Page 145 of About Love and Revenge

And then he told me his nightmare.

Talked about how Leandros had burned down the house with all of his family inside. He had barely escaped.

With each narrated fact, a confusion of feelings invaded me. Anger, revulsion, pain, but mainly an immense love for the man I chose to be my companion.

“It's weird to accept that I love her.”

I hug him around the waist, letting my head rest on his chest. “Accept?”

“Yes. I don't think I ever stopped loving her, you know? I just couldn't forgive what I thought she had done. And then I found out she was innocent and blamed myself.”

“You can't blame yourself. You were just a little boy, and you were tricked.”

He nods. “Thanks for coming with me. I thought I could do this by myself, but now I'm not so sure.”

“I came so our children could meet their family.”

As I expected, he smiles and places his huge hand over my dress.

We found out that I'm pregnant with twins. Apparently this is common in the Lykaios family, as Zoe has given birth to two little boys as well.

“Yes, our children came to meet the family.” He kisses my forehead and continues, “But I don't have anything of them to show the kids in the future, other than the photographs Ingvar left me.”

“You're good at telling stories. I already felt connected to you, but I think it was those nights in your apartment's library that sealed my fate.”

After placing the flowers on the graves, we walk back to the car.

“Each time you read to me, unlocking a world I could only imagine because I couldn't understand every word, I fell a little more in love.”

“It wasn’t the sex capable of reversing the Earth's rotation, then?”

I sigh in relief that he's joking again and promise myself I’ll work on making him smile more often. My husband is still so young, but he's had more tragedies than reasons to smile so far.

“Oh yes. How could I have forgotten our hot, sweaty sex?”

Before we get into the car, he leans me against the door, holding me in his arms, then bending down to kiss me. “I love you, my Elina. I live for you.”

“I love you, my husband, and I can't wait to fill our house with lots of children. To fill it with our love.”

Elina

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Four Months Later

NEW YORK

“They're perfect,”my husband says.

I look at the two tiny creatures we've brought into the world. Tyr and Aegir. We chose Scandinavian names for our boys, following the family tradition of Odin's maternal grandfather, who always registered male babies with Norse god names.

They are sleeping on their backs after I’ve nursed them, while Odin hugs me from behind, watching over them.

“They are. When I look at these two, it's like being able to touch our love,” I say.

“Even before them, I could already touch our love every day,” he says and gives me a kiss on the head.

I turn towards the bed so I can look at him. “You and the children are my world, Odin. I never imagined I could be so happy.”

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