My Viking Son’s Two Fathers

Chapter 12

The journey takes six days through mountain passes and coastal roads, and I spend every moment in a state of heightened vigilance that frays my nerves to bleeding threads.

I personally inspect each meal before my sons eat, examining bread for discoloration, sniffing meat for the telltale sweetness of certain poisons.

When dishes seem unfamiliar, I test them on scraps for the camp dogs and watch the animals for an hour before allowing my boys to touch a morsel. The servants think I'm mad.

I sleep across the entrance to our tent with my blade unsheathed, waking at every unfamiliar sound.

Solveig has been permitted to accompany us despite Astrid's pointed objections, and the older woman becomes my second pair of eyes, watching servants and food tasters with the quiet intensity.

"You cannot sustain this," she tells me on the third night, pressing a cup of broth into my hands. "You will collapse before we reach Skálholt."

"I will collapse after my sons are safe," I reply, and she does not argue further.

The boys experience the journey differently.

Bjorn rides in stony silence, refusing conversation with warriors who attempt to draw him out. Erik, by contrast, pelts every warrior within earshot with endless questions about battles and glory.

The warriors indulge him with varying degrees of patience, and I watch my son drink in their stories like a man dying of thirst.

Ivar watches everything with unsettling perception, his strange eyes tracking movements others miss.

On the fourth evening, as I tuck furs around him against the mountain cold, he speaks quietly.

"The queen looks at us the way our old cat watched mice before she pounced. She would sit very still, and her tail would twitch, and then—" He makes a sudden grabbing motion with his small hands.

I pull him close and say nothing, because there is nothing to say that would not be a lie.

***

Forced proximity on the road creates encounters I cannot avoid.

Ragnar rides near me in silence for hours on the fifth day, his presence a weight I feel without seeing. The column moves slowly through a narrow pass.

When he finally speaks, his voice startles me despite its quietness.

"You held the eastern flank for Sigvald for seven years. The position is traditionally given to the most trusted commander." His ice-blue eyes remain fixed on the path ahead. "How did a woman earn such a posting?"

"By being better than the men who wanted it," I reply flatly.

"That is not an answer. That is deflection."

I consider refusing to elaborate. But the silence that follows his words carries expectation rather than judgment, and I find myself speaking despite my intentions.

"I learned to fight because the alternative was helplessness. I became good at it because I had children to protect. The eastern flank was simply where my skills proved most useful."

The memories surface unbidden—Sigvald and Solveig finding me half-dead, those first brutal months of recovery, the slow rebuilding of a body and spirit that had been shattered.

"You speak of protection," Ragnar says. "Yet you clearly enjoy the violence itself. I watched you on the battlefield. That was not mere duty."

"Perhaps I have learned to find pleasure in the only power available to me."

"Perhaps." His gaze finally turns to meet mine, and something in it makes my breath catch. "Or perhaps you were always a warrior, and circumstance simply revealed what was already there."

The conversation stretches longer than I intend, winding through tactics and campaigns and the peculiar loneliness of command.

When we finally fall silent, the sun has moved significantly across the sky, and I realize with discomfort that I have enjoyed speaking with him.

But it is Leif who shatters my careful defenses.

He finds me alone at the camp's edge on the sixth evening, the firelight distant, the darkness intimate.

"You look like a woman carrying the weight of mountains."

I turn to find him leaning against a pine tree, arms crossed, his copper hair dark in the dim light. "I am carrying the weight of three children and a kingdom's worth of enemies. Mountains would be lighter."

He laughs softly, pushing off from the tree to move closer. "You wound me. I thought perhaps I contributed some small portion of that burden."

"You contribute confusion," I admit before I can stop myself. "Which is burden enough."

The playfulness fades from his expression, replaced by something rawer. "That night, ten years ago. Do you remember any of it clearly?"

The question strikes somewhere vulnerable. "Fragments. Sensations. Nothing coherent."

"I remember everything."

His voice has lost its usual lightness, dropping to something low and serious.

"I never forgot you, Hild. The fierce, wild girl who came to us through the snow like something out of legend. I have bedded women since, many women, and none of them erased the memory of you."

"Leif."

"I am not asking for anything."

His fingers brush my jaw, tilting my face toward his, and I should pull away but I do not.

"I am simply telling you the truth. Whatever you think of me, whatever you believe about that night, I never forgot."

When I do not retreat, he takes it as an invitation.

His mouth claims mine with hungry urgency, and my resolve crumbles beneath the heat of him.

I find myself pressed against a tree, his body crowding mine, his hands sliding beneath my cloak to find the curves hidden underneath.

His palm cups my breast through fabric, his thumb stroking until I gasp against his lips.

"Tell me to stop," he breathes against my throat, his other hand traveling lower, slipping between my thighs to find the heat of me through cloth.

I should. I know I should. But his touch is fire and relief and ten years of loneliness demanding answers.

"Do not stop," I whisper, and his groan of response vibrates through my bones.

He strokes me until I shudder apart in his arms, biting my lip to keep from crying out, my fingers clutching his shoulders as waves of pleasure crash through me.

When I finally still, trembling and breathless, Leif presses his forehead to mine.

"There is more," he promises, his voice rough with restraint. "So much more I would give you."

But voices call from the camp, guards changing watch, and the spell shatters. I pull away on unsteady legs, my body still humming, my mind reeling.

"I cannot afford this," I tell him. "I cannot afford to want you."

"Too late," Leif says softly, and his smile holds no triumph.

***

We arrive at Skálholt on the seventh day.

The royal seat steals my breath despite everything—a vast complex of halls and towers perched on cliffs above a roaring sea, magnificent and terrible as the men who rule it.

This is my cage now.

As we pass through the great gates, I see Astrid watching from a high window, her smile visible even at this distance.

The queen has arrived before us.

And I carry the memory of Leif's hands like a secret burning beneath my skin.