“I want you to actually answer my question,” I told him firmly. “What are you going to do when I die?”
His mouth flattened. It would have been a grim, cold expression if not for the crackling heat of his gaze.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, tight irritation creeping into his voice. I hadn’t heard him sound that way in a while. He’d been lighter lately. More relaxed. Maybe even happier. I’d seen glimpses of who Ashken had described to me that night in the library. I’d begun to see who Wylfrael had been before he’d almost died, before he’d met me. I’d witnessed moments of grace, of generosity, of kindness coming through, when he spoke to the staff or the animals. Despite the tension of that first interaction with Brekken, he’d obviously grown to love that fucking dog. He got down on the floor and wrestled with him and went hunting with him, and I noticed he often saved a scrap or two of his dinner to pass to the hound when Aiko refused to give him any meat from the kitchen.
I tried not to notice too much – notice this side of him – because I liked it too much. But it became impossible not to notice when those moments of kindness were focused on me. Bringing me sweetened milk before I asked for it, or bristling with a frantic, frenetic sort of care whenever I stubbed my toe or got a headache. As Aiko finished working on various outfits for me, he carted them into our bedroom, finding places for everything, shoving his own clothing aside to fill his armoire when mine overflowed. And when he held up clothing or fabrics for me to try on now, it no longer felt like an exertion of power but rather an actual desire to clothe me, to take care of me, to see what I’d look like wrapped up in something he’d chosen just for me.
“We have to talk about it,” I said. “I will die eventually and we need to plan for that.” I was a practical sort of person. I’d agreed to marry him because it made sense to do so and would get me what I needed – my friends, my freedom. I’d also grown up without a mother and had recently dealt with the death of my father. I knew that these things – the big things, life, marriage, death – needed to be discussed and planned for properly.
“I mean, there are logistical considerations, right?” I asked. “How are you going to stay on the council? When I die, you’re supposed to die, too.”
A muscle ticked in Wylfrael’s jaw. The sleigh rocked gently beneath us, Barra serene and silent as she pulled us slowly through snow-laden forest.
Finally, Wylfrael answered, though every word was short and clipped.
“Most mated gods stay on the council until their deaths, but they do not have to. I only need to be there long enough to find out where the humans are and where Skalla is, and to use the council’s power to bind my cousin if he is still berserk. Once that is accomplished, and I learn more about what the council has been doing while I’ve been away, I can end my term and return here.”
My eyes widened. He’d never mentioned this before. That he could come back permanently. He’d hinted lately that he didn’t have to be at Heofonraed all the time like he’d previously implied. That he could come visit me here with my friends. That particular conclusion had come about without any more conversation, both of us settling on it in silence. My friends and I would eventually stay here together on Sionnach and not some other viable world. I told myself that it just made sense for us to do that, and that I also wanted to stay with Aiko and the others. I tried to convince myself that it had nothing to do with living in Wylfrael’s world, being close to him when he came back to visit.
“OK, so you’ll come back here, then?”
“I will come back here to live out the rest of your life with you.”
The biting certainty of his words shook me. The rest of my life. It was a vow. Like a marriage vow.
Trying to distract myself from how much that statement had knocked me off balance, I refocused on my original question. The one he seemed to be avoiding.
“Right, but what will you do after that?”
Lightning flashed through his eyes, a thunderous bolt of pain crashing down his features. He wrenched his gaze from my face and dragged his hand through his hair, mussing it and loosening the blue tie at the back. He looked ruffled. And, other than during particularly intense moments when we had our relations, he never looked ruffled.
He glared moodily out at the landscape. We were still trekking through the forest, the mountains on our right, snow-capped peaks piercing up into a cloudy sky.
His fingers dug deeper into my hair, catching around my throat and pulling me closer to him even as he looked away.
“I’d mourn you. For a very, very long time.”
I stared at him in profile. I hadn’t been asking about emotional things. I wanted to know the logistics of what would happen when I was gone and he was supposed to be dead. The Sionnachans knew enough about the mate bond to know he was supposed to die when I did. I’d merely wanted to know his plans.
He’d mourn me.
That was surprising enough. But even more surprising was his comment about a very, very long time. We looked at time completely differently, he and I. A lifetime for me was a mere moment for him.
A very, very long time to a stone sky god was eternity for a human.
Absurdly, tears pricked at my eyes. Not because I was thinking about my own death, but because I was thinking about Wylfrael grieving without me there to, to...
To what? Comfort him? Love him?
Before I could pursue that terrifying line of thinking, Wylfrael spoke again, granting me salvation via distraction.
“When you are gone, I will disappear. I will go into exile and hide on some forgotten world. I will have to do that eventually anyway, so I do not hurt anyone when I go mate-mad. I don’t have berserker blood like Skalla, which means in madness I likely won’t be strong enough to open any sky doors, and my star map may be gone by that time, anyway.”
“Hold on. Mate-mad? What does that mean?” He’d mentioned it when talking about his cousin. The Lord Skallagrim who’d nearly killed him. But I didn’t have an exact definition of the term and hadn’t known that he was susceptible to it, too.
Wylfrael still didn’t look at me, gazing with a dark expression at the beautiful snow and trees.
“If a stone sky god does not find his mate and claim her with his knot, he will eventually lose his mind.”
“That’s going to happen to you?”
Dread and panic combined in my stomach, a nauseating turmoil. So not only would he grieve me, he’d eventually go into exile and go insane, all alone?
Not long ago, I wouldn’t have cared. I even might have thought that Wylfrael deserved such a fate. But not now. Now...
Now, it broke my fucking heart.
“Wylf! Can you look at me, please?” My last word was a choking sob. At the change in my voice, he whipped his head towards me and caught my jaw in the cage of his fingers.
“Torrance-”
“Don’t do this!”
His eyes flared.
“Don’t do what?”
“Marry me!”
We stared at each other, him perfectly still, me shuddering with shaking breaths. Ours had never been a happy story, but now it was turning into a tragedy, right before my eyes. Marrying me, choosing me instead of his real mate, would doom him. I swallowed, tears flowing freely, realizing I’d just offered him everything. I’d offered to annihilate our deal. I’d give up my friends, give up my own freedom, to save him. So that he could live happily with someone else long after I was gone.