Amora had already left the feast by the time Loki returned to look for her, and he managed to slip in and out of the Great Hall without attracting the attention of his father, who was now seated dutifully at the head of the feast table like nothing was amiss.

Loki found Amora in the palace orangery, the plants from each of the Nine Realms pressing their leaves up against glass panes the size of playing cards as they curled their vines around each other. A bitter violet from Alfheim shied from Loki’s shadow as he passed it, its petals the pure blue of the inside of a glacier. Amora was sitting under the wide leaves of a Midgardian fern at the edge of the small pond that bubbled up from the ground. She was brushing her fingers through the grass at the edge of the water like she was petting an animal, and Loki watched as, with each pass, her fingers raised sparks from the reeds.

“Is that a new spell?” he asked her, and she looked up.

“No. It’s Svartalfheim fire grass.” She ruffled her fingers through the blades and small sparks puffed around her hand the way most plants would shed their seeds. Amora smiled. “Not magic. Just nature.”

“Does that make us unnatural?” Loki asked.

Her eyes flicked up to his, their thin veins of green seeming to take over her whole irises for a moment so that they looked as though they were fashioned from the jungle around her. Then she looked back to the grass, letting a spark linger and bloom into a small flame along her fingertips before she snuffed it. Loki sank down beside her, close enough that their knees pressed together. Even through the hazy gloom lingering from his conversation with Thor, an electric shiver went through him when she didn’t pull away from his touch. No matter how small that touch was.

“Will you answer me something?” he asked.

“Depends on the question,” she replied.

He had already felt fragile and self-conscious, and the flippancy he usually enjoyed in her instead tipped him over the edge. “Never mind.”

He stood up to go, but Amora caught him by the wrist, pulling him back down beside her. “Sit down, Trickster, and don’t be so dramatic. Of course I’ll answer your question.”

Trickster. The nickname used to make him blush. Now every time she called him that, it felt intimate and secret, a name only she used for him. If I’m a trickster, you’re an enchantress, he had said the first time, and he was delighted by how caught off guard she looked. Amora was almost never undone, or if she was, she didn’t show it.

Enchantress, she had said, and he could hear the pleasure in her voice. So much prettier than witch, don’t you think?

She paused, eyeing him. “Ask me your question,” she said, her hand not on his, but lingering near it. “I’ll answer it as best I can.”

He did not know exactly what he wanted to ask her. Do I seem the sort of person who would help end the world? Am I destined to turn against Asgard? If I know it, can I stop it, or will trying to stop it make it happen?

So instead, he asked, “Do you think my father will ever make me king?”

“Not if you remain devoted to your current hair care regimen,” she replied.

Loki rolled his eyes. “Amora.”

“Really, one decent haircut and a bit of oil daily would work wonders on this mop.” She reached out, flicking a lock of dark hair out from behind his ear. “You think your father would have gotten where he is without that lustrous beard?”

“Please don’t refer to anything about my father as ‘lustrous,’ it’s very upsetting.”

Her smirk didn’t fade, but her face softened around it. When she looked at him, he could feel her gaze caress his face. He wished she would touch him again, even just another strand of hair tugged from its place. Let her ruffle him.

“I think your father would be a fool to name anyone but you his heir,” she said.

“Do you think my father is a fool?”

Amora laughed, her lips pursed together so it came out breathily through her nose. “You’re very clever.”

“I have my moments.”

“Many of them. You are made of moments.”

A leaf had stuck to the knee of his trousers, and he attempted to brush it away, only to find it so sticky with some kind of sap that it wouldn’t be parted from the fabric. He flicked his fingers, sending a small gust of wind to blow it off, but it ended up stronger than he intended, pushing both his and Amora’s hair back off their faces. Loki wrinkled his nose. Control was still an elusive thing, and a skill he was certain Odin had denied him to keep his use of magic to a minimum. “You don’t think much of my father,” he said.

“I don’t think of him at all, if I can help it,” Amora replied, tugging her hair over her shoulder and running her fingers through it. “What’s brought on these questions?”

“Nothing.” Loki slumped backward against the stone behind him. “I’m just brooding.”

“I know, and it’s adorable. You get this little crease between your eyebrows.”

“Stop it.” He batted her hand away as she pressed her finger into the space between his eyes. She laughed. “Have you seen Karnilla since the ceremony?”

“Not yet. Isn’t she still with your father?”

“They’ve returned to the feast.”

She ran a hand over her knees, smoothing her trousers. “Why do you ask? Do you think she has something she wants to say to me?”

“I know what my father saw in the Godseye Mirror.”

She raised her head, eyes hungry. “Tell me.” Loki ground his feet into the dirt, watching it halo around his heels until Amora pushed her toe against his. “Tell meeee.”

“He saw one of his sons leading an army against Asgard,” Loki blurted out. He had intended to say it, but not in such an inelegant tumble. “He thinks it means Ragnarok.”

He expected a reaction, but her face didn’t change. “Which son?” Amora asked, her voice flat.

“He didn’t say.”

“But you think you know.”

“Thor does,” Loki replied. “He thinks it’s me.”

She picked a strand of the fire grass, and it fizzled into ashes between her fingers. “Why does it matter what Thunderhead says?”

“Don’t call him that.” Loki wasn’t sure why he was defending his brother after what he’d said, but only he was allowed to mock Thor. Not that anyone else ever had. “Do you think I’d do that?” he asked her. “Fight against Asgard? Against my father and my family and my people?”

“I think we are all capable of things we’d never imagine.” Her tone was light, but layered as pastry. She knew what it was like, to live with a birthright that felt precarious and fragile. Amora was an orphan, adopted by Karnilla from an Asgardian orphanage when her natural talent manifested in her levitating the other children across the dormitories. But Amora was fearless. She was brash. She was off-putting, a word Loki had heard applied to him, too. Yet they felt like opposite sides of that coin. Amora said too much; he stayed silent. But both of them were strange and otherworldly, disliked by most for nothing but a skill they hadn’t asked for.

Amora brushed her hands off on her trousers, a few lingering strands of grass flaring against the material. “Short of asking your father, there’s nothing that can be done about his vision,” she said at last. “The only thing to do is live your life and wait and see if one day you find yourself standing before an army against your father.”

“Or I could look in the Mirror,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow, regarding him. “The Godseye Mirror?”

His mind was racing, the ideas leaving him before he even realized they had formed. “It will have been taken back to the vault by now,” he said. “No one would notice if we snuck in. And today is the only day for the next decade its powers can be accessed. If Odin can know my future, so should I.”

“If you’re going to look into the Godseye Mirror,” she replied, “you need someone to channel magic into it.”

“If Karnilla can, so can you.”

“Who says I’m helping?”

“Oh.” He felt himself go red. “I thought that—”

“Calm down, of course I’m helping.” She dug her elbow into his side. “You don’t think I’d let you sneak off into a forbidden wing of the palace to use dangerous magic by yourself, do you? That’s what I live for.”

He could feel his heart racing but tried not to betray it on his face. Amora didn’t like fear. She said she didn’t have time for it. He hadn’t even considered that he could look in the Godseye Mirror until he sat across from her. Perhaps because he wouldn’t be able to do it without her—whoever looked into the Mirror couldn’t channel magic into it as well. The Mirror was guarded. It was protected. It was only for the eyes of the king.

But he had also never thought about turning the flowers to dragons or painting his nails black or learning how to shift his form until Amora came along.

She was staring at him, her face absent of any of its usual mocking mirth. “Do you really want to know?”

He swallowed, the word stuck in his throat. “Yes.”

“Then let’s find out.” He started to stand, but she grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “One more thing.” Suddenly he was looking down at her, at the spot her hand wrapped around his. Her nails were green, his were black. He liked the way they looked together, like the scales of a serpent. He liked the way her fingers felt against his skin, the way his hand felt in hers. But all at once, he worried that she could feel at his pulse point the way his heart beat faster when she touched him. She was staring down, and he was sure she sensed the flush running across his skin and was about to say something about it.

But then she asked, “Are those my boots?”

“Oh. Um...” They both stared at his boots. “I saw you wearing them yesterday and thought they looked nice.”

Amora let out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, if you’re going to be looting someone’s wardrobe, I’m glad it’s mine. It’s like this entire city never discovered tailoring. All your draping and cloaks and swaths; you might as well be swaddling yourselves in window dressings.”

“Well, not everyone can pull off tight-fitting clothes,” Loki said. “We aren’t all blessed with a figure like yours.”

He wasn’t sure if he imagined it or if her cheeks colored a little when he said that. If they did, she covered it up with a sly half smile and a wink that sent him blushing. “I am rather divine, aren’t I?”