48. The Fleeting Hours
XLVIII
THE FLEETING HOURS
The day had been long, filled with hammering and arguments, measurements, and muddy boots. The bailey stood strong, but Montfort Keep—what remained of the old keep and what was rising in its place—still looked like a wound scabbed over.
This land—Fellmere—had once been a field of spilled Norman and Welsh blood. Now, the keep’s stone walls stood taller, the gate was nearly finished, and Ragnar’s command had echoed in the courtyard with a confidence Erik wished he had at that age.
He should have felt pride that it was his and now a land of peace at Seren’s doing.
It would be ready by the Ides of January.
Erik had hoped to take Seren as his bride. All the keep’s plans had been tailored to her liking from earlier in the year.
His chest ached with the dull pressure of things unsaid. Time slipped through his fingers.
Stone was being laid higher. The timber was strong.
The guards respected Ragnar’s orders and followed David’s lead without question.
They were rebuilding something that had once been broken and paid for in much blood.
Maybe that was reason enough to hope loyalty to David and even to Erik and his son was enough to make something out of Lord Henry’s mess.
However, in the future, someone important would be missing from Erik’s life. She was another man’s betrothed, a king’s at that.
David stood near the western wall with Ragnar, the two of them tracing their fingers across the blueprints. The young lord was commanding in the way only youth and conviction allowed, while Ragnar’s quiet nods carried the steadiness of a man raised in a noble’s stead under a warlord’s thumb.
Erik watched them both for a long moment. The sun was gone now. Shadows slipped across the walls as night curled over the valley.
This was his new home. If Seren had already gone, he’d be here with Ragnar, overseeing Montfort Keep, but he had managed afar at Thornwyck to be with her for as long as he could be.
But the hot month of summer required his and the young lord’s presence.
David had taken his mother with them so she could be close to him and Erik.
“I’ll turn in early,” Erik said, patting Ragnar’s shoulder. David gave a distracted wave, still deep into discussion by torchlight. Erik couldn’t read well anyway. Ragnar had learned with Father Osbert, but Henry only ever afforded Erik chainmail and a sword.
Erik stepped beyond the half-cleared campgrounds, into the silence that only hills and forest could give.
The old keep had been built near water—strategically, yes, but perhaps some long-dead builder had simply loved the way the lake turned silver under the moon.
Too bad the view was now mostly hindered by trees.
He approached, drawn by the lull of mystery.
For all the times he’d fought for this land, he’d never gone to the lake and never seen its beauty by night.
He glanced back at the tents: David’s was the largest in the middle. Seren’s beside it. His tent flanked David’s and Geoffrey’s.
Moonlight silvered the world.
The lake lay still beneath the stars, a polished obsidian mirror rimmed with reeds and the quiet hush of night wind.
The tents had already gone still by the time he made it to the lake.
Only the soft whinnying of horses, the flicker of distant torchlight on the path, and the hiss of unseen insects broke the silence.
Erik walked the southern edge of the lake. His boots crunched grass, moving over root and stone with ease. The soft chill of autumn touched August’s night air.
The trees parted enough to show him a clearing near the shore. The fireflies had begun their slow dance above the wildflowers.
Moonlight caught a flicker of movement at the lake’s edge. The soft outline of a woman came into view as he came closer.
Seren. Her veil lay forgotten, and her slippers were cast aside.
She sat alone. Her bare feet stirred the water, rippling the moon’s reflection. Her skirts were gathered in her hand on her thighs, revealing the leg lines he’d only dreamed of. The moon lit the waves and her light olive skin with equal devotion.
Seren’s braid had unraveled, loose strands glowing like silver thread in the night, long like he remembered.
She didn’t see him, and Margot lay nearby, curled under a traveling cloak like a loyal hound dozing on watch.
He should have turned back to not cause a scandal if they were found together with her so bare. But his gaze wouldn’t leave her. Her shoulders rose and fell with tired breaths. She wasn’t washing or praying, just staring at the water with sad, vacant eyes.
For the first time in all their long years together, she looked entirely unguarded. She wasn’t behind a veil or rigid in her duties and expectations. She wasn’t fighting against a world that caged her free spirit and made her someone she was not.
He remembered Astrid like that.
Watching Seren then, the same ache bloomed in his ribs that said, I’ll take my love for you to my grave.
She dipped one toe deeper, then the others, and her breath hitched—whether from the cold, he wasn’t sure. Her eyes closed. Her arm was loose at her side.
Henry was dead. It was Erik’s camp. Margot was there, too. And if anyone found them together, it was his duty to make sure she was safe. No, he wasn’t leaving, not with so few moments left with her.
He stepped forward, letting his boot brush against a stone so she’d hear. She turned slightly, but not in alarm.
“Is the water cold?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head with a soft smile. “You cannot sleep either?”
“The day wore on for a number of reasons. I needed to clear my mind before sleep,” Erik said.
He stopped a few paces behind her. She didn’t bid him closer, but she didn’t ask him to leave either.
Erik stopped beside her slippers, eyes on the water. “This place is quiet. No one is listening. You don’t need to speak as a lady here.”
She didn’t answer right away. Her toes curled in the shallows.
“I used to dance around a lake like this, when I was free to be who I wanted to be,” she said. “Long before everything changed.”
He tilted his head. “Is that what you see looking into its reflection? You look peaceful. And also close to breaking.”
Seren looked back at him over her shoulder. The moon lit her lashes, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe at her raw beauty.
“There was a circle dance my mother taught me. We’d spin with our arms out, skirts catching the wind. The steps always returned to the start.” She gave a brittle smile. “It made me think time could be undone. That maybe we could go back.”
Erik moved beside her and sat, his hands folded loosely between his knees.
Silence stretched. The wind pulled at her hair, lifting a strand to brush his shoulder.
“Too bad I was a silly girl with silly thoughts.”
His fingers slipped over hers. Their palms touched—a warmth shared between two who had bled in silence for too long.
“I planned them with you, these dances,” she went on.
“One for the wedding—after the church’s, of course.
Then the harvest. One for the birth of our child.
One for the days our children wed, and one for when we were old and gray.
” Her voice cracked. “Maybe we’ll only have the one when we’re old and gray, if the Lord wills it. ”
Erik kissed her temple. “Dance them with me.”
She blinked. “Now?”
“I will dance every one of them with you,” he said. “Even if our plans end in ash, I want to carry you with me.”
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.