“You’ve been hurt,” he said. “And we seem nothing alike.”

“We are nothing alike.”

“That isn’t true.”

I breathed a mirthless laugh. “Have you looked at us side by side?”

My pulse was the brittle tick of an old clock. But there they were—the words I’d dreaded saying, the truth I couldn’t avoid when I remembered my stepmother’s criticism.

Boys like Peter. Boys like Torden.

I realized I’d been waiting for this moment, this inevitable point when he would look at me—soft, scared, unremarkable—and see that he could do better.

Torden was a tempest on the edge of the dawn, a self-contained thunderstorm as he gripped me gently by the elbows and forced my eyes to his. “The things we like are different. The things we love are the same.”

A strangled noise escaped me. “What does that mean?”

“Courage is the heart of me,” he said. “The thing I pray to be. And I see it in you. It’s in your eyes every time you tell me something you are afraid to say or try something you are afraid to do.” He took a breath. “You are so brave, Selah, and so beautiful, and I want you beside me always. I will keep you safe, and you will be my home.”

Torden shifted around me, curving my body against his, and I found myself sheltered beneath his arm. “I have seen how we look side by side,” he whispered into my ear, “and it has changed how I imagine my life. With you, I see a wider world.”

I forgot how to breathe as he ran a thumb over my cheekbone. “Would it work?” My voice was desperate. “Could it possibly?”

“Who can say? But I am not afraid to try.” Torden pressed my palm to the hammering in his chest, voice growing fierce. “My heart is not a liar.”

“Mine’s beating just as hard,” I whispered, laughing weakly. Torden smiled and leaned his forehead against mine.

“It will not be easy, but we could build something good together. Something that would endure.”

Something that could save Potomac. And Daddy.

My heart rose.

The sun made its way over the horizon, its advent coloring the Bilröst and the cliffs and Torden’s face warm with light.

Through this whole affair, I’d been yanked like a marionette from one place to the next. I’d left Potomac on my stepmother’s orders. Bear had deceived me. Even as I believed I was making my own decisions in England—following my heart, taking risks when I dared—I was merely reacting to circumstances tailored to control me.

Torden, my only suitor not set to inherit a throne, had felt like a foregone conclusion before I met him.

I’d thought I had no choice. But Torden had chosen me.

He had given me the truth. He was offering me himself. And that meant everything. It changed everything.