by Mackenzi Lee
So it was Loki who spoke first. “In my defense, I was left unsupervised.”
Odin’s face did not change. His features were like steel, as sharp as the edges of the Norn Stones at his feet. “I will not ask what you were thinking,” he said. “Because it is clear that you were not.”
Loki kept his head high, but shame rippled through him. How he must look, standing at his father’s feet, covered in soot and blood and the black tar that had filled the veins of the reanimated corpses, a smoking path of destruction leading from his feet all the way back to Midgard. “I had a plan,” he said. “It isn’t my fault it didn’t all work out. If I had been successful, I would have brought you Amora and the lost Norn Stones.”
“And instead you bring me nothing but excuses,” Odin replied. He wasn’t shouting. Loki wanted him to shout. “Do you know what this looks like, my son? It looks like treason.”
Treason was a generous word for it. To show up with an army and stolen amplifiers. Though destroying said army should have at least won him a few points back.
Odin still didn’t stand. “I wish you could at least tell me that you were hypnotized or bespelled or that some of her magic had a hold on you. Tell me that my son, whom I raised from birth, did not choose to bring this destruction upon his home and his friends.”
It was an out. An opportunity to lie. To save face. But more than that, it felt like a trap. Like both he and his father knew the answer to this question, and if he said anything other than that, they’d both know it was a lie. Odin wanted to know he was a liar. He wanted to know his son was what he suspected—a trickster, a liar, the God of Chaos.
So that’s what Loki gave him. “I was not bespelled,” he replied. “I was not enchanted, or bewitched. All the choices I made were my own, and not Amora’s. Not anyone else’s.”
“Why?”
That was a trickier question, for he hardly knew himself. Because he wanted to be king? How could he say that when his father had not named an heir? It would sound foolish, another voiced truth that both of them knew in their hearts but neither expected the other to say aloud.
So instead, he said, “Because I wanted to.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I wanted to play with fire. I wanted to make bad choices. I wanted to defy you.” It didn’t matter what he said, no matter how noble his heart had been—or at least, somewhat noble. At certain times. His father had seen him in the Mirror and assigned him his role long ago. Loki could have brought him all of Asgard’s enemies knocked out cold in a giant cage, and Odin still wouldn’t have believed his heart. “What do you want me to say?!”
“The only truth with which you need concern yourself,” Odin said, “is that any man who sticks his hand into a fire will be burned. You have disappointed me greatly today, my son.”
“As opposed to what, exactly?” The vehemence of his own voice surprised him. Before he knew what he was doing, before he had truly considered it, he mounted the stairs and walked up to the throne, uninvited, and faced his father. “You have never given me a reason to believe you were anything but disappointed with me since the day I was born.”
Odin shook his head. “You do not give me reason to show you anything but that.”
“I have done terrible things, but you let me be nothing but those things. Tell me, Father, do you think me evil? Do you think me monstrous?” He spread his arms. “Did you need a villain and I was available? Someone to make Thor look prettier than he is so that when you give him the throne, everyone will be willing to overlook the thousands he’s slaughtered in the name of peace and Asgard?”
“Enough!” Odin roared, flying to his feet, and Loki fought the urge to step back, that primal fear that Odin inspired in so many gripping him. But he didn’t. He faced his father with nothing but stubborn defiance.
This, he thought, and he almost glanced at the Norn Stones discarded on the steps. This is power.
Odin’s knuckles were white on his spear. “I could banish you,” he said, as quiet as Loki had been loud. “I could send you to the darkest corner of the Nine Realms and strip you of your powers, or back to Midgard and let whatever is left of your Enchantress decide the best punishment for your treachery.” He paused. Loki held his breath. “But I am a merciful king. Which you will never be.”
Merciful? he thought, but Odin continued. “You are not fit to be a king, my son. You never have been, and no tutelage I offer can choke the darkness from your soul.” He turned from Loki and began to descend the stairs to retrieve the discarded Stones. As he bent slowly, he said, “At the Solstice, I will name Thor the heir to the throne of Asgard.”
Loki closed his eyes. Amora had been right. The deep, shadowed fear that lived inside him had always been right. He would not be king. Not only that, but Odin had never considered him a contender for the throne. Would never see him the way he saw Thor, a young, reckless creature whose rough edges could be sanded off with time and patience and lies. Loki was all rough edges to his father. All jagged and sharp and too difficult to touch without cutting yourself.
“Do you understand this?” Odin asked.
“Yes,” Loki said, the word a quiet knife between his ribs.
“Do you accept this?”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked, the bite unmistakable this time.
“There is always a choice.”
Theo’s face flashed suddenly in his mind, the look in his eyes as he had split the train cars, split them apart, as his chance to go to Asgard with Loki was ripped away from him.
There’s always a choice.
He would never be king. He’d never be his brother. He’d never be a hero. He would never be Theo, cast aside and still strong without being brittle. He’d never be Amora either. He had proved that when he’d tried to stop their army.
What else was left?
He could be the witch. He could be the villain. He could be the trickster, the schemer, the self-serving God of Chaos, prove the mythology books right. Prove them all right in what they had all thought, that he was rotten from the start. He would serve no man but himself, no heart but his own. That would be his choice.
He could be the witch.
Be the witch, and know everything.
MACKENZI LEE holds a BA in history and an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Simmons College. She is the New York Times best-selling author of the historical fantasy novels This Monstrous Thing; The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, which won a 2018 Stonewall Honor Award and the New England Book Award; and its sequel, The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy. She is also the author of the nonfiction books Bygone Badass Broads, a collection of short biographies of forgotten women from history, and The History of the World in 50 Dogs, which is the same but dogs. When not writing, she works as an independent bookseller, drinks too much Diet Coke, and romps with her Saint Bernard, Queenie.