The afternoon gave Eirlys exactly what she needed: an excuse not to think. After lunch, she had barely finished helping arrange a few things in the royal chambers before Sif appeared with the Warriors Three, carrying a deck of cards and an expression that suggested Eirlys had no choice in the matter.
"You are playing," Sif announced.
Eirlys stared at her. "That sounded less like an invitation and more like an order."
"It is."
And somehow, that was precisely what Eirlys needed. For the next several hours, she kept herself occupied with cards, arguments, laughter and increasingly ridiculous accusations of cheating. Volstagg insisted the deck was cursed whenever he lost. Fandral accused Sif of distracting him deliberately. Hogun remained suspiciously silent whenever the rules were questioned. Eirlys laughed more than she had expected to. It was easier that way. Whenever her thoughts threatened to drift toward the morning, toward Loki's quiet affection, toward the strange vulnerability she still couldn't quite understand inside herself, she simply picked up another card.
"Your turn," Sif reminded her.
Eirlys looked down, she had no idea what was happening. Apparently, she had been holding the same card for nearly a minute. "I was thinking."
"That is dangerous, we didn't know you could think," Fandral said solemnly.
She threw the card at him. "Shut up, I'm perfectly capable of thinking."
Across Asgard, Loki had found his own excuse. "I believe I shall meditate for a while," he told Eirlys earlier, with the calm expression of someone who had absolutely nothing to hide.
She had only glanced at him from beneath her lashes. "Your powers require meditation?"
"Everything requires discipline."
Eirlys had narrowed her eyes. "Since when do you speak like an old man?"
"Since marrying you."
She had thrown a pillow at him and he had left laughing but Loki had not gone to meditate. He slipped away from Asgard and descended toward Midgard, following the faint trail of magic and technology he had been tracking for some time. He told himself he was merely checking on Thor. His brother had disappeared to Earth with Jane, and Loki wanted to know what they were doing. Whether Thor had settled there, Jane had become another distraction and for how long his brother would be wasting his time playing mortal hero. But the moment Loki reached Earth, something else caught his attention. Something far more important. The Tesseract.
He stopped, even from a distance, he could feel it. That impossible concentration of energy. Blue light pulsed through the space like a heartbeat, and Loki's expression slowly changed. He knew what it was, what it could do, and, more importantly, he knew what it could unlock. The thought of it sent a strange thrill through him. For years, there had been parts of himself he had barely understood. The frost beneath his skin. The strength that had appeared only in fragments. The magic inherited from a lineage Asgard had spent his entire life allowing him to believe was something shameful. The Tesseract could change that. It could give him access to power he had only ever touched at the edges. Power enough that no one would ever look at him as Thor's lesser brother again.
Loki stepped closer, then he stopped himself. Not because he was afraid but because he remembered Eirlys. Her face that morning, her trust, and he way she had looked at him after everything they had finally shared. He couldn't afford to let her discover this, not yet. His jaw tightened, he needed to return to Asgard. He needed to become exactly what she expected him to be: her husband, her quiet and complicated Loki, the man who had gone away to meditate and returned with nothing more dangerous than tired eyes. He could tell her that he had been seeking greater control over his magic. He could let her believe that. And perhaps, in time, he could even make her believe that every secret he kept was meant to protect her. Loki turned away from the Tesseract but he would come back and take it. But first, he needed a plan because Eirlys could not know. Not until everything was already in motion. By the time Loki returned to Asgard, the afternoon sun had begun to sink.
Eirlys was still sitting with Sif and the Warriors Three, laughing over another ridiculous round of cards. She looked up when Loki entered. "There you are."
Loki smiled. "There I am."
She studied him for a moment. "You actually meditated?"
"Of course." It was effortless. The lie came so naturally that even Loki almost admired himself for it.
Eirlys smiled and moved aside, making room for him. Loki sat beside her, his hand found hers beneath the table. She didn't notice the faint tension in his fingers. She didn't know the Tesseract reflected in the back of his mind. And Loki, for the first time since their wedding, realized that the greatest danger between them might not be whether Eirlys could learn to love him. It might be whether she would still love him once she discovered who he truly intended to become.
Dinner ended far sooner than Eirlys had expected. Perhaps it was because she had been distracted throughout the meal, still carrying the lingering embarrassment of the morning beneath an outwardly composed expression. She had managed to behave normally around everyone, even laughing occasionally when the conversation turned amusing, but every now and then her mind betrayed her and wandered back to what had happened between her and Loki. Each time it did, warmth crept up her neck.
By the time the last dishes were cleared, she was more than ready to escape the dining hall. Unfortunately, Loki had apparently decided that escaping meant going directly to their chambers. He waited until they were away from the others before gently taking her hand and leading her along the corridor. Eirlys followed, though she gave him a suspicious glance when she realized where they were going.
The moment they entered their quarters, Loki turned toward her with the unmistakable expression of someone who had already made up his mind. "Come."
Eirlys frowned. "Where?"
"Our chambers."
She looked around pointedly. "We are already here."
Loki's mouth twitched as ge guided her toward the bed anyway, his hand resting lightly against her back. "You need sleep."
That immediately made her defensive. "I am not tired."
Loki stopped beside the bed and looked at her. Eirlys straightened almost instinctively, as though she had just been challenged. She had spent the entire day proving to herself that she was perfectly capable of functioning normally, played cards, laughed with Sif and the Warriors Three, eaten dinner and walked all the way back without complaint.
There was no reason for her to suddenly admit that her body was beginning to feel heavier than usual. "I am perfectly fine," she insisted.
Loki's expression remained unconvinced because he remembered how she had looked earlier that morning, how she had tried to hide her nervousness and embarrassment beneath stubbornness. Now she was doing it again, except this time she was attempting to convince him that she had somehow escaped the consequences of a morning that had left both of them changed. He studied her for another moment. "You spent half the evening sitting upright while pretending to concentrate on cards."
Eirlys opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. She had, in fact, been holding the same card for far too long. Loki's amusement deepened. Still, he did not press the point immediately. Instead, he reached for her hand again and gently encouraged her toward the mattress.
She resisted for another moment before finally sitting down. "I am not exhausted," she muttered.
Loki tilted his head. "Not even a little?"
"No." There was something almost challenging in the way she answered.
His eyes travelled briefly over her face before settling on the faint colour that had already begun appearing in her cheeks. "Not sore either?"
Eirlys went completely still. The silence that followed was answer enough. Loki's expression changed slowly, amusement spreading across his face as realization dawned.
"If you aren't tired or sore at all," he said, his voice deceptively thoughtful, "perhaps I didn't do my job properly earlier."
Her face immediately turned crimson. "Loki."
He had to fight the urge to laugh because he knew precisely how easily embarrassed she became whenever the morning was mentioned. The sight of his usually composed wife suddenly looking as though she wanted the floor to swallow her whole was far too entertaining. He leaned slightly closer. "That might explain why you aren't exhausted."
Eirlys stared at him in horror.
"And perhaps," he added, his voice dropping into a teasing murmur, "I could change that and make certain you are properly exhausted this time."