The feast was glorious. Loki eagerly dug into the dozens of dishes on offer and drank until he felt himself begin to lose control of his sensibilities. After the Snap, the loss of millions of workers and the resulting political instability had disrupted most supply chains. Many basic items increased in price by orders of magnitude or disappeared altogether. Wong and Loki had never gone hungry in the Sanctum, but after relying on the same few foodstuffs for months, the lack of variety had begun to grate.
Once Loki couldn't swallow another mouthful, he ventured out to see the entertainment on offer and to clear the cotton wool in his head. The previous night, at the feast to mark the eve of Thor's coronation, there had been a skilled bard and a troop of lithe dancers from Vanaheim on hand to entertain the gathered. Today, there were easily a dozen bards and dance groups on show. The festivities stretched out far beyond the Great Hall, to the courtyards of the palace and down to the streets of the city itself.
Loki made an unhurried loop of the courtyards, stopping to amuse himself at a lewd puppet show and to cringe at a duo on harps, who were reciting a mangled tale of Loki and Thor's early exploits. At the fifth mention of Loki's 'fierce orbs', his patience reached its limits and he turned to head back inside the palace.
Before he was halfway there, however, he spotted Thor and his usual quartet of hangers-on at the edge of a broad square. The palace guard typically used this space for their training sessions; today it had been re-purposed into an arena for dancing. A group of musicians were playing a lively tune and there were at least a dozen pairs dancing, yet Thor's voice boomed over them all.
'You must dance with me!' he proclaimed. After a moment, he added. 'Nonsense, Lady Dagny, I'm sure you're as graceful on the dance floor as a swan is in water.'
Loki slipped past the revellers charring idly around the edges of the dance area. Thor's cheeks were flushed and his gait was a little unsteady as he took a step towards the mortified-looking Lady Dagny. He had left his hammer somewhere, but he still held onto their father's spear and in fact, seemed to be using it to help him stand without swaying. Loki marvelled, it took many pints to achieve such results. But then today he'd had time enough to be drunk thrice over. The festivities had begun early in the afternoon and now the sun was beginning to set.
'My king,' Lady Dagny stammered out, 'please forgive me. As much as it shames me to admit it, I am a poor dancer.'
'Nonsense, my lady,' Thor replied, again too loudly. 'Lady Sif, will you hold onto Gungnir?'
Both women recognised the futility of resistance. With bewildered eyes, Sif shifted her goblet into her left hand and accepted the spear from Thor. Dagny, for her part, let Thor whisk her away into the flurry of dancing couples.
In a way, Loki could see what Thor was trying to do. Lady Dagny was petite and flaxen-haired, just about the exact type that tended to draw Thor's eye. She was also painfully shy. As a child, she had often danced with her older sisters and her natural grace had been obvious even to Loki and Thor, who at the time had been barely more than children themselves. But now that her older sisters were married off and Dagny was at an age where she was expected to dance with men, she tended to hug the edges of the room. She met any proposal for a dance with wide, startled eyes and a shuddered refusal.
Thor was merely attempting to draw her out of her shell. He was just being a boor about it.
Sweet mercy, I'd near forgot what he could be like.
Frowning, Loki shifted over to Sif. 'Let me take the spear.'
She was all too eager to be rid of it, but then she cocked her head and offered him a sly half-grin. 'Why so sour, Loki? Having second thoughts about those horns?'
In fact, Loki'd had second, third and fourth thoughts about the horned helmet currently adorning his head, both in this timeline and the previous. The helmet had been a product of cringe-worthy insecurity. Having decided that his lithe frame would never match Thor's or Odin's broad shoulders, Loki had decided to at least make sure he looked as tall as possible. He now paid a steep price for his vanity. Unless the helmet was positioned at the exact right angle, it pinched the top of his ears and the weight of it inevitably led to a headache. And, above all, he looked like a gilded grasshopper.
Not that Loki was about to share his honest thoughts with Sif. Out of Thor's four closest friends, she had always been the most unpalatable and had caused Loki the most trouble.
He offered Sif the most charming he could summon. 'I'm not sour, I'm sad. For you that is. You've spent half your life pining for him and you still haven't caught on. He's not interested in you.'
'Were you not Thor's brother,' she sneered, 'I would –-'
'The king's brother,' Loki retorted and sent a covert spell towards Sif's goblet.
It was one they were both familiar with; Loki had discovered Sif's hatred for crickets back when they were still drilling with wooden weapons. He waited for Sif's indignant shriek, but it didn't come. Sif snorted and shaking her head, walked away.
Loki tracked her retreat until the crowd swallowed all traces of her. Had she put some protection on the goblet? Surely not, Sif detested magic and thought it the coward's way out. She wouldn't resort to it unless her life was at stake. Was it the spell then? But it was an easy one, Loki had mastered it about the same time he learned basic arithmetic. And now that he thought about it, despite the healing spell he had worked hours ago when he had been readying himself for the coronation ceremony, there was still a nagging ache in his shoulder.
If there was something off about his magic, he needed to find out exactly what. Loki pushed through the crowds, muttering half-hearted excuses, until he was back at the entrance hall of the palace. From there he turned in the opposite direction to the clamour and gleam of the Great Hall, then hurried up the side-stairs up to the second floor.
'Loki?' Odin called out.
Loki froze in mid-step, suddenly all too aware that he still held Gungnir in his hand. Sheepishly, he trudged over to the second-floor landing where Odin stood, the man's expression inscrutable.
'Will you take this?' Loki thrust out the spear towards his father. 'Thor wanted to dance; I don't know what to do with it.'
Odin took Gungnir from him, but his eyes never strayed from Loki. 'You mother said you have been unwell.'
And right now Loki longed to tell his father that he still felt ill and was about to retire to his quarters. Odin would let him go and Loki would have the evening to investigate what precisely was going on with his magic. But it would only be a matter of time until his mother heard he was ill claiming illness again. She would descend upon him with at least a trio of healers in tow. What if the healers noticed he was not the Loki who had originally occupied this body? No, he couldn't risk this discovery.
What then to tell his father? Now that they were alone, there was much he wanted to discuss with Odin. He had more or less come to terms with his true parentage after a number of bitter years, but nagging questions remained that Odin had never deigned to answer. As for Hela, Loki had a hundred questions about her. However, he couldn't just ask outright, not without giving some account of how he had come by such knowledge. Besides, this did not feel like a night for hard questions — it was a celebration after all and truthfully, his father looked weary already.
'I do feel better now, father.' Loki replied, uncertain if Odin would find it odd how long it had taken him to come up with an answer. 'It's just... I find myself lost in thoughts. Tonight marks a new beginning for Thor; I have to question what this means for me.'
Odin motioned for Loki to follow him, which brought a quiet smile to Loki's face. Perhaps it was the fact he spent so much of his time seated and nearly motionless upon his throne, but Odin had always preferred to walk as he conversed. Loki fell in step with his father and they walked along the long gallery that overlooked the eastern side of the city.
'I believe one day Thor will be a great king,' Odin said. 'But he is still young and in need of much guidance. While I still live, I will advise him as best I can. Once I am gone, it is my hope that he will be able to rely on your good counsel.'
'He will,' Loki replied reflexively, then sucked in a breath as he finally understood something that should have been clear to him long ago.
Had his father never articulated what he was attempting to do with Thor's coronation? Or had Loki been too bull-headed to listen to what his father was saying? Looking back at it, the first time around, Loki had been so focused on the faults of his brother's personality, Odin's decision to give Thor the throne of Asgard had seemed ludicrous.
But Odin had not been looking at the faults of his first-born son, but at his potential and was presently trying to smooth over the transition period. Better to guide his son through the first difficult days of his kingship as his adviser than to cling onto power until death took him and leave a grief-stricken Thor to muddle through on his own.
And he was right. I saw with my own eyes the king Thor became.
Certainly, a better king than I'd been.
That was all well, but Loki couldn't just let the matter drop as if he were the vision of a dutiful son. His younger self would have pouted and Loki was concerned a sudden personality change in him would raise alarm.
'You told us, and more than once, that we were both born to be kings,' Loki said.
Odin glanced back at his youngest. 'Do you wish to be king in Thor's place?'
Most definitely not.