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Chapter Text

There was a delegation waiting for them when the bifrost deposited them in Alfheim. Loki was only somewhat surprised by their presence, and Amora was delighted y it, especially when its leader (one of the younger Elf princes) greeted her with a gallant bow and kiss to the back of the hand. Loki wondered if the prince was a former lover or just another who was hoping to become one. Loki didn't have long to wonder, because one of the Elf princesses stepped forward to greet Loki with a smile.

"Hello Eimmyria," Loki kissed her cheek, surprised and happy that his old friend was here to welcome him.

"This is a surprise," Eimmyria said, "you usually give me more notice for your visits."

"It was a rather sudden decision," that was a lie, but Eimmyria didn't need to know that, "Amora asked for my company," he lowered his voice conspiratorially, "Thor is acting like an ass and I needed to leave before I did something that would upset Mother."

Eimmyria snorted inelegantly, "When is he not an ass?" Loki always found joy in the fact that the Light Elves preferred him to Thor, "But I suppose it would be worse now that he has a throne to sit on. I'm just happy that Father doesn't expect me to be part of the delegation sent to honour Asgard's new king."

"Truly consider yourself lucky," Loki held out his arm, prompting Eimmyria to take it. The prince did the same for Amora, and the group set off towards the palace.

"You'll be staying in the guest wind of the palace," Prince Arian informed them, "unless you have any objections?"

Before Loki could answer, Amora did it for him, "Of course not," Amora would never pass up the lap of luxury. Not that Loki would have objected anyway.

"Two rooms or one?" That was a more personal inquiry. Amora turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. Loki nodded in her direction, leaving the decision up to her.

"Two should suffice," Arian looked quite happy about that.

"The library, of course, is completely open to you. Though we do request that you do not take anything," he glared at Loki, who stared back without a trace of guilt.

It's not like he hadn't returned those books.

"Don't worry," Amora assured him.

Amora would keep that promise right up until it served her better to break it.

"How long do you think you'll be staying with us?" It was Eimmyria who asked.

"Honestly?" Loki answered, and Amora met his eyes with a grin, "I have no idea. However long it takes."

l.l.l.l

A knock on Loki's door made him pause in his reading (a book from Asgard on the trade treaties with the Dark Elves, because damn if he could just stop). The door opened before he could rise from his seat. Amora leaned against the doorframe, looking smug.

"Have a good evening?" He asked.

Amora just grinned as she sauntered in, closing the door behind her, "Of course I did."

Loki didn't doubt it, "And what can I do for you? Are you here to regale me on how you're twisting the dear Prince of Alfheim around your lovely finger?"

Amora snorted, "Hardly. I'm simply wondering about your plans. You do know we can't stay here forever. A trip to the library can only last so long. Besides, the Elves will not put up with us indefinitely. You will have to return soon enough, and most likely before your brother has failed spectacularly."

"I wouldn't say that," Loki's grin was all teeth, "there are a few favours that I can ask repayment for, and even more secrets that people would pay for me to keep. Besides, Eimmyria adores me. I can stay here centuries if I desire it."

"That does not solve the first part of the problem. How is it you plan to justify our stay?"

"By convincing my brother, if he were to inquire, that this was meant to be a romantic trip, and coming here for the book was simply an excuse to leave and give to Mother. Because I do not flaunt my conquests, Thor seems to think I have none. If he thinks I'm here with a lover, he will be overjoyed and certainly leave me to enjoy it. That is, of course, if you agree."

"Agree to be your love or agree to pretend?"

"I had the second in mind, but if you're agreeable to the first, you will not see me complaining."

Amora hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Loki decided that this trip was going to be more exciting than he originally thought.

"And if someone goes and inquires to Heimdall?"

"I've long been able to hide myself from Heimdall's sight," Amora's eyes widened at that, and she was the first to know, "and it won't take too much to hide you as well."

"Truly?" Amora couldn't hide her disbelief, and Loki enjoyed it.

Loki smirked, "Yes. I'll create shades of the two of us that Heimdall will see, and they'll be acting in a manner that will insure he promptly looks away."

"How far you've come," Amora spoke more to herself than him, "so very far from the boy who struggled to form shapes from water."

"I did have excellent teachers."

Amora raised an eyebrow, "I do enjoy a good compliment, but so dislike it when people surpass me."

That was one of the reasons that Loki tended not to show off when around her.

"A bit of jealously is only to be expected," Loki moved t unruffle feathers, "but surely acting on it can wait until we've both thoroughly enjoyed watching Thor make a fool of himself?"

Amora continued to glare at him, until she wasn't, "You truly are a magnificent bastard, aren't you?"

"I do try."

l.l.l.l.ll.l

Thor wasn't exactly sure where he had gone wrong. It could have been when he laughed at Dagar's battle tales and told him that if he truly did wish to bloody himself, he was more than welcome to join him the next time Thor and his friends rode out. Or maybe it was when he jested that perhaps Forseti should trade his seat on the council to his wife, because the times he began a sentence with 'my wife believes' surely meant his wife was the one who belonged here. It might have been when he angrily snapped that he was king now, not Odin, and the realm was his to rule as he pleased. Perhaps it was in the very beginning, when Thor took his seat at the table and announced that this should be kept brief, for he had more important things to see to.

Thor couldn't pinpoint the exact moment things went wrong, only that they had spectacularly so.

Thor watched the last of the lords leave the room, and he had no idea what to do. His anger, which had been so bright only minutes before, when he had been questioned like an inept child, had sizzled out in his bewilderment. When Elli first stormed from the room -in the middle of Thor's argument, his face purple from anger-, Thor had been too shocked to order him back. When three others followed, he had been stunned. When the last two lords had glanced at Thor, and then at each other, and scurried out of the room without so much as a by your leave, Thor could only stare at their retreating figures.

When the doors slipped shut again, leaving Thor alone in the council chambers, his anger returned with a vengeance. It burned through him, red hot and vicious. His hands closed around the table in front of him, and with a yell, he up ended it. Everything -from legal papers to food that had been brought as refreshment- went flying, scattering across the floor and leaving a mess of the royal study. The table landed with a satisfying crash, but it was not enough. Outside, there was a distant rumble of thunder. Too enraged to stay indoors any longer, Thor called Mjolnir to him from its perch near his abandoned chair, and stormed from the room.

He stalked to the training grounds, needing to destroy something. There were a few other warriors using the grounds, but the cowards practically ran when they saw him coming and saw the rage on his face and the brewing storm. Thor growled at their retreating forms, but ignored them after that. Instead, he swung his hammer into the nearest training dummy. There was a great crash, and he hit it again. He kept hitting it until there was nothing left but pieces. Then, he moved onto the next, and did the same. He decimated three before he stepped back, breathing hard. He surveyed the carnage he had caused, and it wasn't enough. It did nothing to soothe his rage of being so disrespected.

How dare they! He was King of Asgard! They had no right to act in such a way, to walk away without his permission! They should have known their place!

Thor threw his hammer at a practice dummy across the yard, and did so with all his might. Lightning cracked across the sky as the hammer hit, and the wood splintered into a thousand small pieces. He recalled Mjolnir to him and prepared to do it again, but a roar stopped him. It was not the roar of thunder, but the roar of his father's voice.

"THOR!"

Thor turned towards the voice, and found Odin stalking towards him, looking every bit as furious as Thor felt. Instinctively, Thor flinched in the face of it. His father's anger was always something frightening to behold. Then, in the wake of it, Thor's anger flared again. He was King of Asgard! He should flinch from on one, not even Odin Allfather!

By the time Odin reached where Thor was standing, the man was raging. Fury was radiating off him, and Thor could only assume that his father had heard about the disastrous meeting.

"What have you done!" Odin yelled when he reached him.

"I?" Thor replied, angry at his father's tone, "What have I done!"

How could Odin not know that the lords were in the wrong here? Thor was king, and they had completely disrespected him! Surely Odin, who had been king for so long, knew what an affront that was!

"Two of the lords have left the capital altogether, another two are preparing to go as we speak! Eli confronted me with his complaints in front of half the court, and gods only knows where Dagar has gone to lick his wounds. If that idiotic boy does something stupid because you slighted him, his father will never let us forget it!"

If anything, that only enraged further. They had not only disrespected him, but completely spit in the face of his position by leaving the capital completely, let alone running to his father and...and tattling on him.

"They dar-" Odin cut off Thor before he could start.

"What did you do Thor! It is a simple meeting, one you have sat through for the past hundred years. How did this happen!"

"Why do you blame me!" Thor yelled right back, "Their overreactions are to blame!"

"Overreactions? Thor, you insulted each and every one of them! If anything, they reacted tamely to how they could have!"

"And what of the insult they gave me! They turned their backs and walked away from me! They just left, and after going to you to complain! That is no way to treat your king!"

"And acting like a spoiled child towards the lords who control the countryside that feeds half the realm is no way for a king to act!"

Thor felt as though he had been slapped. Odin hadn't yelled at him like that for a very long time. It hurt, and he felt like a child...and he hated that he felt it. He was angry, but far from cowed. Despite what Odin thought, Thor wasn't a child to be talked down to by his father.

"You will fix this Thor!"

"I will consent to speak to the country lords again once they are willing to show me the respect I deserve and ask forgiveness for their disrespect," with that, Thor followed the lords' example and stormed away without another word.

l.l.ll.l.

Using mirrors to scry, using them to watch others unnoticed, was a skill that Loki learned at a young age. Despite that, it was a skill where Amora was better than him. Amora used her beauty like a weapon, and that preference showed in her magic. The spells that were Amora's strongest (not that her others were lacking) were the ones that touched on attraction, lust and love. It only made sense that a mirror, a symbol of vanity, was a tool Amora could manipulate with more ease than him.

That was why, early the day after their arrival, when Loki needed a way to see events that had happened in Asgard without being noticed, he asked Amora to do it. She preened under the obvious compliment and looked forward to the entertainment her mirror spell would bring. They hadn't been able to watch the meeting between Thor and the lords the day before, so they were going to watch it now. In the aftermath, Loki just stared at the mirror.

"How did he even manage to do this?" Loki was genuinely bewildered, "it's an annual report on the happenings on the outskirts. He could he possibly do it this wrong?"

"It takes a degree of talent to have some of the most docile lords wanting to revolt after one unimportant meeting."

"When I left him, I assumed he'd cause problems with the other realms, not within Asgard itself! And this is only his first day as king!"

"Do calm down darling. Panicking is quite unbecoming on you."

Loki only half heard her, because his mind was still making sense and cataloguing what he had just witnessed. It had gone wrong from the moment Thor had walked into the room and opened his mouth. It only went down hill -quickly down hill- from there. Loki saw all those instances where it went wrong, and knew how he would have turned the tables. He couldn't have fixed it necessarily, but he saw opportunities to soothe egos and make it less dire. All opportunities, most of them obvious, that Thor had missed. Not only missed, but frolicked obliviously by.

"It's as though he heard my warnings before I left, but then decided to ignore me and do the complete opposite."

"Well, at least it seems he listened to you...even if he did turn it all around in that pretty little head of his."

A bark of laughter escaped from Loki, and he knew the whole thing was truly hilarious. Day one, and already Loki could see what a farce this whole situation was. What in the nine realms had Odin been thinking, that this Thor should be on the throne? If he couldn't even handle one simple meeting, how could Odin even contemplate handing over the rule of Asgard over to him? Even if Loki had been willing to play his game, it was impossible for Loki to always be at Thor's side.

"Will he hold to the oath of not seeing them until they grovel?" Amora asked, curious.

"No," Loki waved it away, "for all his faults, Thor is incapable of holding a grudge. He'll meet with them again. Give it a week or two and Thor won't even remember that he should be angry at the supposed offence. He keeps forgiving me, doesn't he?"

Thor's ease at forgiving the sins of others was one of his better traits. Foolish at times, because there were always those who, if you were to forgive and forget, would stab you in the back at the next opportunity, but noble. A king willing to let bygones be bygones was a good thing, kept harmony in the realm. Now, if only Thor could work on not getting so angry in the first place.

"You do have point," Amora conceded, "though, it wouldn't do much good, would it?"

Loki shook his head, "Unless the lords are told by my father to just blindly agree with everything Thor says, no, it won't."

"Dare I ask who Thor needs to act kingly with next?"

Loki sucked in a breath, and felt panic crawling up his spine again, "The Dark Elves. Malekith is sending his ambassador two days from now to pay homage to the new king of Asgard."

The relations between the Dark Elves and Asgard had been, at best, tense and, at worse, openly hostile for hundreds of years. While they had never gone to all out war, they had come close more times than Loki could even remember. There was a very fine, very delicate balance between Asgard and Svartalfheim...one that could very easily be destroyed. If Thor could cause such strife within Asgard, there was no telling what he could do with Svartalfheim involved.

Loki was on his feet and striding towards the door the minute the thought crossed his mind. He would have kept going all the way to the bifrost, if it hadn't been for Amora's magic stopping him before he could leave the room.

Loki made a warning sound, and it was dangerous, "Amora, let me go."

"No," Amora's voice was firm, but there was understanding in it as well, "if you go back now, things will never change. Thor will remain incompetent and you will forever be the puppeteer in the shadows. It will be just as your Father planned, and you'll both be miserable in the end. You deserve better than that. Even Thor deserves better than that."

Loki knew she was right, but he still had to argue. No matter how offended he was, no matter how angry and hurt he was, he couldn't let Asgard fall, "But-"

"Odin will not allow it to get so far as war. He is as manipulative and quick witted as you are. He will stop it from escalating too terribly. Will there be tension? Yes, of course. There always is with the Dark Elves. No matter what Thor does, Malekith is too shrewd to jump into a war he probably can't win. He'll keep the slight in mind to use in the future when he thinks he has an advantage, but it will not be today."

"How can I risk that?"

"How can you not? Your father is a fool for not seeing that his plan is a disaster in the making. He gives neither of you enough credit, and underestimates you on top of it. If you're constantly cleaning up Thor's messes, how will he ever learn not to create them in the first place?"

Loki knew he points were valid - knew she was right- and he was convinced. It didn't feel any less wrong or make him want to rush back any less, but he would not run back to Asgard.

There was a point to this, and it wasn't just about soothing his ego. The point was to make Thor become the king Asgard needed, the king he could be. Loki had to keep sight of that.

Amora's hands came to rest of his shoulders, kneading gently. Loki realized into the rough, letting the tension run from his body. There was a hint of calming magic in the tough, and for once Loki didn't protest the use of magic on him without his permission. He needed it.

"Better?" Amora asked a few minutes later, and Loki nodded, "Good. I expect you and your lovely hands to repay the favour tonight. For now, you're going to go meet your dear friend and have a wonderful, tension free walk around the capital."

"And where will you be while I'm with Eimmyria? With her smitten brother, perhaps?"

Amora laughed, "Nothing quite so exciting. I'll be in the library, searching out my book. Once you're done, feel free to join me. While my studies might not interest you, I'm sure you'll find something to peak your interest."

The libraries of Alfheim always held something to peak his interest, "I like the sound of this plan."

"Of course you do," Amora sounded smug, "I always make good plan."

Loki could think of a few plans that had gone spectacularly wrong, but didn't comment on them. Not at the moment, anyway.

"Well then, shall we?"