16. The First Longing #2
He felt the north in his chest: the hard salt of sea spray, the smell of smoked fish in winter, the way Astrid had braided his hair before the raiding season.
For her, he had killed, and for her life, he had twisted grief into a shield.
He had sworn once, in a night like this, to make a future where Ragnar’s name would be a promise of reckoning.
That oath burned hotter than any humiliation Henry could devise.
He should not have reached for Seren—a man of honor did not touch his lord’s wife—but the memory of his boy in his arms, of Astrid’s face, and the stubborn mercy and grace Seren had shown made his hand move.
He hovered there, breath thick in his chest, hand poised in the space between desire and duty. But gratitude demanded more than silence and inaction.
He ran his hand down her back, helping her rise—because in one way or another, warriors always did.
The touch was desire and discipline, reverence and restraint—his hand saying everything he could not, a silent claim that he still belonged to something greater than pain and duty. A way to say that he remained what he had always been: a father, a husband, a man forged by the north.
The words he wanted to say caught behind his teeth—too dangerous to speak, too heavy to swallow.
The stillness stretched between them, full of duty, mercy, and the cost of both. He pushed a few strands of loose hair from her brow with the back of his fingertips.
“Don’t risk your life for us again, Lady Seren,” he told her. “Lord David is too young—”
“I know,” she said.
A woman of strategy knew his hands were tied. He hoped she knew he had to bite back every instinct to tear Henry apart, not just for her, but for Ragnar too.
“I want my son’s legacy to be built on trust, not fear, not blood,” she whispered.
“I’ll take whatever punishment Lord Henry sees fit, but if God sees me as blameless, he will provide for my life, my son’s, and this child’s.
” She smoothed her chemise over her belly.
Her lips trembled from pain and a pride that would not break.
“Do not test the gods, Lady Seren,” Erik whispered a warning.
“I am not testing God,” she said, her chin dropped. “I am pleading with Him.” Tears pushed from her eyes, and he couldn’t help but lift his arms and pull her close.
She leaned into him as if he were a harbor and, for the smallest of moments, they found a shore in each other.
He placed a gloved hand on the back of her head, grounding her with him, and the other on her arm, to hold her against him.
The softness of her hair against his chin made him ache for the love that had been ripped away. He wished his hands were ungloved so he could touch Seren, feel her warm in his embrace.
His pulse betrayed him, pounding with everything he could never tell her, everything that would destroy them both if he did, or perhaps only him. The silence between them pulsed with what could never be—desire buried beneath duty, honor fighting the weight of sin.
He shifted her away from him so he could look her in the face. He stepped back just enough to give her breath and keep the line between solace and scandal. The corridor’s chill reminded him of boundaries.
He steadied his breath, forcing the longing from his voice before it could betray him.
“I apologize for my indecency in the hall.” It sounded ridiculous in the hush, but they kept the world in some order. He forced a small, rueful bow of the head—half jest, half admission—so the tenderness between them would not become a crime by daylight.
She softly chuckled. “If you apologize, I do too. I stand before you in nothing but a ripped chemise.”
He was sure his cheeks flushed. “Do not—”
“You do not either, then.”
Her words lingered, suspended in the silence between them.
He’d hated that she’d seen him like that—in front of the court, stripped like a savage for their scorn. Henry had meant to shame him. And yet, she looked at him now not with pity or revulsion, but with a softness that undid him.
She had seen the sacred runes Henry mocked, the body she was never meant to see. And she had not looked away.
Shame prickled his skin from how much it mattered that she’d truly seen him beneath his Norman facade, and how deeply he realized he’d wanted her to.
She stood there in torn linen, bruised and bared, and he felt the weight of his gaze—how much he saw her, too. Skin, he should not admire. A mind he should not respect. A woman he should not want.
He gave a slow nod, his half-smile more ache than amusement.
“I must remain nothing to you,” he said quietly, the words a leash for his heart.
The air between them tightened, straining beneath all that could not be spoken.
She slid her hand into his, and he closed his gloved fingers around hers, as if they had done the same a thousand times before.
Her eyes told a story he could not afford to read—yet one he’d dreamed of for far too long.
“I wish you didn’t have to be,” she whispered.
His gaze faltered, slipping to her busted lip. His heart beat hard and fast. He shouldn’t want her—not like this. Not another man’s wife.
But he did.
He wanted to kiss her. To keep her safe in his arms, not just tonight, but forever.
And still—Ragnar, David, this new child—a thread secured their futures. His desire was a fire he could not feed. There was more at stake than the longings of his heart.
He should have walked to his room without a word. He should have left her in the hall. Should have let the moment die in silence.
But still he stayed.
Still, he looked her in the eyes and wanted.
The stairs echoed.
Instinct took over.
He grabbed her by the elbow and ran with swift, quiet feet toward her chamber. He left her by her door and stepped into the corridor leading to the garderobe, into the shadow.
She entered her room but caught his gaze before she shut the door without a sound.
Lord Henry’s voice echoed through the hall. “Guard, pick up my wife’s clothes and throw them in her room. The indecent woman walks these halls without a care in the world.”
“Yes, my lord.” The reply came.
After Godric opened the door, threw the gown and veil in the room, and took his position, Erik stepped from the corridor and hoped Henry was already inside his chambers.
He nodded to Godric as if he were just leaving the toilet, walked past Henry’s guards, and down the corridor to his room without looking back.
With the door closed, he almost prayed then—not to her God, nor to his—but to whatever power might keep him from longing for what he could never have.