"Please! Hilund- put him down! We can talk about this!" Your entire body vibrates with fear that you pray isn't nearly as obvious to her or Loki as it is to you.
"Careful, Little One- you're starting to sound like him." Her grip tightens on Loki, causing him to let out a little puff of air. She raises her free hand in your direction when you take a step toward her, her seidr gathering at her fingertips.
"I'll get the Casket." Loki's eerily calm tone of voice comes as a shock to you, and by the way Hilund snaps her head back in his direction, to her as well.
"Make me believe you, God of Lies."
"I will leave Gersemi here, under your care while I retrieve it."
THE HEL YOU WILL.
"Loki!" Your face and neck catch fire at his outlandish proposal.
"Is that so?" The giantess laughs, still dangling the young prince in the air. "Why the sudden change of heart?"
"It's certainly not for you, if that's what you'd like to hear." He taunts.
"I'm crushed." She retorts, her sarcasm thick enough to be cut with a knife.
"Gods, the two of you fight like siblings." You scoff, your frustration with their ridiculous bickering temporarily overshadowing your fear.
"Cousins." Hilund laughs, releasing Loki, who lands on his feet with the grace of a cat. "'Course, I would never claim the runt." She drifts toward the kitchen area without another word.
You turn to him for an explanation, but he looks even more baffled than you feel.
"I beg your pardon?" He tips his head to the side, his sass not even remotely dampened by the fact that he's spent the last several minutes in a giant's chokehold.
She returns to the room with three mugs of steaming liquid, gesturing with a tip of her head at the large chair for the two of you to sit down. You both obey without a word, and she hands you each a clay mug full of something resembling herbal tea.
Her pensive gaze shifts from her mug to Loki. "You are unaware of much more than I realized." She takes a sip of her piping hot beverage. "Vernonias are native to Jotunheim. They didn't exist before the Casket was placed here and they all died off, along with most everything else, when it was stolen. Where did you get these ones?" Her eyes dart back and forth between the two of you, her expression difficult to read.
"They-" You begin to speak, but hesitate, worried this may not be your secret to share. Or if it should be shared with a woman who just had the man you love, who is apparently also a relative of hers, in a chokehold.
Loki gives you a reassuring nod and you continue. "They are growing in a deeply secluded area, hidden away in one of Asgards forests. The trees are so thick there that practically no light reaches them."
Hilund smiles, a reaction that you find completely baffling amongst all other things. "They prefer the cold and dark." Her eyes glisten with pride. "They must be able to grow only on the realm that houses the Casket."
"So we need to go to Asgard to get more-" You interject, your stomach still in knots in fear for your sister.
"No." She rumbles. "You need to go to Asgard to get the Casket."
Before you can protest, she continues. "Several hundred years after our banishment, the Jotun race was prospering. We'd developed our magic even further, had created our own political systems, and realized that we no longer desired to live amongst the false gods. We no longer needed them. Naturally, the All-Father felt threatened by this. He attacked us in our new home realm.
The battles raged on for years, but eventually, we were overpowered by Asgard's soldiers and Odin took back the Casket.
Very quickly after that, our crops, our forests and our flowers all began to die. Without the DNA altering effects of our vernonoas, we could no longer survive the wretched cold. The giants began to parish in massive quantities, only those unusually large in stature or particularly adept in magic survived. It continued on like that for years; Over half of the Jotun race dead in a matter of days, the survivors doing everything they could to adapt and reproduce."
She turns her focus to Loki. "When I said that we were just as your people once, I also meant in appearance. We have always been larger than the Aesir and Vanir, sure- but the blue and green skin, the teeth, the eyes- they are all a result of having to survive the cold and dark.
'Tis why your form is so beautiful, Pretty Boy. You've never had to survive. You never would have survived." She growls, her anger clearly bubbling up within her.
Loki's eyes fill with remorse, his next words dripping with conflict. "Fathe- Odin has only told me horrific stories of the giants, that they are merciless and cruel-"
"That's rich, coming from the mouth of the realms' most brutal leader." She spits, storming to the kitchen to grab a stool and dragging it across the stone floor with a horrid screech.
"How many of you are left?" Your voice is shaking. "How many survivors?"
She folds herself onto the stool. "A hundred. Maybe more, maybe less."
"Gods-" You hold your hand over your gaping mouth, a little bit embarrassed when tears fill your eyes and quickly run down your cheeks.
Making an obvious point to ignore your sudden emotional outburst, she continues. "I'm taking the two of you to Utgard today to speak with Laufey."
"I killed him" Loki finally speaks again.
"That was not Laufey." The giantess laughs.
Loki furrows his brow.
"Your mother, Queen Laufey is alive and well." She continues with a smirk.
Before either of you can respond, she continues, a smug sort of timbre in her next words. "Do you know how honeybees survive, my child?" She shifts forward on the stool, resting her thin, knobby elbows on her equally angular knees, the position making her appear far more child-like than you assume her age reflects.
You stare back at her in bemused silence when her magenta eyes connect with yours.
"The worker bees, they are all female. Work, work, work." She clicks her tongue three times. "Drones- those are the males. They have but one purpose- to breed.
When the Casket was stolen and the eternal darkness fell upon us, almost all of our males died. Perhaps because Jotun women are larger than the men, perhaps because of some other genetic factors we don't understand. Either way, it became exceedingly clear that we needed to make adjustments to our political systems and enact new policies.
Within weeks of the mass devastation of our realm, our first Queen was crowned, and an entirely female council appointed.
Now, the queen has many drones. They all do as she commands without question." She pauses briefly, seeming to ponder her next words, something you'd yet to see her do. "May the gods smile a little brighter upon the drone you murdered in your would-be father's name."
"You're lying." Loki growls, exposing his bottom teeth as his lips linger on the tail end of his words.
"Ah, yes. That is to be expected. Go ahead, my prince- trust the people who have been lying to you your entire life... after all, you barely know me." She clicks her tongue again, just once this time, before chuckling to herself and striding away to the far corner of the space, once again searching for something.
"It was an Asgardian arrow that injured you that day." Hilund returns, handing Loki each end of a broken arrow, stained with the young prince's dried blood from all those years ago.
"What?" Loki snaps his gaze to hers, his tone frostbitten.
"The house of Odin... is full of traitors." She clicks her tongue.
The arrowhead is a brilliant gold, with someone's insignia etched into the side. The ornate fletching is composed of the unmistakable red feathers of a fjalar, a bird native only to Asgard.
A rapid wave of Loki's seidr washes over the pieces of the arrow, vanishing it from thin air before you can get a better look at the insignia.
"That doesn't mean anything. We were young, we'd hardly seen battle. They were afraid- the snow and the wind-" You place your hand on Loki's thigh, a small, simple gesture of comfort, and he ceases his rant immediately at your touch. "You... you weren't there." His grief-saturated gaze searches yours.
"I believe you." You nod, holding back the tears caused by what to you, seems like a very obvious betrayal.
"It would be wisest to not do that often, Little One." Hilund's barb comes off more genuine than you're sure how to process.
She gathers your mugs and returns them to the kitchen.
"What are we going to do?" You whisper to Loki while Hilund is out of earshot.
He takes hold of both of your hands, resting his forehead against yours. "We're going to let Hilund take us to the capital."