Fix You (Loki Romance)

Chapter 32

Three years later

He stepped into the purple room, looking around with a smile. Ebony had persuaded her friends to visit for a week and they'd been working for days on Kenna's new room. She moved from the nursery and had been staying in a room beside theirs for a few years now. But Ebony had found unused chambers just down the hall that would give Kenna all the space she needed for her constantly growing pile of books and collections. Seeing as her formation energy was purple, they had decided her royal colors would be purple and gold. He looked around at the neatly arranged toys and books and the small desk set up in a corner. His eyes traveled to the back of the room where a small fort of ice stood. The floor over there was stone whereas the rest was carpet. She kept a fort up now for whenever she wanted to be alone.

Ebony had been planning to take her to Midgard for her seventh birthday today but after going out to play with some new friends, Kenna had quietly decided she wanted to stay home. She had retreated to her room. Too many people and too many things at once often tired her out so they had thought little of it.

But it was nearing dinner time and she had yet to come out. He knelt and bent his head to see into the shadowy back of the structure and found himself staring into a pair of green eyes. "Hello, love."

His daughter stared at him over the top of her book. He glanced down at the cover and saw it was a book meant for her age- surprisingly. She'd progressed in her learning beyond belief, having an insatiable appetite for new things. He loved that about her; that she never stopped learning or observing but she rarely asked questions. She preferred to find out on her own and he loved the satisfaction on her face when she ran to him and told him all she'd found out.

"I thought you didn't like children's books. They're too easy."

"It's somewhat interesting."

He looked over at the carefully placed dictionary and book of legends, abandoned for the sake of the children's one. "Come out for a moment will you?"

She grumbled and put her book down, crawling out to sit in his lap on the carpet. Frowning, he brushed an angry red scrape on her cheek.

"What happened here? Training?" Looking down, he noted similar scrapes on her hands. He wondered if the "friends" she'd played with this morning had been the cause or if she had trained with Sif this morning without his knowing.

After being pushed around by other palace children, Kenna had had enough. Sif had begun training her in the same way she had trained Ebony. Kenna brushed his hand away and huffed.

"They said they'd let me play Seek. And then my partner said we could hide in the kitchen but she pushed me in the freezer and locked me in. She said I should go back where I belong. I hit a patch of ice when I fell."

"Ah. Who was this?"

She shook her head. "Doesn't matter." Pressing the pads of his fingers to the scrape, he chilled it. She pulled away.

"It's fine." She snapped.

Loki sighed. He knew what it was like. To be teased, tricked and hurt. He had hoped Kenna would be spared that but the Asgardian opinion of Jotuns hadn't changed. Hoping to make a difference, Loki had ventured out in his Jotun form once, with Kenna when she was two years old. The glares had bored heavily into his back. People whispered. A man even dared to throw stones.

Loki had furiously demanded he be punished for his insolence but Odin had merely waved the problem away. "You went out in such a manner, knowing how they feel. What did you expect?" 

They would always be outcasts, left on the edge of favor and kept there only by the people's love for Ebony.

"I punched her anyway when I got out." Kenna grumbled.