#maidservant

Since you’re still Loki’s handmaiden, rumors still circulate. You haven’t heard them yourself, but you have seen the weird looks from other servants. Judgmental looks from older women. Envious looks from younger women. Crude looks from men.

You pull aside one of the girls from the kitchen staff and ask her what’s with the glares you keep getting. She tells you she would do no such thing, “but people do talk, ma’am.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

Frightened, she gives you a vague explanation about how the other servants talk about how Loki seems to show you preferential treatment and nobody knows why.

You’re either horrified or devasated, but you can’t quite decide which.

One thing’s for sure: you have to find Loki and ask him if he knows about this. Ask him what to do.

In one of the hallways, a young woman whose job is to polish the throne room floor rushes to you and quietly asks if Loki is “as good as he looks like he would be. I won’t tell anyone, I swear!”

“Are you the one who started that rumor?!”

“N-No! I just heard—!”

“You heard wrong. Who told you that?”

“I... I don’t know her name.”

You shove her aside and run. You don’t care where. You just have to find Loki before the burning-hot tears fall.

He’s in his study, tucked away in its own suite within his chambers.

“(Name)! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“No. Well, sort of. But not like that...”

You tell him what’s going on, and that you don’t know who started the rumors to begin with.

All you know is it hurts that you’re thought of in that way.

Loki seethes in silence for a moment.

“Loki?”

“I’ll kill them,” he finally says.

“What?! Don’t you think that’s a bit—?”

“Extreme? No. No, it’s not. I have no use for anyone who disrespects you, (Name). I will gladly make an example of them, and violence is not out of the question.”

His answer chills you to the bone.

“But... why? And why have you been so kind to me, anyway?”