'This is how my son died,' Tyr said. In the last few hours, Tyr's voice had taken on a softness that Loki had never known the man to possess. He used a cool cloth to wipe the sweat on Sif's face and straightened the blanket Sif's last seizure had left askew. 'Not exactly like this, no. His company became cut off and thus unable to take their injured to a field hospital, let alone back to Asgard. The poison took him as he lay in a dark cave, without so much as a fire to give him comfort in his final hours.'

Loki pressed his palms together, uncertain about what response Tyr wanted from him. Ove, Sif's brother, wasn't a topic one raised within Tyr's earshot. As best as Loki understood it from snatches of whispered conversations and from Sif's few words on the matter, Ove's early death left Tyr to bury all the ambitions he had held for his house. In the first few centuries, Tyr had hoped for another son, but the Norns saw fit to offer him three daughters in Ove's stead. After Sif's birth had nearly robbed him of his wife too, Tyr had to admit defeat.

Tyr's family had long amused Loki: Sif always striving to become the son she could never be; Tyr's simmering resentment that she would even attempt such a charade; and Sif's older sisters perpetually attempting to force a peace between the two.

It wasn't so amusing now.

'Well over a millennium has passed and, unlike her brother, Sif is in the care of the best healers in Asgard,' Loki said.

Tyr threw him a condescending smile. 'Does she look to be improving?'

She didn't. The arrow wounds themselves were serious injuries, but the poison on the arrowheads turned out to be the true calamity. The first symptoms had appeared in hours after their return to Asgard, once the poison had a chance to spread throughout Sif's body. A fever came. Within an hour it was severe enough to spark seizures. Then Sif's organs began to suffer. The healers propped up her vital functions, but they struggled to bring down the fever and they could do nothing about the grotesque spider-webs of grey spreading over Sif's skin.

'How is it that after the long years Asgard and Jotunheim have been at war, we don't have a cure for this?' Loki asked. Sighing, he leaned against the windowsill and tried his best to ignore the sun creeping up from behind the mountains.

'Healers say the poison is never the same,' Tyr replied as he sunk into the wicker chair by Sif's bed. 'And they cannot keep a patient alive long enough to try an antidote.'

'An intelligent strategy, I'll give the frost giants that.'

'A coward's strategy. An honourable man doesn't resort to poison.'

Loki bit his lip and swallowed his instinctive reply, then reached for something more conciliatory. 'I'm not ready to surrender my hope for Sif's recovery, but whatever may come, I'm sorry this grief has befallen your family. She should've had many more years in this world.'

Despite their mutual dislike, Loki didn't have to spin his words out of nothing. Sif had been more perceptive than the rest of the Asgardians, so fearing that she would expose him, Loki had banished her from the Nine Realms. She hadn't been there for Ragnarok or for the funeral pyre Thanos made of the Statesman. She could well have survived Thanos' Snap too.

Helblindi. Sif. Who else will find premature death because of me?

Something of Loki's thoughts must have crept into his expression, because Tyr cocked his head and said, 'Do not doubt your father's strength, Loki. He is not as we are. He will recover.'

'Thank you, Lord Tyr,' Loki said, speaking more quickly than he meant to.

Loki had no desire to discuss his father, but now that Tyr had brought up Odin's condition, Loki couldn't find a trail of thought that didn't swiftly circle back to Odin. Tyr, for his part, seemed to have nothing else to say. So they kept vigil until a healer burst into the room and disrupted their uneasy quiet.

Her eyes swept over Tyr, then froze on Loki. 'I thought you would be with your father, your highness.'

I couldn't take being in that room any longer.

'I came to check on Lady Sif and Lord Tyr,' Loki responded after he dismissed the first three answers that flashed through his head as unnecessarily hostile. 'I had best return now. Do make sure Lady Sif receives the best of care.'

All of fifty paces separated Sif's bedside from the room where Odin presently lay, but each step was a struggle. When it came to Sif, there was a fairly long chain of events connecting Loki's decision to meddle with the past and the arrows that struck her in Jotunheim. When it came to his father, Loki's culpability was far more direct. He had mistimed the moment to drop his shield. Half a second — just enough time for an arrow to find its mark before the Bifrost delivered them to the safety of Asgard.

To Loki's surprise, his mother wasn't at her husband's side, but stood out in the hallway by the doors to Odin's room.

'Why are you out here?' Loki quickened his pace. 'Has he —'

'No, your father sleeps,' Frigga said. 'You were gone so long, I worried. How is Sif?'

Loki shook his head. 'Not well.'

Frigga closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath, then offered Loki a reassuring smile. He struggled to match the gesture in any way. Instead, he took his mother's arm and led her back to the broad room where Odin slept. As must as he didn't want to hear the grief in Frigga's voice or see her knuckles whiten as fear left her clenching Odin's cold hand, Loki knew she needed him close at this moment.

Frigga nestled herself back on the edge of Odin's bed and gestured for Loki to take the chair he had occupied through much of the night. Loki sunk into it, then peered up at his mother.

'We must not lose hope,' she said, more to herself than to Loki, but he nodded nonetheless.

After a couple of minutes, she rested her back against the headboard and began taking out the long pins that kept her hair up. They were decorated with golden eight-pointed stars, which glimmered as they caught the light flooding into the room through the uncurtained windows.

'Thor was fascinated with these when we were children,' Loki said. 'He would always beg you for a pin until you gave in and handed him one. Of course, he'd lose the pin or break it and come running to me, demanding I fix it.'

'And you did, didn't you? Otherwise, there wouldn't be a pin left,' Frigga replied. She opened her hand and let the pins rest across her palm. Gathered together like this made obvious the limitations of Loki's artistry. A few of the pins had odd kinks in them and two stars sat angled incorrectly.

'I don't know where to start to fix this,' Loki sighed.

He longed to start over again and think things through before he made any changes instead of allowing sentimentality to drive him. But considering the damage time travel had inflicted on him already, Loki has certain the spell would kill him should he try it a second time. The time stone meanwhile was still well-protected by Strange's predecessor. Attempting to get his hands on it would be no less suicidal than the time travel spell.

'Dawn always follows the night, no matter how deep the dark might seem.' Frigga replied. 'Your father will come back to us. Your brother too.'

For the first time since he returned to the room, Loki's gaze drifted to his father. No seizures, no foul tentacles of poison trailing across his skin. As best as they could tell, he had fallen into an Odinsleep once the arrow struck him.

Loki suspected the Odinsleep had been inevitable. His father had put it off for far too long; likely a testament to his private hesitation to leave the Nine Realms in Thor's hands. And if Loki's revelation about his true identity could trigger his collapse, news of Thor's capture by the frost giants certainly could too. However, the arrow complicated matters. Last time Odin had slept for three days, but there was no guessing how long this Odinsleep would last.

Heavy footsteps outside startled Loki out of his anxiety-ridden speculation. He rose to his feet just as the doors swung open and Lord Agnar, the chancellor of Asgard, strode in with Gungnir in his arms. Behind him, at least half a dozen guards positioned themselves along the hallway. Before Loki could say anything, Agnar dropped to his knees and offered Loki the spear.

'Thor is captured, the line of succession falls to you,' Frigga declared. 'Until your brother returns, Asgard is yours.'

Loki let out a mirthless laugh. There was an uncomfortable sense of self-inflicted deja vu about this moment.

'Do you not believe your br —'

'No, mother, it's not that,' Loki said quickly. 'Thor lives, I'm sure of it. He is of more use to the frost giants while alive.'

Sighing, Loki took the spear out of Agnar's hands and muttered a few perfunctory words of gratitude to the man. The spear had been thrust into Loki's hand once before and he had carried it daily for two years while he impersonated his father, but it still didn't sit comfortably in his hand. Loki slid his palm down a few inches and clenched Gungnir's shaft.

'You are right, mother, you always are,' Loki said. 'I have had the night to grieve and now it is morning. There is a great deal of work to be done. Lord Agnar, have you anything to write on?'

When the man shook his head, Loki shrugged and dismissed him, then summoned a few sheets of paper from his father's study. These were remnants of the king's stationery — crisp, thick and Asgard's city-scape embossed at the bottom of each sheet.

'Huginn. Muninn,' Loki muttered while he pulled a chair over to the narrow table between the room's two windows.

A few moments later, the two ravens dove through the doorway with low, gurgling croaks. Muninn, always the shier of the two, perched on the headboard of Odin's bed. Huginn, meanwhile, landed in his favourite spot to linger — atop Gungnir.

'Get down, you menace, as if this thing was not heavy enough without you squatting on it,' Loki tipped the spear forward until Huginn had no choice but to relocate himself onto Loki's forearm. 'No claws either, please. I have a task for you — a message that cannot go astray.'

Both ravens cawed excitedly, but they were soon disappointed. The letter still had to be written. It took four aborted drafts before Loki realised that brevity would best suit his intent and contented himself with a concise, if inelegant, missive.

'Unto Laufey Blainnson, King of Jotunheim.

Your majesty,

It has been reported to me that your people have captured my brother, Thor Odinson, when he and his companions travelled to your realm. I wish to discuss what arrangements can be made between our two realms to secure my brother's safe return to Asgard.

Please send a reply with the ravens indicating if you would be amenable to such a discussion.

My regards to you and your house,

Loki Odinson, Prince-Regent of Asgard.'