Denouement Beauty {Pure Illusion Series: Book 6}

Epilogue

Love is not something you have but something you earn. You earn it by caring for one another above all else. You work through hardships with one another and lean on one another in times of need. They are your everything, the only thing that makes you smile and get through the day. But what do you do when the other half of your soul leaves you behind?

You shatter into a thousand pieces. 

And so the story of Loki and Sigyn was such.

He never intended on falling in love with the traitor of Asgard across from his cell. He had never thought of the young girl that had told the men to hold their tongues or that had defied him would one day be his bride.

She had never thought she would have fallen in love with damned Prince of Asgard. Never had she imagined that she would have made a life with the man that had once sworn to end hers. Everything she had feared, she came to love and cherish...

~

"Son of Laufey, knowing this, what do you choose?"

Loki looked to the figure of the young blonde maiden from Vanaheim. She was restless in her sleep, her eyes twitching as she tried to sleep in vain. The shimmer of the cell wall blurred his vision a little, the dim lights not helping much either. It had only been hours since she had confessed to a crime she did not commit on his behalf; she had saved her life, and for what?

He had been part of the reason for the riot in the prison; he could not deny that. And yet? She had spoken out, condemning herself for something he should be paying the price for. No one, not even his own family, had ever sacrificed so much before. She hardly knew him, but she thought he mattered. She was... different than any other woman he had met. The way she could see his insecurities and pull him apart in a few words as if they were nothing; to be honest, she scared him. 

"Give me the gift for healing her mind - I care not the consequences. She in no doubt saved my life, I owe her a debt I wish to repay."

The god nodded, giving him a warning to head. "Know this Prince of Asgard: the cost of this deal is that the Lady Sigyn shall become worth far more than any throne you desire. She is something you would risk everything for to save; this is no simple deal."

"I highly doubt that," Loki muttered. His eyes looked to Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld; they were the Norns of Asgard. He wasn't entirely sure why they had visited, but 'the fate of Nine Realms' depended on this moment - a moment in which they wished for him to save the maiden form Vanahiem's life. "So be it, grant me the deal."

The god's eyes closed and the Norns - invisible to all and any within the cells and walls of the palace - blessed him with the ability to heal minds. They hadn't truly explained all that they had shown him, but the glimpses of his future were... intriguing to him; it looked far better than the life he would continue to have in the dungeons of Asgard.

Almost as suddenly as they had appeared, they vanished. His vision shifted to the blonde maiden, still sleeping on the floor.  She stirred, glancing across the way to his cell. He could see the puzzling features flash across her face, as if trying to decipher what he was up to; she had hardly slept at all that evening. He murmured another spell under his breath, pulling her back to sleep as he had when he had been speaking with the Norns in his cell. She would need her rest, as would he, for what was to come. There had to be a way he could protect her, even within this cell. His green eyes flickered to body, seeing her blue eyes flutter closed as his mind became entangled with hers with each passing minute that he pried into her deepest and most sacred hopes, dreams, and nightmares. 

Elsewhere, Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld looked on - sitting outside of time and space as the Prince, soon-to-be-King, of Asgard, paced his cell.

"Have we made the right choice?" One of the three asked.

"Look upon his future to see what she means to him; he cares what happens to her even now while trapped in his cell across from her this very hour. This... this immature Prince knows not what he truly wants. The man he becomes is not measured by this moment in time,"

One of the Norns turned, a smile on one of their faces as they motioned for the others to look, letting their gazes falling to a Loki and Sigyn in the distant future, each looking upon one another in love and understanding.

"It was all a pure illusion. He saw the darkness in her beauty. She saw the beauty in his darkness."

And so was the denouement of Loki and Sigyn's story.

Or perhaps, it was simply the dawn of a new beginning...