My Viking Son’s Two Fathers

Chapter 10

I find children already awake, alerted by the night's commotion.

The sounds of battle and its aftermath must have carried even to this sheltered wing, and my boys have learned too young that unusual noises often precede danger.

Bjorn stands protectively before his brothers, positioning himself between them and the door.

A knife gleams in his hand—a blade he should not have, stolen from the kitchens or perhaps gifted by some well-meaning warrior.

"Mother." His voice carries suspicion rather than relief. "What has happened? The guards would not let us leave."

Erik peers around his brother's shoulder, copper curls disheveled from sleep, green eyes bright with obvious curiosity rather than fear.

Behind them both, Ivar sits cross-legged on his pallet, watching my face with that unsettling perception that sees too much. He already knows something terrible has changed. He is simply waiting for confirmation.

I close the door behind me and cross to kneel before them, bringing myself to their level. The knife in Bjorn's hand does not waver.

"Put down the blade," I say gently. "I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen without interruption. Can you do that?"

Bjorn's jaw tightens, so like his father's expression that my chest aches, but he lowers the knife. Erik immediately opens his mouth to speak, but a sharp look from his older brother silences him.

I take a breath. There is no gentle way to deliver this truth.

"The twin konungs who arrived yesterday," I begin, "the men who now rule half the North. Ragnar the Ice-Bound and Leif the Laughing Flame." I watch their faces as I speak, memorizing each reaction. "They are your fathers."

Silence.

Then Erik's voice, breathless with confusion: "Both of them? How can we have two fathers?"

"It is... complicated. Something that happened before you were born, before I came to this place."

I reach out to touch his copper hair, so like Leif's. "What matters now is that they know you exist. And they have decided that you will return with them to Skálholt."

"Return with them?" Bjorn's voice cracks like ice fracturing. "We are to be taken from our home? Given to strangers who have never…"

He stops, his small hands clenching into fists at his sides. "We do not need fathers. I have protected this family. I will continue to protect it."

The words are brittle with betrayal, and I see Ragnar's implacable will staring back at me from my son's face. The same cold determination. The same refusal to bend.

He has been the man of our small family since before he understood what that meant, and now I am telling him that role has been stripped away.

"Bjorn…"

"No." He steps back, shaking his head. "They abandoned us. They left you alone. Why should we go anywhere with men who—"

"They did not know." The admission costs me something, though I cannot name what. "That night, they did not know who I was. They did not know I carried their children."

Erik, predictably, has fixated on entirely different aspects of the revelation.

"The twin konungs," he breathes, his green eyes sparking with Leif's own restless fire. "The ones from the stories? The ones who conquered the entire eastern coast in a single summer? They're truly our blood?"

"There will be time for questions later," I say, gentler than I feel. "But I need you to understand—this changes everything. The life we had here, the freedom we knew... it will not be the same."

Ivar has not spoken. He sits motionless on his pallet, his strange eyes—not quite blue, not quite green—fixed on my face with that terrible perception.

"Will they hurt us?" His voice is barely above a whisper.

The question strikes something in my chest that makes breathing difficult. I reach for him, pulling him close.

"I will die before I let anyone harm you," I swear against his temple. "Whatever happens, whatever they demand, I will always protect you."

Ivar simply burrows closer into my arms, accepting the promise with the faith of a child who has never known his mother to lie.

***

The meeting takes place in the main courtyard with the household assembled as witnesses.

Gray dawn has given way to pale winter sunlight that offers no warmth. Servants and warriors alike crowd the edges of the yard, their faces arranged in expressions of careful neutrality that barely conceal their shock.

Ragnar and Leif wait on a raised platform, dressed in full royal regalia—black and silver for Ragnar, gold and copper for Leif.

They look like kings from the old stories, magnificent and terrible, and I feel my sons tense beside me as we approach.

The resemblance strikes the crowd into murmuring silence.

Bjorn stands rigid at my right, his ice-blue eyes fixed on Ragnar. Erik vibrates with barely contained energy at my left. And Ivar walks between his brothers.

Ragnar studies Bjorn with prolonged intensity, and I watch something unreadable flicker across his features. Recognition, perhaps. Or the strange vertigo of seeing one's own face reflected in miniature.

Leif grins at Erik, that dangerous, charming smile I have learned to distrust, and receives a tentative smile in return. My chest tightens at the ease of that exchange.

"These boys," Ragnar announces, his voice carrying across the courtyard, "are of royal blood. They will be treated accordingly, with all the rights and protections their lineage demands. We ride for Skálholt within the week."

No mention of their mother. No acknowledgment that I exist beyond the vessel that carried them. I am merely the mechanism by which his heirs were produced.

I keep my face smooth as stone.

The assembly disperses in clusters of whispered speculation, but before I can slip away with my sons, Ragnar's hand closes around my arm.

His grip is too firm, his body too near as he pulls me close under the pretense of private words. To the dispersing crowd, we must appear merely as king and sworn sword conferring on logistics.

They cannot see how his thumb traces a slow circle against the inside of my wrist, pressing where my pulse beats traitor-fast beneath the skin.

"The journey preparations," he murmurs against my temple, his breath warm where it should not be. "You will oversee the boys' packing personally. Nothing left behind that might cause complications."

Mundane instructions. Practical concerns. But his voice does not match his words—low and rough, meant for bedchambers rather than courtyards.

His other hand has found my hip, steadying me as though I might fall, though we both know I need no steadying.

The hard line of his body presses against mine. Through layers of wool and leather, I feel the heat of him, the solid width of his chest, the unmistakable evidence that this proximity affects him as much as it affects me.

The scent of him fills my senses—steel and winter and something darker beneath. Something that calls to the memory of snow against my back, of weight and heat and pleasure I have spent ten years trying to forget.

"Do you understand?" he asks, and the question seems to carry weight beyond packing and preparations.

"Perfectly, my lord." My voice emerges steadier than I feel. A small victory.

His lips brush my ear as he speaks again, so soft that no one else could hear. "You still smell of battle. Blood and steel and fury." A pause, heavy with implication. "It suits you."

Then he releases me without acknowledgment and walks away, leaving me unmoored in the middle of the courtyard, my skin burning where he touched, my body aching with want I refuse to name.

My pulse races with fury. I tell myself it is only fury.

I almost believe it.

From the hall entrance, Astrid watches with a face like carved marble. Beautiful. Cold. Promising murder.