? Didja hear what I said? Do you think she heard what I said, Rinca?” You realize then that you haven’t responded at all. Before you have a chance to save yourself, the shorter one elbows the taller guard in the side, a cruel laugh preceding her next words. “I guess it really is true what they say about mortals, eh?”
The last thing you need is to be asking questions of snarky palace guards who a) definitely appear to be on Odin’s side, and b) apparantly hold all mortals in contempt. But you can’t hel but feel a bit uneasy at the implication that Asgardians have stereotypes about humans. You didn’t think Asgardians really thought about mortals at all. You just assumed that Æsir & Co. would have more important things to do than to consider the numerous shortcomings of the human race. After all, before Loki, none of them had come to Midgard in quite a while, right?
Let’s reel in the mental tangents, (Y/N). You’re not going to break any derogatory Asgard-Midgard stereotypes by standing here like a deer in headlights.
Deer. Masquerade ball. Home.
Home.
No, (Y/N). Focus. You shake your head, and pretend you’re wearing something a bit more regal-looking than this (admittedly very good quality) robe as you respond. “I tried to go back in. The room refused.”
“The room...refused?” Shorty first scrunches her nose in confusion, then purses her lips, looking at you with knit brows. “And I suppose you expect us to believe you?’
You stare at her blankly. “You can check the doorknob. You can literally check the doorknob, it—”
“But then why’d you come out in the first place?” cuts in Carrot-Top (Rinca, the shorter one called him, but that’s too bad—he’s forever Carrot-Top in your mind now).
You notice, with growing unease, that a small crowd has begun to form a bit further down the hall. A glance over your shoulder shows a similar group clumping together behind you, as well. They stand at a polite distance, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that they’re evesdropping—especially when a few of them look to be whispering to each other, when you hear mortal and Prince Loki and with child being thrown around rather liberally.
“I—” You’re a bit too distracted by the crowd. It makes you flustered, which makes you stutter, which you’re sure the guards will be only too keen to take as a sign of guilt. “I, um—”
“Rinca, Colleth. Leave the poor girl alone.”
At the sound of that melodic, almost-familiar voice, the guards and the crowd turn their attention away from you in shockingly quick order. You follow the voice, too, and find yourself staring deep into a pair of amanranth eyes.
Sigyn smiles. “She was coming to meet me.”