48. The Fleeting Hours #2
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 kissed her 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.”
“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 this time. 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 was fragile 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?
He had failed one love. He would not fail another.
Seren’s lashes cast faint shadows on her cheek in her moonlit sleep. She had prayed every night. To a God he did not know. To a heaven he’d never trusted.
But she trusted her God and His heaven.
And so, for her sake, he would try.
He tilted his face to the stars, voice low and rough with everything he had not said for decades.
“God above in Heaven,” he whispered, as if he were speaking into a stranger’s home. “I don’t know your rites. I have no blood to give. No silver. No chant or holy word.”
He looked down again, thumb brushing the edge of her jaw.
“But if you’re there . . . if you love her like she says you do . . . then help her.”
A long breath left him, his chest hollow in its wake.
That was all.
And he bowed his head—not as a Christian, not as a forced convert, not even as a man—but as a soul hoping this God was listening.
Tomorrow, she would belong to the crown again. But that night, she belonged to the lake and the stars and with him.