For the Love of a Queen

Chapter 3

As her people sat up their shops and began their lives in Asgard's city, Sigyn let the youngest prince get to know her a little at a time. She walked with him in the gardens, their conversations leaving him with a few clues to her life, but no great understanding of her community. But nearly a year after her arrival, their conversations shifted.

He escorted her through the roses her arm looped through his, their bodies a respectable distance apart, as they always were. She stopped to smell a flower so darkly violet that she could have called it black had the light not been right. Cupped in her hands, the bloom flowed beyond her fingers. She studied it intently.

"We never saw flowers like this in the fields, but neither do I see our flowers here."

"Oh?"

"Wild things do not do well with boundaries. Not even appealing ones."

He tilted his head, watching her gently brush the petals with a fingertip, "Does this apply to people, too?"

"Of course."

"And you?"

She sat the bloom down, "Yes."

"You yearn for the mobility."

"No. I yearn for the places. The smell of the meadows in the spring and the songs of the dark woods. I long to hear creatures that cannot live in this place and to pick wild berries from patches of light deep under the trees in places people do not go."

She heard a hesitation in his voice as he carefully chose his words, "Does this mean you intend to free yourself from this cage so that you may find your happiness?"

"No. For then I would lose other things I have gained this past year."

"Such as? Tell me one such thing that compels you to stay in this golden cage."

She turned to face him, away from the roses, "You resent this place? It is your home. Imperfect as it is, it is where you have made yourself and been made. You have it."

Loki sighed, "No. I resent my father's light that shines so brightly on Thor and casts the long shadow in which I stand." She reached for his face, a slow, careful moment she did not know if he would allow.

Her palm rested on his cheek and he leaned into her touch, sliding his own hand along her arm until his fingertips stretched over hers, "Then be a candle and light the darkness. Is it that hard to be someone that makes his own light?"

He turned his face towards her hand and kissed her wrist, "Yes, Sigyn it is."

"And where is your mother's light?"

"I do not know. It is an imperfect metaphor. May I kiss you?"

She laughed, "You just did."

"My Queen, I mean on the lips."

"You hardly know me," she said as she brought her face to his, lips warm in the sunlight. It was so easy to allow the moment to carry them away, slowly exploring one another until she pulled him into a hidden corner of the garden and undressed him, unwrapping her gown only after she was sitting over him. She led, he submitted, willing and eager. He hadn't known what to say after they were done, and she rested against him, her head on his shoulder, her dress draped off her shoulders, the silk tickling his sides.

"Thank you, my lady."

She kissed his chin, then stood and refastened her gown, "Thank you, darling prince. You are not a dark thing to be hidden in shadow. You have light and passion and beauty all through you. You must learn to cast off shadow with it, not wallow in it in despair or jealousy. Do not think I have never been overshadowed. I was not the first in line to inherit my father's seat."

Loki looked for his clothing as she stepped out from the curtain of ivy, "What happened?"

"Your father's men killed him before they knew who we were." And she was gone. He dressed quickly, intending to follow, but by the time he emerged from the greenery, she was gone.