I found her in the garden by the fountain, the place where we used to sit together when I was a child.
Frigga was reading on a stone bench in the shade of a silver-leafed tree. Morning sun filtered through the branches, painting patterns of light and shadow on her dress. An idyllic picture: the Queen of Asgard at rest, far from intrigue and conspiracy.
I stopped at the edge of the path, unable to make myself approach.
This was my mother. The woman who had taught me magic. Who had believed in me when all of Asgard saw only Thor's shadow.
But the worm of doubt that had gnawed its way into my mind these past days refused to fall silent. It reminded me of the small things: the questions she asked, the calm that seemed out of place, the missing morning chill.
Small things. Nothing more.
But I knew far too well how small things add up to a picture. How a single wrong note gives away a false melody.
"Are you going to stand there all day?"
I flinched. Frigga was watching me over the top of her scroll, a gentle mockery in her eyes.
"Just admiring the view." I walked over and sat beside her. "What are you reading?"
"Old chronicles. The history of Asgard's first contacts with the outer realms." She set the scroll aside. "After everything with the Skrulls, I wanted to refresh my memory."
"Find anything useful?"
"Only how little we knew about those we made alliances with. Names, titles, promises, but never the substance." She turned to me. "How is the hunt going?"
"Slowly." I stared at the water in the fountain. "The trails go cold faster than I can catch hold of them."
"You'll find them."
"Your confidence flatters me."
"It isn't flattery." Her hand touched mine. "I know you, Loki. You don't stop until you get what you want."
Her touch was warm, familiar. I forced myself not to pull my hand away.
"Mother," I said after a pause, "may I ask something of you?"
"Of course."
"I want to train. With you. Like we used to."
A pause. Brief, almost imperceptible.
"Train?"
"In magic." I turned to face her. "Since Helheim, I feel... I don't know how to describe it. My magic has changed. The Necrosword did something to it, or I did something to myself. I need to understand what."
"And you want me to help?"
"You taught me. No one knows my magic better."
She looked at me, and for a moment I thought, only thought, that something like calculation flickered in her eyes. A quick weighing of options, an assessment of risk.
Then she smiled.
"Of course, my son. I would be glad to."
We moved to the enclosed part of the garden, where tall living hedges formed natural walls and Asgard's ancient magic swallowed sound. This was where Frigga had taught me my first spells. This was where I had made my first illusion, a lopsided copy of Thor that fell apart after three seconds.
The memory stung with unexpected sharpness.
"Do you remember how we started?" Frigga stopped in the center of the clearing. "You were so impatient. You wanted to work wonders right away, and I made you spend hours just feeling the currents."
"I remember. I hated those exercises."
"But they worked."
"Yes. They worked."
She stood facing me, an arm's length away. Sunlight fell across her face, and she looked exactly as she had a thousand times before: calm, assured, radiating that particular warmth I had always associated with safety.
This was my mother.
"We'll begin with something simple," she said. "Current synchronization. Do you remember?"
"Of course."
Current synchronization. A basic exercise for two mages working together. Teacher and student join their magic, let it flow between them, learn to feel one another. When it goes right, it's like a dance. Two voices singing one melody.
Frigga raised her hands, palms toward me. I raised mine, almost touching her fingers.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
She closed her eyes. I felt her magic reach for mine, carefully, gently, the way it always did. An invitation, not an intrusion.
I opened myself to meet it.
And the world went still.
It was wrong.
Not hostile, not dangerous, just wrong. Like shaking hands with a stranger who had introduced himself as an old friend. Like a letter written in a familiar hand by someone else's fingers.
The magic that touched mine was strong. Confident. Technically flawless. It knew every right movement, every correct rhythm. It did everything exactly as Frigga's magic should.
But it was not her.
I knew my mother's magic the way I knew my own breathing. Years of lessons, thousands of hours working side by side. They leave a mark. Not in memory, not in technique. Deeper than that. In the very essence of how two magics recognize each other.
Frigga's magic was warm. Not in temperature, but in feeling. It smelled of summer storms and blooming gardens. It knew me, every curve of my power, every crack in my defenses.
What touched me now was... a copy. A perfect imitation. Someone had studied every note of the melody, every shade of the voice, and reproduced them flawlessly.
But the music was dead.
No.
I didn't let myself recoil. Didn't let anything show on my face. I kept up the exercise, mechanically, on autopilot, while everything inside me collapsed.
No, no, no.
"Loki?"
Her voice. My mother's voice, the same intonations, the same softness.
"Are you all right?"
I opened my eyes. She was looking at me with concern, and the concern looked real. Perfectly real.
"Yes." My own voice reached me as if from far away. "It's just... a strange sensation. Everything feels different since the Necrosword."
"Perhaps you should rest."
"No." I forced a smile. "Let's try something else. Do you remember that warming spell? You showed it to me when I first... when I found out about the Jotuns. When I was cold on the inside."
A pause. A little longer this time.
"Of course I remember."
"Will you show me?"
She nodded. Raised her hand and spoke a few words in the old tongue. A golden glow wrapped around her palm and drifted toward me.
Warmth touched my chest. Pleasant, gentle warmth.
But not the right one.
Frigga's spell didn't just warm the body. It warmed the soul. It reached into the icy emptiness I had carried inside me since I learned the truth about myself. It melted it, not completely, but enough to make breathing easier.
What I felt now was just heat. Physical, superficial. Like a campfire offered to a man who needs an embrace.
"Better?" she asked.
"Yes." I lied. "Thank you."
She smiled. A mother's smile, loving, understanding.
A stranger's.
I left under the pretense of exhaustion. I told her I needed to rest, that we would continue tomorrow. She didn't insist. She simply nodded, wished me a good day, and returned to her scroll.
I walked through the palace corridors without seeing anything around me.
That is not my mother.
The thought beat inside my skull like a bird in a cage. I tried to find another explanation, any other. Maybe Helheim had altered my perception. Maybe the Necrosword had ruined my ability to sense magic. Maybe I was simply a paranoid fool who saw enemies everywhere.
But I knew the truth.
The creature wearing my mother's face was not her. It had her memories, her voice, her mannerisms. It knew everything she knew, every spell, every conversation, every secret.
But it was not her.
Somewhere, in a dungeon, in another world, in a grave, was the real Frigga. Alive or dead. And here, in the heart of Asgard, beside the king, sat a counterfeit queen.
Veranke.
Eyes beside the king.
Damn it all.
I stopped at a window and pressed my forehead against the cold stone. My hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from rage. From helplessness. From the realization that all this time, while I was searching for enemies among advisors and servants, the enemy had been sitting at the royal family's table.
Eating breakfast with us. Sleeping in the queen's chambers. Touching Odin.
How long? How long had she been here?
I remembered the morning after Helheim. How she had brought breakfast, how she had asked about Hela, how she had embraced me. Had it been her already? Or earlier?
When was the last time I had seen my real mother?
There was no answer. And that was the worst part.
The throne room was empty at this hour, too late for morning audiences, too early for evening ones. Only Odin sat on the throne, absorbed in some scrolls. Gungnir leaned beside him, propped against the armrest.
I entered without announcement. The guards at the doors started to stop me, but Odin raised a hand.
"Leave us."
They filed out. The doors closed with a dull thud.
"Loki." Odin set his scrolls aside. "Judging by your face, you bring no good news."
"No."
I came closer. Stopped at the foot of the throne, looking up at the Allfather. He looked old in this light, ancient, weary. Thousands of years of power leave their marks even on gods.
"I know who Veranke is," I said.
Odin straightened.
"Who?"
"Frigga."
Silence.
Odin stared at me, long and heavy. His one eye darkened.
"Say that again."
"The creature posing as the Queen of Asgard," I said evenly, though everything inside me was burning, "is not Frigga. It's a Skrull. Veranke. She took Mother's place. I don't know when, but long enough ago to..."
"Enough."
Odin's voice was a thunderclap. I fell silent.
"You are accusing my wife," he said slowly, "the mother of my sons, the Queen of Asgard, of being an impostor?"
"I'm not accusing. I'm stating a fact."
"On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that I know Mother's magic better than anyone in the Nine Realms." I took a step forward. "She taught me, Allfather. For years. Thousands of hours. I know her power the way I know my own. And what I felt today was not her."
"What exactly did you feel?"
"A stranger." I searched for the words. "A perfect copy, technically flawless, but... dead. Like a portrait instead of a living person. Skrulls can copy memory, appearance, even powers. But they can't copy the bond. The bond that forms between teacher and student when they work together for years."
Odin said nothing.
"I know how this sounds," I went on. "I know I have no proof I can lay on the table. But I'm asking you to check for yourself. You have ways I don't."
"You're asking me to suspect my own wife?"
"I'm asking you to protect your own wife." I met his gaze. "If I'm right, the real Frigga is out there somewhere, alive or dead. And every day we delay lowers the chance of finding her."
Odin rose.
He stood a head taller than I did, and in that moment he seemed larger still, filling the whole hall, crushing it with his presence alone. The Allfather, king of Asgard, god of gods.
"If you are mistaken," he said quietly, "if this is your paranoia, your resentment, your game..."
"Then I'll accept any punishment."
A pause.
Then Odin nodded.
"Wait here."
He descended from the throne and passed me on his way to a side door. Gungnir was in his hand. I hadn't even noticed when he took it.
"I will check for myself. And may the Norns help you if you have lied."
The door closed behind him.
I was left alone in the empty throne room.
The waiting was the worst part.
I sat on the steps of the throne, staring at the closed doors, counting the beats of my own heart. One hundred. Two hundred. Five hundred.
What if I was wrong?
The thought returned again and again. What if Helheim really had altered my perception? What if the Necrosword had warped my magic so badly that I could no longer trust my own senses?
What if I had just accused my mother of being a monster?
One thousand beats. Fifteen hundred.
The doors flew open.
Odin strode into the hall, and I didn't need to ask. I saw the answer in his face, in the way his knuckles had gone white on Gungnir's shaft, in the vein twitching at his temple, in the darkness of his single eye.
The Allfather was furious.
Not the theatrical fury he displayed at trials and councils. A real one. Quiet. Deadly.
"You were right," he said.
Three words. They fell into the silence of the hall like stones into water.
"How did you check?"
"There are things only Frigga and I know." He walked to the throne, but didn't sit. He remained standing, staring into the emptiness. "Not memories. Not words. Bonds. Threads we have woven together over millennia. When I pulled on them..."
He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
"Where is she?" I asked. "The real one?"
"I don't know. Not yet." Odin turned to me. "That creature sits at my table. Sleeps in my bed. Touches me with my wife's hands. And I didn't notice."
His voice held more than rage. It held guilt. It held pain.
The Allfather, all-seeing and all-knowing, had overlooked an enemy beneath his own roof.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We kill her."
"Wait." I stood. "If we kill Veranke now, we lose our only thread to the real Frigga. She knows where Mother is being held. Alive or..."
"Do not say it."
"...or not. We need information."
Odin looked at me. The fury still burned in his eye, but reason was winning. He would never have become king of Asgard if he couldn't think through his anger.
"What do you propose?"
"I don't have a ready plan," I admitted. "Their disguises are too perfect. Ordinary methods..."
"Ordinary ones, no." Odin turned to me, and something new had come into his eye. Not rage, but calculation. "But there is an ancient ritual. I haven't used it in thousands of years. It demands enormous power and can only be performed under certain conditions."
"What ritual?"
"Aurvandil-seidr. The Spell of True Form." He raised Gungnir. "This spear was forged in the heart of a dying star. It holds enough power to strip away any mask, any illusion, any change of shape. With a single strike, everyone in the hall will appear as they truly are."
I stared at him. Such power existed, and he had never mentioned it?
"Why haven't you used it before?"
"Because the ritual cannot be aimed at one person. It exposes everyone. Every soul within its reach." Odin smiled, bitter and without humor. "Imagine what would happen if every Asgardian saw the true face of every other. All the secrets, all the disguises, all the little deceptions. Chaos."
"But now..."
"Now we have no choice." He nodded. "Union Day. In two days. The entire court will gather in the throne room. I will perform the ritual under the guise of the traditional blessing. Veranke and any other Skrull will lose their faces."
"And then we take her alive," I finished. "Interrogate her. Find out where Frigga is."
Odin was silent. Thinking.
"The risk," he said at last. "If she realizes we know..."
"She won't. I'll act as I always do. So will you. Two days isn't that long."
"Two days beside that creature, pretending she is my wife."
"Yes."
He looked at me for a long time. Then he nodded, sharply, briefly.
"Very well. Two days. But if anything goes wrong, if she grows suspicious, if she tries to flee..."
"Then we act immediately."
"Yes." He gripped Gungnir until his knuckles whitened. "And Loki?"
"Yes?"
"No one. Not Thor, not Tyr, not Heimdall. No one until this is over."
"I understand."
"I am not sure you do." He came down from the throne and stopped in front of me. "You have just proven that my inner circle was porous. That an enemy could sit at my table for months and I wouldn't notice. If Veranke took Frigga's place, who else might have been replaced? Whom can I trust?"
I was silent. I had no answer.
"No one," Odin said himself. "Until this is over, no one but the two of us."
I left the throne room with the feeling that the world had changed.
Not for the better, just changed. Sharper. More dangerous. Shadows seemed deeper, faces around me more suspect. Any servant in the corridor could be an enemy. Any advisor. Any friend.
Except the two of us.
A strange alliance. The Allfather and his adopted son, the liar and the trickster. United by a shared purpose: to save the woman we both loved.
If she could still be saved.
I stopped at a window and looked down at Asgard. The city shone in the sunset light, golden spires, waterfalls, endless terraces of gardens. Beautiful. Eternal. Unshakable.
An illusion.
Beneath that beauty, worms hid. Skrulls in Asgardian masks, waiting for their hour. And the queen of those worms sat on the throne beside Odin while no one saw.
Two days of pretending everything was fine. Two days of looking into the face of the creature that had stolen my mother, and smiling. Two days of waiting.
And then, Union Day.
I headed for my chambers. I needed to rest, to gather my thoughts. To prepare for the hardest performance of my life.
The God of Lies had to lie.
Even when every word felt like glass in my throat.
She came again that evening.
She knocked, politely, gently. She entered carrying a tray with a pitcher and two cups.
"I thought you might be lonely," she said. "After our training, you seemed... upset."
I was sitting by the window, pretending to read. I set the scroll aside and smiled.
"Just lost in thought. Nothing serious."
She came over and sat beside me. She poured wine into both cups and handed one to me.
"What shall we drink to?"
I took the cup. I looked at her, at the face I had known all my life. At the eyes that seemed so dear.
"To family," I said.
"To family," she repeated.
We drank.
The wine was good. Tart, with a hint of something floral. It was exactly what my mother would have chosen.
"Loki," she began after a pause, "I wanted to ask... your investigation. Are you close to a solution?"
"Maybe." I turned the cup in my hands. "I have a few leads."
"Which ones?"
"It's too early to say. I don't want to spook the quarry."
She nodded, understanding, patient.
"Be careful. Those creatures are dangerous."
"I know."
She reached out and touched my shoulder. The same gesture as always. Warm, soothing.
I didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. I simply let it happen.
Two days.
"Thank you for coming," I said. "It... means a lot."
She smiled. A mother's smile.
"I will always be here, my son. Whatever happens."
When she left, I sat in the dark for a long time, staring at the closed door.
Then I rose and went to the window. Below, Asgard was sinking into night, the lights going out one by one, the city falling asleep.
Two days.
After that, everything would change. One way or another.
I closed my eyes and began counting the hours until dawn.