Page 147 of Top Shelf

I look at Viktor, who has gone suspiciously still again beside the table.

“I’m already married.”

“Ahh.” Ebba smiles without looking up from the ribbon she is measuring. “A true love is not always someone you have not met yet.”

My throat tightens before I can make a joke out of it, and Viktor’s gaze finds mine across the table. He also looks like the sentence went straight through him.

“What if you talk while picking them?” I ask, because survival demands practical questions.

“Then the magic hears you have no discipline,” Freja says.

“Devastating.”

“It is good for you,” Ebba says. “Some truths arrive better when the mouth is quiet.”

I do not look at Viktor. I am absolutely not going to look at Viktor. He knows what happens when I get nervous and has heard me fill plenty of perfectly good silences with words. But, inevitably, I look over about three seconds later to see him grinning.

Before bed, I decide I want to do it, so he takes me out into the meadow.

The family is back on the terrace, voices carrying in pockets through the warm air. I can still hear Hugo arguing about bedtime, Freja laughing, Astrid calling for someone to bring more candles. Ahead of us, the meadow spills toward the treeline, alive with tiny movements and the soft gold of a sun that refuses to leave.

Viktor stops at the edge of the taller grass and looks at me.

“No talking,” he says.

I press my lips together and nod solemnly. His eyes narrow because he knows exactly how difficult this will be for me, but then he holds out his hand, and I take it. We walk slowly, with my fingers threaded through his, our joined hands swinging lightly.

The silence should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. With Viktor, silence has never been empty. Tonight, it’s full of grass brushing my ankles, bees moving happily between flowers, the lake lapping lightly through the trees. It’s full of him kneeling to point out a flower, then another, careful not to choose for me. He only shows me what there is.

A daisy. A clover and a buttercup. A tiny purple bloom tucked low in the grass. A fern frond from the edge of the trees, and a pink wildflower I don’t know the name of. Last, he points out a blue cornflower he finds near the fence line, standing stubborn and bright among taller stems.

He glides a gentle finger over its petals first, then looks at me. My throat throbs, and I swallow it down as I pick the cornflower carefully.

Seven flowers.

Seven small, fragile things gathered in silence with the man I’m supposed to dream about only if the old stories are stronger than the contract sitting somewhere across an ocean.

Viktor walks me back as the sky turns pearl-pink above the lake. Near the terrace, he stops before we reach the others. His thumb moves once over my knuckles. I want him to say something, but I’m afraid of what he might say, and I’m even more afraid of what he won’t. But all he does is lift our joined hands and press his mouth to my fingers, right over the flowers crushed lightly beneath them.

When we go inside, Astrid gives me a square of cloth and shows me how to wrap the stems so they won’t stain the pillowcase. Vera inspects the bundle and declares it acceptable. Ebba tells me to put it beneath my pillow and not to try to control my dreams.

Later, in the blue guest room, Viktor watches me slide the bundle beneath my pillow.

“This feels questionable,” I say. “I’m already married—what if I dream of someone else?”

He sits on the edge of the bed in a t-shirt, the lamplight turning his blond hair gold, his eyes softer than I know what to do with. “Then I will fight them.”

I laugh, but it comes out thin. He reaches for me, tugging me gently between his knees, and his hands settle at my hips, warm through my sleep shirt.

“Time for sleep, Heidi,” he says, thumbs brushing slowly.

“What if I dream of you?”

His gaze lifts to mine, and I think he might answer with something that’s going to ruin me. Instead, he huffs lightly and leans his head into me, pressing a warm kiss to my stomach through the thin shirt.

“Then you will wake with good taste.”

I roll my eyes and push at his shoulder, but when he catches my wrist and pulls me down into bed, I go willingly.