Page 39 of Wishing Upon a Monster
What I hadn’t counted on was sharing my sleeping space with her highness.
Grumbling, I dove for my spot in the bed, Sashimi yowling as I wrapped her in my arms. She let out a long-suffering huff and relaxed on my stomach, eventually purring as I gave her scritches.
“I have always been very good with small animals,”he said, running a long finger down my cat’s back.
“I believe it. They can tell your goodness behind that majestic exterior of yours,”I yawned, snuggling to his cool chest.
“That may be true, min skat, I cherish their sweet though brief existence.”He continued to run his finger down her fur.
“Will I... be a sweet existence, something brief and wonderful?”I had been thinking on this for the past week.
“Your existence is not sweet,min elskede, it is brilliant. It is bold and funny, delicious and warm––but to answer your question, we are bound.”He lifted up his wrist, the one with my hair woven into a thick cuff. “You will live as long as I do; the gods would not be so cruel as to give me such a deep love for it to only last mere seconds. They did not wake me up to experience such loss again.”
“Did you love him?”I asked, thinking of his friend without jealousy.
“Trygve? I did, though not as I love you, Aurora.”he moved his hand to my shoulder, rubbing his thumb along the curve.“He was more like a best friend or a brother? Maybe a younger sibling. It’s hard to pinpoint because I do not have anyone you would consider immediate family. Some of the ways he acted remind me of your unfortunate brothers, if their chat is any indication of their true personalities.”he paused,“If you are worried––”
“Do I feel worried?”I looked up, waiting.
“No, you do not. We have both had our dalliances over the years.”He sighed, a feeling of irritation surfacing.“You should know I am not jealous of Kenton, though if he died, it would be no great loss––”
I thwacked him, laughing as the irritation switched to me,“Nice deflection, but the real thing I am hearing is that Trygve taught you to love mortals, and thanks to him, you love me.”
“Hmm, and what do you plan to do with this new information?He kissed the top of my head.
“I will be thankful for your experiences and try to grasp that if something doesn’t kill me, I’ll outlive my family.”
Sashimi, having had enough of this conversation, leapt off the bed to go find something more interesting to do.
I turned over, laying my cheek on his chest.“I am having complicated feelings about that. I love them, despite the fact that they don't understand me or you, apparently, if the texts I am also getting are any indication,”I snorted,“and they never have really tried to. It’s like they don’t care enough to form something other than the expected responses to their youngest sister having a serious boyfriend. You would think they would have checked in, come for a visit, or challenged you to a duel or something.”
“Boyfriend? I know this is what they call me, but they need to have a better grasp of their own language. Though I do like the word serious,”he replied playfully,“You know that they would be wasting their time dueling with me.”
"You don’t have to go and be all logical.”I pouted, aware that perhaps I was being a bit of the spoiled younger sister.“It just seems like our relationship is superficial.”
“Perhaps they trust that you, out of all of them, know your path,min skat. You are one of the most self-assured adaptive beings I have met. I sometimes think beings don’t check in because they have faith in your abilities.”Olan ran his hands through my hair, relaxing me.
“So... I might be the one being superficial?”I pouted a bit, not liking that maybe I was. “When you went to sleep, did your family not check on you?”
“You know that my definition of family is different than yours. Brøndmand are not birthed, they are formed. But I have beings I would count as family who did not come looking for me when I went to sleep.”He admitted quietly,“Old gods frequently sleep to pass the time. Existence is long. Beings I cared for just assumed that I was settling in to pass the time, not to embrace the Void.”
My stomach dropped out,“The Void, you said it was like heaven? Did you... did you go to sleep to die?”
“Yes and no,”he said, shushing me when I made a noise of distress, then sitting up and pulling me into a hug.“I didn’t feel the need to be awake, and with such loss, I had accepted the idea that I might drift off eventually into that warm embrace of our afterlife. I wasn’t seeking death by any means, but when you live so long and experience so much, you need to rest. Sometimes, your being decides to continue on that path to something new, something unknown. If I passed on, I was okay with it, because I had lived such a full life. I was, at the time, ready to accept oblivion.”
Tears filled my eyes as I thought of Olan dying, of never meeting him. Big emotions I wasn’t ready to name clogged my throat, and I choked.
“Min elskede, beloved, I am awake because ofyou. You pulled me back into the waking world. The gods knew better than I did that you were coming, and that is why I slept so long and so deeply. I was replenishing, healing, becoming whole in my heart again—for us.”He lifted my face and kissed away my tears.
“This is how I knew you were not to be a mere wisher, but a wife,”he said before kissing me on the lips.
His kiss was firm and tender, flavored with my tears. I had heard that one little action could change the world for someone, and I had ended up changing the world not just for myself, but for him —a god, my husband.
“I’m really glad I got my ass kicked by some red caps,”I joked, thankful for the luck I had always cursed in the past.
“Mmm, me too, wife. You were worth waking up for,”he said, laying us back down and pulling the covers over us.“I willneverchoose to sleep as deeply without you,Min elskede.”
“You better not,”I grumbled.“You literally signed up for this, and that means you’re mine now.”
