17. The New Lady
XVII
THE NEW LADY
The second child was a daughter.
Henry did not care to name her. He’d grunted outside the door when the midwife announced it and left for the great hall before the cord was even cut.
So Seren named her Aveline.
It was a proper Norman name, elegant and unoffending. She would have preferred a Welsh name—one threaded with memory, one that belonged to her mother’s mother or the hills named after her father, Madoc—but Henry would never have allowed it. A name, he believed, should serve the father’s lineage.
He hadn’t held a feast for Aveline, hadn’t paraded her through all of visiting nobles, or rang any bells. His indifference was not unexpected, but it still twisted Seren’s heart.
Only one month separated Aveline’s birth from the present gathering. The courts had come for Henry, at his command, as a show of loyalty, thinly veiled as a celebration. Another type of parade, one of alliances and favors stitched together with flatteries and goblets of weak wine.
Henry’s harsh grunts resounded in memory from that morning.
“She is not what I asked for. You were made to breed men, not cradle daughters.”
She’d turned away from him, but he’d grabbed her arm, slapped her for turning away when he was not done speaking. She apologized as she always did. Her prayer was to stay humble, to survive, and not let bitterness corrode her heart.
Seren sat beside him on the dais, her body still swollen and raw beneath the folds of blue damask.
Her belt was tied so tight it mocked comfort.
The bruises across her ribs, the milk still sore in her breasts, the aching hollow where the child had been—all of it tucked neatly behind embroidered velvet and the pretense of resilience.
The smell of roast boar and crushed thyme curled in her nostrils. A slow, crawling revulsion started in her gut and pulsed beneath her skin in waves.
Henry reclined as if at ease, legs sprawled wide, the picture of masculine command. One ringed hand curled lazily around the goblet stem. The other—absentmindedly, possessively—rested on her knee beneath the table as if he were chaining her to him.
Below them, nobles gathered in curated arcs, their voices a low ripple of conspiracies masked as cheer.
Lord Basile whispered something to the fat steward from Stafford, and both chuckled behind their sleeves.
Lady Cléroux, lips bit to a nice pink hue, tapped her goblet in staccato rhythm against the table, the clinking sharp enough to grate.
Her daughter, the fresh-faced Lady Adelais, cast sidelong glances toward the commander’s corner of the hall.
She didn’t need to follow the young unmarried maiden’s eyes. She already knew where they landed.
Seren’s gaze dropped to her plate.
A slow, unexpected ache stirred in her chest—jealousy. She was not a girl who could cast glances across a hall, not a maiden hoping to be seen. She had no freedom to want. And yet, Erik had held her close as she cried. She had never cried in front of anyone, not her kin.
Perhaps he was the only kindness she had met. And in the corridor, blood still drying on her skin, he had offered it freely. Not out of duty. Not even out of pity. He had spoken to her as if she were still someone worth defending.
He had called her Valkyrie.
Not lady, not lamb, not breeder.
Valkyrie.
The word clung to her memory like a baby’s curled grip.
A warrior maiden from the old gods—those Erik still half-believed in, though she’d seen the shame he carried for it in Henry’s court.
A woman who was selected by his god. A woman who bore the fallen with mercy.
Who knew violence and still did not lose her soul to it.
She was not one of his gods. She had never carried a sword. Though her father taught her to fight, she’d never seen battle. One life saved was not worth the name Valkyrie in a Norseman’s eyes.
And yet, he had called her Valkyrie.
He hadn’t seen her kiss David’s curls when Henry would not, nor hold Ragnar in a tight embrace, or stitch knights’ wounds behind closed doors. He didn’t know she’d swallowed her fear with every breath she took in that keep.
He said he honored her because she came for peace, knowing what her life would be. She had kept that peace with her body, knowing what it would endure, and never faltered, even in a room full of nobles and holy men watching Henry’s power theater.
Perhaps he had seen that in her. Perhaps that was why he called her Valkyrie.
He had called her what no one else dared to see or to acknowledge.
And it fractured her resolve.
Because she was not made of smoke and myth.
She was a woman in pain, a woman with bones that ached from kneeling too long at the feet of a man, her husband, who would never honor her.
And yet—when Erik looked at her, he did not see a failure of a wife or a spoiled vessel for sons.
He saw the fight in her. The war she waged every day to keep her children alive.
To not become like the wives who vanished before her.
And for a moment—just one stolen moment between the noise of nobles and Henry’s heavy hand—she believed him.
She believed she might be something more than what the world demanded her to be.
A Valkyrie in velvet. A mother made of mercy. A woman unbowed, unbent, and unbroken.
Erik was her friend, and she begged herself not to see him as more, for what use was there in wishing for a life not hers?
She lifted her eyes back to the pretty Lady Adelais, who still stared at the handsome commander. She allowed herself to glance, too.
Erik stood where he always did—flanked by the black-and-crimson banners of Thornwyck, posture straight, jaw set beneath a hard stare. His surcoat was simple but cut with authority, a shade darker than the night sky. He looked at the entry as if he longed to escape.
Seren hadn’t seen him since the hallway, since the press of his hand against her, his warm embrace, and the unbearable softness of his voice. An ache bloomed in her despite every reason it shouldn’t.
Henry’s voice sliced through the clatter of goblets and spoons. He stood with the air of disinterest that men like him wore as a cloak.
“The borderlands,” he announced, lifting his goblet with little effort, “suffer yet another shortage—despite the generous allocations I’ve approved.”
A rustle swept through the chamber. Sips paused mid-air.
Henry let the silence breathe before turning toward the shadows near the banners.
“Commander de Montfort,” he said smoothly, the words almost pleasant. “Come forward and speak of your great mismanagement.”
Erik’s boots were slow but deliberate. When he bowed, it was exact, with no embellishment.
“My lord,” Erik said, “the merchants rerouted through Stafford after the last raid. That has delayed the grain and timber meant for the garrison. I’ve posted men to secure the southern crossings. The situation is contained.”
Seren thought the matter over and showed Erik’s strategy, not mismanagement, but Henry rolled the goblet between his fingers, watching Erik the way a falcon watches a trapped hare.
Then, with an affected turn of the head, he looked at her.
“What say you, milady?” he asked, loud enough for all to hear.
Henry was baiting her. He was already suspicious of their time in the garden and her time with Ragnar. Women were not to speak in assemblies. She had learned that the hard way, and yet he wanted her to speak.
“Surely a mother of my blood has something wise to offer the court in this predicament?” he goaded.
The room quieted. Dozens of eyes turned, all waiting.
Seren’s spine pulled straighter. Her bruises protested. She breathed through it and swallowed the tremble in her voice.
“Commander de Montfort speaks prudently to my ears,” she said, her voice smooth as poured oil.
“The border will hold if supplied. Perhaps better coordination with Stafford’s houses would hasten the lanes; however, it seems Commander de Montfort has already taken the matter into his hands, rerouted the convoys, and secured them.
In my limited view of the world, I do not see any further issues.
But, my lord is better capable of managing situations such as these. ”
She met Henry’s gaze and hoped he believed her praise.
She doubted it. The words were right, but he knew she truly despised him.
She could fight back if she wanted, and maybe that’s why he beat her so much.
He wanted her to fight back so he could kill her.
But she let him do whatever he wanted to her.
David, Aveline, and Ragnar needed her to live. Maybe Erik, too.
“The lady speaks more than she smiles,” Lord Henry said with a smugness that teased the edges of her Welsh-born independence.
A few nobles tittered behind silver goblets, uneasy about the vague remark.
Seren smiled at her lord husband. A practiced, pleasant curve of the mouth. It meant nothing. Or everything. Let them decide.
She had long since learned the art of surviving in velvet—the game of letting them believe she’d already folded while quietly collecting favors of trust behind her back.
Henry raised his goblet again, though he still did not drink. His fingers tapped once against the rim. His gaze flicked between Erik and her as if watching for Erik to fumble or Seren to slip.
“Despite the lady’s simple mind, she has spoken my thoughts. Very well, Commander. Return to your post.”
Erik gave only a nod and turned to return to his place.
He glanced at her only once.
A flicker of eye contact, not long enough to draw scorn, but long enough for both of them to share a thought.
It was a thank-you. A private one. A thread pulled between them so finely that no one else might see.
Henry’s hand tightened on her knee beneath the table as a warning, but she didn’t flinch.
She had children to protect, a home to build from Henry’s tyranny, and Mortlande to save from his wrath.
She would smile, speak when spoken to, receive the bruises, and bow her head until the time came to raise it.