Page 145 of The Thornwyck Rose

“I,” she whispered, breath padding his lips. “needed to feel you choose me.”

When he finally pulled away, their foreheads rested together, breath mingling, silence pressing in again around them.

Margot’s quiet breathing remained unchanged from her bedroll nearby.

He wrapped his arms around her again, tighter thistime. As if the world could fall apart, and he’d still hold the pieces of her together.

“Dance with me.”

She rose slowly. He stood, too, offering to take her other hand in his.

She stepped close. The lake shimmered behind her. Her breath was warm on the breeze.

They swayed as a man and a woman who had lost and somehow still stood. But after a while, she stopped.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “If I keep moving, I’ll believe this is real. That there’s a future for us.”

He steadied her. His arms wrapped around her as her forehead pressed to his chest.

“There is,” he said.

She shook her head. “It keeps slipping through our fingers.”

He didn’t answer as the moon watched in silence.

Eventually, her breathing slowed. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her fingers curled into the fabric at his chest.

She fell asleep like that. Tired, worn. She slept like a field after a storm, clinging to what roots still held.

He gently took her in his arms as he would on their future wedding day. He saw it clearly, refused to acknowledge that it might never happen, and hoped that when it came, he would still be strong enough to carry her.

Cradling her close, he sank beside the rock, her breath warm against his neck. The tension in her limbs had softened. Sleep had claimed her.

He should have gone back before tongues wagged or suspicion stirred. But he leaned against the rock instead, holding her close.

His lips brushed her brow, her cheek, then her mouth. Featherlight kisses—reverent and mourning what he had not yet lost.

He wrapped his cloak around them both, pulling her tight to his chest as if he could shield her from time and the world.

Her hair smelled like leather and the wind. Her body wasfragile in his arms. How many times had he dreamed of this—of holding her without fear of rumor and its effects?

The lake lay dark and endless, the moon’s reflection rippling gently across its surface, drawing his gaze. Above, the stars blinked like the eyes of ancient gods.

But none of them answered.

His thoughts drifted—Astrid's laughter, long faded. The weight of Ragnar, just a babe, barely walking, when she died. The years in Henry’s shadow: fists bruised and bloody from training, voice hoarse from screaming inside a heart no one listened to.

He had never stopped loving Astrid. He never would. But this love—this second love—was different. Seren had become the rhythm his soul marched to. And now, he might lose her, too.

Erik closed his eyes, and his throat was thick.

Prayer had come at Astrid’s pyre. He’d burned tokens for Odin, laid out food for the old gods, and marked her grave stone in ash.

No god had answered.

He hadn’t prayed since.

But now his heart shook with the need to speak to someone mightier than he was. If Odin would not answer, then who would?