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 cut Sif's cheek; the glare of metal in crystal, the wicked emerald of Loki's wanton eyes.

Sif is ever-impatient; her breeches quickly leave her body, tribute again to shadows. She hasn't the patience to fiddle with his trousers, instead slicing the fabric as if to wound it; the cloth squeaks in protest, threads snapping to the hollow point of her blade. Loki strives against his restraints.

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

She bunches his tunic in her fingers, holds it to his 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 tip of her tongue. The flesh blooms blue; it beats her name. She grabs and yanks his grease-slicked 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. 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 nearly ripostes into the fetter, but words coil like snakes inside his throat. Sunken, vacant, coated in saliva-slick; pitched and fallen flat, along with his screams.

"Coward," she whispers, because she knows that she is—that they both are. Her body bends like a saber. She drips.

Loki knows these sounds, knows intimately the of the way she moves when he's magicking her with his own fingers—he wants to unsee, unhear, but Sif is holy chartered ground, the swell of her hips and salt of her neck and the sting of her fingers inside. The noises she makes as she brings about her ruin.

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

Stone teeth grate Loki's spine. Sif wields an excoriated expression. She leers over him, extending two fingers to the weeping erection that so fruitlessly strains against cloth. Her lips are pulled taut like the string of a bow. Loki's sneer is swallowed by metal.

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

Grasping his play too quickly, Sif shoves herself upward; snatches her clothing from the shadows' hold; dresses; and leaves.

Freshly fed, Loki laughs with abandon—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 gray bird sweeping overhead; the consoling hand of Thor 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, into a 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 rooms, grateful that he cannot see.

Sif doesn't think of Loki, because he is already inside her mind. The stars bear witness to her shame. Beneath the ancient canopy of trees, Sif fingers the cold smooth surface of one of her knives. She does not ponder its likeness to his skin.