Chapter Fourteen
Snowpetal reaches the stable before I do.
This isn’t difficult. She has four legs, excellent claws, and no respect for weather. I have two legs, wet boots, and a cloak that keeps wrapping around my knees.
The path disappears beneath us while we run.
“Wait.”
Snowpetal doesn’t.
She hits the stable door with both front paws. The lower half swings inward, and she vanishes between two startled horses.
I reach it three breaths later and catch the frame before my left boot sends me under the nearest stall.
Progress.
The stable is louder than the hall. Wind punches at the roof. Horses stamp behind the partitions, and six people are carrying ropes, lanterns, feed sacks, and pieces of wood in every direction.
Baldr stands beneath the open loft with a roof beam over one shoulder.
The timber is longer than my bed and thick enough that I can’t put both arms around it. Two stable hands guide the far end while Baldr carries most of the weight by himself.
His coat lies across a gate. His dark shirt sticks to his back.
This remains unfair, even during emergencies.
He lifts the beam onto a pair of braces. The stable hands push it into place, and Baldr drives one wooden pin through the joint with the heel of his hand.
The whole wall shudders.
Snowpetal runs beneath him.
“Snowpetal.”
Baldr turns.
He looks at my hood, my boots, and the snow falling from both.
“What are you doing here?”
“Finding you.”
“In a storm.”
“You came out first.”
“I knew where I was going.”
“So did I.”
He looks at the door behind me.
The path outside is gone.
“Mostly.”
One of the stable hands takes a hammer from the floor. “The west brace is holding, Dróttin. We can finish the loft.”
Baldr tests the new beam with both hands. Nothing moves. “Secure the shutters, check every stall latch, then get inside the hall.”
The man looks toward the roof.
“It’ll hold,” Baldr says. “No one stays out here for timber.”
Everyone moves faster after that.
Snowpetal chases a length of rope across the aisle. A stable girl snatches it away before the end reaches her teeth.
“That’s not food,” I tell her.
Snowpetal jumps at the girl’s hands.
“Also not food.”
The girl holds the rope above her head and looks at me for help.
I catch Snowpetal around the middle. She turns boneless the instant I lift her, because every animal I meet enjoys making me look unreasonable.
Baldr takes his coat from the gate.
He doesn’t put it on. He comes to me and wraps it around my shoulders instead.
“I have a cloak.”
“Your cloak is wet.”
“Your coat will become wet too.”
“It’s survived worse.”
I push one arm through the sleeve. My hand doesn’t reach the end.
Baldr pulls the cuff back until my fingers appear. He does the other side, fastens the coat over my purple wool, and lifts the hood away from my face.
He’s still angry.
Not at me. A little at me. Enough that his jaw stays tight while his hands are gentle.
That’s worse.
“I wasn’t choosing his side.”
Baldr’s fingers stop beneath my chin.
The stable hands continue past us with their eyes fixed ahead.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His thumb moves along my jaw. “You said he didn’t make the storm. He didn’t.”
“You still walked away.”
“Because I wanted to hit him, and doing that in front of his entire hall would have become tiresome.”
“For you?”
“For everyone.”
That’s probably true.
Snowpetal stretches between us and puts one paw on Baldr’s chest.
He looks down at her. “Your defender has arrived.”
“She forgave Eirik.”
“Did he apologize?”
“Poorly.”
“Then it was Eirik.”
I rub Snowpetal between her horns. Wet fur sticks to my fingers.
“I’m not defending breakfast,” I say. “Or the weather report. Or the mutt comment.”
Snowpetal’s ears flatten.
“That was a quotation,” I tell her.
Baldr’s mouth pulls at one side.
There.
“I only said the part that was true.”
“You’ve said several true things for him.”
And now the small smile is gone.
I shift Snowpetal to my other arm. “And against him.”
“You followed him to the scale yard after he humiliated you.”
“Ketill invited me.”
“Then you helped him redesign the eastern releases.”
“Because the old way was bad.”
“Then you defended the recount.”
“Because eight bars were missing.”
Baldr looks toward the stable door. Snow presses against the lower boards and spills through the gap beneath them.
“I’m not angry that you were right, Sól.”
“What are you angry about?”
He rubs both hands over his face.
That answer again.
I catch one wrist before his hand drops.
Baldr looks at my fingers. Mine don’t close all the way around him.
“Tell me.”
“He hurts you, and you keep walking back.”
His wrist goes still under my fingers.
Snowpetal stops moving in my arms.
“I walked back to you.”
His eyes lift to mine.
“I’m here.”
The stable girl passes us with the last coil of rope. The outer door closes behind her. A second stable hand checks the stalls, bows to Baldr, and follows.
We’re alone with twelve horses, one Sanguir, and a roof that may be listening.
Baldr touches the wet curl beside my cheek. “He thinks you’re predictable for coming after me.”
“I am predictable.”
“You are not.”
“I sleep with a stuffed unicorn, talk to every animal I meet, and have eaten the corner from your cake since I was ten. I’m full of patterns.”
“You also climbed a roof for a kitten.”
“That was one time.” Snowpetal squirms, and I hitch her higher.
“You walked into Eirik’s study.”
“Wrong door.”
“You picked up a Sanguir.”
I look at Snowpetal. “She was cold.”
Baldr’s mouth finally gives in.
I put Snowpetal on the floor before the smile can escape again. She trots toward a stall and begins sniffing beneath the gate.
Then I take Baldr’s face in both hands.
“I came after you because I wanted you.”
His hands close around my waist.
“You have me.”
“Good.”
I kiss him.
He holds still for one second. Then his mouth opens over mine, and my back meets the nearest post.
The wood is solid.
Excellent roof.
Baldr’s hands move beneath his coat and over my wet cloak. There’s far too much clothing between us. I pull at the ties under my chin until one catches in my hair.
He frees it. “Slow down.”
“I’ve been walking slowly all day.” My hands are already back in his coat.
“You ran here.”
“Badly.”
“Still counts.” His thumb moves along my ribs.
I kiss him again before he can keep being reasonable.
Snowpetal growls inside the stall.
We both turn.
A horse is staring down at her. Snowpetal is staring back. The horse moves its nose closer.
She licks it.
The horse sneezes in her face and Snowpetal falls over.
I start laughing.
Baldr presses his forehead against the post beside mine. His shoulders move.
Snowpetal gets up, shakes herself, and marches toward the hay with what remains of her dignity.
“She’s perfect,” I say.
“Of course.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Not remotely.”
His chest is shaking. He’s not even trying to hide it.
I poke him.
He catches my finger before it reaches his chest. “I saw what happened to Eirik.”
“He moved.”
“He wanted to keep his ribs.”
“They are very hard.”
Baldr looks down at me.
Oh.
That wasn’t the correct thing to say.
“His coat is thin.”
“Sól.”
“You have the same chest.”
This also fails to help.
His amber eye brightens.
I put both hands over his shirt. “Yours is better.”
“Generous.”
“I have conducted more research.”
He kisses me hard enough that my hood falls over my eyes.
I laugh into his mouth and pull it back.
“Take me upstairs.”
Baldr starts to lift me.
“Wait.”
I put my hand flat on his stomach and slide it down.
“Sól.”
“Mm.”
“There’s a door.”
“There is.”
“It doesn’t lock.”
“I know.”
His belt takes longer than it should. Everything I do with my hands takes longer than it should, and this one was made by somebody expecting a siege.
Baldr doesn’t help.
He could help. He stands there watching me lose to a belt and says nothing at all, and his jaw has gone somewhere strange.
It comes open.
“Sól—”
“Don’t.”
I go down into the straw.
It’s cold, and it’s stabbing me through my stockings in four places, and there’s a horse eight feet away doing something wet with its mouth. This is not the version I’ve been carrying around.
Because I have been carrying it around. For weeks. Usually while doing something unrelated—once through an entire conversation about grain.
In none of those versions was it directly in front of my face.
Oh.
I have had this inside me. Twice. I am supposed to know something about this.
It doesn’t help. From down here it’s another thing altogether. It’s heavy, and it moves when I stop holding it, which I did not expect and which I make a small noise about, and I would like that noise back.
Baldr says nothing. Baldr has never said less in his life.
There’s a question forming, and the question is: how.
Just—how. It’s not a small thing. My mouth is not a large one. Nobody has ever sat me down and explained how those two are meant to meet.
The plan was that I’d get down here and it would become obvious.
It is not becoming obvious.
“You don’t have to—”
“If you say one more helpful thing I’m going to bite you.”
His breath goes out.
“Noted.”
Okay.
I hold him at the base, because holding on to something is better than not.
Then I lean in and lick him, from my hand all the way up.
His whole body twitches, and the groan that comes out of him starts somewhere under his ribs.
Oh. He liked that.
Okay. Okay, I can do this. This is completely doable.
Doable.
Ha.
I put my mouth on the end of him and take him in.
That’s it. That’s all I do.
Baldr makes a sound I have never heard him make.
Not a word. Nowhere near a word.
Ohhhh.
So that’s the whole point of this.
I take more of him. Then more, because I’ve apparently decided I’m good at this now, and it turns out there is a limit and I find it immediately.
I come off him and cough into my own shoulder.
“Sól—”
I wave a hand at him without looking up. “I’m fine.”
“You’re—”
“I said I’m fine.”
The hand is still going.
My eyes are watering.
Alright, then.
Less ambition works better. My hand covers what my mouth can’t, which is most of it, and nobody needs to know that started as an accident.