Page 76 of The Gathering Storm

Wilhelmina slashed a hand through the air, hurt fury radiating out of her stiff posture and fixed expression. “Then take care of yourself, and don’t come crawling back to me when she’s through with you.”

Troy stood, his expression tight with anger. “Don’t say something you’ll regret, Willie.”

“No,” Sigrid said, the single word a counterpoint to his. “I love him.”

Will jerked around, his eyes wide. “You what?”

Anya threaded her fingers together over her stomach, a satisfied expression on her face. “I think she said that she loves you.”

“When?” Will said. “How?”

Wilhelmina stepped toward them, unmindful of Troy moving to block her path. “She’s lying. That cold hearted bitch has never loved anything in her life except her own hide.”

Sigrid lifted her head through the thick morass clinging to her and met Wilhelmina’s gaze with her own. “I love him, but I won’t separate him from his family.”

“Fuck that,” Will spat out.

Sigrid reached a hand toward him as a tear slipped down her face. Wilhelmina was right, in her own narrow-minded way. Outside of her family and a few close friends, Sigrid had never really loved anyone. She’d never loved a man before, never given her heart. How did she know now that what she felt for Will was real, true, as eternally strong as love should be? How could she wrest him from his family, knowing her own love might falter at some point, leaving him in exactly the situation Wilhelmina so feared?

Better for him not to face that. Far better for him that she not be a part of his life.

“I renounce my claim,” she whispered through the noise filling her to the brim. “I renounce—”

The noise ceased, leaving a dread silence behind, and in its wake, a great weight pressed down on Sigrid. She gasped under the pressure, struggling to breathe. Will slid out of his chair and knelt beside her, his forehead creased into a frown. “Sig, honey, what’s wrong?”

His words were thin, distant. She clutched a hand around his forearm and said, “Love you,” then the weight lifted suddenly, carrying her up with it until she could go no higher, and she separated from it and fell down alone, lost in a world without her Will.

Will scrambled out of his chair and knelt beside Sigrid, ignoring his mother’s squawking, his father’s attempts to calm her, and his grandmother’s satisfied smirk. That last especially. The old biddy had played them all, though to what end he had no clue.

He shoved the thought aside and gently patted Sigrid’s cheek. She’d been acting strange all morning, since the end of the exhibition, truth be told, but today more so. And now she slumped in her chair, her hands like ice and her pulse rapid under his fingertips.

Damn it, what was wrong? Daughters didn’t get sick. Their immortality protected them from almost everything. Her body had nearly healed after the fight, so what could it be? There was nothing else to explain this sudden collapse.

“Leave her be, dear.” Anya knelt beside him and gently pried his fingers away from Sigrid’s wrist. “She’ll come around in a minute. They always do.”

“Come around?” he asked.

Behind him, something thumped heavily into one of the chairs. “I don’t believe it,” Wilhelmina whispered. “She was telling the truth.”

Will clenched his teeth together. “Would somebody please clue me in?”

“She submitted.” Anya threaded her arm through Will’s and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Her curse is no more, thanks to you.”

Will sat back on his heels and stared at Sigrid, at a loss. She loved him, so much she’d somehow submitted to him and broken her curse?

She loved him?

“Holy shit,” he finally managed, and his grandmother laughed and said, “Yes, that about sums it up.”

He shook his head, disentangled himself from his grandmother, and, still ignoring his mother, now deep in a muttered conversation with his father, Will picked Sigrid up, cradling her against his chest, and carried her upstairs to the bedroom he’d used as a child. The room was exactly as he remembered it. Twin beds stood on either side of the room’s only window, overlooking the back yard. Matching cedar lined trunks hulked at their feet. Blue and red plaid bedspreads covered the mattresses, an exact match for the curtains tied away from the light spilling into the room through the solitary window.

Will stepped inside the room, skirting a rocking chair and the lone chest of drawers, and placed Sigrid gently on top of one bed. He dug a crocheted afghan out of one of the trunks and draped it over her, then shut the door and pulled the rocking chair up to the side of her bed.

And waited.

Anya’s assistant came by offering him a drink. Will waved her away and thought seriously about locking the door, and regretted not doing so when his mother slipped into the room half an hour later and perched on the edge of the other bed.

Will kept right on doing what he was doing, watching Sigrid while rubbing slow circles over her stockinged ankle under the afghan.

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