Page 144 of The Thornwyck Rose

Salt threatened the edges of her calm. She chewed the lip of her contorted face. “I can’t, Erik. I can't pretend. I can't plan anymore. I can’t feel, for if I do, I will break.”

He threw his arms around her as she collapsed into his chest, hair spilling forward to hide her face. She didn’t sob. She didn’t speak, but her whole body trembled in his arms.

“You won’t break, Seren,” he whispered. “I’ve seen you pushed over the breaking point many times, and yet you always rise unbroken and stronger than before. It was me who was broken, and you gave me your star’s light to chase away my darkness.”

He moved his hand in a slow trail down her back, memorizing the feel of her beneath his hand. “Let me be strong for you tonight.”

She didn’t answer, but her fingers curled into his tunic. And slowly, her trembling ceased.

“Dance with me, Seren, under the stars. Laugh and have this memory as you have of childhood in the Marches to build a foundation of love on which you will stand until we can be together.”

She lifted her bleary gaze to him, and he caressed her cheek, thumb brushing the trail of tears from beneath her lashes.

Years of glances as their only means of speaking, he knew desire lived in her gaze, and he was sure she saw the same in his.

She stared at him, eyes glassy, mouth parted in uncertainty and ache.

And so Erik leaned in slowly, painfully slow, waiting for the flinch that never came. Waiting for a word that never rose. The lake lapped gently at her ankle, and the air cooled with the edge of nightfall.

His lips met hers like one of her prayers—soft, reverent, and full of a longing he didn’t have words for.

A promise.

He kissed her again, pressing harder, lingering, feeling her melt against his mouth. Her hands gripped the fabric at his chest to hold him there, tethered to her.

He tried to memorize the shape of her mouth before the world tore it from him.

His fingers grazed the bare flesh of her leg, and he firmed his grip.

She gasped with aching need. Every vision of how he could love her filled his mind, but he knew there could be no child, or a painful death from the crown would surely follow.

His fingers curled into her skirts and smoothed them down over her thighs to remove the temptation, before rising to cup her jaw.

One day, they could do as they pleased as husband and wife, without risk of scandal, ostracization, or death. He believed, he had to believe, one day, he would take her as his wife, and when that day came, he’d take her back to this spot on the lake without consequence. His thumb brushed the hollow beneath her cheekbone, memorizing the curve of her body pressed against his.

Erik deepened the kiss, his mouth moving against hers with a quiet desperation, his hand sliding into her hair, tangling there as if to anchor himself. He kissedher like a man standing on the edge of loss, knowing if they didn’t take this moment now, it would be gone forever.

Her breath quickened. Her hands fisted the wool on his shoulders as though she might pull him into the future she wanted. The world narrowed to heat and breath and the ache of everything they could not have.

Margot stirred and coughed.

Reality surged back.

A single tear fell down her cheek and touched the edge of his mouth. He tasted salt and sorrow and everything they had never been allowed to say aloud.

He broke the kiss with a low, unsteady breath, forehead pressing to hers, both of them trembling.

“Seren,” he whispered, voice rough and low, as if saying her name hurt. “I am sorry.”

Sorry, he couldn’t save her, couldn’t keep her from Henry’s fists, keep her from the life that stole her from him yet again, sorry for her future, the one he could not control, and the one he couldn’t give her.

Her lashes fluttered. Tears slid silently from her eyes. She blurred in the water in his eyes.

They stared into each other’s souls and wiped the tears from each other’s cheeks.

He held her there, lips brushing hers again—short, soft kisses, restrained only by will—before pulling back, his hands both wrapped around her waist and cradling her face as if letting go would slaughter his soul.

“I needed,” he said quietly, “needed to know how your soul tasted in this life.”