Chapter 5 — Well. Apparently We've Been Matchmade.
When Loki left the throne room with what he'd asked for, Odin sat for a long time afterward — still, thoughtful, turning the boy's words over in his mind. The boy who, over all these years, had become as much his own as any son of his blood: "I don't want the throne, Father. I only want to be treated accordingly... and to have someone beside me to share the good moments and the bad."
The Allfather ran the phrase through his mind a second time. Then a third. Then he laughed quietly into his thick beard.
He was more relieved than he could easily have said.
The rest of the evening was consumed by the business that had accumulated on his desk — the bureaucratic mountain of parchments and petitions and formal grievances that had become the unglamorous reality of ruling nine worlds in peacetime. It was not what Odin, son of Bor, had imagined when he'd dreamed of kingship. Not remotely. He could still remember, if he reached far enough back, the iron weight of real war — the campaigns fought for the sake of something enormous and necessary, the slow forging of an order across worlds that hadn't wanted to be ordered. He had been a different man then. The statues in the throne room still remembered that version of him.
And when his thoughts traveled far enough back, they always found the same place. The same wound.
His firstborn. His daughter.
Hela had grown up on battlefields, in the company of war and conquest and the particular kind of ferocity that comes from never knowing anything softer. He had made her that way. And when it became clear that she would not — could not — stop, that she would tear through every world she could reach in the name of Asgardian glory, he had made the only choice he could see. He had sealed her away in Helheim, a desolate realm of stone mountains and grey plains that had eventually taken her name, its only occupant becoming its only queen.
That decision had cost both him and Frigga more than anyone would ever fully know. But the alternative had been worse.
He did not intend to make another mistake like that.
Evening arrived quietly. He set down the last of his paperwork and went looking for Frigga, finding her in the small sitting room she'd claimed for herself over the centuries — a warm, private space she'd converted into something cozy and entirely her own, where she kept her reading materials and her craft work and her thoughts. She sat in a cushioned chair by the hearth, her fingers moving through threads that glowed with soft white light. It looked like ordinary knitting, more or less, except for the distinctly Asgardian quality of both the material and the grace with which she handled it.
— You spoke with him? — she asked, without lifting her eyes from her work.
— I did. — Odin settled into the chair beside her, leaned Gungnir against the wall — something he permitted himself only in her presence. — He asked for something I wasn't expecting.
— Oh? — A note of genuine interest moved through her voice.
— He said he didn't want the throne. Didn't want power. He doesn't want a retinue the way Thor has one. He wants — — Odin paused, searching for the right word. — Friends.
Frigga set down her knitting and looked at her husband. In the firelight her eyes were warm in a way that still, after everything, had the power to hold his attention longer than strict decorum required.
— And this surprised you greatly, husband? — The mother of two remarkable boys kept her voice serene, but there was something pointed underneath it.
— I had expected him to ask for recognition. For his efforts to be acknowledged. From a young age Loki pursued that — and then something shifted in him, but — — The King had been about to continue when she interrupted him, gently.
— Our son has already proven everything he needed to prove — to himself, — she answered, without sharpness. Then, with considerably more of it: — He doesn't need your validation, Odin. Loki wants to be seen as something other than "the second prince" or "Thor's younger brother." He wants to be seen as Loki.
For Odin, this landed the way a revelation lands — as though he had been blind in both eyes rather than one, and something had just opened.
— How long have you known this, my queen? — he asked, after a pause.
— Since he was ten. He used to follow Thor and his friends, try to find a way into their conversations. They turned him away politely, and when he realized he was only a burden on his brother's circle, he simply... went to books, and magic, and training instead.
— But why didn't you say something?
— I was waiting for him to speak for himself. And he did — eventually. Our son has become a strong young man who chose his own path. As his mother, it was my place to support that, even when that path was a lonely one.
Odin absorbed this with the quiet discomfort of a man recognizing a failing he can't entirely argue with. He had been consumed by Thor — the heir, the future king, the boy who needed direction and shaping. And Loki had always seemed so self-contained, so capable, so settled in his own interior landscape that it had been easy to assume he needed nothing.
Apparently that assumption had cost something.
— Then I ask for your counsel, my love, — the Allfather said, looking at his wife. — Should I simply give him someone from one of the noble houses?
— Gods, no. — Frigga looked at him with the expression of a woman who has just watched someone propose a truly spectacular mistake. — Have you seen those children? They'll grow into fine warriors, I don't doubt it, but they'll never find common ground with Loki. What he needs is not another Volstagg to laugh at his own jokes and measure everything by the size of his fists.
— Am I correct in assuming, — Odin said, with a narrow smile, — that you already have someone in mind?
— There is a girl from Vanaheim. — Frigga drew the words out with a girlish quality that sat unexpectedly well on a queen. — Her name is Amora.
— Amora? — Odin searched his memory. — Isn't that the one the reports describe as having a temperament that —
— Sharper than Loki's, — Frigga finished, practically singing the words. — Which is precisely why she's the right fit.
— You want to hold a lit torch over a barrel of powder, — the Allfather remarked, finding himself impressed despite everything by the architecture of his wife's thinking. Women.
— I want Loki to have someone who won't look up at him from below, — she said, with a certain slyness, — but rather meet him as an equal. Or perhaps even slightly above. She's already sixteen, and a remarkable young mage for her age.
— And he is fourteen, — Odin calculated, and then a particular understanding arrived with the force of a lightning bolt. — Forgotten Gods. My queen. You don't just want him to have a friend, you want him to — blush?
— I want him to grow, — the queen countered neatly. — Right now Loki keeps himself very tightly contained. He's afraid to show weakness because everyone around him measures things by muscle and battle prowess. Amora won't let him relax either — she'll likely needle him, irritate him, possibly infuriate him — but they both study different aspects of magic, so they'll find a shared language. A real one.
Odin considered his younger son — always composed, always carefully managing every word and gesture — and placed beside that image a girl who, according to rumor, could turn enemies into frogs and had a tongue like a sharpened blade.
— Will she agree? — he said, with a short, dry amusement. — Amora is not a lady-in-waiting from some Asgardian noble house. She has her own ambitions.
— I have already spoken with her. — Frigga returned to her knitting, though her fingers moved slowly, as though she was still organizing her thoughts. — The girl is looking for a position at court. She's tired of being an apprentice — she wants somewhere to apply herself. With Loki, she would have considerably more freedom than she would ever find in Thor's retinue.
— Thor's retinue would not have accepted her in any case, — Odin acknowledged. — She is too unconventional.
— Exactly. And Loki needs exactly that. But there is one difficulty.
— Which is?
Frigga set down her work and met her husband's eye directly.
— I cannot simply appoint her. If I tell our son "here is your companion, I've arranged everything," he will spend the rest of his life believing it was charity. That his mother solved his problems while his blind father looked away — and don't make that face, the truth sometimes requires you to look at it — the important thing is to address the mistake, not flinch from it.
— So what are you proposing? — The Allfather conceded, inwardly, that she was correct, and chose to simply trust her.
— The Norns, — Frigga said.
— The Norns. — Odin very nearly choked on air. — You want to involve the Goddesses of Fate?
— Why not? If their paths are already woven together, the Norns will confirm it. If not, they'll offer another direction, or say it isn't time. I'm not making the decision — fate is.
— You want to transfer responsibility to the Norns, — Odin understood, and shook his head with genuine respect. — That is brilliant.
— I want Loki to receive not an order, and not a favor, but a sign. Something external that tells him this connection has meaning. It will be easier for him to trust it that way — and Amora won't feel like she's been assigned to him out of obligation.
Odin stroked his beard.
— And if the Norns refuse?
— Then we look elsewhere. But I am nearly certain they won't.
— Why?
Frigga smiled and extended her hand, palm open. In the center of it, a thin golden thread shimmered — not a knitting thread, but something woven from pure magic, alive and luminous.
— Because I have already looked, — she said quietly. — Their threads already reach toward each other. They aren't woven together yet, but they are touching. They simply need to meet.
— Alright. — The Allfather exhaled, regarding the gleaming thread. — Send a messenger to the Queen of the Norns in the morning. But I warn you: if they determine that Amora is fated to marry a Dwarf from Nidavellir, I will not intervene.
— You won't need to, — his wife agreed pleasantly, returning to her knitting. — Because by that point Loki will have already worked out how to prevent it himself — if such a thing were ever to happen at all.
They laughed together then — quietly, privately, allowing themselves that luxury only when alone or with family. And the next morning, a golden messenger took flight toward the Well of Urdr, where the fates of all nine worlds are woven.
No one, not even the Ruler of the Nine Worlds, knew what the Norns would answer. But Frigga, watching the messenger disappear into the distance, smiled as though she had already read the ending in her threads.
I didn't usually dream. But that night I did.
I dreamed of Asgard — a place that carried the same name as home but was nothing like it. This Asgard was silent. Perfect. Dead in the particular way that things are dead when they have been arranged rather than lived in.
And in the middle of all that perfection: me.
On the throne. The one I had never wanted, the one I had no birthright to, but in the dream it felt like something that had always been mine. Odin was gone — I didn't remember how, didn't want to. Thor had fallen somewhere in exile, forgotten by everyone he'd once led. And I had finally rewritten the story. Reached every goal I'd supposedly been reaching for.
Reality had become soft as wax in my hands. I shaped it on a whim — when I was hungry, when I was bored, when I wanted the sky to match my mood, gold or green or deep crimson. I made the guards smile even when there was nothing to smile about. They didn't remember other rulers. I had removed that from them — reached into their memories and taken it, taken everything that might have ached.
It was monstrous.
I remembered descending to the throne room — no, not descending, gliding, the way morning mist slides off a lake. The floor was a black mirror, my face staring back up at me from every step. Warriors in gilded armor stood along the columns like statues. Their eyes passed through me. No fear in them. No respect. Nothing at all.
— We welcome you, King Loki, — they said, all in one voice, and that single shared voice was the most terrifying thing in the room.
— Are you bored? — I asked them, smiling at their hollow greeting, and answered for them: — No. You can't be bored, because I took away everything that could have ached. You are perfect now.
I walked the length of the hall trailing my fingers along the cold gold of the columns, and somewhere deep in my mind a thought kept beating like something trapped: I should be happy. I have everything. Power. Recognition. A throne that was never mine by birth but is mine now.
So why did it feel so completely empty?
— It turns out, — I said aloud, loud enough for the dead walls to hear, — that to be king is to rule over no one, and to be a god is to have no one left to pray to you.
The echo took the words and multiplied them into a mocking whisper.
I stopped before the great mirror — the ancient one, the one that remembered Odin. In its surface stood a stranger: tall, horned helm, a cloak that moved even in still air. Beautiful. Commanding. Utterly foreign.
— Where is everyone? — I asked my reflection, and my voice came out strange in the silence. — Where is Thor with his ridiculous hammer? Where is Mother, who always pretended not to notice my tricks? Where is — anyone — who would tell me I was being an idiot? —
The reflection didn't answer. It only smiled back at me with my own smile, and there wasn't a fragment of joy in it.
I don't know how long I stood there. What ended it was sound — a deep, rolling thunder I felt through my spine before it reached my ears. Lightning. Hundreds of them, thousands, tearing through the golden dome like it was paper. Wind screamed through the hall, ripping my illusions from the columns, and beneath them the stone was old, scarred, real.
— Thor, — I said, and saying his name burned my throat.
He came across the Rainbow Bridge, and every step rang like a hammer strike. Mjolnir spun in his hand, peeling away my gilt from the railings, restoring the Bridge's true and living color as he walked.
— Loki! — His voice was thunder, but there was no anger in it. Only pain. — Brother, what have you done?!
I wanted to answer. Wanted to say it was all for him — so he could understand what it felt like to be second, to be invisible, to be the one no one looked at. But the words wouldn't come. My throat was full of all the things I had never said.
Around me the warriors were beginning to collapse, coming back to themselves. The illusion peeled from them like scales, and they looked at me with the horror I had so carefully cut out of them.
— You stole their lives, — Thor said, coming closer. The hammer in his hand glowed like a small sun. — You stole their right to be afraid, to be angry, to love. Why, Loki? What was it worth?
— So you would finally see me. — The words came out on their own.
Thor went still. And in his eyes — those blue, simple, sky-over-Midgard eyes — something appeared that I couldn't stand to look at.
Pity.
— I always saw you, brother.
Mjolnir rose. I didn't move. I just stood and watched the lightning gather in his hand, ready to sweep me away along with this hollow throne. And at the moment when the branching light should have swallowed me —
I woke up.
Hard, like being pulled from deep water. My heart was hammering, my forehead soaked, the sheets cold and clammy against my skin. I sat up in the dark and breathed and tried to remember where I was.
Golden ceiling. Warm light. My window.
Home.
— Gods, — I exhaled, dragging a hand across my face. — What was that.
The dream was too vivid. I could still taste the texture of that power — hollow as a dry husk. Could still see the faces of those warriors, wearing the exact expression I had once feared most and secretly craved.
— That wasn't me, — I said to the room, out loud, because it needed saying. — That was a different Loki. One I will never become.
The self-assurance helped marginally. My fingers still trembled when I reached for the water on the nightstand — noticeable enough that I registered it.
Beside the glass, something rested on the polished surface that hadn't been there when I'd gone to sleep.
A small golden key, catching the faint light and throwing it back in the colors of the Rainbow Bridge — as though the Bifrost itself had been compressed into one tiny piece of metal. Beside it, a slip of parchment folded in half, covered in writing so fine it seemed to weigh nothing:
Don't be late, Prince. Fate does not enjoy waiting.
The fear dissolved.
Of course. Today was the day Father had promised to make good on his word — and I had nearly forgotten entirely because of that nightmare, which was now retreating rapidly, chased off by something sharper and more immediate.
I checked the time. Less than an hour to dawn.
I was out of bed in seconds. I straightened myself with a quick burst of magic, grabbed a clean shirt, trousers, and boots as I went. My hair I decided to leave — it wasn't quite as settled as it could have been, but honestly, fine. For the sake of gravitas I threw on the ceremonial cloak with the green trim that Mother had given me for my last birthday.
At the threshold I caught my reflection in the mirror.
Pale. Eyes not quite done with the dream yet. The ghost of something unresolved still sitting in my expression.
— Just don't be that Loki, — I told the reflection quietly. — Understood? Don't be him.
The reflection, naturally, said nothing. It would have been genuinely alarming if it had.
I walked out into the corridor thinking briefly about how strange that was, and then stopped thinking about it, because the golden key was in my fist and my heart was doing something other than hammering in fear now. It was anticipation, which was entirely better.
The Hall of Mirrors received me in half-darkness. Enormous frames in gilded gold ran the full length of the walls, but instead of reflections, each surface held only a drifting, pale haze. I walked down the center of the room, trying not to clatter my boots, though everything inside me was bubbling with impatience.
This was one of the oldest places in Asgard, rarely used for anything as mundane as ceremonies or banquets. Each mirror here showed not the outward appearance of whoever stood before it, but their essential nature. For some it revealed true intentions. For others, hidden fears. For others still, what they would become if they followed one path rather than another. In ancient times warriors had come here before great campaigns to confirm that their own souls would not betray them. Kings had brought foreign ambassadors and ambassadors of questionable loyalty, because lies, it was said, could not hold their shape in these reflections — they simply dissolved into the mist.
— Well, then, — I murmured at the empty room. — Where?
Silence. I was beginning to seriously consider that Father had played a very elaborate joke on me when the far mirror flared — a soft, gold-warm light, blooming outward from the center. I walked toward it and looked in.
My own reflection stared back. Just me, in an empty hall touched by the first light of the Asgardian morning.
And then I heard footsteps behind me.
In recent years, very few people had managed to simply approach me unannounced. My senses were trained, my awareness sharpened by years of practice. But whoever this was had done it without a sound, without a trace of magical disruption. I turned.
A girl.
She was taller than me — clearly half a head taller — and this single fact made my carefully trained fourteen-year-old body feel abruptly, unhelpfully adolescent. Her hair was pale, nearly golden, and fell loose around a face that the statues in Mother's garden might have considered an unfair standard of comparison. Her skin was light but not Asgardian — something different about it, a faint cool undertone. Vanaheim, perhaps. Her eyes were dark at first glance, but if you looked properly they held a deep violet, like certain rare gemstones from the treasury that I'd spent entirely too long cataloguing in my youth.
She wore a fitted leather corset over a long green tunic, and at her belt hung several leather straps threaded with small pouches — almost certainly for magical materials. Her left wrist carried a thin silver bracelet that pulsed with a low, steady light in the dimness.
Her lips were just barely parted in an expression that was almost a smile, almost an assessment. She looked at me the way you'd look at something that might be an opponent, or might just be an interesting animal.
— Well, hello, — she said, and her voice had a slight rasp to it. — You must be Loki.
I gathered every fragment of royal composure I possessed and deployed it against the impulse to say something immediately foolish.
— And you are apparently the "friend" who was meant to brighten my scholarly existence? — I said, and immediately thought: that was still quite bad.
It had been too long since I'd spoken normally with anyone from the other side of that particular divide. Especially anyone who looked like this.
She stepped closer. I caught a scent — something warm, spiced, cinnamon and honey with a thread of bitterness underneath, the way a good herbal infusion smells before it cools.
— Friend? — Her brows rose in theatrical surprise. Then genuine amusement broke through in her voice, the kind that made me want to find the nearest floor and sink into it. — Sweetheart, I am not your friend. Not yet. As far as I understand it, friendships generally require an introduction — or a fight — or — she paused, and her eyes made a single, unhurried pass from my boots to my face before her smile sharpened into something foxlike — or perhaps you'll come up with something more interesting and impress me instead.
I felt the outer layer of my composure develop a crack. My ears, traitorously, began to heat.
Insufferable.
— I could certainly come up with something, — I said, keeping my voice as level and mildly condescending as I could manage. — But you're from Vanaheim. From what I've heard, they mostly teach you to solve problems with your hands. I wouldn't want my more elaborate schemes to exceed your comprehension.
— Oh, the Prince has teeth. — She laughed, bright and immediate, and there was something so genuinely infectious in it that the corners of my mouth began rising without my authorization. — That's encouraging. I was worried you were going to whimper like the boys from the noble houses who complain that their swords are too heavy. By the way — I'm Amora. Future greatest mage in all Nine Worlds.
— I'm Loki. Most charming God of Mischief in existence. — I stepped into the rhythm of it without thinking. — I'm simply stating a fact.
— And what fact would that be? — she asked, with a tilt of her head.
I stepped forward, closing some of the distance between us, and discovered that up close she was — objectively, verifiably — more striking than she'd been at a distance, which was already unfair. Something pulled at me that I briefly catalogued as suspicious before I could stop myself. Magical enhancement? Some Vanir technique? Surely ordinary beauty couldn't account for quite this degree of—
— That I'll probably spend a considerable amount of time explaining elementary concepts to you — if your magical repertoire is limited to what a low-level enchantress picks up from charm work and glamour, — I said, deploying my best expression of tolerant condescension.
She didn't flinch. Instead she raised her hand, casual and unhurried, and snapped her fingers directly in front of my nose.
A golden spark bit the air.
And my cloak — my ceremonial cloak, Mother's gift, dark green with gold trim — turned pink. Violently, aggressively, magnificently pink, streaked through with orange and covered in small elephants.
— Oh, — she said, blinking with absolute innocence. — I must have confused your aura with a flower bed. Or perhaps not? — She tilted her head, studying my new appearance with what appeared to be genuine aesthetic consideration. — You know, it works for you. Brightens the whole look.
I reached for the cloak, tried to shrug the foreign magic off it, and discovered that it held fast. My own reversal spells did nothing. Instead of wasting energy on a frontal attempt to strip the enchantment, I went still — and started looking.
My fingers traced faint patterns in the air, casting one diagnostic weave after another across the fabric.
The structure was... interesting. She had layered it — illusion overlaid on the actual material of the cloak, and then the whole thing anchored to my personal magical signature. Clever. But fundamentally Vanir-crude beneath the cleverness: the base construction rested on three anchor points, one of which had been tied with visible haste, and a second that was drawing on an incorrectly calculated energy flow. Like someone who had worked fast and hadn't expected anyone to look closely enough to matter.
Amora, watching my stillness and my silence, read them her own way. Her smile widened. Something triumphant lit up in her violet eyes.
— I've simply demonstrated, — she said, folding the victory into her voice like a tailor pressing a seam, — that in magic, what matters isn't strength. It's imagination. And one more thing: don't judge a girl by her surface, especially if you're two years younger than her and apparently can't control your own cloak.
She turned with perfect grace and began walking toward the exit, unhurried, her steps carrying the full weight of someone who considers the match already won. Over her shoulder, without looking back:
— If you'd like your colors restored — come find me. And try not to trip, my Prince. It would be unfortunate if your brother saw you like this.
Her heels rang against the stone, measuring her victory in precise intervals, each footstep another beat of a celebration she'd already started.
Behind her, a calm and unhurried voice said:
— Interesting magic. A pity the enchantment structure contains rather a significant number of flaws.
Amora turned on her heels. Her violet eyes snapped wide open, searching my face for the trick in it. I stood exactly where I'd been, hands clasped behind my back, regarding her with the polite and almost sympathetic interest of someone who has just spotted a small error in an otherwise promising piece of work.
— Bluffing won't remove my enchantment, — she said, and the confidence was still there, but it had acquired a fracture. — Especially not bluffing that clumsy.
She expected deflection. Denial. Some scrambling attempt to save face. Instead I simply tilted my head a degree to one side, held her gaze, and said nothing at all.
For one breath. Two. Three.
Then her smile began, very slowly, to die.
Because my cloak was changing color.
The pink contracted and thinned, retreating like mist burning off at sunrise, the deep emerald green reclaiming the fabric inch by inch. The orange streaks faded. The small elephants evaporated without ceremony before they'd fully materialized. Within seconds I was standing in a perfectly immaculate dark green cloak with gold trim, and not a trace of recent humiliation anywhere on it.
I permitted myself a small, quiet smile. Not triumphant — more the smile of someone who has just reviewed another person's essay and found it promising but in need of revision.
— If I were you, — I said, taking one step forward, — I would check my own clothing.
She frowned, didn't understand, looked down on pure instinct.
The color that flooded her face traveled from her cheekbones all the way to the roots of her pale gold hair. Blazing, in elegant, elaborate lettering, right across the chest of her corset:
Property of Lord Loki.
— What — — The word came out barely formed, carrying shock, indignation, and something else I chose not to name yet.
Her hands flew to the enchantment, feeling for its edges, looking for the seams to pull. She moved quickly and with real force — genuine magical pressure, not decoration. Counter-weave after counter-weave went out. And each one simply stopped when it touched the inscription, guttered, died. The construct held like it had grown there.
— You used my own spell on me, — she said, and now her voice had something different in it — the specific quality of surprise that lives just beside genuine admiration, when someone encounters something they genuinely didn't see coming. She lifted her eyes from her corset and looked at me as though I had just materialized from somewhere unexpected. — How? You saw it once —
— One time, yes, — I said, closing the remaining distance between us slowly, giving her the full span of the moment to understand what had happened.
— That's not possible, — she said, and her voice slipped slightly upward. — You can't replicate a spell from a single viewing! That's — — Her frustration broke through into something that was almost a shout. — And why won't it come off? Answer me!
— Your own thinking is the limitation, — I said, with a sigh of very gentle disappointment, the specific sigh of a tutor whose student has just fallen into an obvious trap. — Because you couldn't, does it follow that no one could? As for your second question — it really is very simple.
A pause. I let it sit. Let her violet eyes stay fixed on mine.
— As I mentioned, — I said at last, very softly, — the structure of your enchantment had several weaknesses. So I made certain improvements before anchoring it. — My voice was quiet, almost kind, which made each word land more precisely. — I wouldn't count on removing it yourself. You'd be better served thinking about how to apologize for your earlier presumption.
She was still. I watched the calculation run across her face — pride, irritation, and something else pulling in the opposite direction. She was not used to this position. That much was clear. She was used to being the sharpest thing in the room, used to people maintaining a respectful distance, and she had encountered something she hadn't calculated for, and it was making her furious and fascinated in almost equal measure.
— You, — she began, and stopped. Reconsidered.
I waited with genuine patience while she worked through it. She was watching me and I was watching her, and then she changed tactics with the decisive speed of someone who knows when a frontal approach isn't working.
Her expression shifted. The lightning went out of her violet eyes and something slow and deep replaced it, the kind of depth that had no obvious bottom. She took a step toward me, and in that single step there was something liquid, feline, unhurried — and my heart added an unauthorized extra beat before I could address the matter.
— My Prince, — she said, and her voice had dropped an entire register, acquiring something warm and low and fundamentally unfair. She lowered her lashes slowly — not performed, not mannered, just precise — and the technique of it was so perfectly executed that any man, regardless of age, should by rights have lost his footing. — I humbly beg your forgiveness for my inappropriate behavior.
I noted, in the calm part of my mind that was still functioning as intended, that one could have any quantity of reservations about Amora's magical craftsmanship, but her beauty and her command of enchantment-by-other-means were not in the same category. This girl knew how to hit without a single spell, and the hit landed with full force.
— That is considerably better, — I said gently, containing what would otherwise have been an extremely satisfied smile.
My hand moved in a short, precise gesture, dissolving the threads that locked the inscription in place. The golden letters shivered, blazed once in a final protest, and scattered into luminous dust that settled and disappeared without a trace. She grabbed at the fabric immediately, checking, then raised her eyes to mine. The expression she gave me held relief, irritation, and what I was now fairly certain was the beginning of genuine respect.
— We're not finished, — she said quietly.
In the word finished there was no longer a threat. It was a promise.
— I never imagined we were, — I replied, straightening my collar.
She made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, but the corners of her mouth moved. She turned and walked toward the exit — but her steps were different this time. Slower. Less absolute. I followed, and we left the Hall of Mirrors side by side, not as winner and loser but as two players who had just completed the opening move of something that was going to take considerably longer to play out.
Oh yes. Our... relationship. Our game. It had only just begun.