“But my title—I thought it was clear.” I shook my head, more a twitch than an actual gesture. “And I couldn’t presume you’d marry me, regardless. I didn’t know for certain how you felt.”

Torden eased his arms back around me. “You don’t know the half of it,” he murmured into my neck.

“So come with me.” I gave a shivering laugh.

He swallowed hard. “I can’t.”

My heart stopped. “Why not?”

“Because if Asgard’s daughters are its bridges, Asgard’s sons are its walls.” He grit his teeth, closing his eyes. “And Asgard’s sons do not leave.”

51

I sat on Torden’s bed and stared at him, dumbfounded.

He’d shucked off his flannel shirt and his boots when we reached his room, mopping his forehead with the shirt before adding it to a heap of laundry on the floor. The boots now sat neatly beside the large closet to one end of the room, and Torden sat backward on a chair across from me. Knees bouncing, head propped on his muscular forearms, he looked like an overgrown little boy.

We’d been silent a long time.

“I thought I explained everything,” I finally said. “What Alessandra did. That Daddy is unwell. What I have to do.”

Torden wet his lips. “Selah, your stepmother said when she opened negotiations that you would resign your title for the right suitor. You would never have been invited to visit if my father had known the truth.”

“But I told you that morning by the Bilröst that she wanted me gone.”

“Huginn and Muninn accepted her words as fact, and I never thought to question them. We don’t lie like that here,” he said, agitated. “Besides, you told me yourself that first day you hated the pressure, being in the public eye! Why didn’t you say anything?” The spread of his hands was frustrated. Helpless.

“Ask you to give up your brothers for me? Your home?” I whispered. “I just—I couldn’t. I didn’t know if you would, but I couldn’t even bring myself to ask.”

I lowered my head into my hands. He drummed his fingers on the back of his chair.

“There is one more reason I have to stay,” Torden finally said. “Dronning Rihttá. I have a promise to keep, to take care of her. To hold things together here.”

Hodr. Baldr.

I thought I understood. I wanted to protect the little brother or sister I hadn’t even met yet.

I only wished I’d had a chance to know the love he and his mother shared. Rihttá was family to Torden in a way Alessandra had never wanted to be to me.

I nodded. “No. I know. You’re a good son. I—” I sprang off the bed and walked to the door, stifling a sob with my fist.