Krystal

24

Three servant girls come to take me to the bathing room this time. The guards aren't permitted to escort me anywhere after last night, which I'm happy about.

Once I'm down in the water, I feel that much better, like I'm finally able cleanse away all the worries and sin from my soul. I allow myself to float on the surface of the water in a moment of absolute peace and clarity.

I wanted nothing more than to share myself fully with someone that I loved and be able to move on with my life, but until the witch was dead I couldn't do that.

"Mind if I join you?" Loki's voice comes from the doorway.

"What are you doing here?"

"The servant girls owed me a favour" he smiles.

"Slept with all of them have you?"

"We hardly did much sleeping, my dear".

"Come in then I suppose".

Once he's in the water, I feel the urge to tell him everything, to let him know what had led me here to Asgard in search of revenge even though I know I shouldn't.

"Are you still trying to figure me out, Mr Mischief?"

"Without my collar on, all I have do is touch you now and I could know everything".

"Would you really want to?"

"I would much prefer it if you were to tell me yourself".

That was all the invitation I needed to finally open up the floodgates of my history.

"I wanted a baby. Me and my husband were married for three years and we'd been trying for two of those years. Mortal doctors said there was no physical reason why we couldn't have a baby together. I thought it must've been my fault because I'm a witch and I knew my mother had struggled to conceive me".

To my relief, he doesn't say anything, he just lets me keep talking.

"I went to someone I thought I could trust, told her my situation and she agreed to help me".

"The witch?"

"Yes. She made me a potion that she swore had worked for other witches with the same issue, so I blindly took it on good faith".

"What happened?"

"I drank it and went home to make love to my husband believing that would be the night I finally got pregnant. Just before we fell asleep, I remember him telling me how much he loved me, and I told him the same".

That's when the tears I'd been holding back sting my eyes.

"When I woke up the next morning, he was still laying next to me in our bed and. He was cold and not breathing. I didn't know what to do, so I called the witch thinking she might be able to bring him back somehow using magic. When she got there and saw me cradling his dead body in my arms, she....she just laughed".

He remains silent and allows me to compose myself as all the horrible memories I had kept to myself come back.

"She'd known him before I met him and blamed me for his lack of interest in her. She always did that with every man she ever chased. The truth was, she was just obsessed with what she couldn't have".

"How did you get the scar, the brand?"

"After she finished laughing and giving me a big speech about how his death was all my fault, I blacked out. When I woke up on a table in her house, the brand was already there".

"What does it do?"

"It makes me unable to ever bare a child of my own".

"Was your husband's death also a part of the curse?"

"Yes. Even now, if a man ever declares his love for me and I do the same, he dies".

"That is why you cannot give your heart?"

"I don't want to hurt anyone, that's why I behave the way I do towards men. No emotional involvement, no risk".

"What if Thor were to declare his feelings for you?"

"I would've compelled him to forget them. I've had to do that sometimes over the years".

"So this witch was envious of you because you could have had any man that she wanted?"

"Essentially, but my husband was the only man I'd ever noticed or been in love with. She never even told me about her feelings towards him until the day he died".

"Why curse you to be unable to have a child?"

"She said it was a kindness. That I'd never know the cruelty of what it is to be replaced by someone younger in the eyes of another".

"Why would she believe that?"

"Because it's what she believed happened to her on the day I was born. The witch I've been searching for all these years, the one I came here to kill, she's my mother".