Valdor didn't show up for the meeting.
We'd agreed on midnight, in the same garden behind the library. A quiet place, hidden from prying eyes, far enough from the palace's main corridors. I waited an hour. He never came.
An advisor who had served at court for five centuries doesn't miss appointments. Not even if that advisor is a Skrull wearing a stolen face.
I found him at dawn.
The body lay in his own chambers, on the bed, in the same pose as the dead ambassador: hands folded on the chest, eyes closed, face serene. But this time there was no attempt to disguise it as a natural death. A symbol had been carved into the forehead of Valdor, or whoever had worn his face. A circle with three lines radiating from the center.
I didn't recognize the mark, but I understood its meaning. Traitor. Warning.
A message for me.
The body had already changed: green skin, alien features, empty eyes. The dead Skrull stared at the ceiling.
"Found something interesting, Prince?"
I turned. Tyr stood in the doorway, one hand on his sword.
"Another one," I said evenly. "Advisor Valdor. He was a Skrull."
Tyr came closer and looked down at the body. His expression didn't change. He was a warrior who had seen too many deaths.
"Murdered?"
"Executed. See the symbol? This isn't just a killing. It's a sentence."
"By their own?"
"It looks that way."
Tyr frowned. "Why would they kill one of their own?"
"Because he talked. Or he was about to." I stepped back from the bed. "Someone found out that I'd exposed him. Someone who's watching me."
"Watching you?" Tyr glanced around the room as though he expected to find a spy in the corner. "Are you sure?"
"I spoke with him last night. Alone. Today he's dead. Coincidence?"
Tyr said nothing. Then he shook his head.
"We have to report to the Allfather."
"Yes. But first, check the guard rosters. Who was on duty by the guest wing last night. Who saw Valdor last. Who came and went."
"You think the killer is one of ours?"
"I think the killer could have looked like any one of ours."
Tyr left. I stayed with the body, but not for long, only enough to search the room. No signs of a struggle, no evidence. Professional work. The Skrulls were as good at covering their tracks as they were at stealing faces.
Valdor had given me three names. Three minor officials he knew to be his own people. Now I had to find them before someone else did.
I was too late.
The first, a scribe from Tyr's chancellery, had vanished. His room was empty, his belongings untouched, but the man himself had simply dissolved. His coworkers said they'd seen him last night. Since then, no one.
The second, a cook's assistant, turned up in the cellar where the wine casks were stored. Hanged himself, if you believed the scene. A rope around his neck, a overturned stool beneath his feet. A classic suicide.
Too classic.
The green skin had already surfaced. Another dead Skrull. The traitor's symbol was carved into his chest, beneath his clothes.
The third, a gardener who worked in the royal gardens, lay among his flowers with his throat cut. A maidservant had found him when she came for a bouquet for Frigga's chambers. The girl was still sobbing in the corner while I examined the body.
Three names. Three corpses. In a single night.
Someone was cleaning up the trail. Fast, ruthless, efficient. Someone who knew I was hunting and had decided to take my quarry away from me.
I stood over the gardener's body and thought. Valdor had spoken with me last night. By morning he was dead. I hadn't told anyone about our conversation, hadn't spoken the names, hadn't shared a word of it.
But someone knew.
Someone had seen us in the garden. Or someone was reading my intentions before I could act on them. Someone close enough to know where I would go and why.
Eyes beside the king.
"Loki."
I turned. Frigga stood on the path between the flower beds. The morning sun gilded her hair, and she looked as she always did: calm, regal, beautiful.
"Mother."
"I heard about Valdor." She stepped closer and looked at the gardener's body. Her face didn't change, except for a faint sorrow in her eyes. "And now this. How many more?"
"Three in one night. All Skrulls. All killed by their own."
"They're covering their tracks."
"Yes."
Frigga walked around the body and stopped beside me. Close, her shoulder almost touching mine.
"How is your investigation going?"
"Slowly." I watched her face, searching for something, though I couldn't have said what. "Every thread snaps the moment I pull on it."
"Perhaps you're pulling the wrong threads."
"What do you mean?"
She smiled, softly, mysteriously.
"You're hunting Skrulls among servants and clerks. Small fish, scouts. But whoever kills them this quickly and this cleanly," she nodded toward the body, "is no small fish. That is someone with power. With access. With information."
"I know."
"Then why are you still looking down instead of up?"
I was silent. She was right, logically, absolutely right. Veranke, whoever she was, held a high position. High enough to know my moves before I made them.
"Do you have suspicions?" I asked.
"I have many suspicions." Frigga looked away. "But suspicions aren't proof. And without proof, accusing one of Odin's inner circle..." She shook her head.
"Who do you suspect?"
A pause. Long and heavy.
"Tyr," she said at last. "He's always at Odin's side. He has access to every military plan. And he is far too..." She searched for the word. "...straightforward. Sometimes the best disguise is to seem like exactly what you cannot be."
Tyr. I thought of him: warrior, veteran, Odin's right hand in matters of war. To replace him would mean access to Asgard's defenses, its plans, its army.
But Tyr?
"Are you sure?"
"I said suspicions. Nothing more." She touched my shoulder. "Be careful, my son. The enemy is closer than you think."
She walked away, leaving me with a dead gardener and thoughts that would not give me peace.
Tyr. She had pointed at Tyr.
It made sense. Too much sense. And that was exactly why something scratched at the edge of my mind. Something wrong.
I remembered how Valdor had spoken of Veranke. She is here, in a high position. Tyr was a high position. But Frigga was higher. The Allfather's wife, mother of princes, Queen of Asgard.
Why was she so calm?
Three Skrulls killed in a night, a conspiracy spreading through the palace, and she was asking about my investigation, offering suspects, giving advice. As if...
As if she were steering me.
No. I shook my head. This was madness. This was my mother. She loved me. I had seen it in her eyes a thousand times. Felt it in her touch. Heard it in her words.
But Skrulls could copy everything. Memory, voice, mannerisms. Everything except the body.
Valdor's migraine. A physical reaction that couldn't be faked.
What did I know of my mother's habits, her reactions, the things that came from flesh and not from the mind?
She was always cold in the mornings. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, even in summer, until the sun climbed high enough. It came from her body. She used to say the blood of the Vanir ran cooler than that of Asgardians.
This morning she had stood in the garden without a shawl. In a light dress. She hadn't hugged herself, hadn't sought warmth.
A trifle. The morning was warm. The sun was already up.
A trifle.
I forced myself to turn away from those thoughts. She was my mother. The only one who had ever believed in me. The only one I had truly trusted.
But the worm of doubt had already gnawed a path into my mind. And no matter how hard I tried to drown it out, it kept gnawing.
The council assembled again, this time at my request.
I stood before the table where Odin, Frigga, Thor, Tyr, and Heimdall sat. I reported on the dead Skrulls, on the trails that kept going cold, on the purge someone was carrying out among the conspirators' ranks.
"Four in one day," I finished. "And those are only the ones we've found."
"They're eliminating witnesses," Tyr said. "Anyone who might talk."
"Or anyone who already has." Odin looked at me. "Advisor Valdor. You spoke with him before he died."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"And?"
"He told me little. Names, ones I'd already checked. All dead. But he mentioned their leader. A queen named Veranke. She is here, in Asgard. In a high position."
Silence.
"How high?" Thor asked.
"He didn't know. Or he ran out of time to say."
Frigga sat motionless, her hands folded in her lap. Her face was calm, attentive. She listened, and I couldn't tell what she was thinking.
"Veranke," Odin said slowly, as though tasting the name. "I've heard it before. A long time ago, before the fall of their empire. A high priestess, a fanatic. She believed the Skrulls were a chosen people, that the gods should serve them, not the other way around."
"Charming woman," Thor muttered.
"If she's here," Odin went on, ignoring his son, "then these are not simply refugees seeking shelter. This is an invasion. Slow, quiet, but an invasion."
"What do we do?" Tyr asked.
I looked at Frigga. She caught my gaze and smiled, barely, at the corners of her mouth.
"I need more time," I said. "And more freedom to act. If the enemy learns of every move before I make it, then I have a leak. Somewhere close."
"Are you accusing one of us?" Tyr frowned.
"I'm accusing no one. I'm stating a fact." I swept my gaze around the table. "Information is leaking. From where, I don't yet know."
"Then how do you propose to proceed?" Odin asked.
"Alone. No reports, no briefings. I'll tell you only the results, when I have them."
A pause. Odin studied me for a long moment, with the look that saw more than it revealed.
"Very well," he said at last. "Proceed. But if there are no results in three days, we do it my way. A mass inspection, regardless of the consequences."
"Understood."
The council dispersed. I left last, lingering at the door.
Frigga walked down the corridor ahead of me, alone, without her handmaidens. Her stride was sure, her back straight. No trace of the morning chill, no sign of her usual gesture of wrapping her arms around herself.
Three days. I had three days to find the truth.
And part of me, the part that had survived Sanctuary, Helheim, the battle with Gorr, already knew where to look.
I just didn't want to admit it.
That evening I went to the library.
Not for books, but for solitude. I needed to think, and the palace, with its whispering servants and suspicious glances, wouldn't let me concentrate.
The library was empty at that hour. Only dust danced in the beams of the setting sun slanting through the tall windows. I sat in a chair in the far corner and closed my eyes.
Facts. Only facts.
One: the Skrulls had infiltrated Asgard. How many, unknown, but enough to hold positions among servants, officials, possibly higher.
Two: their leader, Veranke, was here. In a high position. High enough to influence decisions, to know of my moves before I made them.
Three: someone was erasing the trail. Quickly, efficiently. That someone had known about my conversation with Valdor and had acted that very night.
Four: Frigga was behaving strangely. Small things, the question about Hela, the morning chill, the way she steered suspicion toward Tyr, but small things add up to a picture.
I didn't want to see that picture. But it was emerging more clearly with every moment, like an image on a developing photograph.
"Deep thoughts?"
I opened my eyes. Thor stood by a shelf, running his fingers along the spines of the books.
"Just thinking."
"Dangerous pastime." He came over and sat in the neighboring chair. "Do you suspect someone in particular?"
"What makes you say that?"
"I know you." Thor smiled. "When you go quiet and stare into nothing, you're not resting. You're hunting. Just inside your head instead of out in the world."
I said nothing. Thor waited.
"If you found out," I began slowly, "that someone close to you... someone you trusted... wasn't who they seemed. What would you do?"
Thor frowned. "Who are you talking about?"
"Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically," he repeated doubtfully. "All right. Hypothetically, I'd check. Make sure. And then I'd act."
"Even if it meant... losing someone?"
"Losing what?"
I didn't answer.
Thor looked at me for a long time. Then his face changed, understanding settling into his features.
"Loki. Who are you talking about?"
"No one."
"Don't lie to me." He leaned forward. "You think someone in the family... someone among us..."
"I don't think anything." I stood. "I'm just asking questions."
I left, leaving Thor alone in the library.
Three days. I had three days.
Tomorrow I would test my mother. I would ask questions she should know the answers to. I would watch her reactions, her body, the little things that couldn't be faked.
And then I would know.
Part of me hoped I was wrong.
The other part, the one that had survived by learning to trust no one, was already preparing for the worst.