She had never really thought about what love looked like. It wasn’t manipulation. And it wasn’t sitting down and letting another person suck everything out of you.
It wasn’t passive. It wasn’t malevolent.
Love, she thought, was expensive. It had a cost. It took work.
Sacrifice.
Because yes, she could cut ties with everyone and everything; she could go to the French Riviera with Ricardo. She could havelavish parties, and drink her troubles away. She could live alone. Or she could dig in and do the work here. Wasn’t he worth it?
This man who had been betrayed.
This man who had gone through life with no one.
Wasn’t she worth it?
Wasn’t she worth all this hard work?
She was beginning to understand that the most important things in life were hard. And freedom was making the choice to do the hard thing.
The thing that held weight. Had real value. Yes, she had dreams about a little farm. But that was just… It was a dream from an old version of herself. Who hadn’t truly known everything that she was capable of. Who had thought that she could only hear herself, find herself in the quiet.
But she knew different now. She knew that she could stand strong, be the person that he needed and in turn the person that she needed.
“The next time we have a party, I’ll call you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll see what I can find.”
And while she waited, she would have to decide what she was going to do about her husband.
Would she be like Freya? Waiting and waiting?
No. She was a goddess. And if she was a goddess, then she was going to go and make something happen.
It was late, and she wasn’t quite certain where she might find him.
She had a feeling he wasn’t in the palace, even if she couldn’t say why. She put on a coat, and went outside into the harsh weather. The season was changing, and the harsh climate here was growing teeth.
So of course he would be out here. Of course he would be out here punishing himself.
Sleeping in the stable. As he had done when he was a boy.
She tore across the grounds, and went into the stable, where she saw him, standing by the stable with his horse.
His horse.
The horse meant something to him. Something important. He hadn’t told her. He had come to get her on a horse, which was ridiculous.
“Why did you ride the horse to come and get me?”
He looked at her, his blue eyes shadowed.
“Please,” she said. “Talk to me.”
“For a number of years he was the only constant in my life. My most trusted…friend.”
“See, you have had friends. Soren. Your horse. Me.”
“We are not friends, Fernanda.”
