Daisy had zero interest in the Avengers. That team was a nonstop misery parade—Captain America had spent most of his career suffering through it and had become a wanted fugitive more than once. Tony Stark opened up his own tower as a headquarters, never saw a government subsidy in return, and bled money until there was nothing left. With examples that grim, she wasn't jumping into that pit.
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to mobilize those people? They all have their own agendas," she said with a quiet scoff. "Your star consultant, Mr. Stark? Right now he's on the West Coast quietly dragging the Destroyer Armor out of the water. What excuse did he give S.H.I.E.L.D. for the leave of absence? Sprained ankle? Hot date?"
Just thinking about all that nonsense gave her a headache. "I'll stick to being an agent. Make some cartoons, sell some weapons in my spare time. Life's good." She didn't give Baldy a chance to answer—just turned and walked out of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, leaving a thoroughly composed silhouette behind her.
The next second, she stepped in front of her villa and stopped cold.
Her master bedroom had a new skylight. A very large one. Of the unplanned variety.
"Tangbao. Come here. Explain—never mind." She grabbed the lion cub by the tail as he tried to slink past, hauled his increasingly round form back, asked him a couple of questions, remembered he couldn't talk, and sent him off with a firm pat on the rear.
He didn't go far. Three quick bounds and he was gone—streaming into Lorna's room and pressing himself flat against the door to watch through the gap.
"Lorna! Out here! Now! Explain!"
She dragged over the other freeloader. Whoever had done this, she was going to make sure they regretted being born.
"Hey, um, hi, Daisy..." Lorna offered her most awkward smile.
She tried for a bright side. "God never gives us more than we can—"
Daisy's expression could have frosted glass. "Save it. Was it you?"
"Absolutely not!" Both hands went up. She wasn't taking that fall.
"It was the big guy—golden hair, the hammer. There was this massive lightning bolt and—"
Daisy stopped listening after "hammer." Her mind went a little sideways. She didn't consider it her fault—she hadn't exactly forgotten about Mjolnir, just hadn't prioritized it. The resentment landed squarely on Thor regardless.
She pointed at the sky. "Thor, I—" She stopped.
She'd been about to unleash every profanity in her arsenal. Then she saw them: two ravens were perched on the shattered roofline, watching. One of them ruffled the feathers on its wing with an air of patient attention.
She swallowed every word.
Frigga had been good to her. Odin's ravens were right there. She just couldn't do it.
Lorna noticed Daisy had started a sentence and immediately abandoned it, which she found fascinating. She also recognized, with the instincts of someone who'd learned from the maid's example, that now was the moment to exit. The maid hadn't shown her face since the damage report came in. That was a woman who understood the situation.
"A classmate needs me—got to run!" She abandoned Daisy without a scrap of remorse.
Deep breath. Let it go. This was technically a natural disaster. Lightning strikes fell squarely within coverage on every property insurance policy she owned. And she couldn't take Odin in a fistfight, so screaming into the void wasn't going to accomplish anything.
It took some work. Eventually, she steadied herself.
She turned away from the two ravens—neither in any hurry to leave—and walked into the room to tally the damage.
The roof had to be fixed. Her constitution was exceptional, but sleeping under open sky was a different category of problem.
The room was exactly as it had been ten days ago. Both Lorna and the maid had the sense not to touch anything—they knew her well enough to know nobody wanted to be the one who caught the bad luck.
She looked at her clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry—all of it scorched to blackened ruin, as though someone had methodically taken a blowtorch to the wardrobe. A stress vein made itself known on her forehead.
Many events required specific looks. Women's fashion didn't work the way men's did. A man could rotate three suits indefinitely. A woman wore a dress once and retired it. In her bracket, pieces ran from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars each. The shoes and jewelry were worse.
The math hurt.
They were things she'd never have worn again. That wasn't the point. It was still money.
Lorna had fled. The maid had simply not appeared. But there was someone who couldn't escape.
"Danger, how much did I lose?"
"Miss, the structural damage to the property is estimated at nine percent of overall integrity. Projected repair costs: seven million dollars. Clothing, accessories, and jewelry damage is substantial—accounting for the low probability of repeat use on most items, my preliminary estimate for that category is approaching five million."
Daisy pressed a hand to her chest. A sharp, seizing pain.
Twelve million dollars.
She couldn't breathe.
If Thor didn't have the father he had—and if she could actually win that fight—she would have charged back to Asgard by now.
A beat of wings arrived first. Then Odin's raven swept in through the opening in the ceiling and settled on her desk. Two crimson eyes regarded her.
I didn't actually curse. I was about to, but I didn't. She didn't think Odin was petty enough to dispatch a reprimand over unspoken thoughts. Which meant only one other explanation made sense.
The All-Father was sending compensation.
She held herself very still, held back the smile trying to surface, and arranged her face into something warm but not desperate. She wasn't going to ask for Gungnir or anything ambitious—even a couple of decent relics would cancel the house debt outright. And she could still run the lightning claim through insurance. The evidence was self-explanatory.
The raven nodded at her with considerable dignity. She read it as encouragement and smiled back—warm, not fawning.
The raven gestured toward the window with its wing. A moment later, the second raven struggled in through the gap, laboring under the weight of three large chests.
The chests were covered in dark-gold patterns—impossibly intricate, the lines flowing into each other without break. Whatever they were, they didn't just block her vision; they blocked her vibration sense entirely. Looking at the three boxes was like looking at nothing. Three blank spots in the universe, present and absent at the same time.
"These are all for me?" she asked, testing the waters.
One raven gave her a look that could only mean: are you slow?
She scratched her head. "Right. I pick one?"
The raven nodded. Both birds arranged themselves with great dignity and waited.
There was nothing to negotiate here. One was always better than none.
She circled the chests, looked them over from every angle, tried the vibration sense again. Nothing. Identical patterns, identical weight, identical blankness. No angle gave anything away.
If she pulled a relic, she was winning big. If she drew garbage, she'd want to throw herself into the Hudson River.
The raven shifted impatiently. She took the hint.
Oldest method available. Let fate decide.
She counted silently in her head—eeny, meeny, miny, moe—finger tracing across the three boxes in a row.