of shadows in darkness that i used to own

iv. aqua regia

Finding the young girl proved to be a simple task for Loki.

She resided with her mother in a tucked-away hut under a grove of leafless trees, a place where Loki had never thought to venture. Their living space favored comfort over splendor. A single ragged fur tossed on a single tiny bed; walls unmarked and unadorned. Unremarkable.

The child Sif slept noiselessly beside her mother. She lay flat upon her back, her small hands balled into pitiful fists. (Perpetual even in sleep.)

She thinks herself fierce even now. Loki grimaced; he stepped back thrice, carefully missing the shaggy bed of straw clumped on the cold stone floor.

A silver dagger glittered in his hand, freshly sharpened. Alive with his purpose.

The coveted hair, golden and beautiful, lay splayed before his eyes. Flowing and arrow-straight, it seemed to writhe—like serpents, like tongues, a flurry of sun-colored flame.

The girl was unworthy of that hair.

Like so many treasures he hoarded in secret, this was no different. Those yellow locks were a prize to be won. A splendid token purloined from battle; a goblet of gold stolen from beneath the bloodred mouth of a king. Loki would claim it for his own.

The dagger whistled in the air, a flash. (Once, twice, a hundred times.) Resistance from the cells. Magicked by his hand, Sif slept. Loki shivered. His pulse could beat a hole in him.

The sheet of gold loosened, freed, into his hand. The strands slipped between his fingers like stars, like rain. Drenching his fingers, choking his heart with a feeling he too intimately understands.

(Envy.)

It was light that conjured her beauty, the gold of her hair. Only to remove her light, and Loki would know peace. His heart raced loud enough to ruin him, but he did not stop the motion of his hand as it brushed the child's scalp.

When the shadows had reached Sif's hair, he was already gone.

-   x   -

The world of dreaming is soaked in light—white fine-streaming powder that hails from the heavens to shine on the weight of his sins. Loki has ever made trouble here. In the all-flooding light, gold silk strands give way to black that fall about the young Sif's face. Loki watches as a weft is crushed gently, alluringly, by glittering teeth.

He moves to touch it, the black hair so unlike his brother's, his father's, all of Asgard's. It flutters just beyond his reach, tangled like branches in a flood. A treasure, lying just beyond the reach of his thieving fingers.

The dream-Sif taunts him, a devilish disposition framed in fog. Felled bits of hair brush his ribs; her nails pierce his scalp. It is tortuous, intended to humiliate, to instigate his fury and leave him to howl like a spoiled child. The child he was. His restraints are solid and infuriating, cutting into his wrists like frost, trapping the lips that would claim her, maim her, rend the delicate, evermore.

The light spills from his head, the antechamber of his desire. There would be no greater pleasure than to kill her, to ravish, to force the repent of her arrogance. To take her as his greatest trophy, this woman who lingers—refracted in light, reflected in sound.

She is light.

When Loki awakens he is hard, achingly and wantonly so. His breath comes in short, labored gasps, straining behind the confines of the muzzle.