Through it all—the blood, the gore, the unbearable screams of pain, the terror—she stroked his hair, kissed the top of his head or meshed her fingers with his.
He might have known she’d sense when the enormity of it brought him to the verge of tears.
“Let it go, my Black Knight,” she whispered.
“A man cannot cry,” he rasped.
“A man incapable of tears is not a man,” she countered.
He opened the floodgates and wept until his throat was raw and his head was pounding, then tumbled at last into a peaceful sleep.
* * *
Blythe accepted it would take months for her husband’s soul to heal but, in giving vent to his emotions, he’d trusted her, and for that she loved him even more.
As Dieter lay sleeping peacefully in her arms, she gave thanks for the wisdom imparted by her parents. They had undergone many hardships and learned to overcome adversity. They’d talked a lot about trust in a marriage, but only now did she truly understand.
War was always brutal. Her father had come close to dying on the bloody field at Alnwick, but he’d never revealed the horrors he too must have witnessed. She recognized that the atrocities Dieter had described would haunt her, but that was a wife’s role—she was willing to share the burden.