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Deep in her chambers, shoved behind extra knife sheaths and spare bits of armor, Sif’s lowest shelf held a secret.
***
Odin found her standing on a balcony at the rear of the second level of the palace. Sif tensed as she heard footsteps approaching. Only when her king’s familiar profile entered her field of vision did her fingers relax upon her sword's hilt.
Odin did not speak, but stared out over the railing. Sif set her jaw and followed his gaze.
This particular balcony overlooked a small stream, which turned to join the mighty river that formed part of Asgard’s outer defenses. Thor knelt before it, his back towards them. In front of him lay a small model of a ship, the sort a child might play with. As the two on the balcony watched, Thor raised a helmet with two curved horns briefly to the light, then set it inside the boat.
From here Sif could not hear her friend’s words, though she could see his lips move. At last he bowed his head and launched the small craft, Loki’s helm cradled within it. When he turned to watch it travel downstream, Sif could see his face was wet.
“I would have thought Thor’s friends would stop him from such folly.”
Odin’s harsh voice startled Sif into movement. Instinctively she thrust her shoulders back, feet together at attention. “Thor mourns for his brother who was lost,” she answered, focusing her eyes on the ground to avoid raising them in challenge.
“And you do not? You are less foolish than my son, then.”
Sif did look up at that, though at the last moment she kept her gaze trained outward, where Thor stood silent as a monument. “I mourned for Loki long ago.” She meant to stop there, but the words came from her throat unbidden, slow and reluctant like honey in winter. No one had asked her about Loki in a long time. “I lit lanterns for him when he fell from the Bifrost, and I sorrowed that we would never send his body to Valhalla. Thor and I mourned together.” She pressed her lips tightly and did not speak again until she was sure her voice would emerge only as she willed it, cold and implacable as ice. “Thor cannot see that he never came home again. Loki died below the Bifrost, and he has been lost to us ever since. I have no need to mourn for him again.”
“See that you remember that,” Odin said. His voice rattled in his throat, and there was no trace of forgiveness or empathy within it. “If you must only observe rather than interfere, you would do well to ensure no one else discovers Thor here. Asgard does not need to see one of its sons mourning a traitor.”
“If anyone but you had approached, my king, Volstagg and Fandral would have turned him back,” she said.
Odin turned to look at her. Sif could read nothing in his single remaining eye. “Then I see my son retains his friends, despite abandoning his duties as my heir.”
“Yes, my king,” Sif replied. Odin waited, but there was nothing more Sif could tell him.
After a moment Odin nodded sharply, then turned on his heel and left the balcony.
***
Sif had told Odin the truth about mourning Loki, but she had not told him everything.
When she returned to her chambers that night, wrung out from watching over Thor as he held his private funeral rites for Loki and then bidding Thor goodbye, her feet carried her to the corner of her room, where a series of shelves held her few possessions. She knelt, pushed aside the deliberately accumulated detritus on the lowest shelf, and withdrew something that glowed in the darkness of her chamber.
Loki had enchanted the flower, turning its yellow petals to pure gold, shining with its own internal light. He had presented it to her the week it had become clear that her hair would never grow back the same shining gold as it had been before Loki cut it from her head. “To replace your missing light,” he had said. His words were mocking, but his eyes begged for her forgiveness.
Sif had snatched the flower from his hand and tried to grind it beneath her feet. It had resisted all her efforts at destruction, until at last, frustrated, she had slapped Loki across the face and left him and the blossom alone in the long hall outside Odin’s throne room.
When she returned to her room, she found the flower on one of her shelves, still glowing faintly. No matter how many times she tried to dispose of it, it always found its way back to her.
As the years passed, Sif grew to love her new, dark hair. It set her apart from the other maidens of Asgard, none of whom wanted to be a warrior as Sif did. It hung deep and rich from her shoulders, and she loved the way she could braid metal thorns into it so that the iron hardly showed, making anyone who attempted to grab her long hair in battle regret it sorely. More small weapons, in sleek, black metals, appeared in her rooms next to the flower, and she learned to conceal these within her hair as well.
Fifteen years later, Sif wore the flower in her hair for Loki’s nameday feast, held once every fifty years. When Loki saw it, he stared, and he continued to stare all the way through dinner until Sif approached him to lead out the first dance. Then he gathered himself, hiding his shock beneath his habitual smirk.
“I would be honored,” he had said, before accepting her hand.
Now Sif knelt on the floor of her room, centuries of tricks and forgiveness and betrayal between her and that day, and the golden flower glowed precisely the same as it had the moment Loki had first given it to her. Experimentally, she tried again to crush it within her grip. When she opened her fist, it remained as undamaged as ever.
It was difficult to mourn someone whose presence remained everywhere, even as no one would speak his name. Odin sat alone on his throne, and alone in council, and alone at the high table during feasts – and still Loki’s shadow was everywhere, as the first blow which had splintered the royal family until only its patriarch remained.
It was difficult to mourn someone whose magic endured, pure and unbroken, any time Sif cared to look for it.
***
All day, Sif tried to suppress her knowledge of exactly what today signified. It should have been simple. Loki’s name did not pass anyone’s lips, not from her friends, or her fellow guards, or Odin himself. But Sif could not forget that if Loki had lived and not betrayed them, then today they would have celebrated him, holding a great feast for love of their second prince.
About to leave her room for dinner after training, Sif hesitated, one foot already in the hall. She turned back and stared at her far wall, where a soft light glowed faintly in the dimness of the evening.
In three quick strides she had crossed the room. Then she fixed Loki’s golden flower within her hair, and left the room at a near run.
Sif felt conspicuous as she entered the great hall, but no one commented upon the bloom, or asked her about Loki. As the meal progressed, Sif slowly relaxed. It had been centuries since Loki had presented her with the flower. Most probably, no one had known but Loki and Sif that he had created it in the first place.
As she reached for the tankard that Fandral was currently hoarding, she became aware of eyes upon her. She scanned the room, swiftly and discreetly as she had been trained, as she poured herself more mead.
Odin was staring at her. No – at her hair. Sif clenched her jaw tightly and took another drink.
The king did not approach her until the meal ended. “I recognize the touch of Loki’s magic,” he told her, abrupt as his usual wont. “Why do you wear a traitor’s badge within your hair?”
“I see no reason why treachery on the behalf of its creator should deprive me of one of my only ornaments,” Sif said, keeping her face blank. “The object is not its maker.”
Odin watched her, his face unreadable, and Sif waited to see what his judgment would be. Odin had become increasingly unpredictable at the loss of both of his sons, for all he had willingly relinquished the one and repudiated the other. At last he nodded sharply. “True enough. And I suspect it will fade soon. Little sorcery survives the death of its caster.”
Sif nodded and bowed. Odin regarded her for another moment, then turned and stalked away.
Odin knew far more about magic than she did, Sif knew, but she wondered now if Odin underestimated his former son. It had been nearly a year since Loki had fallen in defense of Asgard, and the flower had shown no signs of fading. Sif saw no reason why it should do so now.
***
The day after Loki’s forgotten feast day, Sif returned to her room after a long day’s duty on the walls of Asgard, only to stop dead in her tracks. Loki’s enchanted flower lay dead on its shelf, its golden light vanished. Even as Sif watched, it crumbled further in on itself, withering to dust before her eyes.
Hot rage built within her chest, flooding her veins with boiling surety. She stormed from her room and back down the golden hallway. Her fingers convulsively clutched her sword. She could see nothing but the withered bloom in her chambers. In her ears she could hear Loki’s laughter.
Sif burst into the throne room. Odin half rose out of his seat, startled at her entrance. She did not even allow her king to speak. “Loki is alive,” she announced.
Odin completed his rise, fingers settling on Gungnir as he rested his weight on its shaft. His brow creased in anger, his expression thunderous. “Loki is dead on Svartalfheim,” he barked. “How came you to believe otherwise?”
The words were right, but his face was wrong. Just once, Odin’s eyes slid to the side, darting back to look at her sidelong – a liar’s look, one who wondered just how much of his scheme he could still deploy. And she knew.
“Loki.”
Before her brandished sword, Odin’s eyes flared green.