16. The First Longing
XVI
THE FIRST LONGING
The hall still smelled of iron and incense after Erik had watched the lord pull his wife up the stairs. The echo of Henry’s voice still pulsed in his ears:
“He is beneath us.”
Henry had spat his name like rotted meat in the hall. He could still hear the scrape of boots on stone, the quiet that falls when a man is made to tremble in front of those who would hold his life in their hands.
The young guard he’d nearly cut down—Tomas—lingered at the edge of the room, head bowed, his spear trembling against the floor.
Erik approached him, again clad in his noble knight’s uniform, and put a hesitant hand on his shoulder.
“You would have truly killed me?” Tomas asked, his voice raw.
Erik’s eyes met his. “Yes.” His whisper was just as raw.
Tomas swallowed, eyes flicking toward the stairs where Henry and Seren had gone. “I—I honor you, Commander, but . . . I love my life more.”
Erik nodded and then said quietly, “Would you rather die quick and clean by my hand—or see a boy, my son, tortured and killed before your eyes, and then have us share his fate?”
Tomas didn’t answer, so Erik continued.
“Lord Henry wanted a spectacle. He wanted to show that he could make a man kill for the look of it and to showcase what happens if one disobeys.”
The young man blanched. His spearpoint dipped.
“It would have been one hurt, Tomas, and then you would have been with your God. I wouldn’t have made you suffer.”
Tomas rubbed his jaw with his shoulder as if he were fighting back from the edge of death.
“Well, Lady de Thornwyck shamed us,” Tomas said. “Said I had sinned and needed to repent. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Erik squeezed Tomas’s shoulder. “In Lord Henry’s eyes, you did. She knew what I was going to do; our lady saved your life.”
He let the words fall and take root.
Tomas shuffled. “Then… perhaps I am indebted to her.”
Erik had not expected gratitude to taste so bitter. “You are. She saw what I would have done and stopped it. She saved your life—and my honor in my son’s eyes with it.”
His jaw tightened. “Do not mistake her mercy for weakness,” he told Tomas. “She is a warrior. Smarter than any of us. And I fear what stripes her grace will earn her.”
Tomas shuffled, looking away. He was quiet for a moment.
“Thank you, Commander,” Tomas finally murmured and slipped out of the hall, leaving Erik alone in the hollowed silence. The remaining guards glanced at him. He’d lost the respect earned from years of battle. That’s precisely what Lord Henry wanted: to reduce him to a pawn, again.
Whatever luxury he had in slightly bending Lord Henry’s law and having no one speak of it was likely gone. He had turned on one of his men in an instant at a single order for the sake of his Norse son.
They didn’t care why. They only knew what they saw—a disloyal commander, a two-faced leader.
Still, he wasn’t going to tuck tail like a dog; he met their gazes until they turned away.
He ascended to his room, but stopped short when he reached the corridor that led to Henry’s chambers.
Two guards stood outside the heavy oak doors—Henry’s personal men, armed and grim.
From within, Erik heard the sound of stifled pain, then breaking through:
A thud, and Henry’s voice. “Do you think anyone here would save you?”
Another thud. “Get up, wife.” A harshly spoken command.
And another. “Get up!”
Erik’s vision narrowed on the door. His fingers clenched. He placed a firm hand on the stone wall of the stairs and did what he had to: controlled the animal inside.
One guard met his gaze and gave an upward glance to the attic.
The other guard—a younger man with pity in his eyes—nodded toward the upper stair. “He’s with Baldwin,” he mouthed.
Erik’s breath came hard through his teeth before he went to comfort his son without Lord Henry’s permission, and hoped the guards weren’t testing him at Henry’s order.
But after the day’s events, he needed to console his son.
The attic was cramped, the air heavy with dust and lamplight. Baldwin let him in, and to Erik’s surprise, came into Ragnar’s room with him.
Baldwin crouched beside Ragnar’s cot, his broad shoulders blocking most of the glow.
Ragnar’s small hand clutched the dried kingcup.
The boy’s eyes were wet and red-rimmed. “She knew, didn’t she?” he said. “She knew what he’d make you do.”
Erik sat beside him, gathering him close, pulling him into his lap, cradling him like the baby he no longer was. He glanced at Baldwin, wondering where his loyalties were.
“She knew,” Erik whispered to Ragnar.
Baldwin nodded.
“If he ever commands you to kill Lady Seren,” Ragnar said as he cradled the dried kingcup in his hand, “I’ll endure pain first. I’ll die first. I’ll not let you kill her. I’m almost a man. I’ll take the pain to save her life.”
Erik’s throat burned at the brittle courage of a nine-year-old that sharpened his son’s voice. He’d had to kill a wife before, the very wife he’d tried to save and lost Astrid for. He did it to save his son, but Ragnar was too young to remember. Seren must have told him.
If Erik had a clean shot at Henry, he’d take it, but his guards stood with spears that would thwart any attacker, and Henry always had his dagger on him. They’d likely kill him before he could, and that would leave both Ragnar and Seren with torture before death.
His arms tightened around Ragnar.
Baldwin glanced at father and son, clenched his jaw, and looked away.
“Ragnar, you are brave for loving what is right, but you will live,” Erik said, gripping his son’s shoulder. “You’ll live long enough to change this world. Brave men die young under this roof.”
He smoothed Ragnar’s curls. “So don’t be brave. Not yet.”
The boy’s tears came, and he wrapped his fingers in his father’s sleeve.
Erik had to will the world to steady. If he ripped Henry limb from limb, there would be no hiding for any of them.
He’d be executed on the spot. King William could send a new lord, perhaps worse than Henry—one who might not be as moved by a woman’s prayers.
David, who was still learning to walk steadily, had no power to his name.
The borders would collapse in the absence of both Henry and Erik, and he didn’t want to envision what the victors would do to the women and children.
Baldwin stood up, fists knotted, fury restrained. As if reading his mind, he muttered, “When Lord David is older, we’ll make it right, Ragnar. Until then, I’ll teach you to fight in secret as we’ve been doing.”
Erik nodded in gratitude to Baldwin. At least one of the guards over his son had a sound mind.
The stairs creaked somewhere below. Erik’s and Baldwin’s heads jerked toward the sound.
“You should go, Commander,” Baldwin whispered.
Erik bent over Ragnar and kissed the top of his head. “If ever you must be brave, let Heaven have you for it.”
Then he rose and went down the spiral stone stairs with soft feet.
The keep’s top floor was dim. The wall sconces’ candles flickered, guttering in shallow pools of wax.
Henry was gone—his two guards too. Only the faint sound of the drawbridge chains carried through the night.
And there—by the wall of Henry’s chambers—Seren was alone, crouched in ripped linen.
Her blue gown lay rumpled beside her, and her veil lay dashed on the floorboards. Her back bore the red welts of Henry’s temper, evident through the rips of her stained chemise.
The sight of blood on fabric pulled him backward—Astrid’s chemise, soaked and still. Astrid’s blonde-red curls pressed against the cloth, softening the gruesome scene. He had held her only as long as Henry allowed, just long enough to remember the pain of disobedience but not long enough to grieve.
Seren’s dark hair had come loose from its braid, spilling across her shoulder, hiding the bruises and the weight of the child in her womb. If he held Seren in her hurt, it would not be in memory of loss, but the sorrow of holding a future he could never have.
Erik looked down the corridor to his room, but no one stood.
Looked the other way to hers; no one, not even Godric, was there.
The absence of others emboldened him, made him take a chance he wouldn’t have taken otherwise.
He was risking both Ragnar’s and his life, but he couldn’t just walk away and leave her there, not after what she’d done for him.
With silent steps so as not to draw attention from anyone who might be listening, he approached and took a knee beside her. The rattle of his chain mail upon kneeling gave him away.
Her eyes flicked up, startled, and then softened. Bruises bloomed across her skin. Open gashes still wept. She wiped her nose, and blood streaked her forearm.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.
He hesitated, the words rising in his throat before he could stop it.
“Valhalla has a place for you, Valkyrie,” Erik whispered, a reverent hush in his voice. She was not a warrior who fell in battle—but one greater, braver—a shield maiden of Odin in her own right. She had faced cruelty with grace and chose mercy over fear.
In his faith, no praise ran deeper.
Her brow furrowed, and she glanced at him with misted eyes.
For a moment, he wondered if she would chide him for his pagan ways—or remind him there was no Valhalla, only Heaven.
But instead, she whispered, “You honor me, Erik.”
She said his name then, so quietly he thought he’d imagined it. It hurt to breathe. She’d said his name, his real name, not Commander, not his Norman name that mocked his faith—but the one his father had given him.
For a long, jagged second, his mind emptied and then filled with a dozen faces: Astrid’s hair spilled over a bier like summer grain, the way her laugh had been taken in a single breath when Henry had seen fit; the cold weight of a grave he had stood above and promised never to let another child bury his mother.
Memory split him open—old promises, old names—Erik Bjornsson, son of Bjorn, not merely the Norman blade the world called “Commander.” The runes on his skin were not shame but honor; they remembered who he was when his soul had refused it.