‘You left without saying goodbye.’ His voice was low, audible only to her.
Her eyes flared, but still she didn’t look away. ‘I... I couldn’t. I couldn’t say it,’ she confessed, pain breaking through the words. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He looked away only briefly, catching Freya’s brother’s glare. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to let you go,’ he admitted, the truth of his statement evident in the raw edge of his voice.
‘But you can now?’ she asked. He pulled her just a little closer into his hold, his legs sweeping through the layers of tulle and silk and beading, desperate to feel the warmth of her body.
‘You were born for this, Freya, notintoit. The title, the role...these things were meant for you.’
I was meant for you, a part of him cried, but he thrust it aside. For her.
‘But you need to know—’
Her hand tightened in his hold, stalling his words, as if half wanting to stop him and half wanting him to never stop. He blew out a breath, steeling himself against the inevitable pain that would follow his words. But he stood by them. And she deserved more than anything to hear them.
‘I love you.’ His voice was a whisper but the power of those words struck like a bell’s toll that changed their worlds. Her eyes filled, but not a single tear fell. Amber shimmering into gold. ‘I will always stand by your decision to remain royal. But I will always love you.’
Her lips trembled until she speared her bottom lip with her teeth and he wished for all the world to reach for it, set it free with the pad of his thumb, but he felt every single set of eyes in the entire room on his back, watching intently, trying to fathom what was happening.
‘Eight years ago, we didn’t get the chance to do things properly. And when you left Dalarna...’ His heart shattered all over again at the memory of her getting in the helicopter and disappearing into the snow-filled sky. ‘We need to say goodbye.’
For the first time since he’d appeared, Freya dropped her gaze from his face and whispered, ‘What if I can’t?’
The waltz was reaching a crescendo, she could hear it and feel it in her breast.
‘You can. Because you’re the strongest person I know.’
Breath shuddered in Freya’s chest and everything hurt. Her body, her skin, her heart... But instead of feeling the icy frigid grasp that had held her heart since leaving Kjell in Dalarna, a pulse of warmth beat within her. His words, his love, igniting a single ember into an inferno that bloomed and twirled and twisted until she felt the truth of it feed her, forge her strength anew. She looked up to find his head angled over her shoulder, the stark line of his jaw, the powerful and proud man she loved whole-heartedly. A man she would never touch again after that night.
She felt a single tear escape down her cheek. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, even though it broke her. It hurt and wrecked her, but he deserved to hear it too. ‘I will never stop loving you.’
His jaw clenched, the muscle flaring, and when he turned his gaze to her, the raw pain in his eyes was only matched by her own. The music came to a crashing climactic conclusion and he drew them to a stop in the centre of the ballroom, watched by a hundred pairs of eyes.
He released her from his hold, stepped back, bowed low and deep, and this time the perfect Princess forgot all about etiquette, forgot to curtsy at all. Struck completely still, Freya watched as Kjell turned on his heel and left the ballroom.
On the far side of the ballroom Aleksander watched Bergqvist walk away from his sister, his jaw clenched and fury pounding in his veins. He was about to go to Freya when Henna appeared by his side. His sister’s lady-in-waiting looked as angry as he felt.
‘Fix it,’ she commanded. Two little words in a tone that no one ever dared speak to him in.
He raised an imperious eyebrow that had quelled heads of state and countless politicians.
‘I don’t care what you have to do, just fix it.’
And she stalked off, leaving him just as confused as he always was whenever she was around. He looked up to see Kjell disappear through the large doors of the palace ballroom and decided that the time for subtlety was over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
KJELLLEFTTHEpalace in a daze that no self-respecting soldier would tolerate. His heart pounded in his ears and his eyes were full of the last look Freya had given him, leaving him half blind and deaf and utterly vulnerable to attack.
It had been the right thing, but it had left him devastated in a way he would never recover from. Even Enzo’s voice in his mind was quiet. Kjell made his way down cobbled streets in the old part of Torfarn, gently illuminated by streetlights wrapped in wrought iron filigree. He stumbled, feeling drunk without having touched a drop of alcohol and cursed, desperate to get himself under control before he arrived at his destination. Everything in him made him want to leave, to return to Sweden. But Freya had been right. He had to go home. Even if he wasn’t sure that Svardia was it, he needed to see his parents. Needed to face his father.
His mother and father had moved out of the palace a few years ago as Brynjar had needed space for a workshop, which had been impossible in the palace staff housing. Kjell wondered if his mother missed it, having spent her life surrounded by the hundreds of live-in staff, the constant buzz he remembered from his childhood that had made integration into the army seamless.
After three hours of walking, he came to the front door of a modest house on a quiet suburban street. At two in the morning, he was surprised to find a gentle light glowing from the back of the house where his father’s workshop was. He made his way through to the garden with the silent steps instinctive to a soldier, but still his father was waiting for him. The wide wooden door of the garage was open, revealing the workbench where Brynjar Bergqvist sat, polishing a small piece of metal.
His father peered at him over wire-framed glasses and, although he didn’t smile or seem surprised, Kjell was half convinced he heard love in his father’s voice when he said, ‘Welcome home.’
Kjell nodded, unable to speak past the lump in his throat. He wished he could be stronger, wished he didn’t have this need crawling beneath his skin, desperately reaching for something he could never have. But he knew that he needed to face this.