Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BASTIAN
Iwas frozen in the bed next to Sigrid, absolutely terrified to move in case I spooked her. We’d forged a new bond, but every time I thought I’d knocked her walls down, she found a way to rebuild them stronger.
My heart beat so rapidly, I could hear it pounding in my ears.
“My father uses the people I love against me too.” The words tumbled out of her like she hadn’t entirely meant to say them aloud.
She continued in a soft but steady voice.
“As my father’s heir, I was treated differently from my brothers, expected to do more.
It felt like an honor when I was younger, one I was eager to live up to, but when my powers manifested in adolescence, his demands changed.
” She rubbed her temples, like dredging up the memories was exhausting and I wanted to lift the invisible burden for her.
“I was terrified when I first began to sense people’s fears.
It’s like living in a constant hellscape of humanity’s horrors, and I cowered from it, begging him to make it stop. ”
I dared to reach out a hand and place it on her knee over the blanket, and she didn’t shove me away. To be a child who constantly experienced people’s fears?
“My father was…less than sympathetic. He grew determined to train the weakness out of me, so his answer was to expose me to the worst fears. If I could handle myself through inflicting torture, their everyday, mundane fears wouldn’t be so overwhelming. I became what I needed to be to survive.”
She paused like she was digging for a long-buried memory.
“He was careful at first to only send me people who’d done heinous things, people I’d be able to justify torturing.
But that didn’t last. Once he saw my powers in action, he wanted to use them on his enemies or anyone he suspected of being disloyal.
He knew how I hated it, so when he found something he wanted from me more, he offered me an out.
I could stop torturing if I married a Viking of his choosing.
“Arranged marriages are common for Viking royals, so I should’ve realized there was something wrong when he saw reason to bribe me into doing it, but I was only sixteen and far too relieved to have an escape.
I didn’t meet the man until the wedding.
He was the son of an influential warlord my father needed to bring in line to consolidate his power, a godsdamned animal who’d been raised to think he was a god.
He knew who I was and what I was capable of, and the sack of shit’s answer was to try to cow me that first night, to claim his marital rights by force when I refused to offer them freely.
I cut off his head and carried it out to the feast. What a sight I must’ve been in my torn and bloodstained white gown. ”
A vicious grin I could see even in the dim glow of the fire replaced her scowl. “How many times I’ve gotten to relive that memory in my father’s fears. How many times he’s imagined me holding his head by the braid, gore dripping from his severed neck.”
“So he sent an assassin after you?” She’d survived, and yet it twisted my guts to think of what she’d gone through.
She nodded slowly, her smile replaced by a haunted look. “I thought he might do something to punish me, but I didn’t expect that. Sending a Banamaer isn’t a scare tactic. He meant to kill me and wanted to be sure it was done swiftly. That very night, the Banamaer attacked.”
It was hard to imagine a creature of death that scared even Sigrid. “How did you defeat him?”
A humorless smile curved her lips. “Luck and my berserker. Even Banamaer have fears. There is no record of them ever failing, but this one was afraid to be the first. It was his downfall when he imagined his weaknesses and I exploited them. Even then, it was the closest I’ve ever come to death.
His weaknesses would’ve been an accomplished warrior’s strengths. ”
She fingered a sharp tooth on her necklace.
“I wear the trophy I took before I deposited his head outside my father’s chamber.
He never said a word about it, but he left me alone…
for a time. We were at war, and I was too useful to him in battle to push the issue.
I thought we’d reached an understanding, but years later, he found himself in need of another alliance, and he’d discovered a better way of controlling me.
“During the war, he’d seen how much my brothers meant to me, and this time he called me back to the palace and made it clear he’d kill them one at a time.
He marched Axel, who was still only a child, into the throne room and handed him a blade.
Axel eventually became a master weaponsmith, and even at that age, he’d been fascinated by a beautiful blade.
As he examined it, my father asked if I was ready to marry again.
The threat was clear. If I didn’t do my duty as his heir, he would’ve seen Axel killed with the blade he was so delighted by. ”
“My second husband tried something similar to the first. When I agreed to wed again, my father held a tournament to find the strongest Dane to breed with me. I was notorious for killing my first husband at that point, so you can imagine the type of man who felt up to being my second. The bastard who won was a brute. I should’ve been able to handle him, but my father tricked me, and before I knew it, I was chained to the bed. ”
She shrugged like it was nothing. Shrugged like she could handle what had happened. I might’ve hated that shrug more than the rest of it. That she’d endured enough in her life to even be able to shrug at it…I’d never known such violent rage.
“How did you get away?”
“It took me a while, but he was afraid. Even when I was in chains, he feared me. His fears told me that he’d underestimated my strength and wasn’t sure the anchors on the chains would hold. He’d been warned to reinforce them, but the fool didn’t listen. He died too quickly.”
She idly dropped her hand onto mine, not quite holding it but tracing her fingertips over my knuckles.
“I’m surprised your father still wanted you to be his heir. Why not one of your brothers after you defied him?”
She laughed low in her throat. “He loved that I was strong enough to defy him, takes such pride in my viciousness. I was the strongest and fiercest of my siblings, and he thought he could shape me into his image if he only found the right way to control me.
“He trained the weakness out of me but never managed to strip me of my love for my brothers. And he can’t stand it.
He thinks that as the heir, I must be willing to use them as tools to maintain power, just as he did.
He’ll keep exploiting my weakness, using my brothers against me, until he breaks me or one of us kills the bastard.
While he lives, our freedom is only temporary. ”
I’d seen the look she got when I told her about my mother. Whatever she’d been feeling then was what I felt knowing she had to live in fear of the day her father would try to use her again. I trembled with the need to fight for her freedom, even if I’d likely end up dead in the process.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone standing against you, Talon, and Thorin together. Why haven’t you killed him?”
She snorted. “In a fair fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance.”
It was odd that I’d never caught so much as a whisper of what the Viking king’s unique berserker power was. Talon was the only one besides Sigrid I knew for sure—he could sense people’s intentions. “What gives him such an advantage?”
“Like I’m going to tell a Saxon.”
I squeezed her thigh over the blanket. “What does it matter if I’m a dead man anyway?”
She sighed like she was giving in. “He’s never told us how it works, but he has powers of compulsion. Most people don’t even know it’s been used on them. It took us a long time to realize what he was capable of.”
Shock rattled through me. “He can control your mind?”
“Not like a puppet, no. More like single actions. Like getting you to drop a weapon and put a pair of shackles on instead. Or to turn your weapon on yourself. Or to share a secret you’d never tell him.
He doesn’t use it often because it’s more powerful if people don’t realize he’s done it.
If he does it overtly to someone, it’s a sure sign they’re about to die and take the secret with them.
“I learned to resist him…most of the time. But none of us have been willing to put it to the test when he was fighting mortal peril and his berserker threw his full powers behind it.”
My mind raced with the possibilities of things he could’ve done to her…and she hadn’t always known.
“Don’t look at me like that.” she said, pulling her hand away. “Don’t make me out to be an innocent victim. If he compelled me, I still did those things. I could’ve resisted him if I’d been stronger. I could’ve found a way to spare innocents like Eleanor’s brother.”
I had to swallow my anger so my tone wasn’t harsh. “Sigrid, you were a child.”
“Maybe by Saxon standards, but I was a teen by then, trained as a fighter. The truth is that I chose my brothers over hers. I imagined my father forcing Thorin to cut his own throat, and all thoughts of disobedience went up in smoke. I chose knowing it meant an innocent would die. And I’d make the same choice again, so don’t even think of making me out to be helpless in this. ”
I ached to reclaim her hand, but I didn’t dare try to take what she didn’t offer.
“How did you escape?”
“I vowed never to set foot on Viking lands again while he lived. I made a blood offering and asked the gods to choose between us if it came to that. He fears they’ll take him, but he doesn’t want to lose his heir either, not before I produce an heir of my own that he probably wants to use as a puppet.
” She turned pensive. “Unless taking Layla was an elaborate way to lure Thorin back into his clutches so he can make him the heir and force them to provide the next generation.”
“What would that mean for you?”
A shuffling sound in the adjoining room to our left made both of us freeze, but Sigrid quickly resumed talking, her voice never changing tone as she picked up the knife she’d left by the bed.
“He can pick a different heir now that I’m a Saxon royal.
Maybe he married me to you to move me out of the line of succession.
The Viking people would never truly accept me now. ”
She nodded, and as one, we rolled from the bed, padding silently across the room towards the noise.
I picked up my sword and stood to one side of the doorway as she stationed herself on the other.
She signaled with her hand that she’d enter first, but I held up my sword to demonstrate that my weapon had greater reach and better defensive capabilities if it came to it.
She rolled her eyes and swept her hand to invite me to enter first.
My mind raced with visions of eyeless assassins lurking in the dark, but I drew in a breath and charged into the room. A dark figure huddled against the wall, and I raised my sword to strike before they had a chance to act.
A bloodcurdling scream tore through the silence.