Chapter 37 Sigvid
SIGVID
Blackwood Estate, Treland
Black storm clouds roll in off the South Sea. On the horizon, lightning flashes into the waves, illuminating the sheer power of the growing tempest.
All week, sailors whisper that a force of terrifying proportions heads for Toftlund. Nothing that has ever been seen in centuries.
In preparation, Sigvid, Avina, and their son, Bjorn, spent the days leading up to the prophesied storm ensuring that every home was boarded up and supplies made ready.
Sigvid cleaves the last log in his woodpile to find Bjorn already finished, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed.
“Getting slower, Pops. How will you ever keep Toftlund warm while I am away in Steinlund?”
Cheeky bastard. He gets that from me.
“Careful, or I shall swap the lines of succession, and you can be king.” He threatens, enjoying the flash of discomfort in his son’s gray eyes.
To think Bjorn’s life began on the streets of humble Sjoby. Yet, neither he nor Thora desires the Treland throne, leaving the heavy crown to fall on Aura.
Sigvid’s forehead wrinkles as he stares out at the stormy swell as they traipse back inside. Servants hammer the final nail into the glass A-frame, plunging the central space into an unnatural darkness.
Avina has three lanterns waiting for them on the long dining table. “We are prepared to hunker down, Sig.”
He pulls her roughly to his chest, savoring the scent of her floral bouquet. “Do the girls know how to prepare for the storm? It will likely strike Sjoby, and with Mother’s second broken leg, I worry about her movement.”
Bless Thora and Aura for tending to Frida and putting down an uprising simultaneously. Who knew there was such trouble in that hamlet?
“I trust them, don’t you?” She kisses his cheek.
He smirks as she thanks the servants, ushering them back to their homes.
What a Queen she has become.
“Has someone double-checked the windows in the guest wing?” He looks at Bjorn, who shrugs.
“I spent the day with you, Pops.”
Sigvid takes the steps two at a time, knowing he will not rest until he has inspected every corner of Blackwood.
Thora’s room is unsurprisingly immaculate, with her collection of knives hung on the wall evenly and precisely. Nearly as pristine is Bjorn’s room. His small chests full of treasures are locked and secure on the floor.
The remaining rooms are boarded shut.
He hesitates when he reaches Aura’s door at the end of the corridor.
Since he awoke from the Azure, there is still a gap in his memory from when he entered the longhouse that night until Isabel injected him.
No matter what he tried, the night remains just beyond his fucking reach. Had the girls not been in Sjoby assisting his dear mother, he would have demanded they return home to Blackwood. To simply exist in his presence as he shoved through the damned haze of his mind.
Aura’s room is chaos.
As he expects of his youngest.
Slats of wood cover her windows, although her usual stack of shit perched on the window sill is stacked haphazardly on her bed.
Sitting on top are sketches that tug at his black heart.
The bed creaks under his weight as he perches on it, examining her drawings around Blackwood. Her artistic skill is unmatched. To think there was a time when she burned it all.
But the next drawing he flips to feels like a rock sinking into his fucking gut.
It is a perfect representation of Calder Avardsson glancing to his left.
Sigvid’s jaw drops as the next thirty or so drawings are of his Inner Circle Member—images of everything from his hands and lips to his face.
He crumples the parchment in his trembling hands as he stomps across the hall to the room where Calder stayed.
His gaze searches for any connection to his daughter when he notices a tightly folded piece of parchment peeking out from beneath the bed.
He tears it open to find a pair of minks drawn and signed by Aura.
“Calder acted exactly as instructed. He seduced the Princess of Treland…” Isabel’s words resonate clearly in his mind as more memories from that night seep back until they become a barrage.
The carriage.
Isabel.
Calder leading Aura back from the docks.
For a moment, he allows the emotions to engulf him. The helplessness he felt as he watched them take his daughter, and the anger at her recklessness. Sig’s suspicions that Calder was not being truthful.
And, of course, the guilt.
He grips his chest, which aches as if his body denies him air. He needs to embrace his child and make amends.
The Lord Commander’s softened heart beats for a moment before the fucking rage slams into him.
It is not just Calder’s betrayal but also the looming understanding that someone else is to blame.
And he fucking sees red. “Avina! Avina!”
His boots shake their home as he stomps down the stairs to find her and Bjorn watching him apprehensively.
“Tell me you didn’t fucking know this!” He shoves the drawings of Calder into her arms.
Avina is a terrible fucking liar.
If she had a hand in this, she will reveal herself to him.
She carefully inspects the parchment with her index finger, twisting that loose curl at her temple. When she reaches the sketch of Aura clearly sitting on Calder’s lap, she clears her throat and places the stack on the table.
“I. Remember. Everything.” He growls as a rumble of thunder shakes the foundation of Blackwood.
She shuffles the papers until they rest evenly on all sides. “Our daughters are on a quest in Skalor.”
“Did you hear that?” Bjorn glances around. “An excuse to leave?” He slips downstairs to the kitchen.
“What fucking quest? I remember what was said to me before that bitch hit me with Azure. Calder organized everything before the Farewell Feast to capture Aura. How the fuck did Thora get caught up with this? And why the fuck is Edmund there?” Sigvid kicks a chair across the room.
“I have to go get them back. Now!” His voice bellows so roughly she quivers.
“You have spent the last month in blissful ignorance. You can continue another while we await their adventure to conclude.”
“I was not under Kilton’s Azure for that long.” He growls at Avina. “Did someone else sedate me, my little Queen?” He has not addressed her with such disdain since the war. “To ensure I was asleep so Lavinia could kidnap Aura and put her life in danger!”
“I kept you under to protect my family!” She jabs her index finger at her chest. “From your inability to keep your berserker side under control! I would trust Calder Avardsson with our lives. You have done enough damage to our daughters.”
He cocks his head slightly.
What is this outburst, Avina? And how is Calder a part of this supposed mission?
“Your family? I have been protecting us for winters! You do not even know half the dangers because I fucking eliminated them without your knowledge!” He paces while muttering angrily to himself.
She slams her hands onto the table. “No one is taking away what you have done for us! But you must admit you jump before looking. I could not allow you to harm Calder or sabotage this mission, all because of Isabel’s lies.”
“What fucking mission! You still have not clued me in as to why they are in fucking Skalor with a man who has betrayed me!” He slams his fists on the table, scattering the sketches onto the floor.
Mistrust and disappointment exude from her hardened blue gaze, even after he swore he would protect her from those feelings.
“Lavinia placed a bounty on the head of our daughter to be collected by the Skalor Jarls. Maeve assures me they are on a quest blessed by the gods. We must not interfere.”
“What has Briny said about this blessed quest?”
She does not fucking trust me. Avina, my little Queen, my fucking wife, kept me under sedation because she didn’t trust me.
Half my family is fucking gone! And I do not know what is happening or where to find them. Has Calder betrayed me? Why does Avina believe in him?
I need some fucking answers!
His fists splinter the wall behind him. He pauses, staring off into the rafters of the ceiling.
“I cannot believe you are my daughter.”
I fucking said that to Aura.
“Fuck!” He breathes heavily with the realization of how wrong he has been.
I have been causing damage.
“You let Thora believe she is unworthy to be Lady Commander when there is no one better on the Endless Shore to follow your footsteps. Aura wants nothing else in all the realms but your approval, and you barely give her a second of your time.” Avina’s breathing intensifies.
“Let us be honest, Sigvid, she entered that Death Match with Isabel because you made her feel she must become a Drengr. You made her feel like she wasn’t good enough.”
He has never seen her this furious.
Sigvid stares into her beautiful eyes, feeling like he deserves to be swept away by this storm. “I fucked up with our children.”
Before Avina can answer, a loud knock echoes from the front doors.
“Go the fuck away!” He roars back.
The doors burst open, and a battalion of soldiers wearing the snowflake of Skalor swarm into their central room.
The large table blocks Sigvid from grabbing Avina to protect her. He does not wait to find out why they are here.
His berserker side is already pounding on the back door of his senses. So he releases his seidr, and everything fades to red as he roars loud enough for dust to rain from the rafters.
Fuck, I am still down to just one blackwood-handled axe, and it is in the weapons rack. I guess I will be going in with my fists.
He charges the soldier closest, punching his fist through the soldier's head. Blood, bone, and brain blast across those nearest him.
Bjorn appears atop the kitchen stairs, drawing his axes as he enters the fray.
Boards splinter and crack along the first-level windows as more men pour into his home. Rain blows sideways through the shattered windows as the storm descends on Toftlund.
The soldiers grab his little Queen, who screams and fights back with her fists. He hardly gets a moment to appreciate his training with her when they drag her to the main doors.
Sigvid is not fast enough.
He watches with a helpless fury he has not faced in twenty winters as these men dare to restrain his wife. Their hands grasp her body as they tie her arms behind her back.
The situation thrusts him back to that godsdamn Treland Arena, facing off against the Battlemaster and his goons as they ripped her away from his arms.
No one touches Avina.
Fucking no one!
The mass of Skalor soldiers halts their attack on him and his son. Switching tactics, they clutch at every part of him and Bjorn that they can grasp.
By the time another stranger bursts into his home, he has lost count of the number of soldiers subduing him.
Queen Lavina strides into the foyer with the poise and haughty indifference of a spider, her cackling echoing against the high ceiling.
“Hello, Beast. My son said you and your little Queen would be here ripe for the picking.”
Red continues to color his gaze. The berserker rage hums in his veins, fueled by a need to hold his wife in his arms.
“Fucking bitch! I will rip you and all these fucks to pieces!” He charges, but her men pull him back.
“This is the second time someone has walked into Treland and captured someone at my behest. You’re losing your touch, Thordsson.” She glances around Blackwood, her lip curling.
“You took Aura?”
“Not me, per se, but someone who spent a lot of time with the Princess to learn her mannerisms and strike at the opportune moment.” Lavinia’s sneer makes him ill.
“Calder?”
Had Isabel been truthful?
If the Jarls have been tasked with delivering Aura to Lavinia, has Calder found a way to mislead Avina, too?
“I have what I was sent for. If you survive this, I’m sure you know where her Majesty will be held. Besides, I’m certain my son would love a chat.” She blows him a kiss from her palm.
Sigvid watches the wind bending the trees through the broken windows. Avina is thrown into a carriage pulled by no less than eight draft horses.
A frenzied urge to protect her overwhelms his senses.
He bites into the first wrist he can reach and rips out the man’s veins. His seidr vibrates beneath his skin as his berserker side tears through the soldiers.
“Avina!” He roars as an unusual emotion creeps along his spine.
Fear.
Sigvid has never been more enraged.
Who does he fucking loathe more? Calder? Lavinia? These damned soldiers? The storm?
Yet somehow, he is raging at himself more than all of them combined.
“Avina!” His roar sounds unnaturally pained to his ears. Hot, angry tears burn his cheeks as his composure implodes.
He grapples for the first weapon his hand touches and quickly eliminates the remaining Skalor soldiers until only one remains in the doorway, blocking his path to his little Queen.
Sigvid tears through the soldier’s chest, gripping his spine, lifting him to his level, and ripping his throat out with his teeth.
“Avina!” He rushes into the torrential downpour and gale winds slamming into Blackwood.
The carriage is nowhere to be seen, and the tracks swiftly wash away in the storm.
He spins in circles, screaming for his wife, the mother of his children.
I would have been standing beside her if we had not been fighting.
This is Mali’s torture in the Toftlund Jail all over again. Helplessly watching as Avina is murdered or worse.
Realizing she is lost, he collapses to his knees and pounds the ground until his own blood mixes with the mud.
In the muck, his fist connects with something small and metal.
He removes a familiar sapphire ring — the one he imbued with dark seidr that he had gifted to Avina when she once still thought he bore nothing but hate for her.
A tracking ability forever connects him to the ring she has never removed in twenty winters.
I will find you, my little Queen. I will tear apart Skalor until I take back my fucking family.
Lightning cracks across the sky as the storm continues its onslaught on the land.
Bjorn bolts outside, covered in as much carnage as his father. “We will find Mum, but we need to get inside.” His son clutches his shoulders. “We will not catch up to them in this storm.”
Sigvid stands glowering down the road north. “As soon as this passes, you will assume my position in Treland while I take the might of the Drengr Army to Skalor.”
I am coming for you, Calder Avardsson.