Chapter 373: The lock and the bracelet

For half a second, Loki genuinely thought Frigga had won.

Her sword had caught the beast's right arm and the killing blow had stopped four inches from his face, and he was looking up at the underside of his mother's guard, and it was going to hold, and everything was going to be fine.

Then the second blade shot out of Algrim's left gauntlet.

It went cleanly into her chest.

The golden sword hit the marble floor with a hollow, ringing clang.

Loki stopped breathing.

His mother looked down at the black thing standing out of her, the way someone looks at something they do not recognise.

Algrim pulled the blade free.

She went backward onto the cold stone.

"NO—"

Loki's scream tore through his ruined throat. It was not a battle cry. It was the sound of a soul breaking completely in half.

He scrambled across the debris, completely ignoring the sharp glass tearing at his hands. He threw himself onto the floor beside her. He gathered her shoulders desperately into his arms, pressing his hands frantically against the bleeding wound.

"Mother," he sobbed, his voice cracking. "Mother, no. Please."

The blood welled up thick and warm between his pale fingers, and it did not stop coming.

And Loki, who had spent a thousand years being cleverer than everyone in every room he entered, sat on the floor of his mother's ruined chambers and found that there was nothing to be clever about.

This was it. This was the whole of it. This was what mortals had, all of them, all the time. Not the cold. Not the aching legs. Not the running out of breath on a staircase.

This.

Loving something, and watching it end, and not being able to do one single thing to stop it.

Above him, the Kursed stood still, looking down at its own work with those unangry eyes.

"She spent herself on a mortal," the beast rumbled. "Your people will sing about the waste."

Something happened to Loki then.

Deep inside his chest, a lock recognized the truth.

The requirement had been perfectly met. The lesson was painfully learned.

A loud, metaphysical crack echoed inside Loki's soul. The binding came completely apart.

His magic rushed back into him. It did not come as a slow trickle. It erupted like a detonating star. Pure, raw, furious Asgardian magic exploded outward from Loki's body in a shockwave of brilliant green and gold.

The blast hit Algrim with the force of a tidal wave. The Kursed was lifted off his feet and thrown backward. He was blasted straight out of the gaping hole in the palace wall and sent plummeting toward the distant city far below.

Loki did not care about him.

He poured his newly returned magic desperately into his mother's wound. Green light flared intensely over the dark gash, trying frantically to knit the flesh back together.

It did nothing at all.

"Mother, stay with me." The tears were coming and he did not notice them. "I have it back. I have my powers back, do you understand? I can fix this. Please. Just let me fix this."

Behind him, the corridor lit up.

Thor came through the empty doorway with lightning still crawling over his armour, and Odin came in a half-second later through the breach in the wall, Gungnir bright in a hand that was not steady.

They stopped dead.

The ruined room. The absent enemy. And Loki down on his knees in the dust, holding his bleeding mother in his arms.

They crossed the floor in an instant and went down beside her.

"The blade was cursed." Loki did not look up. There was nothing left in his voice at all. "It is holding the wound open. It drinks whatever magic I put in. I have tried—" His hands were shaking inside the green light. "Help me."

"Frigga." Odin's voice cracked on it. He put a glowing hand over the wound and poured the Odinforce into her with everything he had.

The golden light met the black rot, hissed violently, and was turned away.

"It is not working." Something went out of Odin's eye that had never left it before. "It is necrotic. It eats life. The only person in the Nine Realms who could unpick a dark working like this is your mother."

Thor gripped her hand. "No. We have the finest healers in the realm. Eir can—"

"It is too late, my sons," Frigga whispered. Her voice was incredibly faint. She reached up with a trembling hand and touched Loki's tear-stained cheek. She smiled softly. "You found the key."

"I am sorry." Loki leaned into her hand with everything in him gone. "It was my fault. I am so sorry."

"Do not weep." She looked between the three of them, the three men she had loved above everything in the universe. "I am at peace."

Her hand slipped off his cheek.

She closed her eyes.

Loki bowed his head over her chest and made a sound nobody in that palace had ever heard him make. Thor let out a cry that shook what was left of the walls. Odin lowered his head, and his great shoulders shook, and no sound came out of him at all.

The three most powerful men in Asgard sat helpless on the floor around the woman who had held all of them together.

Then, a soft, pulsating green light began to glow, slowly catching the trio's attention.

It did not come from Loki. It did not come from Odin's spear.

It came from Frigga's wrist.

A simple braided band was tied around her arm. Arthur had given it to her a year ago, not long after he had opened the second tier of his Death Magic. He had called it a token of thanks for her guidance and said it might serve her in a dire hour. He had asked her to keep it on her at all times. She had agreed, and had not thought about it since.

The bracelet pulsed. It did not blaze. It did not sing. There was no drama in it of any kind.

The green light rose off the band and sank into her, and where it met the black threads, the threads stopped.

They did not fight back. They did not struggle against the light. They stopped completely. It was exactly the way a man stops speaking when somebody with authority walks into the room.

And then, thread by thread, faster than anything Loki had ever woven, the elven curse was read, and unpicked, and ended. The whole of it was taken apart the way a patient hand takes apart a knot it has all the time in the world for. The blackness drained out of her skin from the heart outward. The wound closed last, without hurry, almost as an afterthought.

Then with its work done, the glowing bracelet crumbled into fine grey dust, its stored power completely spent.

Frigga gasped loudly, her eyes snapping wide open.

She took a long shuddering breath, and her chest rose and fell, and went on rising and falling.

The very first thing she saw was all three of them. Her husband and both of her sons, in one place, around her, none of them fighting, every one of them wearing the same undone, awe-struck expression.

She lay in the ruins of her chamber and looked up at the one thing she had wanted for years and had never once managed to arrange.

"Well," Frigga said, sitting up and putting a hand flat against her unbroken chest. "That was unexpected."

Loki did not hesitate. He put his arms around her neck and his face in her shoulder and held on the way a much younger version of him had once held on. Thor came in around both of them. Odin leaned forward and put his arms around all three, and buried his scarred face in his wife's hair.

For a long, beautiful moment, the royal family of Asgard simply held each other in the smoking ruins of the bedchamber, completely whole and entirely united.

A few feet away, a soft crack of air went unnoticed.

Pietro and Wanda arrived with Winky between them, hands lit, braced for whatever was left of the fight. They took in the destroyed room, the hole in the wall, the crater in the floor, and four gods sitting in the dust with their arms around each other.

"What did we miss?" Pietro said.

Wanda had already looked away. "We should not be here."

"No," said Winky, and took hold of both of them.

"Why—"

Pop.

And the room was quiet, and it stayed quiet, and in the middle of it the royal family of Asgard went on holding on to each other in the dust, four of them, all breathing.