"As her father, and as God King of the Nine Realms, I did the only thing I could.
I struck when she was at her strongest and sealed her and her Death Legion together in an eternal prison in Helheim."
For the first time, a faint, carefully buried emotion entered Odin's voice.
"The seal was built from the bones of the undead and filled with the Underworld's most primal power of death. I locked her there, then returned to Asgard and erased every trace of her from the histories, inscriptions, songs, and memories. As though she had never existed.
Thor's breathing grew heavier. He gripped his knees, his voice tight with suppressed confusion:
"You never told me. I grew up in Asgard. I received every part of a prince's education. I was taught the entire history of the Nine Realms, but you never told me I had a sister."
"Because you didn't need to know." Odin's reply carried the cold, pragmatic honesty of a ruler.
"You were still growing. You weren't Thor yet, and you weren't ready to bear that knowledge. And by the time you grew up and became Thor..."
He shook his head slightly. "I had kept that part of history sealed away for so long that I no longer knew how to open the door again."
"But while you were fighting Knull, I released her from the seal."
Loki sprang from his chair and took two steps forward, his gaze locked on Odin's face. Far more complicated emotions churned in his green eyes than in Thor's.
There was the sting of having been kept in the dark for years, a twisted sense of kinship in realizing that Odin, too, had a past he could not bear to face, and something Loki himself might not fully understand: a