Page 47

I stood on the sweeping hill near the tree line, away from the road, outside the protection of the forest. Cold wind carrying the whisper of northern winter stung my nose. I closed my eyes and listened to the sea roaring against the cliffs far below. A raging, violent melody.

I looked up, eyes drawn to bright pinpricks of starlight. The ache in my chest deepened. This had been my home. Had been my beginning, my origin, my center. Where I thought I belonged.

I caught a hazy glimmer of green on the edge of my vision.

The kind of light that can be seen best only if one doesn’t look directly at it.

Along the northern horizon, over the mountains, a dancing haze appeared, twisting in waves.

It grew as I watched, a swirl spreading, weaving, serpentining across the northern sky.

Joined by another, lancing in from above, and another snaking close, coiling together, and then reaching apart.

They stretched wider and higher as the green burned intensely.

Purple flared on the edges of the green, then red.

The sky exploded in Aurora Borealis –– Spirit Lights.

A riotous, sinuous dance of ethereal color.

Green melding into purple into red. Tears began to stream down my face, one after another.

Overwhelmed at the beauty of it, at the pain it broke open in my core, the longing for a world and a home that no longer existed.

A deep, nostalgic ache for the child I had been, the human girl who had watched these same lights with wonder each winter night, marveling at her place in the great expanse.

I wrapped my arms around myself and let the tears run freely, looking up in awe.

“If I saw this every night for the rest of my life, I would never tire of it.”

I turned to see Byrgir looking at me.

I sniffed, wiping my eyes quickly on my sleeve. “Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it,” I said, but the tears still echoed in my voice.

He wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and stood next to me, turning his gaze up at the dancing glow. It was so strong the green reflected off his skin, his eyes, his dark hair.

“I used to watch the Lights at night as a child,” I said. “Sometimes my parents would wake me and Noirin and we’d all stand outside, wrapped in blankets, and watch together.” I looked up at the sky again.

He didn’t answer, just allowed me the space to keep speaking if I wanted to.

“I’ve lost my home, Byrgir. My family. I even lost Eilith, my second family.” The tears began to flow again. “And now I’ve lost myself. I am not even who–– what ––I thought I was. It’s like I’m back where I started, or worse than where I started. I’m starting over again from nothing.”

“You’re not who you thought you were,” he said thoughtfully, “but realizing you’re not who you thought you were means you get to choose who you become.”

I didn’t answer. He was right, but I was stubborn.

“I know that kind of loss hurts. Knowing you can never go home. That home will never be the same.” Byrgir’s voice was weighted with sincerity, but steady and calming against my stormy disposition.

“The home I thought I had was a lie,” I said. “ I was a lie.”

He turned to me. “You were never a lie, Halja. You were lied to . You were hidden, deceived, for too long. Sheltered from the truth. But there was never, ever, anything wrong with you.”

I looked up at him, so close to me in the ethereal glow. “Thank you.” I stepped closer and held out a blanketed arm. He pulled the blanket over his shoulder and I leaned into him, savoring his warmth and his familiar scent of warm spice and leather.

“You didn’t seem very surprised by it,” I said.

“Oh, I was surprised. Don’t let my cool demeanor fool you.

But I’ve always known you were special, Halja.

Always known there was more beneath your surface than met the eye.

So when I finally saw it, it felt… right.

It felt like I had always seen you like that, in a way.

Just visible now instead of hidden beneath. ”

“It doesn’t scare you?” I asked.

“Not at all.” He squeezed my shoulders, his arm still around me.

We watched the Lights dance quietly.

"So how does it feel, to know you’re immortal now?” he asked.

“Ha! Oh wow, I haven’t even thought of that. Daunting, I suppose. Lots of time to live with all my mistakes.”

“Lots of time to make new mistakes too.” He smiled in a way that made his nose wrinkle.

I blew out a long breath. “Eternity is a lot of pressure.”

“Not quite as carefree as us humans anymore. Are you going to become really responsible and boring now?” He nudged me teasingly.

“I have a feeling you wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to.”

“No more big drinking nights for you. That liver is the only one you have forever,” he bantered back.

“That’s true for you too, you know. Forever is just a shorter time.”

As the words left my lips, my heart dropped, and I felt like my chest would cave in on itself. My life would be so much longer than his. Than everyone I knew. I would spend hundreds of years without him, maybe an eternity.

If Byrgir thought the same thing, he didn’t show it. We both looked up again, watching the display.

I broke the silence. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Make these jokes. Stay so bright, even when everything around you is dark.”

He exhaled and was quiet for a moment, then said, “When my father died, the pain was overwhelming –– especially for my mother. The way she grieved… it nearly killed me. She screamed and cried and howled. She barely ate, hardly slept for weeks. It was horrible to witness, as a child. I didn’t know if she’d live through it.

“But then she found us a new home. She started teaching herself new skills, working harder than ever.

When the holidays came, she made us go to every celebration, and every little bonfire gathering in between.

Anywhere there was music and dancing, she went.

She would drag my brothers and me into the dance with her, spin us around until we were dizzy.

She was always the first one out there and the last to leave.

“She brought herself back to life. Watching her survive losing him… it taught me what resilience really means. Taught me how to live, not just survive. There will always be suffering. Tragedy and death are inevitable. And you can either let that defeat you, or you can keep dancing.”

I let his words sink in, watching his face as he watched the sky. For someone who lived most of his life with death only a sword’s length away, I had always wondered how he seemed so fearless.

“So that’s how you really learned to dance, then,” I said, a smile touching my voice.

He nodded.

“Do you still feel like you don’t have a home?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “I have a home. I have people I love. But I will always feel what I lost. There are wounds that are never whole again. Just stitched back together. They hurt less, over time, but you just learn to carry them with you. To go on anyway.”

“You’re lucky,” I said, still looking at the sky, “to have somewhere you know you belong. To have a home.”

“You could have that too, if you want it.” He was still looking at the sky, his emotional wall completely up, no messages passing through to me beyond his words.

“You could have a home in Rhyanaes. El is already completely taken with you. I have no doubt you could stay with her forever.” He exhaled a soft chuckle with a breath, then said, “We could be that home for you.” He paused, and I felt his gaze on me again. I looked up at him.

“I could be that home for you, if you choose.”

The depth of sincerity, of hope, of longing in his eyes made my heart swell and crack. It triggered an ache in me that was deeper than the desire rising alongside it. This was not just infatuation, nor a carnal curiosity. No, Byrgir stirred something in my very soul.

I looked into his eyes, lit by the otherworldly green glow. I did not need to use my power to sense what he felt.

He turned his body to me, his warm hand sliding up to cup my cheek.

The roughness of his calluses was pleasant against my skin.

As he brushed away a cold tear lingering on my lip, his eyes stayed on mine.

I leaned my face into his hand and closed my eyes, savoring the warmth, the safety he radiated.

I exhaled a slow breath, desperately trying to calm the fervent hammering in my chest, the near painful coiling and fluttering in my stomach.

I felt as if my heart might burst, like I could not contain the immensity of love and desire within the limits of my body.

The swing from devastation to radiance was too much for one physical body to bear.

I could not find the words to respond to his question. Anything spoken would not be a good enough answer.

I opened my eyes and met his, shining in the ethereal night.

His gaze dropped to my lips and he leaned in, an irresistible magnetism I could not fight drawing us together.

“I have wanted this, wanted you, since the day I found you,” he murmured across the tiny distance that separated our mouths now.

“Why didn’t you take what you wanted?”

“You were so free, so wild. I didn't want to tame you. I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

I smiled, and saw the corners of his lips rise in response, only slightly.

“I don’t want you to,” I whispered. “I want you to run wild with me.”

Our lips met softly, gently, but so naturally that it felt as if I’d kissed him a thousand times before. I felt the soft scratch of his beard, the careful caress of his lips, growing deeper, hungrier, more insistent.