Skål! [Fireside/Hjarrandi Wedding]

Chaos flipped the curved dagger up in the air, catching it's gold-chased bone handle in his jaws again casually as he strode through the sweet-smelling, bee-buzzing orchard. He'd been cleansed in all sorts of ways he had never thought possible to cleanse, done every silly thing that the vikings and Tyrian had asked with an amiable docility that might have been alarming to anyone who had known him in his crazy, crazy youth, and now with his bridal gift between his fangs he was on his way to his wedding. Crazy, huh? His mother would have laughed herself sick, he reflected with some amusement of his own. But she'd been loyal to his father in every way that counted without a ceremony to tie them together as anything more than friends - would she have married him, if he'd asked, if it was the only way to keep him? Maybe not. As an adult, he couldn't say if what his parents had was anything more than two friends who fucked and happened to raise children together, and Valentine had had Rhythm. He didn't know what made a relationship work, or how to be married. He didn't know if he was supposed to be with Valkyrie the way his father had been with Cascade, or if he was supposed to be with her like Valentine with Rhythm. He wished he could ask Rhys for advice, let her be his guiding star like when they were young. After all, she was a girl, she'd know. Hell, he was being so maidenly it was disgusting. Gird up his damn loins and go through with it, figure it out as he went.

Stepping up where he was supposed to, body relaxed as though none of these thoughts had been chewing at him all day, his eyes fastened to Valkyrie, darted a little nervously to his father, then fixed back on Valkyrie. He laid the knife in front of himself with a cocky flourish, then waited.