“Flowers blossom most thoroughly when given time, affection, and kindness. This is, I suspect, true for most things in life.”
—Runes for Botanical Remedies
Three Weeks Later
Loki was already leaning against the outer door of Valaskjálf when I arrived, looking far too excited for the matter at hand. In contrast, I looked exactly the way I felt: sleep deprived and harried. Day 21 had arrived. It was time to prove myself worthy to Odin, sink or swim.
“I told you not to come.” I barely looked at Loki as I passed through the doorway. My stomach was already doing flips, and I didn’t need him making it any worse.
Loki slipped up behind me, matching my pace. “I know, but that would be rude. I couldn’t just let you walk in there alone, could I?”
“You really could have.” I rounded a corner, heading for Gladsheim, my heart beating out of my chest. The doors were right there. I was ready.
Wasn’t I?
A hand wrapped around my wrist and Loki pulled me to a stop. “Are you alright?”
I shook my head, blinking back the tears welling in my eyes. The panic was setting in. I couldn’t slow my breathing. “We’ve done nothing but practise for three weeks, and it’s not going to be enough. It’s just like every other time, and then what? What else can I possibly do to change his mind? I’ve tried everything.”
And it really felt like I had. Loki and I had spent nearly every waking hour together, pouring over books in my study, practicing rune sequences, making failed attempts at shapeshifting. 21 days wasn’t enough to learn everything he could offer, let alone master it, and it didn’t matter that we’d sat shoulder to shoulder day after day, night after night. It wasn’t going to be enough.
“Don’t think like that.” The mirth dropped from Loki’s face. “You deserve this.”
“Does that matter?” A tear threatened to spill over, and I wiped it away with a finger before he could see. “It never has.”
“Sigyn.” Loki put his hands on either side of my face, pushing some of the stray hairs away from my eyes. I drew in a breath. I’d gotten used to the way he could touch people so casually, like touching people meant nothing, but this was so much more personal. “Look at me. Pay attention. I know what I said about Odin never bending to anyone, but I was wrong. You’re going to prove me wrong. You are better than him, and me, and everyone else in this city. You’re going to take all those smarts and that stubborn spirit and you’re going to make your father give you that title. Do you understand me?”
I swallowed hard and took a deep, centring breath. Then another. Pushed the fear down. “Yes. That’s what I’ll do. Because you’re all wrong.”
A slight grin slid back onto his lips as I slipped out of his grip and turned towards the doors of Gladsheim. As I reached for the handle to push the door open, I looked back. Loki had propped himself up against the wall and pulled a book from somewhere. He looked up.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded towards the doors, then went back to his book.
I pushed open the heavy door and slid inside. Odin was already in his chair, thumbing through a stack of papers. Frigg sat at his side, staring into the distance. The rest of the chairs were empty. A handful of guards stood around the room, their eyes on me. My body started to hum with worry again.
No.
Loki was wrong. Odin was wrong. This was mine to take.
I strode forward, telling myself that I was more confident than I really was, and stopped in front of the dais.
“Good morning, Father.”
Odin looked down at me, and after a long moment, he set the pile of papers on the floor next to his chair. “You’re ready to show us all your marvellous new tricks?”
“I’ve learned a lot. I think you’ll be surprised.” A voice in the back of my head begged me to walk away, but I drowned it out. “I’ve done good work.”
“Right.” He slumped down into the seat and propped his head in his hand. All the finery of his furs and embroidered clothes did nothing to hide the fact that he already seemed bored.
I looked to Frigg, hoping for a warmer reception, but that was a lost cause. She had yet to register that I was even in the room. Aside from being Odin’s true wife, the Goddess of Marriage, and the mother of Hod and Baldur, she could also see the future. Her mind was somewhere else, watching another time and place. All that was left was a frigid, blonde shell in an icy blue gown, a cold attempt at a stepmother.
When no one said anything, I looked back at Odin. “I’m ready to start.”
“Well, go ahead.”
I pursed my lips and looked around, then back at him. “Will someone be attacking me, or do you have some other test in mind?”
Odin shifted in his seat, one ankle coming to rest on his other knee. “It won’t be necessary. Just demonstrate what you’ve learned.”
“Won’t that be…anticlimactic?” Some of the things I’d learned from Loki weren’t all that obvious to the naked eye. Better reflexes, the ability to read people’s actions rather than their words, using a second energy source. These things needed to be proven.
“If you’re not ready—”
I didn’t let him finish the sentence. I’d been storing energy since the moment I walked in the room. With a single string of runes, I called up a burst of lavender flame on the stairs in front of him. Its heat sprang out in all directions, its tips reaching skyward. I let it sit for a moment, crackling and dangerous, then reached out, pushing my hands together in the empty air. The fire shrunk until it sparked out completely, leaving a wisp of smoke in its wake. Summoning up another burst of flame in my palm, I tossed it from hand to hand. I lobbed it into the air and snuffed it out again.
I took a deep breath and let a long string of runes slip from my tongue. The air crackled as static raced down my outstretched arm, pooling in my hand. The bouncing, living light writhed in my cupped hands, and I stretched it into a spear. I pulled back my arm to launch it across the hall—
“Is that all you’ve learned? Some flashy tricks to keep the crowds entertained?”
My heart dropped from my chest so quickly that the lightning snapped and died in my palms. I stood there, slack jawed, unable to form a word. I’d barely gotten started, and it was already over.
“This is the trouble with learning from Loki; he’s all show and no substance.” Odin yawned. “How will this help you when you’re at the negotiation table with emissaries, vying for a piece of land? What good will it do when you’re working to broker peace between two cities?”
I attempted to brush the shock from my face. “I spent five years studying under Forseti for that, learning the laws and rites of each realm. I spent months with historians to learn Elven etiquette and tradition. When I told you about that, you told me I needed to learn to defend myself.” I pressed my face into my hands, holding back a scream. “I’ve forgotten more things than most of the other gods have ever known. When will you make up your mind?”
Odin leaned forward in the chair, glaring down with that one eye, a scowl under his grey-streaked beard. His pet ravens rustled and squawked from the back of the throne. “I’m waiting for you to show me something worth rewarding, and I haven’t seen it yet, not in the least. Give up on this maddening chase; I’ll tell you when you’re ready.”
“I worked for this! I can’t just give up!” I pressed my hand into my chest, emotion boiling over. “You expect me to settle for scraps like a dog while the rest are handed everything they’ll ever need! I want their respect! I want a place, a meaning. Why are you keeping me from it?”
He took a deep breath, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. “You. Aren’t. Ready.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. The tears were welling in my eyes, and if I cried it would only make me look weak. “Fine. What now? You’ll exile Loki back to the woods, and I’ll get to go back to begging others to teach me things? Because this was all for nothing?”
Odin was about to speak, but Frigg reached out, setting her hand on her husband’s knee. He stopped and looked at her. She nodded, cool and collected, then looked down at me. “No.” Even her voice was like ice. “You’ve learned something from Loki, as the arrangement stipulated. He’s caused no real trouble since his return, and there are still things Asgard will gain from him. Things we need. He stays.”
I squinted at her, confused. Frigg didn’t often overrule Odin, but we’d all seen it before. She knew things the rest of us didn’t, and though Odin wasn’t accustomed to bowing to the will of anyone else, he always listened to his wife.
“Is nothing ever straightforward with either of you?” I snapped. “Am I supposed to keep working with him, or should I go back to learning Dwarven table manners?”
“The direction of your life depends solely on you, Sigyn,” Frigg said, her voice as smooth as glass. “Each choice you make weaves a stitch into your fate, and the Nornir watch you, as they watch us all. Choose wisely.”
I stared at her, wondering if her cryptic bullshit only made sense to her, or if I was the one left out of the joke.
Odin slapped his hand on the chair and stood. “There are other things I need to attend to. Collect yourself before you leave.” Frigg rose as well, though with more grace, and the two of them started down the stairs and out the doors, leaving me standing in the empty hall.
I reached up to touch my face. The tears had spilled over. Ymir’s breath. I was so furious I hadn’t even noticed.
Everything grew so quiet that I could hear my own breath, feel the race of my heart under my skin. I made my way up the dais, one step at a time, approaching the closest chair. The metal was cool under my fingertips. I slid them along its arm, feeling the imperfect gold plating, each groove and knot and scratch from some part of Asgard’s history.
It was suddenly very clear to me that I would never be that god. They had been right. Odin had already decided who I was, and I had spent decades beating my head against a wall. For nothing. It would never be me sitting there, helping to shape the realms and fight back the tides of Ragnarok.
I was doomed to stand at the bottom of the stairs and look up at my betters.
A sob took my breath away. I bent my face into my hands and cried. Every useless night spent studying, every sacrifice, every wasted effort. I couldn’t remember ever really losing hope before, because I had always felt like it was coming. Someday.
This felt like never.
The echo of boots on stone pulled me back to the world. I turned away from the door, wiping my face in my sleeve. The last thing I needed was to be seen snivelling in the shadows.
“Well? How did it go?” Loki came bounding up the stairs, a lilt in his voice. I didn’t answer, didn’t turn toward him. I felt him approach, stepping in front of me. “Did he—oh. I guess not.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and I finally looked up at him. There was concern etched all over his face. My lip started to quiver. He let out a long sigh and pulled me against his chest.
Perhaps it was just the kindness of the gesture, or perhaps it was because it came from him, someone who had no reason to care what happened to me. Whatever it was, I cried the bitterest, loudest tears I’d ever cried. I pressed my face into his chest, soaking his tunic, a floodgate of misery and self-pity. He held me, one hand lost in my hair, the other around my back, as if he might shield me from the world. It had been so long since I’d taken comfort in someone else like that, I thought I might melt into him and never come back.
When I could breathe again, he looked down at me with the softest smile. “I want to show you something.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, no doubt smearing black kohl and tears across the entirety of my face. His tunic was a mess. “What is it?”
“Something your father doesn’t want you to see. Will you come with me?”
I sniffed and nodded. It could hardly be worse than this.
He released me from his grip and led me down the stairs, out of Gladsheim. The moment we were outside the doors, he stopped and looked around. There was no one in sight. “Alright now, as quick as you can, but keep quiet.” He took off running, light footed and sure, and I had to hold up my skirts to keep up with him.
He wound us through corridors and around corners. We were getting dangerously close to Odin’s chambers. He couldn’t possibly be planning to break into them, could he? But then he took the wrong turn. He took the corridor to Hlidskjalf.
I fell in beside him. “You can’t be serious. No one’s ever broken into Odin’s tower.”
“You only think that because no one’s ever caught me.” He stopped in front of Hlidskjalf’s door. It was barely an impression in the wall, its edges flush with the stone. There was no handle, no lock to pick.
His lips started moving in long strings of runes that I couldn’t catch. The air stopped making sense in front of my eyes, and I was forced to look away, blinking the blur from my vision.
When I looked up again, I startled backward, nearly hitting the wall behind me. Odin stood there, as large and overbearing as always. But the grin under his beard was out of place, too sly and playful to be his.
“What has one eye and no sense of humour?” His voice was a growl, the same as Odin’s, but the light, carefree movements belonged to Loki. “Your father.” He laughed at his own joke and pressed his hand flat against the door. Something behind it hissed and groaned, and the door moved, sliding back and away, letting me peek inside for the very first time.
It was a plain grey room, a cylinder big enough for three to stand comfortably and not an inch more. No window, no stairs, nothing.
“Honestly, I’d expected more from a secret tower.” I stepped in and turned around, trying to see if I’d missed anything. I hadn’t. When I turned back to the door, the shape of Odin had sloughed off, and Loki was himself once again.
He stepped in behind me and pointed upward. “Look.”
The tower stretched up further than I could see. There was no visible way to get there, though there was clearly a platform overhead.
“Last time I used my flying boots, but with them so tragically lost, perhaps you could use the air to push us upward…”
Right. That would work. It could get me in a lot of trouble, but what did that matter now? I was never getting a title, and here was Loki, acting like I was capable of floating us into the sky. And all I wanted was for once, one single time, for someone to believe in me.
I strung runes together, choosing them carefully, repeating them over and over. After a moment, the air around us began to swirl, batting our clothes and hair. I pushed down with my hands, and the movement concentrated the force toward our feet. Gradually, we rose from the ground.
It was a slow process, getting all the way up there. Loki didn’t say a word, quietly watching the ground move further away, knowing that any break in my concentration would mean a deadly fall for us both. My mouth was parched and my tongue tied by the time we reached the top. But the view was more than worth the effort.
The room at the top was small, plated in silver and gold. There were no walls, only curling iron bars to hold visitors inside. The bars held up a tiny roof, protecting two ornate, plush seats. Everything else was open air.
Hlidskjalf was Odin’s private tower, one of the ways he kept his eye on the realms. His wife could see the future, and his son Heimdall could see leagues into the distance, and his ravens brought him news from everywhere. It was an obsession of his, knowing everything. Like he was worried that one day he would miss something and that it would be the last straw that hurdled us towards Ragnarok.
But the view.
The realms stretched out around us for miles. Far in the distance was the white walled city of Vanaheim, built into the side of a cliff and bordered by waterfalls. In the other direction were the icy mountains at the far edge of Jotunheim, and behind us was the magnificent blue of the sea. We were so high that even Yggdrasil’s branches seemed to be within reach.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” I walked to the edge of the room and placed my hands on the swirling steel bars, staring over the edge toward Jotunheim. As I watched, the top of one of the far-off mountain peaks crumbled, raining snow down the steep slope.
Loki came to stand beside me. “It’s not a title, but it’s what I can give you.”
“It’s amazing. Thank you.” I took a deep breath, watching him from the corner of my eye. “Frigg said you could stay in Asgard. What will you do?”
Loki gave the most exasperated, exaggerated sigh I’d ever heard, then tossed himself down onto one of the two seats, a place only the Allfather and his wife would have ever sat. Legs slung over one arm, slouching into the cushions, it felt vaguely disrespectful. “I’ve got all these things now. The books and the bags and all that. It would be a terrible inconvenience to bring them back to my shack in the woods. The gold wouldn’t even match the rot.”
“You poor thing. We can’t have that.” I pushed down the doubt and sat down in the other chair. It took effort to appear as nonchalant as he was. I wiggled, trying not to feel stiff and disobedient, and laid back with my legs strung out next to his.
“Sigyn, you look like you’re going to die of stress. Relax.” He kicked my boot playfully, then shifted one leg on top of mine, tangling us up.
I sighed and demanded the tension leave my body. Easier said than done, but his company helped. “So, you’ll stay then?”
Loki smirked. “You’ve clearly got more to learn. What choice do I have?”