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Inga Ingvarsdottir is good at being invisible. It's perhaps the most important part of a handmaiden's duties; whenever her services are not required, a handmaiden is supposed to fade into the background until she all but becomes part of the furniture, never to be noticed until her queen has need of her.
This goes doubly for her, who is not only among the youngest members of the queen's household (she has only been in the Allmother's service for a scant three years), but also merely the daughter of a humble countryside jarl, and must therefore never appear to try and rise above her station. Ambition is solely for the ladies-in-waiting, who come from the highest ranks of Asgard's nobility or, in a few cases, even foreign royal families; a handmaiden's only goal must be to serve quietly and faithfully, and Inga is content enough with her lot.
She loves her queen dearly. Even though Inga began her service during a time of grief and sorrow for the Allmother, right after those strange, chaotic events that ended with the destruction of the Bifröst and the death of the second prince, Queen Frigga has been nothing but kind to her, and Inga is determined to prove herself worthy of that kindness.
She can never tell whether her efforts truly make any difference to the queen. Yet, she still did everything she could, throughout the somber first months of her service as well as during the terrifying days that followed, when the unthinkable happened and Asgard's enemies overcame her defenses, leaving the Allmother widowed and mourning her firstborn son.
Inga tries to stay clear of rumors and gossip, but of course she has still heard her share of whispers about the other prince, the one who had been mourned by very few but his mother until it turned out he had never died to begin with. She can't tell how much truth there is to those whispers, and she never asks because there's one thing she knows for certain: since the deaths of the Allfather and the crown prince, she only ever sees a true smile on Queen Frigga's face when the queen is talking about her younger son, the son who returned to her in her darkest hour and is now sitting on his father's throne.
Inga knows very little about the new king, but she loves him for the sake of that smile alone.
+++
Inga startles violently when the door to the queen's anteroom is flung open. While it is her duty to announce anyone who wishes to enter the Allmother's private chambers, the guards outside are supposed to stop every visitor at the main entrance and announce them to her first so she will know what to tell the queen, and they would never even consider letting anyone pass the gate this early in the morning unless –
She hastily drops a deep curtsy when she recognizes the king. He's not a frequent visitor in his mother's quarters, and never at such an hour, but of course it is not her place to ask any questions since she isn't allowed to speak at all in his presence unless he addresses her first.
He doesn't even seem to have noticed her, though; he turns back and gestures to someone who is half hidden behind him, but Inga's head is still bowed, so she can only see the lower half of the man who steps into the room after the king.
Her knees are beginning to wobble, but she cannot rise from her uncomfortable position until she has been given leave to do so, and to her immense relief, the king finally seems to remember that because he bids her stand with an impatient wave of his hand. "Is the queen awake?"
"She is, my king." Her voice comes out a little squeaky; she has announced him to the queen before when she was on duty in the anteroom, but she has never actually spoken to him on those occasions, and it leaves her a bit flustered. Handmaidens rarely get to converse with male members of the nobility, let alone with the king himself; the late Allfather had sometimes given her orders, but he had certainly never heard her voice. "The Allmother sent for her ladies to help her get dressed half an hour ago."
"Go tell her I need to speak with her right away."
She doesn't waste time on a second curtsy, even though protocol would dictate it; whatever he wants to tell the queen is clearly urgent, and she doesn't think he'd appreciate her tarrying over a formality.
The Allmother is at the vanity in her dressing room with one of her ladies doing her hair, but she turns her head – to Lady Fulla's dismay, judging by her sour face – when Inga slips through the door. "Yes, Inga, what is it?"
"My queen." Inga bobs another curtsy and notices with some relief that the queen is already fully dressed; the somber black of her widow's weeds stands in stark contrast to the golden-red of the tresses that are still curling loosely around her shoulders. "The king is here and asks to speak to you at your earliest convenience."
"Right now?" The slight note of alarm in the queen's tone is unmistakable even though her expression remains calm. "Then bid him enter and tell him I'll be with him at once. Thank you, Fulla, my hair will have to wait –"
It's the last thing Inga hears when she hastens out of the room again; it wouldn't do to keep the king of Asgard waiting in the anteroom a moment longer than strictly necessary.
King Loki is speaking to the other man in low tones when she comes back; he appears as composed as ever, but she notices him picking at the palm of his left hand in a way she has often seen from the Allmother when she was tense or worried. He doesn't wait for her to hold the door open for him; the moment she steps over the threshold, he's already past her, leaving her in the anteroom with his silent companion.
Inga finds herself in a quandary. She hasn't been dismissed, and it's not like she can let a complete stranger linger in the queen's anteroom without supervision, even if the man is here by the king's leave. On the other hand, it's not exactly proper for her to be alone in a room with a man she doesn't know, so she is at a loss what she's supposed to do now.
The man is of no help; not only has he not said a single word while she has been in the room, he is also completely hidden under a long, dark cloak with the hood pulled up so she can't even see his face. All she can tell is that he's tall and, judging by the outline of the cloak, rather stoutly built, but that's everything a surreptitious glance can tell her, and of course it wouldn't do to gape at him openly.
Eventually, Inga does what is expected of a handmaiden who isn't needed and fades into the background. She moves over to the door that leads to the hallway so her back won't be to the king when he comes out of the queen's rooms; once she's there, she just goes still and settles in to wait until her services are required again. She can't tell whether the stranger has even noticed her, which is exactly how things are supposed to be.
+++
During idle moments like this, Inga usually passes the time by composing a mental list of the day's remaining chores, but she has barely gotten started when the door to the queen's chambers is flung open with such force that it crashes against the wall.
Before Inga has had time to recover from her shock, the Allmother bursts into the room, eyes wide and face bone-white, and Inga's own heart misses a beat at the sight because throughout the horrors of the past few years, she has never seen her queen in such a state. Queen Frigga all but runs towards the stranger, but then she stops dead and just stares at him as if she were seeing an apparition.
The man, too, appears frozen to the spot for a moment before he slowly reaches up to pull back the hood of his cloak.
From where she's standing, Inga can only see part of his face, and even that is mostly obscured by a filthy-looking beard and an unkempt mass of greasy hair. Such an appearance is entirely inappropriate for someone who is standing before Asgard's queen, but the Allmother doesn't seem to care. She takes a step towards him, and then another; her hand comes up as if to reach for the man's face, although she hesitates at the last moment as if she weren't sure whether she should really touch him.
The room has gone so silent that Inga's breath sounds overly loud in her own ears, and it's only now that she notices the king, who must have followed his mother and is standing in the open door to the queen's chambers with a strangely frozen look on his face. Inga finds King Loki difficult to read at the best of times, but now it seems to her that he's taking particular care to appear as inscrutable as possible. Her own discomfort is growing by the second; she cannot leave without being dismissed first, but she can't help feeling that she shouldn't be here, that she's witnessing something she's not supposed to –
"...Thor?" The Allmother's whispered question, filled with trepidation and uncertainty, leaves Inga's mind oddly blank. Surely, she must have misheard? Prince Thor is dead, has been dead for over a year, so there's no way this stranger could possibly be – he doesn't look anything like the late crown prince –
"Mother," the man replies, his voice low and shaky, and the sound of it finally seems to bring Queen Frigga out of her daze because she flings her arms around him and starts to cry. Inga hastily averts her eyes; she still doesn't understand what is happening, but she is certain that she must not let the queen of Asgard suffer the indignity of having a servant gape at her during such a moment.
She should probably keep her gaze demurely lowered, but Inga can't help turning towards the king in hopes of a gesture she can interpret as a dismissal. The king doesn't look her way, though; his eyes are on the queen and the man in her arms, and for a fleeting moment, their expression almost strikes Inga as wistful although it's gone so quickly that it leaves her wondering whether she merely imagined it.
Then he crosses the room in a few quick, noiseless strides without another glance at his mother and the stranger, who appear entirely focused on each other and don't even notice him. He's clearly about to leave, which presents Inga with another dilemma because as much as she fears to overstep her bounds by calling attention to herself in any way, it is absolutely unthinkable that Asgard's king should have to sneak out of a room in his own palace like a thief in the night, unseen and without any kind of homage.
Therefore, her heart in her throat, Inga drops another curtsy, as deep and reverential as she can manage, when the king walks by her on his way to the door, which has opened at a wave of his hand. There's a slight pause in his step, and Inga raises her head in the sudden hope that she'll finally receive the dismissal she is waiting for. Yet, the only reaction she gets from the king is a slight frown that looks almost – surprised? before he gives her a curt nod and walks out of the door, which falls shut behind him without a sound.
Inga rises slowly, her thoughts in turmoil. The late Allfather would never have acknowledged the obeisance of a servant, nor would Inga or anyone else in her position ever have expected him to – kings aren't even supposed to take note of her kind unless they wish her to carry out an order, so she has no idea what she's supposed to make of the fact that King Loki all but thanked her for a show of respect that is entirely his due.
She startles when the Allmother's voice pulls her out of her bewilderment; the queen is still holding on to the stranger's arms, but she has taken half a step back and is looking around as if she were only now becoming aware of her surroundings. "Inga, where is the king?"
Inga blushes, angry at herself for being caught woolgathering at such a time. "He left only a moment ago, my queen."
The Allmother inhales sharply, although Inga doubts that her concern is for the glaring breach of protocol. The queen whispers something to the stranger and then, before Inga even has time to hold the door for her, rushes out of the room and disappears into the hallway without the slightest care for decorum or royal dignity.
Inga bites her lip to keep her dismay from showing on her face. Queen Frigga should have sent her if she wanted someone to go after the king, whether it would have been to deliver an apology or to entreat him to come back; it is entirely unbecoming for the queen dowager of Asgard to run after her son – her son, the king of Asgard – like a peasant mother chasing after her wayward toddler. That's not the worst of it, though; the queen's abrupt departure also leaves Inga alone with the stranger for the second time, and she has even less of an idea how she's supposed to behave now than she did earlier.
+++
"Do I know you?"
Inga barely keeps herself from flinching at the question; she would never have expected the stranger to address her, but he's clearly looking at her, which at least gives her a legitimate reason to take a closer look at him in turn.
At first glance, he really doesn't have anything in common with the prince she remembers – not just because he's fat and unkempt, but also because he has the careworn appearance of a tired, middle-aged man while the God of Thunder had been a warrior in the prime of his life. The man's small, self-deprecating smile, barely visible under his monstrous beard, has nothing on the famous brilliance of Prince Thor's beaming smile, which could light up any room and lift the spirits of anyone he talked to – or so Inga has been told, because the queen's ladies all agree that the crown prince's temperament grew more somber after the (presumed) death of his brother. Inga wouldn't know; she only entered the Allmother's service after the events that allegedly darkened Prince Thor's mood, but she still remembers a few occasions when, upon visiting his mother in her quarters, she saw him joking and flirting with the queen's ladies until he had reduced even the sternest matrons among them to blushes and giggles.
She sees nothing of that man in the stranger before her, and she still can't fathom how anyone whose funeral she witnessed with her own eyes could possibly have returned to the land of the living. Still, though – if Queen Frigga recognized her lost son in him, who is Inga to doubt the Allmother's judgment?
He's still waiting for her to answer, so Inga eventually bobs another quick curtsy and replies as meekly as she can manage, "Probably not, my... my prince, I hadn't been in the Allmother's service long when you..."
"Died?" the man – Prince Thor? – supplies helpfully when Inga falters; the topic of his death doesn't seem to concern him overmuch. "You can say it, you know."
If anything, his attempt at reassurance leaves Inga even more rattled than she was before. Why is he even talking to her? If he really is Asgard's crown prince, she is so far beneath his station that he shouldn't even think of striking up a conversation with her, but if he isn't, how could he have fooled the Allmother, who sees with much more than just her eyes? Why would King Loki even have brought him here in the first place if he isn't the king's dead brother?
"Forgive me," she finally manages to stammer although she can't bring herself to call him by his title – by Prince Thor's title – again, "but – I have never heard of any warrior returning from Valhalla, so I don't understand how..."
She falls silent when his expression darkens – not with anger, but with something that speaks of pain and sorrow. "I wasn't – my brother brought me back, but not... it wasn't from Valhalla."
Inga opens her mouth and closes it again; what could she possibly say to that? Prince Thor died in battle – perhaps not as gloriously as he would have liked since the battle was lost, but he died a warrior's death nonetheless, and if the God of Thunder was denied entrance to the golden halls of his forefathers, what hope remains for anyone else to be allowed a seat among the fallen heroes of old?
He must be able to read her thoughts on her face because he shakes his head with a soft sigh. "I think that I... you could say that I lost my way."
It's only then that the rest of his words begin to sink in. My brother brought me back –
Inga feels her breath catch in her throat. All she can suddenly remember is that day in the throne room, when she was part of Queen Frigga's entourage during the opening ceremony of the Allthing and got to hear King Loki's address to the assembled lawspeakers. Almost everything the king said during that speech left her deeply shaken, but right now the only thing she can think of are his words about the Goddess of Death.
Inga may be young, but of course she's nowhere near young enough to still believe the old children's tales about Queen Hela of the Dismal Lands. Yet she has heard, with her own ears, Asgard's sorcerer king speak of the domain he granted Hela on Niflheim, of the chains that bind the Goddess of the Underworld with the power of his magic, and now she's standing before a man who claims to have been torn from her clutches by none other than the king himself.
It is utterly terrifying to think that it may be true, yet also awe-inspiring in a way that leaves her reeling. The man who just thanked her for her show of respect commands so much power that even Death herself cannot stand in his way?
Before Inga can even attempt to wrap her mind around that idea, the Allmother returns.
Inga curtsies again, not so much out of deference but because her legs seem to have turned to jelly. The queen is alone, and her eyes are redder than before, but she's smiling her true smile – the one Inga has long ago learned to tell apart from the serene facade the Allmother is expected to present to the world at any given time.
"Thank you, Inga, that will be all for now."
"My queen." With profound relief, Inga curtsies one last time and flees before the Allmother has time to reconsider. There are a hundred little things she has to do today, and right now she can't wait to get started on the most mindless chore among them to give her whirling thoughts a chance to calm down before she can even attempt to make sense of everything she has witnessed in the last half hour.
The Allmother didn't order her to keep silent about it, but that's because she knows Inga doesn't need to be told. Inga Ingvarsdottir is just a humble handmaiden, but her loyalty is to her queen, and the queen's secrets will always be safe with her.