of shadows in darkness that i used to own

iii. the offering

As was the first night measured in shadows, the second is measured in light: the slivers of torchfire that slice Sif's cheek; the vitreous glare of metal in crystal; the wicked emerald of Loki's wanton eyes.

Sif is ever-impatient; her breeches quickly leave her body, tithed again to his shadows. She hasn't the patience to fiddle with Loki's trousers, instead rending the fabric as if to wound it; the cloth squeaks in protest, threads sacrificed to the teeth of her blade. Loki strives in vain against his restraints.

"On your knees," Sif grunts; but a tremor taints the haughty voice which Loki knows so intimately. He scrambles and she jerks: molding him gracelessly to her desire, bowing his obstinate head to her whim. As Loki kneels before her, he thinks (not for the first time) that power is so often squandered by gods. The subjugation of lesser beings is something he understands well.

She bunches his prisoner's garb in her fingers, holds collar to neck, as if to hang him to her; then yanks upward past his sternum, dives down to strike with her teeth.

Kneeling to his level, Sif bites a bruise just below Loki's heart with the dagger-point tip of her tongue. The flesh blooms blue; every hush and thump beats her name. She grabs and mercilessly pulls on his unwashed hair. Spots of pain pry Loki's eyelids shut, prick at his neck like a collar of thorns.

She is war.

"What is it, shadow-prince?" She bites, beak to exposed bone, trapping him under that razored edge. Memory, like pelting ice. "Won't you fight back? Surely you will not submit so easily—or is it mortals alone who would incite your hand? The weak and the defenseless?" Sif arches her back, draws her palm along the length of her thigh; her calloused fingertips brush her folds.

Loki means to riposte from behind the fetter, but words coil like snakes in the den of his throat. Sunken, walled-off and fangless, coated in saliva-slick; so pitched and fallen flat, along with his screams.

"Coward," she whispers, and yes—she knows that she is, knows that they both are. Her body bends, a saber in wait. So too, unable to strike.

Loki knows these things, too; knows intimately the of the way that she moves when he's magicking her with his own fingers—he may wish now to unsee, unhear, but these were writ in his membranes many lifetimes ago. Captured in his pages; chaptered in his tomes. And Sif, she is holy chartered ground—the dogma of her hips and the scripture of her neck and the sacrosanct sting of her fingers inside. The movement she makes as she brings about their ruin.

For her to reach climax takes no time at all, and Loki revels in this secret sin. Sif's cheeks glow ruddy—with ire or shame?—beneath the forks of snickering flame.

Stone grates Loki's spine. Sif wields an excoriated expression. She leers over him, extending two fingers to the bone-hard, leaking ridge that so fruitlessly strains against cloth. But what he sees is satisfaction enough. Her lips, pulled taut like the string of a bow. The thousand and one arrows she traps on her tongue.

(From the shadows: she never could hide her face.)

Loki's sneer cannot be swallowed by metal. Grasping his play too quickly, Sif shoves herself upward; snatches her clothing from the shadows' hold; dresses; and leaves.

Sufficiently sated, Loki laughs with abandon—long, long after she is gone.

- x -

She can scarcely remember bringing Loki his food the following day.

Sif scarcely remembers anything at all of that day, save for short flashes—the wolfish grin Volstagg flashes as he swirls his morning mead; the erumpent gray bird sweeping overhead; Thor's consoling hand at the small of her back. A knowing sadness, briefly shared.

She and Thor hadn't spoken when Loki was delivered in chains, and they've not spoken since. Nothing was said of the prodigal prince, or of his plight, or of things past or future. Instead, they spar in heated matches at the break of each new dawn, allowing their blades to bear the weight of their emotions.

Sif's body throbs with latent pain that grows monstrous as the sky shifts dark, bleeding into a black night smattered with stars. They seem to nearly overflow, spilling detritus into the sky.

Her head swims with light: piercing, green, spiking behind the whites of her eyes. She parts ways with Thor, stumbling homeward to her mother and her cramped, simple rooms. Grateful that he cannot see.

Sif need not think of Loki, because he lives already inside her mind. The stars bear witness to her shame. Beneath the ancient treescape, Sif fingers the cold smooth surface of one of her knives. She does not ponder its likeness to his skin.