“I have learned it’s best to leave my parents when they get into that state.”
The panic from moments ago pushed aside for the meantime, Elara giggled. Their love was infectious.
Granted, she understood why it made Njáll uncomfortable. Whenever her parents kissed around her, Elara quickly fled.
“Come,” Njáll said, all the authority of a jarl tinging his tone.
Mud stained Njáll’s boots, the earth still damp from the rain of the previous night. Each step rumbled under him, his grip on her hip grounding against the worry clawing at her navel.
Elara followed him along the well-worn path that gave way to a grassy knoll overlooking the still ocean waters below. The mist sprayed against her cheeks and Elara rocked into him, remembering their first breathless kiss.
He twined his fingers with hers, bringing her knuckles to his lips. All the weight she had tried so hard to ignore came rushing to the surface.
“What if I fail? What if people get hurt because of me?”
Njáll angled his body toward hers, the sun making shadows crawl over his back. For a moment, he looked like the demon she always accused him of being, darkness clinging to his scarred skin.
“People get hurt and die all the time. You cannot stop it, kona.”
A scowl twisted on her features, a furrow etching into the space between her brows. Her fingers curled around his forearms.
“That is not the comfort you think it is.”
Braids slid over his shoulders as he shook his head. A palm skated over her jaw, cradling her face.
“It is not meant to be. You cannot trick fate, Elara. Death comes for us all. Whether it is today, tomorrow or a hundred years from now. What is meant to pass will come. Hel would have found a way to get the draugar here with or without you. It was foretold in the stories of Ragnarök.”
None of that mattered.
Didn’t he understand?
That unfiltered light heated in her chest, responding to the swell of emotions, calling out for him, for the one that made her feel too much and not enough.
Hot tears tracked down her wind-burned cheeks, mingling with the salt on her skin. She slapped her hands against his shoulders, all her repressed emotions crashing down on her until she crumbled under the weight of it.
“You don’t understand,” she sobbed, staring up at him through wet lashes. “I shouldn’t be here. If I weren’t, you’d be safe, Jarl.”
Selfishly, she didn’t care about her—only him.
And it was his fault she cared.
She wasn’t supposed to.
None of this was supposed to happen.
“I should hate you! I offered myself to you to save my father. I wasn’t supposed to feel. It wasn’t supposed to matter. You… You… You stole my heart.”
For the first time, Njáll stumbled, struggling to form words. His thumbs brushed away the tear tracks from her face, something between awe and sorrow glittering in the depths of his eyes.
“I should hate the demon who made me fall in love with him. I should, but I don’t. And I am terrified my love will be the thing that gets him killed. Jarl. Njáll. Loving me may be the thing that kills you. And I won’t survive it. I won’t. I can’t. I…”
She covered her face with her hands, trembling violently. Sobs racked her tiny frame, every breath squeezing from her lungs as if forced through a small tube.
Njáll ripped her hands away from her face, his grip unrelenting. Heat blazed in his eyes, flaring with an intense silver fire.
“Do not speak of hate and theft as if I regret it,” he growled, the rough timbre soothing. “You are right, little flame. I am a demon. A thief. I stole your heart and will never release it. It is the one thing I cannot give you, Elara.”
Silent sobs still rattled in her chest, the breeze blowing her curls behind her like a crimson cape.
