Closing my eyes, I try to do the exercises that Runa taught me to calm my emotions down. I breathe in deeply, then let it out with a long exhale. It doesn’t work.
Opening my eyes, I can’t stop the anger and hurt from filling me up, from spilling out of me. The boat starts to rock, the waves start to roll and crash against the side and I can do nothing but stand at the front of the ship and watch, feel, take it all in.
I feel like the queen of the sea, like there is a power within me that is so strong it’s frightening, but I am still proud of it—immensely.
AARIC
“She looks like a goddess,” Gunnar rasps from next to me.
We’re both holding onto the side of the ship as it rocks with the waves. I don’t tell him that I am the reason his feet are unsteady beneath him as the boat rocks and water splashes inside. Instead, I am focused on my wife.
She indeed does look like a goddess, like a sea goddess. She belongs at the bow of a ship. It is her rightful place, the bow of my ship.
“Aaric, what has happened?” he asks.
I don’t say anything right away. I’m intently watching her. The mist has started to dissolve, but the waters are growing rougher with each passing minute.
“She is angry with me,” I admit.
“I gathered that.”
Without turning my gaze away from her, she is too majestic to look away from. I am enthralled by every single aspect of her right now. My heart speeds at the sight of her, the way she looks almost otherworldly.
Something flashes to the side. I see it out of the corner of my eye. Turning my head to look directly at it, I let out a gasp. Nobody hears me thankfully and I’m glad, because standing on the water, right next to my boat is my father.
My dead father.
I haven’t laid eyes on the man himself for fifteen years, yet here he is standing before me. I know that he is not real, that it is his spirit that’s come to me, but it doesn’t stop my desire to wrap my arms around him in a hug.
“Aaric,” his voice carries.
Walking over to the side of the ship, I lift my hands and curl my fingers around the side. Holding my father’s spirit’s gaze, I gulp as I watch him.
“You must heed the fate that the gods have sent forth for you,” he advises.
“I am trying,” I whisper.
He nods his head once. “You must open your heart to your wife, son.”
“How?” I ask.
It isn’t easy for me to know what to do or how to do it. I have been a warrior since I was a boy. I am the oldest son, I am also the only child my mother and father had together. The woman who gave birth to me died doing so. I have never seen my father in love with my mother.
The woman that he married and had the rest of my siblings with wasn’t my mother. He was respectful and kind toward her, but I doubt he actually loved her. Perhaps he did, but I never saw the evidence of that, the tenderness, the doting. All of the things that I know Liv wants from me, I have never seen them myself.
I recall him telling me stories, when it was just the two of us, about my mother. I know he loved her. He admitted it to me more than once. She was the woman he loved, his heart’s other half, the match that the gods had given him for lifelong companionship and devotion.
“I loved your mother, completely. She was my soul’s other half. If you do not accept Liv, if you do not allow yourself to fall in love, you will forever be lost on earth and in the afterlife.”
“Are you lost?” I ask.
He shakes his head, giving me a sad smile. “Nei, Aaric. I loved your mother. I cared for my other wife, but I loved your mother. She was waiting for me in Valhalla. Dhuis kept her safe for me, we were reunited.”
“Fadir,” I rasp.
His lips turn up into a sad smile as his eyes look over my face. “The gods grow frustrated with you. Quit being stubborn, my boy. She is your fated.”
I open my mouth to say something else, to ask him a dozen questions that are just on the tip of my tongue, but he disappears before I have