Lower Your Eyes (A Loki Romance Fanfic)

Chapter Twenty-Three: A Promise, Once Given

The cathedral was large—overwhelmingly large—as we strode inside, our hoods pulled up. Dim sconces cast a pale light on the row as we ascended toward the altar, clearly well past usual hours. A single priest was busy at work dousing the candles and cleaning the statues of the gods laid out for worship. He didn't hear our padded footsteps on the carpet as we approached him from behind, my hand firmly in Loki's.

"Excuse me," Loki muttered, his voice echoing against the tall windows and walls.

The priest turned abruptly and stuttered a bit at the sight of us. "Y-Your highness," he said. "What are you doing here?" He shook his head. "I mean—is there something I can help you with?" By the way he glanced at me next, I had to wonder whether he really hadn't guessed immediately what we were there for.

"Yes, there is," Loki said. "We would like you to marry us tonight."

His eyes widened. "Marry? Tonight?" Nothing but a nod in turn from Loki. "But the kingdom, and your father—"

"My father has no concern over the exact date of my marriage, as there will be a ceremony dedicated to the kingdom," he said. "If you do not comply, we will find someone who will."

"Oh no." The priest shook his head. "No, I will happily do so."

As he set off making the arrangements, I thought about what Loki had said to me outside. That tonight was more symbolic than literal, that this was the first decision toward a life I'd chosen for myself. Where no one could tell me what I should be or with whom I should be, where I ought to live my life and all the things I should do with it.

"Are you alright?" Loki murmured, candlelight falling on his features.

I looked at him. "I'm not sure."

"What's wrong?"

The sense of being an imposter was the first to rise, but all my memories combined of the efforts Frigga, Loki and Thor had put forth to dispel it rose even quicker. "I just wonder if there might be consequences to this that we haven't foreseen," I said. "Something to do with Odin, or the nine realms, or the combining of two royal bloodlines..."

Something flashed across Loki's eyes, too quickly for me to read it. "If I were an ordinary man, would you think twice of this?"

I considered that a moment. "I suppose not."

"And does this binding act not mean that we will embark on all future challenges together?"

"I want it to mean that..."

"But?"

"But...nothing," I murmured. "Nothing, I suppose."

Loki was quiet a moment. "If it helps, I'm also far more nervous than I expected to be."

"You are?" I gaped. "Why?"

He rolled his eyes. "You did not know me before. Perhaps you haven't ascertained this about me yet, but of all the people living on Asgard—even more, in all the nine realms—I thought I'd be the last person in all of Yggdrasil to ever be married."

"Why?"

"I had never thought twice of it," he said. "When you envision your future, there are certain parameters that come to mind. Marriage had never been one of them for me—ambition, the search for knowledge, power...those were easy to picture. But matrimony?" Loki squeezed my hand a little, but I couldn't tell if it was intentional or a nervous jitter. "Never."

"So...what changed?" I asked. "Why did you ask this of me?"

Loki's gaze trailed up the long pillars of the cathedral, up to the candlelit engravings dancing above our heads. "Because there's only one of you, and it's taken you this long to walk into my life," he said. "I've had far too many moments where I thought you were lost to me forever, where I was forced to consider all the things I thought I'd never get to do with you, which started small, but they gradually grew larger. No one was more surprised than I was when this came up."