My Viking Son’s Two Fathers

Chapter 5

* Present *

Dawn breaks gray and cold over the fjord.

The funeral ship rocks gently in the shallows, its hull creaking with each lap of dark water against weathered timber.

Jarl Sigvald lies upon a bed of shields and furs, his sword across his chest, silver coins upon his closed eyes to pay his passage to the halls of the dead.

He looks smaller in death than he ever did in life—this man who pulled me from the sea, who gave me purpose when I had none, who never once asked about the secrets I carried.

The household has gathered on the shore. Warriors stand in mail beside servants and craftsmen, their breath misting in the chill air.

I take my place among them, my own mail hidden beneath a gray cloak, my hand resting on a sword hilt that Sigvald himself placed there eight winters past.

But my eyes keep drifting to the three figures standing apart from the crowd.

My sons.

Bjorn stands tallest, though he is only nine winters old. He has his father's black hair and ice-blue eyes—Ragnar's eyes, cold and watchful, missing nothing.

Already he carries himself like a warrior born, spine straight, chin lifted, as though he knows instinctively that he was made for more than this quiet village.

Beside him, Erik fidgets with restless energy. Copper curls catch the pale morning light, and his green eyes, Leif's eyes, bright with mischief, dart everywhere at once.

He cannot stand still, this one. Fire runs through his veins where his brother carries ice.

And between them, small Ivar, who carries traces of both fathers in his face. Dark hair streaked with auburn. Eyes that shift between blue and green depending on the light.

He is the quiet one, the thoughtful one, the one who watches and waits and sees far too much.

Three sons. Three secrets.

Three reasons my heart has not known peace in nearly a decade.

Widow Solveig catches my gaze across the crowd and nods once. I move forward, boots crunching on frost-rimed stones. The assembly parts for me—some with respect, others with wary distance.

I stop at the water's edge, close enough to see Sigvald's still features.

"Ten winters ago," I say, and my voice carries clear across the water, "Jarl Sigvald found me half-dead on his shore. A stranger with nothing but a blade and a belly full of secrets. He could have left me to the crows. Instead, he saw something worth saving."

My gaze drops to his still form.

"He and Solveig took in my children when the world would have called them cursed. They asked no questions. They helped me raise my sons as kin, protected them, gave them a home when I could offer only a sword and a mother's fear."

My voice threatens to splinter, but I force it smooth.

"He saw in me more than dirt. More than a pawn. He saw a person. That is a debt I can never repay."

Solveig takes my place then. Iron-straight despite her grief, her gray braids crowned with silver beads. She speaks of her husband's honor, his laughter, the way he held her hand even in his final breaths.

Then the ship is pushed into deeper water.

I nock a fire-arrow. Draw. Loose.

The flames catch and the pyre blazes against the pale sky, smoke rising in a dark column. Around me, voices lift in funeral hymns, but I do not sing.

I simply watch the flames consume the only father who ever deserved the name. Afterward, Solveig finds me at the cliff's edge.

"You spoke well," she says.

"I spoke the truth."

Silence stretches between us. Then her voice drops low.

"The land passes now to new hands. Sigvald's nephews inherit his title, but they hold it as vassals to the twin konungs. Ragnar the Ice-Bound and Leif the Laughing Flame will ride here within days to claim what is theirs."

The names strike like blades between my ribs. Heat floods my chest, unwanted, unbidden, as memories surface against my will.

Hands in the firelight. Weight pressing me into snow. Pleasure so intense it shattered me into pieces I have never fully reassembled.

Ten years, and still my body remembers what my mind tries to forget.

"How long?" My voice comes out steady. A small victory.

"A week. Perhaps less."

"And when they arrive?" I cannot look at her. "When they see the boys?"

Solveig's hand closes around my arm. "They remain hidden. The household knows them only as distant kin fostered in my care. There is no reason for the konungs to take interest in three children of no importance."

No importance. I nearly laugh.

"Bjorn has Ragnar's face, Solveig. Erik has Leif's coloring and his restless spirit. Anyone with eyes will see…"

"Then we ensure they do not see." Her voice is firm. "I will keep them in the east hall, away from the main household. The konungs will have no cause to venture there."

I want to believe her. I want to trust the walls she has built, the architecture of secrets that has kept my sons safe for nine years.

But my chest aches with more than fear.

What will they look like now, these men who haunt my dreams? Broader, harder, carved by a decade of war and rule? Will Ragnar's eyes still freeze the air around him? Will Leif's laugh still spark heat low in my belly?

And when they see me, if they remember… what then?

"I could take them," I say. "Tonight. Vanish into the mountains…"

"And go where?" Solveig's voice is gentle but unyielding. "You tried running once, Hild. The North is not so wide that you can hide forever. Not from men like these."

The truth settles into my bones.

If the konungs discover my sons exist, they might claim them as heirs—rip them from my arms to be raised as princes.

Or they might see them as threats, bastards who could one day challenge legitimate children for land and title.

They might kill them.

The thought drives ice through my heart.

"Then I stay," I say. "I kneel. I swear whatever oaths they require. And I pray they see only a sword-arm, not a ghost from their past."

Solveig squeezes my arm. "You are more than a sword-arm. That is precisely what frightens you."

I watch the last embers of the funeral ship sink beneath the waves.

In a week, perhaps less, the past will ride through my gates. Two men I have never stopped wanting. Two men who could destroy everything I love.

And I will face them with steady hands and a silent tongue, as though my whole world does not hang by a thread.