“I mean, there are logistical considerations, right?” I asked. “How are you going to stay on the council? When I die, you’re supposed to die, too.”

A muscle ticked in Wylfrael’s jaw. The sleigh rocked gently beneath us, Barra serene and silent as she pulled us slowly through snow-laden forest.

Finally, Wylfrael answered, though every word was short and clipped.

“Most mated gods stay on the council until their deaths, but they do not have to. I only need to be there long enough to find out where the humans are and where Skalla is, and to use the council’s power to bind my cousin if he is still berserk. Once that is accomplished, and I learn more about what the council has been doing while I’ve been away, I can end my term and return here.”

My eyes widened. He’d never mentioned this before. That he could come back permanently. He’d hinted lately that he didn’t have to be at Heofonraed all the time like he’d previously implied. That he could come visit me here with my friends. That particular conclusion had come about without any more conversation, both of us settling on it in silence. My friends and I would eventually stay here together on Sionnach and not some other viable world. I told myself that it just made sense for us to do that, and that I also wanted to stay with Aiko and the others. I tried to convince myself that it had nothing to do with living in Wylfrael’s world, being close to him when he came back to visit.

“OK, so you’ll come back here, then?”

“I will come back here to live out the rest of your life with you.”

The biting certainty of his words shook me. The rest of my life. It was a vow. Like a marriage vow.

Trying to distract myself from how much that statement had knocked me off balance, I refocused on my original question. The one he seemed to be avoiding.

“Right, but what will you do after that?”

Lightning flashed through his eyes, a thunderous bolt of pain crashing down his features. He wrenched his gaze from my face and dragged his hand through his hair, mussing it and loosening the blue tie at the back. He looked ruffled. And, other than during particularly intense moments when we had our relations, he never looked ruffled.

He glared moodily out at the landscape. We were still trekking through the forest, the mountains on our right, snow-capped peaks piercing up into a cloudy sky.

His fingers dug deeper into my hair, catching around my throat and pulling me closer to him even as he looked away.

“I’d mourn you. For a very, very long time.”

I stared at him in profile. I hadn’t been asking about emotional things. I wanted to know the logistics of what would happen when I was gone and he was supposed to be dead. The Sionnachans knew enough about the mate bond to know he was supposed to die when I did. I’d merely wanted to know his plans.

He’d mourn me.

That was surprising enough. But even more surprising was his comment about a very, very long time. We looked at time completely differently, he and I. A lifetime for me was a mere moment for him.

A very, very long time to a stone sky god was eternity for a human.

Absurdly, tears pricked at my eyes. Not because I was thinking about my own death, but because I was thinking about Wylfrael grieving without me there to, to...

To what? Comfort him? Love him?

Before I could pursue that terrifying line of thinking, Wylfrael spoke again, granting me salvation via distraction.

“When you are gone, I will disappear. I will go into exile and hide on some forgotten world. I will have to do that eventually anyway, so I do not hurt anyone when I go mate-mad. I don’t have berserker blood like Skalla, which means in madness I likely won’t be strong enough to open any sky doors, and my star map may be gone by that time, anyway.”

“Hold on. Mate-mad? What does that mean?” He’d mentioned it when talking about his cousin. The Lord Skallagrim who’d nearly killed him. But I didn’t have an exact definition of the term and hadn’t known that he was susceptible to it, too.

Wylfrael still didn’t look at me, gazing with a dark expression at the beautiful snow and trees.

“If a stone sky god does not find his mate and claim her with his knot, he will eventually lose his mind.”

“That’s going to happen to you?”

Dread and panic combined in my stomach, a nauseating turmoil. So not only would he grieve me, he’d eventually go into exile and go insane, all alone?

Not long ago, I wouldn’t have cared. I even might have thought that Wylfrael deserved such a fate. But not now. Now...

Now, it broke my fucking heart.

“Wylf! Can you look at me, please?” My last word was a choking sob. At the change in my voice, he whipped his head towards me and caught my jaw in the cage of his fingers.

“Torrance-”

“Don’t do this!”

His eyes flared.

“Don’t do what?”

“Marry me!”

We stared at each other, him perfectly still, me shuddering with shaking breaths. Ours had never been a happy story, but now it was turning into a tragedy, right before my eyes. Marrying me, choosing me instead of his real mate, would doom him. I swallowed, tears flowing freely, realizing I’d just offered him everything. I’d offered to annihilate our deal. I’d give up my friends, give up my own freedom, to save him. So that he could live happily with someone else long after I was gone.

And what was that if not an act of selfless, stupid, downright fucking idiotic, love?

No!

I wasn’t sure what I was saying no to. What Wylfrael had told me about his future, or the idea that beyond all sanity, all hope, all sense of self-preservation, some part of me had gone beyond just merely caring for him.

Barely able to get the words out through the tears, I begged him. Begged him to end this. To find his real mate, no matter how long it took. To save himself an eternity of madness and pain and exile. Forget appearances, forget the deal, forget Skalla and the council and me.

All he said in reply was a softly-spoken, “I cannot.”

“Why not? Why won’t you tell me why you’re doing this?” I didn’t buy his claims about how finding his real mate would take too long. Not anymore, not now that I knew the stakes. Why would joining the council and finding Skalla sooner rather than later take precedence over saving his own sanity?

“Why won’t you find her? Why won’t you wait for her?”

But Wylfrael just repeated his phrase from before, the softness in his voice disappearing, hardening, warning me not to press further. “I cannot.”

I pulled myself out of his hold, wiping the fur of my cloak furiously along my cheeks.

“Can we stop? I want to get out,” I said. I was talking about stopping the sleigh ride and getting out from where we’d been sitting, but obviously, Wylfrael interpreted what I’d said differently.

“You cannot leave,” he snapped. “Our wedding is tomorrow. After that, we will attend the gathering of the gods as husband and wife, and then I will join the council. You are mine, Torrance.”

But you’re not mine.

I couldn’t say the words, because Wylfrael crashed his mouth to me. I thought about stopping him again, but I didn’t. Pain twined with pleasure, and I opened my mouth with a stifled moan, wanting to feel him, feel how real and solid and safe he was with me. I didn’t stop him, didn’t fight him, when he hauled me into his lap, my legs spread over his tense thighs. His mouth devoured mine, tongue claiming, groans rising up in his throat as his hands dug beneath my long wool skirt and tore away my new silk undergarments. I couldn’t even be angry that he’d ruined Aiko’s sewing, my need for him was so great. The need for him to touch me.

Despite the cold, Wylfrael never wore gloves. His hands were desperate and bare against my trembling thighs, stroking upward, breaking off the kiss with a vicious growl when he found me already slick for him. He sucked my neck, his tongue hot as he tasted my pulse and he slid a thick finger inside.