It has been like this. She reaches, he pulls away, she lets him, and then stubbornly she reaches again. Although the days that followed make it feel like an immense gulf of time has separated this space and the Archon’s palace gardens, it has been barely over a fortnight, and this cycle costs her in this too new world where she has a heart again.

And this time, finally, when Loki lifts her hand away, turns his back to her to begin yet another day wrapped away in himself, her frustration has grown greater than her respect for his wishes.

“You shall do nothing of the sort,” she says curtly, some heat behind it; it is the liveliest she has sounded in days.