Enamoured with a Mortal

Chapter Ten

Loki POV

In hindsight, I didn't account for how seeing her in this state would make me feel. There wasn't a word I could find that encompassed everything that built up within me. The anger at how deep the bruises and lacerations that littered her skin was, at the perfect imprint of Mjølnir's handle at her temple, and the singes across her arms from Stark's lasers. The only thing keeping me from lashing out at them were the bruises and cuts on their bodies. Even my brother was still sore. Then there was the sorrow, the guilt. At how thin her frame was, at the raised skin around her wrists and neck, and the burn scars at her temples that still didn't heal fully with one round of healing. At the deep red lines that ran down her arms. Thor was right, I was nowhere near recovered enough for this. Not to heal her and push deep into her memories. Ignoring the hesitant way my brother and Stark stood at the edges of her cell, I took a look around where she was being kept. It was far larger than the cell I was kept in and had more luxuries. Stark had been planning for this eventuality. A recreation of a smaller apartment encased in the glass that restrained most magic within. A system of check pointed doors to stop non-authorised personnel getting through and hidden far beneath the ground level of the compound. Still, I knew the reason I couldn't feel her seiðr wasn't the glass around us, nor was it the cuff that sat on her wrist. That deeper calling, the thing that instinctively drew me towards her, it was gone. But seiðr never disappears, it returns to its original owner or to Asgard and that hadn't happened, I didn't feel a gain in power.

With a sigh, I dragged a chair over to her bedside and took a deep breath before settling in.

"I won't try to wake her... but I'm going to see if I can talk to her."

"Brother if it didn't work on Asgard–"

"She was blocking it. I don't know how, and I don't really know why, but Kaya... my Kaya was there. She spoke to me, she knew me, and she warned me not to come for her. She's still in there and I think she'll talk to me." Even I couldn't keep the uncertainty out of my voice, and I made sure not to look towards my brother for fear of the insecurity I would feel.

"Okay. We'll keep watch in case she wakes." I didn't wait to hear Stark's snarky comment in response, lying my head down on the mattress next to her hand. It didn't take long to lull myself into the right meditative headspace, and I found her mind surprisingly open, but I recognised nothing in it. Usually someone's mind is full of memories, each being always taking differing forms. Kaya's memories usually hung like pictures, perfect fragments of time shining brightly. Some of the memories had always been faded and cracked, but never missing. Not even the frames of the hallway remained. Instead, greying orbs floated across an empty space, fractured moments I couldn't recognise. Just as I reached out for one, I felt a shift in energy behind me, a burst of familiar longing from under my skin reaching out.

"I told you to stay on Asgard, that it was safer that way. You should have heeded my advice, Mischief." I turned to the source of seiðr behind me to find a shift in the space around us. Just as it had every time I'd spoken to her like this, the seiðr around us seemed to hang thickly in the air. It was almost suffocating, but after spending time seeing her and not feeling that warmth, I relished its feel. She stood before me the exact image of the woman I'd rescued, no sense of illusion in the slightest. And yet seiðr clung to her very being just the same.

"Kaya? Why are you still using illusion magic? I thought–"

"You thought I was using illusions to mask my current state, so you didn't worry? I apologise but the reasons were far less altruistic." I looked behind her, noticing the sheen of green light from the shield behind her. Beyond it sat a swirl of red energy, pounding against the barrier. Even here I could sense its hunger, its destructiveness. "You can feel it?"