A/N: Well, here's the sequel to "Her Romeo, His Juliet!" I hope you enjoy it!

If you haven't read the first story, I highly recommend that you do, as that would explain a lot.

3rd POV

It was dark outside when Katarina decided to leave the party. She needed some quiet.

As soon as she left she knew she had made the right choice. The air inside the hall had been hot and stifling, but now a cool breeze rippled across her face. The princess exhaled in relief, glad to get away from Thor and any other alcohol intoxicated male.

She started to walk the streets of Asgard, just enjoying the peace when she felt arms go around her waist and someone bury their face into her back. She stopped.

She didn't need to turn around to know who it was. "Loki?"

"The one and only." He murmured. "Why did you leave?"

She tried not to shiver. "It was too loud."

"You could have at least told me." He said in a low voice, tone dangerously close to whining.

"I had to get away from Thor." She attempted to make her voice as level as possible and tried not to focus on his breath against the back on her neck.

"Mm." He absently ran a finger up her arm, and she couldn't suppress a shudder. She could practically hear him smirking behind her.

More because the thought of his smirk irritated her than anything else, she asked, "Are you drunk?"

The prince withdrew his hand and seemed offended by her question. "My alcohol consumption rate has no effect whatsoever-"

"Okay, if you can talk like that, you're not drunk." Katarina looked around her nervously. There were a few people in the street, but most were either too interested in each other or too drunk to notice them. "There are people watching, you know."

"Do I look like I care?"

The princess tried to make herself sound as annoyed as possible and scowled. "Well, I wouldn't know, now, would I? You being behind me and all..."

He laughed quietly and turned her around in his arms so that she was facing him. They were centimeters apart. He locked his fingers behind her back.

She tried to make her breathing normal, tried to slow down her heart rate.

"Do I look like I care?" He repeated, smirking again.

"Mm." She automatically draped her arms around his neck, finding that suddenly she didn't really care either. "Not really." She admitted. He smiled in victory, leaning down-

-it wasn't real. Katarina bolted upright, disoriented, wondering where she was.

It was dark, and as her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she realized that she was in her room, in Asgard, and it was the middle of the night.

She gritted her teeth in frustration and fisted her sheets in her hands so hard that her knuckles turned white, lips still tingling in anticipation. It made her so angry that these dreams kept coming back, allowing her little moments of bliss, but they always, always, always went away and left her more desolate than she was before.

It made her want to throw something.

Katarina sighed and headed wearily to the desk in the middle of the room. She wasn't getting back to sleep anytime soon, so she might as well get some studying done.

vVvVvVvVv

Alienora woke up to the sound of a pen scratching across the surface of a piece of paper. Yawning, blinking blearily, she looked up to see Katarina sitting at the desk and writing.

She groaned. "Kat, what are you doing...?"

"Writing." The other girl didn't even take her eyes off the paper.

Alienora looked at the clock on the wall. "It's, like, five."

"Mm-hm.."

"Kat."

"Mm?"

"Go back to sleep."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Katarina looked up, and this time she looked tired. "I seriously can't, Ali. I can't sleep. Dreams are keeping me up."

vVvVvVvVv

Heimdall heard footsteps behind him and he knew who it was. He didn't even bother to turn around to affirm his guess. "Lady Katarina."

"Lord Heimdall." The girl took a seat on the edge of the rainbow bridge, feet dangling over the edge.

The Gatekeeper eyed her warily. He had not forgotten what Odin had told him; that she had almost thrown herself off the side when the Prince had fallen. But the girl seemed relatively calm.

The sharp shards of the bridge dug into her legs, threatening to draw blood, but she didn't notice or didn't care. "Anything?"

Heimdall shook his head. "Nothing."

She nodded, but he still saw the disappointment in her eyes. It was curious. She got the same answer every day but still managed to be hopeful every time she asked.

"Why do you still hope?"

"Because I know he is not dead. If he was dead, you would see him in Valhalla."

"If he was alive and cared at all for you, then he would look for you." Heimdall pointed out dryly.

"Not if he thought that no one was looking for him." She replied. Heimdall gave her one of his rare smiles.

"He could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve you."

"Yeah, that's what people keep telling me." Katarina got up and started to walk away. "Goodbye, Heimdall."

"Goodbye, my lady."

The Gatekeeper knew she would be back tomorrow.

vVvVvVvVv

Katarina sat at the piano in the empty ballroom with its high ceiling and polished floor. Her pale fingers hovered hesitantly over the black and white keys.

You shouldn't do this. Her reason reminded her. Every single time you do this, you end up hurting again.

At least this hurting is better than the absence. The princess felt that pain settle like a freezing diamond in her throat. That cold absence.

And then all at once she started to play, her hands dancing over the keys, coaxing a soft melody from the piano that echoed throughout the abandoned room.

A familiar melody. The song they first danced to.

After a while she ceased, straining every fiber of her being, eyes squeezed shut, trying to go to that place that they went to, that place that existed only between the two of them, in the moments of silence when a song ended and just before the next began, or in the brief pause between the notes of a tune.

But all that she heard was the blank buzzing.

Now the pain came, cutting through the foggy blankness like a knife through butter, cutting her deeper than she thought she could ever be cut.

Tears stinging in her eyes, she got up and left the ballroom.

vVvVvVvVv

She found it in a pile of old guard reports.

She burst into Nikolai's room, where he was reading a book. He looked up, surprised. "Katarina...?"

"I finally found it!" She said triumphantly, grinning. In her hand she held a piece of parchment, rough around the edges and yellowed.

It was the first time he had seen that smile in forever. "Found what?"

"Someone that can help me with this." She brandished the sheet.

"And who would that be...?" Nikolai closed his book and got out of his chair, looking curiously over her shoulder to see what she held.

"Okay, listen. About five years ago, there was a report of some damage along the Illith River." Katarina pulled out a map and pointed to said river. "A distress message. They said that they needed help, that they were under attack. That's all the message said. Anyway, when the warriors got there, they found the entire village destroyed. An entire village. Just... gone. No survivors, except for one." The princess pulled out another piece of paper, this one a picture of a sallow man with dark, hooded eyes. "He was half-mad when they found him. Totally out of his mind. All that he would say was, "The darkness took her, and she destroyed everything." He died soon after they found him."

Nikolai sincerely hoped that his little sister wasn't saying what he thought she was saying. "So, you want to go there?"

"Yes."

"That's crazy. You want to go to a pre-determined cursed village that was destroyed by someone possessed with dark magic. Katarina, that place is branded with death. If what the man said was true, then a hundred people were slaughtered on the banks of that river."

"I have to go, Nikolai. It's the only place that I've found so far with some mention of the darkness. I might be able to figure something out."

"What if you get hurt?"

"I won't."

"You can't know."

"If I get hurt, then oh well."

He gritted his teeth. "If you insist on being stubborn, then I'm going to go with you."

vVvVvVvVv

There was a chill in the air, a weird sort of chill that seemed to seep into her bones and spread throughout her entire being. Shivers crept up her spine, and Katarina resisted the urge to shudder. She felt like a snowman had walked up behind her and was breathing down on her neck.

Paranoia prompted her to turn around. She did. Nothing.

The village was in ruins, with curtains of fog sweeping the area. Sagging remains of a once-proud town, now a place to be avoided. The ground was soggy.

Katarina dropped from her horse, onto the ground, and heard Nikolai do the same behind her. She pulled out a map that she had found among the reports.

"The attack started... from that area." Katarina had no idea what she was looking for; she decided that she would know when she saw it.

"Kat, this is pointless." Nikolai hissed. He put a hand on her shoulder. "What do you expect to find?"

She shrugged him off. "I don't know. Something that will help my research."

"Why are you so obsessed?" He snapped.

"Nikolai, not now..."

"No, yes now." He spun her around, glaring at her with his hazel eyes. "Don't you understand? He's dead. He fell. You saw."

She avoided his gaze. "No."

His eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. "No? You cannot pretend you didn't see it, Katarina. You were there."

"No. He's not dead."

"Even if he isn't, surely you know that he is not the prince you love. He tried to destroy the Jotunheim, his own kin! He's a Frost Giant, Katarina! The monsters Lydia would tell us about at night! The monsters you were terrified of, that you whimpered about when you a child!"

"He's not a monster!" Katarina's scream made him stop. Her eyes were filled with anger and hurt. The sound echoed throughout the village. "He's not a monster." She repeated, quieter. "He has never been a monster, and he never will be." She turned away from him.

"You saw-"

"I saw? You want to know what I saw? I saw Loki as emotionally unstable as he has ever been in his entire life, took ahold of by a curse and weakened by a supposed betrayal of one who loved him, hanging off the edge of a bridge above oblivion. I saw him cry out to the Allfather, reaching out, seeking comfort and consolation from the man who's love and pride he wanted the most. And I saw that man reject him, turn him away; As good as throwing him off Asgard." She faced him again, bitterness heavy in her voice.

Nikolai instinctively looked over his shoulder, nervous. "Those words are treason, Katarina. Calm yourself."

"Maybe if he had fallen from the bridge in battle, I would believe you. Maybe if Thor killed him, I would believe that the one I loved was truly bad. But he let go, Nikolai. He embraced his punishment and fulfilled his sentence. He let go. And now I can never let him go."

Her brother found he had no reply, not having expected such candor from his usually more secretive sister. This was Katarina at her most honest, baring her soul to him, her innermost thoughts. It made him feel both flattered and sad.

She had already continued her search. Nikolai gave no more protest.

vVvVvVvVv

"It has been more than an hour, Katarina."

She didn't take her eyes off the map. "There's still the graves to examine."

"Do you honestly expect to find something there?"

She sighed. "Not really. But I cannot overlook something." She started towards the graveyard, and her brother followed, shaking his head but not saying anything.

Katarina ran her hand over a headstone, trying to read the faded words.

"'Cassiopeia Quintonsdottir.'" She said aloud.

"Her brother is over here." Nikolai murmured, examining another gray tomb. "Hawthorne."

The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of a stick being broken. Both siblings looked up warily. Katarina's hand strayed to her belt where she kept her knife, Nikolai's to his sword.

"Who's there?" He called out to the fog.

There was no reply.

Katarina took a cautious step towards where she thought she had heard it, but stopped when a figure came out of the mist.

A smaller figure, female, hunched over, wearing a dark cloak against the chill. Her face was shrouded in shadow from the hood.

Nikolai's blade sang as he drew it. "Announce yourself."

The figure's head jerked up, and both saw with surprise that it was a girl, probably younger than Katarina. She had wide green eyes.

She put her hands up slowly, the universal gesture for look-I'm-not-carrying-a-big-murderous-weapon. "Okay, okay. Calm down."

The princess's danger sense was tingling. "Who are you?" She asked, and was proud that her voice was steady. "And why are you here?"

The girl seemed amused by the question. "Who am I?" She repeated. "I am Krystal. And these-" She gestured around the graveyard with a slim hand. "-are my family."

A/N: Well, we finally meet Krystal. Tell me what you think of the first chapter! Are Katarina's feelings of loss reasonable? Or do you think they're too dramatic?

Review, favorite, follow.