He stood slowly, a mischievous grin playing around his mouth. “I said no worrying when I go away. I didn’t say you couldn’t be happy to see me when I got back.”

Torden sidled over, square jaw, square shoulders, scruffy red beard—so handsome it made me foolish. I scrambled for a reply. “You know, it’s funny, mistletoe in the summer,” I blurted out. “I only remember it at Christmastime.”

Something flickered in his gaze. “We hang it all over Asgard. Do you use it in Potomac?”

“Yes.” I twisted my fingers, my voice sounding very small. “If someone catches you underneath it, you’re supposed to kiss them.”

“We do the same.”

I stilled as he approached, panting a little from his drop, lamplight glinting on his hair and in his eyes.

Torden tugged the mistletoe from his shirt pocket. As he dangled it overhead, his free arm snaked around my waist and he bent to kiss me. I was so dazed from his mouth against mine and his hand cupping my face that I hardly noticed the mistletoe slip from his grasp and fall to the ground.

“Any excuse to kiss you, or none,” he said, voice husky against my lips. “Christmas or Midsummer, under the mistletoe or at a church altar or somewhere alone in the dark. As long as you are mine, elskede, because I am yours.”

His mouth was a bonfire that set my skin aglow. As Torden kissed me, warm and relentless, I wondered if it were possible for two people to fall in real love as quickly as we had thrust our hearts at one another.

I wanted it to be. I wanted to keep his red-blooded heart, rough and strange and good as it was. And I wanted him to keep mine safe for me.

Torden held me, and we held the dark between us until we heard the crack of twigs nearby. He glanced up, arms taut around me.

“What is—”

“Shh.” Torden’s jaw grazed my temple, breath tense against my cheek. “I don’t—oh.” He suddenly relaxed. I followed his gaze to Aleksei, standing beneath a scraggly dead tree a few yards away.

“Aleksei!” Torden’s embarrassed laugh shook me. “No mistletoe around here. Keep walking.” I buried my face in his chest, smiling.

But his brother didn’t answer his good-natured grin in kind. “Dronning Rihttá is asking for you.”

Torden cleared his throat and cut his eyes at me. “Right now?”

“Look, she needs you, all right?”

I winced. Aleksei’s tone was caustic.

I shivered at Torden’s sigh in my ear. “This is a difficult night for my mother. I need to make sure she is all right. But I meant what I said.” He bent his forehead to mine and kissed me again, lips certain, lingering. “I’ll come to you later tonight. We have more to say.”