The Blood Of A God || Loki Laufeyson

VIII - Terrified

Chapter Eight

Valneer was dead.

Loki and Thor had been passing through one of the corridors when a terrified young servant ran out of his chambers, screaming that she had found him dead in his bathroom.

Thor helped to calm her down while Loki went to inspect what had happened.

Valneer was floating inside his bathtub, his skin as white as it could possibly get and large puncture wounds on the side of his neck. Blood had made the water a dark red colour, and it was spilling onto the floor. Surprisingly, Loki wasn't very disturbed by it. He never had liked Valneer that much, and he didn't have much of a conscience these days.

Thor had said he would try and find out who did it, but he said that it could wait until the morning, seeing how tired they were.

When Loki returned to his chambers, he found that Seline wasn't there. He knew that she preferred her room to other places in the palace, which was why it was odd that she wasn't there. He ignored his exhaustion and went to find her.

He checked the library first, then the kitchen. Ace and Newt, as she called them, looked terrible. He gave them the night and the next day off, and warned them that there were some people in the castle who should not be angered.

The last place he looked at was the Queen's garden, and there she was, sitting under a large willow tree. She had her back against the trunk and was looking up at the stars.

"Your constellations are different from the ones on Midgard," she said, not even looking at him but somehow knowing that he was there. "I like these ones more."

He nodded once. "Different realms, different stars, I suppose," he said, glancing up at the stars before looking down at her.

"It's late," she said, finally turning to face him. "You should be asleep, my lord."

"I could say the same about you."

She shrugged. "I couldn't sleep."

He went over to her and sat down beside her under the tree, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm awake because the head guard is dead. Thor and I were taking care of it."

"He isn't just dead," she snapped. "He was murdered."

He watched her closely when she said so, taken aback by her sudden harsh tone. But at the same time, a little amused.

"There is a difference between just being dead and being killed in cold blood," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and sighing. "A big one."

He observed her reaction. He wasn't quite sure how she knew about the man's death, but assumed that another servant had told her. He also didn't know why she seemed so badly affected. And, yet again, he assumed that she was just emotional about people dying around her and was feeling more frustration than anything else.

Both of his assumptions were wrong.

Seline knew about the death because she had caused it. She had taken his life away, she hadn't even hesitated. She had taken her anger towards his actions and to her friends, and directed it at him.

His second assumption was closer to correct. She was emotional, yes. But she wasn't frustrated at the fact that she had lost someone she knew. Or was at least acquainted with. She was frustrated that she felt guilty about killing a man that had ruined people's lives for his own amusement.

She found it interesting how Loki had done the same thing when he tried to take over Midgard. He had killed hundreds, if not thousands of people.

As she turned to look at him while he gazed at the stars, she didn't see anything evil in him.