Chapter 8
"Asgard needs a queen," Valkyrie said. She was taking the morning meal in Thor's stateroom, a more and more frequent occurrence. Loki was usually present, and they seemed to expect her in their space, assume her presence at their table, without imposing the pressure of formal invitation. They had simply shifted to make room for her; and perhaps she was shifting, too, to make room for them. "It's time to start thinking about it, anyway."
Loki blinked across the table at her with crimson eyes. She had been Jotun for most of the last week, and playful about it. At the moment she was a scant inch taller than Thor - just enough to make sure Thor noticed - and had the proud curving horns and clarion voice of a frost giant in a female frame of mind.
"I agree," Loki said, at the same moment Thor said, "Why?"
"Because Asgard survived," Valkyrie said. "She's alive, and growing, and so she needs a queen."
"And growing things need a woman's touch?" Thor frowned. "That seems reductive."
"The Queen of Asgard is a title, not a gender identity." Valkyrie tilted her head at him. How could he not know this? "The queen fosters Asgard's growth and protects her heart. The queen is not Asgard's first line of defense, but her last and best. None of that requires the queen to be a woman."
"What is it that you think Mother did?" Loki's voice was cold and sharp. "Gave banquets and wove baby blankets?"
"She did much more than that," Thor said, careful now, "though I do not diminish the blessings of her hospitality or her care for Asgard's children."
"The dream that was Asgard died with Frigga," Loki said. "Or didn't you notice?"
"Loki - "
"I'm not being dramatic," Loki said impatiently. "Think. After she died - was there ever a moment where the realm was whole and strong again? Was there ever a moment of true unity, or lasting peace? Were the people of Asgard ever really safe again, once Frigga had gone out of the world?"
Thor's shoulders slumped under Loki's challenging stare, though Valkyrie felt some sympathy for him. Hard enough to mourn the losses he'd had, the last few years, without having to constantly reevaluate what it was he thought he'd lost. Hard enough to rule, when he'd never been taught how.
"That's a discussion for another time," she said, finishing the last of her coffee, and shaking her head minutely at Loki, who sat back in her chair, frustrated, but let it go. As a sop, she said, "Come on. Let's show him what we're doing with the shared magic."
*
What they were doing, as far as Thor could tell, was equivalent to Loki loading a gun and hurling it haphazardly through interdimensional space in the hopes that Valkyrie would catch it without shooting herself in the face.
"It's not haphazard!" Loki cried, taking offense. "I'm hurling the magic precisely through interdimensional space."
"Yeah!" Valkyrie said. "Besides, I can't generate the ice on my own. How else am I supposed to blast people with it?"
Thor scrubbed a hand over his face. Was it too late to outlaw magic in this new Asgard? Probably. "Okay, show me again."
Loki and Valkyrie scampered into their ready positions, back to back an arm's length away from each other. Loki raised her hands and described a small spiraling pattern in the air; behind her, Valkyrie did the same thing simultaneously in perfect parallel. Then Loki set her feet and generated a burst of ice magic, a blue-white blaze which disappeared immediately from her hands and re-appeared in Valkyrie's, who directed it in a controlled sweep across the wall before her, encasing the chairs they'd set as targets in a shaggy layer of ice.
"This - " Seems like a fucking terrible idea, Thor wanted to say. Should say. But Loki was smiling at him - smiling down at him, Thor thought, distracted, had she given herself another inch? - and he found himself smiling back before the words could actually form. "Could certainly be useful," he finished politely.
"Yes," Valkyrie said, pumping a fist. "Now let's do fire!"
*
At the next morning's council meeting, the head of the council of elders found it advisable to request, in so many words, if King Thor and Prince Loki wouldn't mind fucking in the botany bay from time to time, separately or together as their tastes dictated and their schedules allowed, that the garden might benefit most directly from the magical emanations of their unions.
"Hulk gets it," Hulk said. Thor, who had been choking on his coffee since emanations, choked all over again. "Fertility god, sexy space wizard. Plants need all the help they can get."
"Sexy space sorcerer, if you please," Loki said. "It's a good idea, Elder Eydis. We thank you for your guidance."
She nodded and left the room, only half-hiding her amusement at Thor's distress. He coughed again, and looked at Loki skeptically. "Does that really help?"
"Of course," Loki said. "Formal fertility rites would be most effective, although, of course, it's hard to know what properly constitutes spring on a space ship."
"I remember the rites," Thor said. Specifically, and with infinitely sharp detail, he remembered Loki as an initiate, in the first year of her majority.
Over the long years of plenty, Asgard's fertility rites had become nothing but a springtime lark. There would be a field chosen at the edge of the forest; there would be a wooden frame constructed in the center, just large enough for a bed, and draped all around with gauzy curtains that let you see nothing but let you feel as though, at any moment, you might. Initiates would approach in a silent line. Then a pre-selected couple, usually noble, often betrothed, would disappear behind gauzy curtains and ostensibly complete the rites. Thor thought that less half of them did anything more than kiss. Until the night of Loki's initiation, he had never noticed so much as a single extra bud in bloom after the festival was finished.
But Loki... She had not publicly appeared as herself until that very night, and when she stepped into the flickering firelight there had been a half-swallowed laugh from the crowd, as if at the vanity of the prince adorning himself with such a self-indulgently beautiful glamour.
Only two had known her to be true: Thor, and Freyr of Vanaheim. To this day Thor did not know if there had been some contract between them. He thought not, remembering cool, urbane Freyr looking nothing less than thunderstruck. Freyr had approached Loki slowly, drinking in her proud bearing, the flash of her eyes, the strength in the long lines of her body, the magic shimmering like starlight just under her skin, and had done what any reasonable man would have done when confronted with such a creature. He knelt.
Thor cleared his throat again, shaking away the memory. "But I thought those were just for fun."
"Spoken like someone who ate well through the centuries," Loki scoffed, "never worrying if the crops would fail."
Thor laughed and tilted his head in acknowledgement. He didn't suspect either of them were going to have any unions any time soon, anyway.
*
They do fuck in the botany bay after all, later that day, just to see what happens, Valkyrie rocking breathlessly onto Loki's fingers and tilting her neck for Loki to lay little stinging bites along the skin there.
"They don't look any bigger," she said afterward, stretching luxuriously, and turning on her side to look at at the tender green shoots just poking out of the soil in their raised beds. She glanced back at Loki. "How long does it take?"
Loki had rolled up to a cross-legged sitting position an arm's length away. Not a cuddler then, which was just fine with Valkyrie - better to let the afterglow breathe in the space between them than crush it in an overeager embrace. At the moment Loki had her arms raised, braiding her hair close against the back of her head. The posture was doing marvelous things for her breasts, in Valkyrie's considered opinion.
Loki paused and made a thoughtful face. "It's generally not immediate, outside of the formal rites. More of a cumulative effect over time." Then she narrowed her eyes, registering where Valkyrie's attention was. "Are you very concerned about the flowers, Val?" She snickered as Valkyrie rose onto her hands and knees and crawled toward her. "Do you feel an urgent need to make them bloom?"
"Just doing my duty, ma'am," she said, easing Loki down onto her back, and kissing her own laugh into Loki's cool skin.