“He said, ‘Myrtle, you are not Boreas. You do not dictate the North Wind. You are not Amphitrite—you do not control the tides of the oceans. And you may be a force of nature, but you are not Kymopoleia, goddess of violent storms, and well, if the Greeks had snow, you would not be that god of snowstorms.’ We are just humans, Val. We are living in a world where so much, where most, is beyond our control. You did not cause that accident. That accident just . . . happened. And I did not know your wife, but I suspect she wasn’t a woman who would ever want you shutting yourself away from the world and blaming yourself for . . . for what happened that night.” She paused. “Ullr,” she blurted. “You’re not Ullr.”

He stared blankly at her.

“He’s a Norse god of winter, god of snow. Jeremy told me of—oomph.” The remainder of those words emerged as nothing more than a little grunt as Val folded her in his arms, holding her tight, squeezing her with all he was, for all he was worth, and she brought hers up so that she might hold him in return.

“Thank you,” he whispered harshly against her temple.

“You still don’t believe me,” she remarked because she knew him. In their short time together, she’d come to know him so very well. “But if you think about it—what I said, Val—you will. It makes sense, you know. We are mere mortals. Though I wish we weren’t. Because if I wasn’t, I would—” She immediately made herself stop talking.

Val trailed his fingers along her jawline, bringing her gaze up to meet his. “If you weren’t and were a goddess, what would you do?” he murmured.

I’d be Aphrodite, and I’d make it so that you fell so very deeply in love with me that you couldn’t bear to be apart from me.

But even then, she’d have him in a way that wasn’t real. She’d have him in a way that was engineered and orchestrated by her with no feelings from him, and that would not bring her the full joy of what she wanted—him completely and hopelessly all hers because he wanted to belong to her as much as she wished to belong to him.

“I would ask to be a mortal,” she said softly. “Because I want to live a real life, even with all its pain and flaws and blemishes, with all the heartbreak and suffering—I want to feel it all.”

“You are a remarkable woman, Myrtle.” His gaze touched on every part of her face, his eyes moving slowly over hers, as she’d searched him moments ago before he ultimately locked his gaze with hers.

And she held her breath, waited for him to say more, nay, to say the more that she so desperately wanted.