Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“She’s nae tae set foot beyond the inner walls. And I want full escort, at all times.”
Ragnar’s voice carried through the solar with the flat, inarguable weight of a man who had spent the last hour listening to every possible version of the word but and was finished with all of them.
Isolda sat very still in the carved chair beside the hearth, her hands folded in her lap, the thin line of the arrow graze on her temple hidden beneath her hair. Liv had cleaned it the night before—barely more than a scratch.
The council exchanged glances across the table. The arrow lay between them, its shaft splintered where Ragnar’s men had ripped it from the beam. Douglas’s mark was carved into the wood just above the fletching.
“The shooter was positioned in the tree line northwest of the village,” Freyr said, his arms crossed, his tone careful. “Gone before we could track him. Whoever it was kent the patrol routes.”
“Then change ‘em.” Ragnar didn’t look up from the map spread before him. “Double the southern watch. I want eyes on every approach within bowshot of the keep.”
The Council filed out one by one, murmuring amongst themselves.
The door closed with a solid thud and silence settled between them, thick as the stone walls.
Ragnar stood with both hands braced on the table, his head bowed, the tension in his shoulders visible even through his tunic. The map beneath his palms showed Uist in careful detail—coastlines, patrol routes, watchtowers—but his eyes weren’t on the map at all.
“Ye’ve barely said a word since yesterday,” Isolda said.
He didn’t move. “I’ve said plenty.”
“Tae yer Council, aye. Nae tae me.”
His fingers curled against the parchment. “What would ye have me say?”
She stood, crossing her arms. “That lockin’ me inside these walls like a caged animal isnae the answer.”
“An arrow nearly took yer life in the middle of dinner, Isolda.” He turned to face her, and the rawness in his blue eyes stole the argument from her tongue. “It embedded itself in a beam three inches from yer skull.”
“I ken. I was there.”
“Dinnae ask me tae be reasonable about this.” His voice dropped.
She wanted to push back, to argue, but the look on his face stripped bare and desperate—stopped her.
“So what am I meant tae dae?” she asked, quieter now. “Sit in our chambers and stare at the walls until ye’ve solved everythin’?”
The tension in his jaw loosened, just barely, and one corner of his mouth twitched. “There are many things ye could occupy yer time wi’, little wolf.” His voice went low, rough at the edges. “I could think of a few.”
Isolda’s pulse kicked. “Such as?”
Ragnar crossed the space between them with two deliberate strides, and before she could form another clever retort, his hand found the curve of her waist and his mouth dropped to her neck.
The press of his lips just beneath her ear sent heat spiraling down her spine so fast she had to brace a hand against his chest.
“This, fer one,” he murmured against her skin, his breath warm and unhurried.
His teeth grazed the sensitive spot along the side of her throat, and Isolda’s eyes fluttered shut. The scrape of his stubble was maddening and when his tongue traced the hollow below her ear, her fingers curled into the fabric of his tunic.
“Ragnar...”
“Hmm?” His mouth moved lower, finding the spot where her pulse hammered wildly against her skin. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss there, lingering until her breath caught audibly.
“We cannae—” she forced her mind to function through the haze of his mouth doing devastating things to her neck. “We cannae just stay in our bedchamber all the time.”
“Why nae?” The question hummed against her collarbone.
“Because I’ll lose me mind. I need something tae dae.”
He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. His pupils were blown wide, his breathing uneven, but through the desire there was something else—a tenderness that made her chest ache.
“Aye.” He regarded her for a long moment, his thumb tracing absent circles on her hip. “There is... somethin’. I should have shown ye before now.”
“If it’s another sword drill, I swear—”
“Nay.” He released her waist, and the loss of his warmth felt like a small injustice. “Come.”
He led her through the corridor that connected the solar to the eastern wing of the keep, past the main staircase, past the main library. He continued down a narrower passage she’d never explored—one that ended at a heavy oak door reinforced with iron bands, the wood dark with age.
Ragnar produced a key from inside his tunic—small and blackened, threaded on a leather cord that looked as though it had lived against his skin for years.
“I didnae even ken this room existed,” Isolda said, watching him work the lock.
The mechanism clicked, and he pushed the door open.
The room beyond was small—half the size of the solar—with a single narrow window that let in a shaft of pale afternoon light.
The walls were bare stone, the floor covered in a worn rug that had once been fine.
A heavy wooden chair sat near the window beside a battered reading stand, and against the far wall stood three iron-banded chests, their lids closed, their surfaces layered with dust except where hands had recently disturbed it.
Ragnar crossed to the nearest chest and knelt, he lifted the lid, and the hinges groaned softly.
Inside, stacked with care, lay books.
Not many, but they’d been handled so often that the leather bindings had gone soft at the spines. Some were vellum-bound, others wrapped in cloth. A few had gilt lettering that had worn almost entirely away.
Isolda moved closer and saw histories, a collection of Norse sagas, two volumes of poetry, a translated bestiary with illustrations that had been touched so many times the ink had smudged at the corners.
“Yer maither’s?” she asked softly, kneeling beside him.
“Some.” He lifted a slim volume and turned it in his hands.
Isolda reached for one, its pages yellowed and fragile. She opened it carefully, feeling the texture of the vellum beneath her fingertips, the weight of something treasured. She looked up at Ragnar.
“The library upstairs,” she said slowly, connecting the pieces. “That’s fer everyone. This is...”
“Mine.” The word came out plain and unadorned. “Just like ye.”
Isolda traced the page with her fingertip, trailing over handwritten notes in the margin. “Ye didnae learn as a bairn, did ye?”
The silence that followed was its own answer. Ragnar sat back on his heels, his forearms resting on his thighs, his gaze fixed on the open chest.
“When I became jarl, I could barely sign me own name. Freyr was the only one who kent. He’d sit with me in this room at night, after everyone else was asleep, and we’d work through the letters taegether.” His mouth curved, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Why did ye nae just tell—”
“Because a leader who cannae read is a leader men doubt.” He said it simply, without bitterness. “And I couldnae afford doubt. Nae then.”
She studied his face—the hard line of his jaw, the way his blue eyes had gone distant, fixed on some point years in the past where a boy who’d already killed his own father sat in this room and fought his way through the alphabet by candlelight.
“Ye taught yerself, then. And Freyr helped.”
“Aye. It took years. I still read slower than most.”
“Ragnar.” She waited until he looked at her. “Ye’re one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever kent. Ye rule an island, manage alliances with five other jarls. The fact that ye taught yerself tae read while leadin’ a clan daesnae make ye less. It makes ye remarkable.”
She could see in his eyes that no one had ever said that to him before, and the weight of hearing it now, from her, was settling into places that had been empty for a very long time.
Isolda reached for another book—a collection of Norse sagas, this one more worn than the rest, the spine held together with careful stitching that spoke of repair after repair.
She opened it and found margin notes, the handwriting gradually improving across the pages like a record of its own quiet battle.
“This was the first one ye read on yer own,” she said.
“Aye.” His voice was rough. “Took me four months.”
She closed it gently and set it down. Looked at him kneeling beside the chest that held every secret vulnerability he’d carried alone for eighteen years.
Looked at his hands—broad, calloused, scarred from sword and labor—and thought about those same hands turning fragile pages in the dark, shaping letters he couldn’t yet name.
“Well… since we’re on the subject of… figurin’ things out. There’s somethin’ I want tae try,” she said.
He blinked, clearly not expecting the shift. “What’s that?”
Isolda’s hand found the side of his face, her thumb tracing the sharp angle of his cheekbone, and she watched his pupils dilate as her intention registered.
“How tae make ye stop thinkin’.”
Isolda kissed him with intent, her mouth open and demanding against his, her tongue sliding past his lips with a boldness that made him groan into her.
His hands found her waist, pulling her closer, but she was already moving—climbing into his lap where he knelt, pushing him back onto his buttocks, her knees bracing on either side of his thighs, her skirts bunching between them.
“Isolda—”
She nipped his lower lip, tugging gently with her teeth before soothing the sting with her tongue. His breath shuddered out of him, and his grip on her waist tightened hard enough that she felt every individual finger pressing into her flesh through the wool.
She pulled back just far enough to find the laces at the front of her bodice. Ragnar watched her fingers work them loose, his blue eyes tracking every movement.
“Here?” His voice was scraped raw.