27. The Silent Weight
XXVII
THE SILENT WEIGHT
Erik sat in his bed by the hearth in the barracks’ upper quarters, reserved for the host leaders. The embers cast long shadows on the stone walls.
Geoffrey snored.
Jovin tossed and turned in his cot.
The men in the floors below had gone to sleep hours ago—Baldwin and Ragnar among them—but Erik remained awake, sharpening a blade he wouldn’t use for a while.
A daughter, he mused. Seren had delivered another girl.
The news had come just after sundown, murmured through the bailey like gossip instead of a miracle. He knew there’d be no celebration, feast, or call for song, only another name added to a ledger against Seren.
Another daughter was born beneath Henry’s roof, wrapped in cloth, handed to a mother still healing from her husband’s rage.
Erik hadn’t seen her. He didn’t want to, even in passing, not if it harmed her or made Henry’s paranoia rage.
She had named the girl after the Welsh. That alone made Erik’s throat tighten.
He paused his sharpening, running a thumb along the sword’s edge. It was perfect, unlike him.
The last time he saw Seren, she had been pressing her hand to her mouth and cradling David with the other. Her eyes had met his across the hall, bruised and bright and bleeding with an unbroken but dying spirit.
He’d pushed that night she stitched him and put her star on his flesh up to the recesses of his mind. He made himself believe she held no love for him as he held for her. The questions were too much for him to ponder, but he’d given her his heart. He wasn’t about to take it back.
The flames crackled, and his grip tightened on the hilt.
Henry had beaten her again during the weeks before the birth—called it “discipline” for Ragnar and David.
Erik said nothing, playing the loyal dog, doing nothing while the woman he would die for was used to break children into obedience.
He had offered obedience in exchange for mercy. And the cost was her blood. There was no victory in survival, not when the cost was so much.
The weight of his silence and the helplessness of his inaction chained his neck.
He finally set the blade down and leaned back into his cot, arm behind his head.
Geoffrey’s snore reverberated through the air.
At least, he and Jovin hadn’t tried to kill him as they had in the beginning.
They probably knew it would be their heads if they did after Henry’s barter to keep him alive.
“Another daughter,” Erik murmured.
Another life to protect and fail to protect. Another soul Henry could twist. And all he could be was a ghost haunting a house that was not and would never be his to enter.
He stared at the shadows of the embers dancing on the ceiling until they blurred.
“I’m still here, Seren,” he mouthed to the dark, afraid to let the words come out even as a whisper with enemies sleeping next to him. “I’ll keep them safe as long as I breathe. I swear it.”