I’d happily come out here now and again, though.
Eventually, I opened my eyes to find Tormund gazing at me with stark adoration. His lips quirked up. “Happy?”
“Very.” I beamed.
He nodded toward the ground. I’d yet to look at anything other than the sky. I now saw the patchwork blanket topped with a picnic basket overflowing with food. My smile transformed from a regular one to so large my cheeks hurt.
“We get to eat out here?” I asked, jumping in place.
Tormund laughed. “We can eat and drink and dance all night. Soon, the sun will set, and colors will scrape across the sky like a painting. And then…” He winked. “We can do some other things I think you’ll like.”
I flushed. In the past few weeks, we’d been intimate almost every night, but I’d yet to stop blushing every time he spoke to me like that. I hoped I never would.
We settled onto the blanket. Tormund passed me a pastry I’d never tried before—something rich and salty packed withmushrooms and cheese. It was mouth-wateringly good. When I asked him about it, he said a human named Mabel had made it. I’d have to track her down and get the recipe one day.
Then we had potatoes slathered with butter, crispy carrots, and smoked fish. By the time we made our way through all that, my belly was full and my heart content. On the horizon, the sun inched lower. Streaks of orange lit up the sky, the color of sunstones.
“Beautiful,” I murmured.
“It’ll get even better than that,” he promised, digging around in the picnic basket. A moment later, he extracted a smaller basket of moss cakes.
I giggled and slapped my hand against my mouth. “I can’t believe you brought those. Youhatemoss cakes.”
“I could never hate the thing that brought us together and saved Steingard,” he said solemnly.
“Can I ask you something? And you have to be honest.” After hearing how that sounded out loud, I added, “It’s nothing bad.”
He squinted at me, clearly dubious. “Go on then.”
I pinched the sides of a moss cake and held it in the air. “Have you actually tried one of these things?”
He opened his mouth, snapped it shut, then found something interesting in the picnic basket. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Ha! I knew it.” I waved the moss cake in front of his face. “You have to try it now, Tormund.”
He grimaced. “It’s a very odd color.”
“What in fate’s name is wrong with it?”
“It’s the color of, well,moss. Have you ever eaten moss? It’s not very good. Very grassy.”
“No, I’ve never eaten moss by itself. Or grass.Have you?”
“Well, yeah, of course. When I was a little demon growing up, my friends and I dared each other to eat moss. And grass. And dirt.”
I snorted. “You ate dirt?”
“I ate all manner of things. As achild,” he said grimly, then pointed at the moss cake. “Which is why I will not partake in that.”
“If you loved me, you’d try it,” I said in a singsong.
“Astrid Balstad,” he said, inching closer to tickle my stomach. “That is thoroughly unfair.”
His fingers slid beneath my tunic, and he mercilessly tickled me. I laughed, flailing against the blanket while the sky transformed into a sea of scarlet, pinks, and ambers. Purple streaked through it, like someone had flung colors in random patterns. It made for the most beautiful sight of my life.
I stilled beneath Tormund, gazing up at it in pure awe. With this loving demon beside me, a belly full of delicious food, and a good, happy life, I wondered if my curse had ever truly been a curse. Because right now, I felt truly blessed.
And even if this was the last time I ever saw outside, it was enough. It was more than enough.
