Anders opened the door and knew that it was her even though she was a black shadow against a summer-lit window. He knew like a blow to his heart it was her before his poor brain could fully form a thought to that effect.

He took a step into the room and his mouth opened to say her name, when – so very unusually for him – the words stumbled on his tongue and fell flat on their figurative faces. Was she Delfin or Marie-Therese? This was possibly the most important moment of his life and he had no idea. Not a clue.

The feeling left him breathless and dizzy and not a little bit sick to his stomach – as if being in love wasn't enough for a man to deal with in the first place.

She turned towards him then, and even that simple movement looked like dancing. As she took three steps towards him, away from the light so it slid across her cheek and he could see her face for the first time in far too long (five days), his heart twinged – honestly, like someone plucked at his heartstrings – because there was not a shadow of pain in her eyes. The Sun's glass slippers glittered on her feet, though how he knew that when he hadn't been able to tear his eyes from her face was yet another mystery. He still hadn't danced with her. He hadn't done so many things with her, but he would, just as soon as he figured out which name to call her by.

"Anders." Her eyes were as calm as the lake, the heartless baggage, and her voice cool water and he drank it in, gulped it down with the embarrassing need of one terminally parched. "I am trying to be angry with you but it is not working, because you are here, and I am too happy being able to see you to remember why it is important that I am angry."

He almost laughed but that couldn't be the first thing to pass his lips when he saw her again. He needed to get her to forgive him for almost losing her (more than that, for deliberately trying to misplace her) and the only way to do so was to begin with her name. But he still couldn't decide what that was.

"Is this what being in love is? I do not like it. Your prince said I should make you ... do something. That I should be cold and say only hard things until I know that ... Prince wrote it down for me so I could remember but I can't let you read it to me because you are not to know about it. I loved you before and could still call you an idiot, but now I am so happy you are here I think I might break. Is this crying? Anders. Anders." She repeated his name like a prayer. "Anders, don't make me leave again."

He couldn't stand it. His arm went around her waist, a hand to the back of her head, his lips to hers, clinging with more of that mortifying thirst. A dying man given reprieve. He tasted tears of salt like sea foam but banished the thought. This was perfect, in spite of or because he was holding her too tightly, and their legs tangled in her skirts, and their teeth scraped which he usually hated but couldn't find a part of himself interested in caring at the present moment. This was – well, it was really too maudlin a thought for a person trying to put his tongue in another's mouth – but it was like claiming something back from the river. Maybe not all of it, but the part that he had been trying so hard to fix on his own for so long and couldn't. Here she was handing it to him with his name said against his lips, and her fingers pulling at the hair at the nape of his neck, and her body leaning against him in trust.

She pulled away so that she could take a few deep breaths. "We will be doing more of that. It was much better than in the woods – I can feel all of it now, you know?" Her brows pulled together slightly in concern. "Are you sick? I have never been saying so much without you telling me I am wrong."

It must have been he just needed to get that kiss out of the way because the answer was obvious. He could ask for help now. "What do I call you, mit hjerte?"

She tipped her head to one side. "Marie-Therese when there are people who are not friends, and are friends but you don't want them to know I was a mermaid, and when you love me enough to write me a letter. But Delfin when you love me too, and want to pull out your hair, and talk at my head. When I say you are an idiot you will call me Delfin, but Marie-Therese some of the times when you are being slippery–"

He kissed her to stop the rest of the catalogue. He might have felt a touch more sympathy for her complaints of talking at a person's head but didn't for a moment consider giving up the practice.

"Del, you're no help at all," he said when his need was quenched.

And she smiled, starting slowly with her lips, lighting her whole face, until her eyes burned like stars searing the heart of him, in a way he had never been able to describe in his letters to Vald. And wouldn't have, even if he could, because this was only for them.

It's been a year since I posted the last chapter of Anders, so consider this an anniversary present from me to you.