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It would inevitably gravitate her into his orbit again, and they would both collapse in on each other like dying stars.
My life was better because you were in it.
“Love is far better to know, even if it slips from your grasp or doesn’t bear fruit like you’d hoped. People who say they regret love, true love, are just bitter liars.”
“Are you real?” A voice, deep as ever, broke the silence; eternal, yet fleeting like the midnight hour.
“It doesn’t work that way; you don’t just get to change and then we are something once more.”
“We’re hopeless, you and I,” Vhalla whispered. “If I am going to be hopeless for anyone, let it be for you, Vhalla Yarl.”
The man was a dark star, brilliant and terrifying, and she was constantly being pulled into his gravity.
How many times would she follow the prince into darkness, trusting his light to guide her?
“We can make our own way; we always have.” Aldrik cupped her cheek boldly, and Vhalla didn’t stop him. “What have we to lose?” “Everything?” “Is that all?” His eyes were alight.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured in sleep. “If it pleases,” his voice was deep and throaty when he whispered, and Vhalla smiled tiredly at the sound as much as the words.
“I wanted to keep them.” He gently took the book from her hands and returned it with care to the shelf. He considered the stack of books that saved his life. “They are very precious to me.”
“Vhalla, you are the dawn at the end of a seemingly endless night, and I never showed you enough appreciation for the essential part of my life that you are.”
“I wish I could hate you, you frustrating man,” she breathed hopelessly. “And I wish I could stop loving you, my frustrating woman.” He laughed. It was an equally hopeless sound. “I wish I could see the sun rise without thinking of how beautiful you are in the dawn, your hair an impossible mess and your body contorted in that weird way you call sleeping.”
“I wish I could go to my rose garden without thinking of sitting there with you, of reading, of just . . . just hearing you breathe.”
“I wish I could see you smile without thinking of how it feels when your lips make that shape against mine.” Aldrik braced himself with a hand by her shoulder. “I wish I was not utterly, hopelessly in love with you, Vhalla Yarl.”
“But you are,” she finished for him, searching the prince’s expression. “But I am,” he repeated. “And I have promised myself that if I was ever privileged enough to be in your grace again, I would hold you closer to all that I am, more than I have ever held anyone or anything before—that I would never lose you again.”
Finding each other again didn’t mean absolution; if anything, it likely meant they may be trapped forever. But it would mean they were together.
“Is that any way for a lady to sit?” Aldrik teased. “I am a lady, and I am sitting this way; therefore, yes.”
“Aldrik, I love you, brother. I always have, even if I’ve been awful about it.”
There is nothing to be scared of. I will protect them both.
“I could never hate you.”
“My love, there is nothing more in this world I wish for.”
Vhalla rose to her toes, closing the gap and gripping his shirt. It was the first time his lips had met hers in months and, despite all that had happened, they still fit perfectly.
