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He chuckled but said nothing, one hand rubbing her back as she took a quick swallow of coffee. “So I snuck away to the most grown up-looking section of the library, which was filled with all of these old dusty books that didn’t look like anyone ever checked them out. And that was when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“This big book of mythology. It was like an A to Z compendium of gods and all the hijinks they got into, with pictures! Full color ones, all hand done with gold and these gorgeous colors. I must have read it cover to cover...or really just one page in particular.”
“What page was it?” he asked, seeing the faraway look on her face.
“The one on the Valkyries,” she whispered with a tight smile. “I can still see the page in my head. There was a woman in white armor, just floating there with fire and light all around her, and she had a sword in her hand and this look on her face. She looked so strong, so unafraid, and I was so scared, Anton. I wanted to be like her. I would have done anything to be that unbothered by life.”
“Oh, Grace…” His hand froze where he had been rubbing her back. “Sweetheart.”
She ignored the ache that word put in her and kept speaking. If she didn’t keep going then she might not finish her story.
“I knew I couldn’t be her because I was nine, not insane, so I did the next best thing and found out everything about them. I read every last book I could. The librarians thought it was weird, but they knew about Lilia, so they gave me whatever I asked for, you know? All those books told me a bunch of random crazy things, but they all agreed on one thing. The Valkyries served Odin, which was the start of my sort of Asatru journey. It didn’t really go anywhere, but…” She lifted a shoulder. “Some people have their thing. I have Odin. It just stuck.”
“I get it,” he said. “Well, not in the same sense, but I get the security of it.”
“You get the need to call on an ancient Norse god in times of tribulation because you want to be a Valkyrie?”
“I said not in the same way.” He made a face. “I don’t know what it’s like to nearly devote yourself to a Norse god, but I do know what it’s like to wrestle with some good old-fashioned family trauma.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm, remember how I said that I spent those summers with my very religious uncle?”
“The graham cracker master?”
“One and the same. Well, I didn’t end up there for good behavior or family bonding. I got shipped off there when my parents got tired of their fuck-up son ruining the family’s good name, because there’s nothing quite like the isolation of cornfields and churches to keep you out of trouble.”
She put a hand on his arm. “That sucks.”
“It did, but it is what it is. When I first got dropped off, I had this silly wild daydream that my parents were going to see what they had done. That they would, I don’t know, miss me and come to get me in the middle of the night. My uncle’s house was right next to a highway, which meant there were cars passing by at all hours of the night, and sometimes I would just lay there and watch each set of headlights until they passed, and then I would start over. I mean, of course it was never them, but it was something to do while I rotted away in the Midwest. I used to think it was me. Maybe I was too much...sometimes I still think I am.” Her chest squeezed hearing him say aloud the words she had only ever thought.
“It’s not that they’re bad people, but maybe people who shouldn’t have been parents.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw and gave a little shrug. “It’s just one of those things, but it’s a part of me, just like your family is a part of you.”
Grace swallowed hard. The image of a younger Anton waiting for parents who never came made her eyes well up with tears.
“You didn’t deserve that,” she told him.
“And neither did you,” he replied, turning to meet her eyes.
They were quiet for a very long time, the chalet comforting like a cocoon around them, insulating them from the outside world. There was no data theft in this place, in this gentle tentative moment that blocked out the worries waiting for Anton in New York, or the work ahead of Grace.
There was only them, and it was more than enough.
* * *
The rest of the afternoon passed by in that same sort of dreaminess that had descended on them that morning. Everything felt raw, delicate as eggshells, and the pair moved around one another in that way almost-lovers did, hyper-aware and buzzing like live wires.
Grace knew every move Anton made, and from the way his fingertips trailed her elbow or hand she was certain he tracked hers too. Even now, with a fire crackling away and soft music playing in the background as Grace mixed cookie batter together, she knew he watched her. A chilly wind blew so hard that the firs outside bowed and rocked, their branches scraping the roof and sides of the chalet. It was a dreary afternoon; clouds had rolled in off the mountains and settled over the house, but Grace didn’t notice. How could she, when she was sequestered away from it all with Anton?
A silly grin spread over her face, and she looked up to see him sprawled on the couch in front of the fire, one leg hooked over the couch arm while he read a book. There was no scene more pleasing than the sight of a beautiful man reading, and she sent out a silent prayer of thanks to whomever was responsible for the chalet’s open floor plan, which afforded her such a tantalizing view.
She smirked, seeing that he wasn’t looking at the pages in front of him at all—instead, he gazed back at her over the top of the book.
“How’s the book?” she called out to him.
“Enthralling.” He turned a page to show her as much. “An absolute masterpiece.”
