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The music had not stopped yet, that was the cruelest part.
Golden strings still echoed through the halls of Asgard as nobles whispered behind jeweled hands, pretending not to stare while the throne room doors stood open, empty where the groom should have been.
She could still feel the warmth of Loki’s hands from minutes ago, the way his hands felt in hers just seconds before the doors opened, the way his eyes held hers.
She could still hear his breathing, feel the look in his eyes on her tongue - Not cold, neither uncaring but somehow so much worse.
Her dress spilled across the marble steps like fallen waterfalls, layers of white silk and beautiful golden details trailing behind her as she descended the long ceremonial hall alone.
The veil attached to her hair floated softly with each step, beautiful in the way Gods painted their queens and muses but still so utterly abandoned.
The court and guests watched in silence, No one dared move or speak as her heels clicked in the loud silence of the hall - partly because she was walking down the isle alone but mostly because everyone knew that Loki had fled.
The massive doors at the end of the hall remained open to the storm dark sky beyond the palace balconies, Somewhere out there, beyond the Bifrost, he was already becoming the man she was praying so hard he would never dare to become.
But a few moments ago, he had just been Loki, her Loki, the boy who used to hide beneath banquet tables with her to avoid formal dinners, the prince who stole books to read them, the young god who once swore, at thirteen and shaking with fury after an argument with Thor, that he would burn the entire realm down before letting anyone decide his future for him.
She should have known then.
The silence pressed against her ears, and suddenly it felt like she could not breathe.
Her hand tightened around the fabric of her dress as memories crashed through her all at once, Loki placing frost flowers in her hair as children, Loki asleep against her shoulder in the library, Loki pulling her into shadowed corridors to escape royal obligations for just an hour together, her heart ached terribly with his decision.
Her mind kept replaying the image of Loki looking at her before the ceremony, not with doubt, but with the kind of grief you feel before you even leave.
“You wouldn’t,” she had whispered, her hand tight in his as he looked down at her, she had not said it because she believed he was incapable of cruelty but rather because she knew he loved her.
She felt his love in every vein of her body, behind every corner of these halls, in every shared glance.
That had always been the tragedy of it.
Loki’s mouth had parted slightly, his eyes shining with something unreadable as he answered “I can’t.”
Not I won’t, not I don’t love you, but "I can’t." and that told her everything she needed to know, that was the second her heart had to accept the burden she would feel, though whatever darkness had opened inside him had him already make his desicion.
A servant moved near the end of the hall, hesitant, as if intending to comfort her, but one glance from her stopped them immediately, she would not fall apart here, not before the court, not before Odin, not before Thor, whose face had looked stricken with horror as Loki vanished.
So she continued walking, one step after another, her head up high with the desicion Loki had made for her, for them.
The train of her gown dragged behind her.
Years later, she would still dream about that hallway, and some part of him would always wonder what they might have become together if he had stayed.