Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

1 | Bedridden

Several maids reside within Y/N's dorm, yet cobwebs stretch between every corner as though they have never seen a broom, and the air is gritty with dust as though it has never felt a breeze.

There's a window pressed into the wall over Y/N's bed, a rectangular column of light falls from it when the sun is in the right place. It's pushed open ajar with the intent of catching some fresh air, but the wind doesn't seem to have any interest in the ground; it would rather play about The Place's soaring towers than skulk around its dank roots.

The dust makes Y/N cough, and even after two or three times her lungs still feel as if they're half full of lint.

Turning into her back had eased the coughing when it bad been at its worst, but she hadn't liked laying that way:

The ceiling is low overhead, so low that on her first night of illness---whilst caught up in a fever dream---she'd sworn it was curved; sagging under the weight of the Palaces heavy gold and marble. It's criss crossed with beams, thick, splintered things, and she'd reached out to hold them up as they buckled---

---only to awaken with slippery palms and a pain in her skull.

All the same, she'd heaved herself from her bunk and tugged on a uniform.

It didn't take long before someone stopped her.

Y/N is pretty sure it had been the head housekeeper---Alfdis---on the way to her office, but she couldn't be sure. She was too distracted by the flagstone below her feet morphing into a jigsaw of complicated swirls.

Whomever the person in the hallway had been, they noticed the hair plastered to Y/N's clammy forehead and sent her promptly back to bed.

She has remained there for eleven days; besides trailing to and from the privy.

She would be bored, but with a temperature high enough to cook a decent pie---Alfdis had joked---Y/N has had no complaints. She'd slip from the covers and be shivering violently by the time her bare feet reached the washroom tiles. When she made it back to bed it wouldn't be long before she'd be kicking her covers off as they began to steam.

By now, her fever has cooled and her aches are tepid and dulled. Had her apothecary friend, Frode, taken a look at her, he'd probably say the sickness is almost entirely flushed from her system.

However, her eyes remain grey, and the colour hasn't returned to her cheeks. She's still so pale and listless that Alfdis won't let her get back to work; which is okay with Y/N.

She doesn't want to sweep hallways anyway. She'd done enough of that before.

It had been her old job; sweeping. Starting her day before everyone else, before the birds, before the sun, to rub soapy water over Asgard Palace's front steps. Whilst doing so, she'd met a mysterious stranger; who'd turned out to be the youngest son of the king, and he'd promoted her; simply because he felt sorry for her poor chapped hands.

She'd spent months as his maid, the only maid he'd ever permitted to enter his chambers. They'd formed quite a friendship, then something more so, and Y/N had never been so happy---

Until her prince was snatched from her, torn from her life and handed to someone else:

The princess of the neighbouring kingdom.

Her Mother, and Loki's father had arranged it; a union to bind two torn kingdoms, and---on the first full moon of spring---Y/N's Prince was dragged across the continent to his new home.

The entirety of Asgard celebrated, besides a few sceptics Y/N knows to be dotted about the kingdom; her good friend Arne, and a local barkeep; Beca.

Y/N spent the celebrations in Becas tavern, slumped in a corner whilst everyone around her drank and sang along to a band playing lively music.