21. The Child’s Lesson #2
She placed the wolf carving into his palm.
“I want you to have my wolf.”
He looked at her, confused. “But I’m not—”
“I love you,” she said. “You’ve told me your father calls you little wolf, and you protected a child when it would’ve been easier to look away.”
He held the wolf a little tighter. “My father did nothing.”
“Lord Henry ordered him to do nothing. Henry did it to teach you both a lesson. If your father had acted, you and he would’ve been executed alongside the evening meal.” Seren sighed.
But Ragnar shook his head in disbelief. “Well, either way, I disappointed him. That’s why he is not here.”
“No, Ragnar. He loves you so much. He took a chance and asked Lord Henry to see you tonight, but Lord Henry denied him. Your father wanted to be here, and I’m sure he’ll come if he can sneak away. But right now he has to be with Lord Henry.”
Ragnar blinked back tears.
“I’ll always protect David,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered, brushing a damp lock of hair from his temple.
“But let me remind you of something, Ragnar. You’re not just here to protect him.
You’re here to learn what power is. And what it isn’t.
And right now, you have none that will save your life.
Just as this wolf knows to wait, strike, and move, you will have to learn how to build your power and learn how to survive just like your father, just like me. ”
He nodded, quiet again.
“This world is not kind, Ragnar.” Her eyes misted.
“As much as it pained me to see Bertrand hit my son, I could do nothing but let it happen because that is the way of the world. Until those in power determine otherwise, that will be life, and to go against it will earn you lashes or worse, and the one you are trying to protect will have no one to love them.”
Ragnar sniffled and gripped the wolf harder.
“You have to choose what you will stand for and make what you stand for count for something.”
“I stand for David and Aveline and Vala, you and my father and Baldwin,” Ragnar said. “No one will hurt you. Not if I can help it.”
She stroked his hair off his forehead. “And we don’t want to see you in pain either. Choose your battles, for it may be your only one.”
Outside the attic window, wind shifted through the trees as Seren finished tending to Ragnar’s wounds while he pondered the thought she’d left him with.
Seren dabbed a salve into the broken skin with slow, even strokes, as if gentleness could undo what the lash had carved. Ragnar gritted his teeth but didn’t flinch. His eyes were fixed on the darkness outside.
Somewhere below, a guard laughed too loudly.
“Do you miss it?” Ragnar asked after a moment. “Your home?”
She looked to the narrow attic window, to the hills that rolled into the Welsh borderland far beyond.
“Yes,” she said. “But more than the place, I miss the feeling that we belonged to the land and not the other way around. That it remembered us.”
“Tell me something about it,” he said.
“The fields were red in spring. My father’s voice would always echo off the stone. My brothers—I have three of them—they would always wrestle. They’d get hurt, and my mother and I would have to tend to their wounds.”
She paused, relishing the memories. It had been so long since she’d thought of home.
“I remember waking up to wolves howling in the distance like songs in mourning. I was afraid of them, but my father made these carvings,” she said and pointed to the one in Ragnar’s hand.
“Told me they run in families just like ours. He gave me ten of them to give to my children.”
Ragnar’s eyebrows popped. “And you gave this one to me?”
“I did,” she said with a smile. “You carry the north in your blood—but I see the Welsh in your spine. You are both your mother’s son and mine.”
Ragnar lowered his head and settled on his cot with peace in his eyes.
She told him of bread made with honey, of river baptisms and sky burials, of the wind speaking through the weather and her mother’s hands pressed to her belly after supper.
By the time she finished, his eyes had closed.
The wolf lay in his palm.
Seren stood and pressed the back of her fingers to Ragnar’s brow. His skin was warm, but not hot. No fever.
“Sleep,” she said in love. “I’ll come back when I can.”
As she turned, he groggily whispered after her.
“Lady Seren?”
She paused.
“Will you be in trouble for coming here tonight?”
“That is none of your concern, my sweet boy,” she whispered with a smile.
He nodded and clenched his jaw. “Be like your wolf then, Lady Seren.”
Her voice was soft. “You too, Ragnar.”
She waited to leave until the soft rhythm of his breathing signaled that he was asleep.
Margot descended the narrow staircase with a bundle of hay in her arms, her voice high and casual.
“Lady wanted some extra hay for the bedding,” she said cheerfully to the guards, now standing at their post outside Henry’s chambers.
They barely glanced at her. One grunted, the other sighed as Margot entered the top floor. That was all the space Seren needed.
She ducked her head and slipped around the edge of the stairs, her dress whispering over the stone as she hurried past the landing to the middle floor, unseen.
But as she turned the bend of the narrow spiral, she collided with Erik.
The bowl in her hand slipped. Her foot skidded against the stone. He caught the bowl in one hand and pulled her against him with the other before the fall took her.
Neither moved as they took each other in. His eyes swept over her—the bloody cloths, the jar of salve, and the tremble in her breath. The way he looked at her lips made her breath shake more. His eyes pleaded for an answer to the unspoken question about his son.
Their voices would travel on the stone staircase, so she nodded and pressed a soft smile. It was the only answer she could give.
Ragnar was as safe as he could be.
Her toe found the step again. She steadied herself, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he pulled her closer and dipped his head.
Her heart skipped a beat.
His lips brushed her temple with a warm breath and lowered to her ear in a whisper.
“Thank you, Valkyrie.”
It was the first time he’d spoken to her in years—truly spoken.
Their lives had become a language of glances, guarded smiles, half-turned heads.
But now, in this hushed bend of stone and shadow, his voice weakened her knees.
Her chest ached. She wasn’t sure if it was from relief or the sheer weight of emotion.
He didn’t move away, so she didn’t either. Her lips grazed the curve of his ear.
“I’m sorry, Erik,” she whispered. “Ragnar was so fast. I couldn’t stop him in time.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he whispered. His lips brushed the side of her cheek as he whispered. “All this time, you’ve been there when I could not, even tonight. Helped him, cared for him, told him of his mother.”
They swayed in the silence of the spiral stair, half-shrouded in shadow. She glanced down; he, likely up—both listening for witnesses, both knowing the risk.
She touched his forearm, and he pulled her closer.
“I love him as my own,” she murmured. “I want you to know that.”
“I do,” he said. “And I can never repay you.”
“No need to repay love.”
There was a pause full of things unsaid with all that could not be said. She lifted her hand to rest on his chest. She shouldn’t have done that, but his closeness unleashed a sense of belonging that blurred the lines of should versus should not.
“I told him that you wanted to be there, but Lord Henry denied you,” Seren whispered. “I told him you love him and tried to help him understand why today happened as it did.”
His fingers spread wide on her back.
“He is lucky to have you, as we all are,” he said.
Her voice came softer than before, with words spilling out before she could stop them. “We are lucky to have you, too. The potato seed. And the kingcups.”
He drew a breath against her cheek and rubbed her back, firm and warm.
She sank into his strong embrace. She should not have done that either.
She repeated the lies she’d told herself to keep from the should not’s. He only respected her. He didn’t think of her as anything more than an honorable fellow warrior. Or maybe now, it was just the wine he’d had in the council chamber.
But even if he did want her or love her, she was still someone else’s wife.
“Thank you for bringing some peace to Mortlande,” he whispered. Again, his lips brushed her cheek as he whispered. “We are all indebted, milady.”
“I have so much I want to tell you, but I fear someone will come,” she murmured, pressing the side of her face against his cheek. She was memorizing the way he held her in a firm, careful grip.
His hold across her back tightened. His head dipped, and his lips brushed her neck.
She stilled.
Had he kissed her?
Her breath caught. Her thoughts tangled.
It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter.
It was probably just the closeness and his warmth against her.
And if he had, he probably kissed all the wives. Held them all before Lord Henry struck them down. That was why he warned her that they all died wanting kindness, protection, and love.
But he hadn’t said her name in a whispered warning if this was a test.
She told herself it was nothing. Told herself the lie again. Her hand trembled as it rested against his chest.
She had to leave before she wanted more. She could barely keep from glancing at him when he was in the keep, and if they kissed, how would she stay away? How would she keep that from Lord Henry? From God?
“Is the middle floor empty? Who walks the hall?” she asked, forehead pressed to his cheek, realizing only after how intimate and longing-filled that question sounded. She had only asked for her ascent through the nursery’s secret stairs.
He pulled back, his forehead sliding to hers with a question in his eyes.
His answer came slowly—his nose crossed hers as he closed the tiny space between them. “Yes. Tomas is posted. No one else.”