When she woke with a start in the middle of the night, he was there, and he eased her back to sleep. Each time.
When she woke in the morning, he was there.
He was there.
~oOo~
In the great hall, the next afternoon, the warriors and townspeople gathered to drink and make merry. After a tense beginning, on the words from Leif and Vali, speaking jointly about their plans to restore the balance of their worlds, an easy friendliness had taken over. Almost all of the Karlsa clan had agreed to stay and fight; those who spoke in favor of it spoke of finishing their vengeance in Snorri’s name. Those who did not agree to stay said that they would not see their new jarl leave unattended.
Then they had made sacrifices in order that Leif and Vali’s jarldoms would prosper.
And now, they feasted.
Brenna, still feeling the unreality of the changes in her circumstances, sat quietly in a corner and watched as Vali and Leif were toasted and congratulated, as men and women made petitions to them both. Vali seemed supremely uncomfortable as the subject of so much deference. But he would be a great jarl. He was a good man and wise. A strong and fierce warrior, storied among all their people. Compassionate when he could be and decisive when he had to be. The seer had seen clearly. With Leif and Vali holding two of the most important seats in all their world, a great era was most certainly dawning.
He caught her eye at every chance, and took his first opportunity to extract himself from the crowd and join her in her little corner. He pulled her from her seat and took it, then pulled her onto his lap. Smiling at the possessive gesture, she hooked her arm around his shoulder and let her hand play with his braid.
“Is this what it will be like always?” he grumbled as they watched people search for and find him. They would not have this private moment much longer.
“When you want solitude, you will have to make it, I think.”
A disgruntled sigh was his only answer.
Sitting alone, Brenna had been thinking. Since she’d woken that morning with his arms around her, in a comfortable bed, in a cozy room, she had been thinking. Since she had dressed in a beautiful, brilliant blue dress, braided her hair, and slid hooks through her ears dangling elaborate blue stones, she had been thinking. While she watched her husband and good friend each claiming a jarldom, she had been thinking.
About the future.
She had never been to Karlsa. She had never seen the home that Vali meant to bring her to, but she felt easy in the knowledge that it waited and was good. A home.
Now, in the ebullient throng of the great hall, sitting on her husband’s muscular lap, feeling his need of her against her bottom, she leaned down and put her mouth to his ear. His hands grasped her more tightly at even that innocently intimate touch.
“I am ready to bear another child.”
He jerked away and stared hard at her. “Brenna? But last night—”
“Last night I needed what you gave me, and I feel cleansed today. You always give me what I need. Now I need to make our home and family. I want your seed in me.”
His eyes were so intense—they seemed to hold more magic than hers ever had. He cupped her cheek in his hand. “I would not rush you.”
“I know. You give me what I need. I need this.” She turned her head and touched her lips to his palm. Then she stood and held out her hand.
He furrowed his brow. “Now?”
“Would you rather not?”
“You are sure?”
“I am.”
A grin took over his handsome face. He stood and grabbed her hand. “Then I am as well.”
Brenna sat at the side of the bed, her body bare, and unwound her braids. She stared at a point on the floor, lost in thought. While he undressed, Vali watched her, his chest aching with love—and with the lingering, impotent rage he could not seem to master.
Written all over her fair skin was the story of her suffering since she had been taken away from him. She was skinny, her ribs, collarbones, and cheekbones so pronounced they made shadows on her skin. Her knees and elbows were scraped, her legs and arms bruised. Bruises marked her everywhere. Her nose had been broken and still bore the marks of it, and the skin below her eyes was a riot of colors, from beating, exhaustion, and starvation. Her wrists were raw from wear of the shackles. Her neck—her neck. She would bear the choker of Åke’s abuse for all her life.
And her back. Vali had demanded that Leif tell him of that torture, in detail. Hot rods laid on her back. Laid there and left to cool while the flesh cooked away beneath. When he’d first fully seen the long, vicious furrows the rods had left behind, Vali had nearly been undone by his fury and grief. But he had been with her, and she had been vulnerable, saying his name again and again, weeping, needing his strength and his calm. So he had swallowed back his rage and given her what she’d needed.
Leif had stood there in that room and let it happen. He had stood there and watched. Vali cared not about his reasons. No true friend would have stood by. Brenna said she understood. She trusted him. She even said Leif had saved her, shielded her.
But Vali gazed down at his beloved wife, at her battered, starved, burned body, and knew that he would never forgive the man who had let her be taken, who had stood by and let her be enslaved and abused.
Never.
“Where are your thoughts?” Brenna asked, and Vali brought his mind back to the room to see her smiling up at him, her hair loose over her shoulders.
He was glad to see her smile, though it wasn’t the brilliant, beaming light he had promised her, on their wedding day, that he would bring forth from her every day. The smile she gave him now was dimmed around the edges by all the griefs and trials they’d had since then.
“I could ask the same of you.” He went to the bed and knelt before her. Lifting her hands, he put his lips to the marks around her wrists. “You were lost in thought as well.”
She turned her hands and laced her fingers with his. “My head seems to spin whenever it’s quiet around me.”
He frowned up at her and searched her face. “You should rest, and we should wait to make a child until you have recovered.”
Brushing her fingertips over his drawn brow, she shook her head. “That was not my meaning. I feel well. I feel strong. I’m merely finding it sometimes difficult to adjust to the changes that have happened over these two days. I was in chains yesterday. Today, I wore a gown finer than ever I have before.” She shook her head lightly, making swing the blue stones that still dangled from her ears. “I wear jewels.”
When she released one of his hands and moved to pull an earring from her ear, Vali stopped her and reclaimed hold of her hand. He had not ever noticed that her ears had been pierced, but earlier in the day she had slid the hooks into her lobes without trouble. “It cannot be the first time you’ve worn jewels in your ears. Why else would they have been pierced?”
“Glass beads. These are stones. Precious. And not mine.” They had been Hilde’s. So had been the dress she’d worn. “I don’t know how to be a woman of precious stones and fine clothes.”
“Only the circumstances have changed. You have not. You are a beautiful woman, Brenna. More than that, you are a great woman. You are a warrior. Whether you be dressed in rough clothes or fine, in wool or furs, in linen or leather, in chains or jewels, it makes no matter. That is what Åke did not understand. Even in that shackle, you were no slave. You have never been anything but the woman you are.”
She smiled and leaned in until their foreheads touched. “You tell a fine tale with pretty words.”
“If I do, I have you to thank for saving my tongue to tell it.”
“Your tongue does other pretty things as well.” She kissed him, darting her tongue out to tease at the corner of his mouth. Just a feather-light touch, but it made Vali’s blood sing. Yet she was so battered. Åke had not broken her, but he had surely tried.
“Are you certain?” he breathed, brushing his lips over hers. “I have no wish to hurt you.�
�
“I know, and you never have. I want to feel your loving touch. I want to feel the bliss you bring me. I want to bring you bliss. I want to put this all behind me, behind us, and make our future.”
She pushed away and slid backward on the bed, making room for him to join her. “Make me see our stars.”
He took her in his arms and loved her slowly and gently, keeping her body as close to his as he could manage, keeping his eyes fixed with hers all the while. The sweet, delicate sounds of her pleasure assured him that he caused her no harm, and when she clutched him tightly and dug her fingers into the muscles of his back, her breaths growing frantic and deep, he let himself become more forceful and turned part of his attention to his own pleasure as well.
When she released, her eyes rolled up in her head and her body went fully tense, curled up against his and twitching, and the intense power of her pleasure almost brought Vali to his. He slowed his thrusts, holding deep inside her, until she had felt all of her bliss.
Then she relaxed, and she gazed up at him with a sated, wanton grin. She pushed on his shoulders until he understood. With a grin of his own, he rolled to his back, and she rode him to his finish. As it struck him, he roared and rolled again, returning her to her back just as his seed surged forth and filled her.
Vali dropped to her side and held her close. As they lay together in a gasping tangle, Brenna asked, “Do you think we made another son tonight?”
He brushed the damp strands of her fair hair from her face. “I don’t know. And in this moment, I don’t care. I am with you again. You have my love, and I yours. We are making our future, whether we’ve made a child or not.”
~oOo~
Her sleep these past two nights had been fitful, full of dark dreams. Vali knew because she started awake again and again, her eyes wide and her body ready to defend itself, and for a few moments she stayed in that wary state, until she would blink and know that she was with him and safe. Then she would ease slowly back to sleep.
They were leaving early the next day for Karlsa, in the little karve, with a small crew of his clansmen—including Jaan, who was by now as much a part of his clan as any other. Georg and Hans had elected to stay and fight Calder. They both had had family in the coastal village when the raiding ships had first landed, and had grudges against Calder from the first raid. They had made peace with Vali and the other raiders who’d stayed, but Calder had done his damage and then left, until he had returned to do still more.
Vali had a grudge against Calder as well; it was he who had first beaten and then stolen Brenna in Estland. But his need to get her far from this place was greater than his need to see Calder’s head rotting next to his father’s. He would leave Calder to Leif.
And if they two—who had been, after all, good friends all their lives—ended up allied, if Leif betrayed Brenna’s trust yet again? Well, he did not have Vali’s trust. So Vali would be prepared, and he would take them both down.
He had already begun to plan.
“You are lost in thought again,” his wife whispered. Her head was pillowed on his bicep, and he smiled down at her.
“I am thinking about our voyage today. Are you rested?”
“I am. But I’m still worried about leaving Leif to fight Calder alone.”
“Not alone. Two hundred of our men will stay and fight with him.”
She nodded but said nothing more.
“Brenna, I would speak with you about something. Leif and I spoke last night in the hall, and I would extend our journey somewhat. We are in agreement that we should visit the jarls between here and Karlsa, to ease their minds about events here and the way our world has changed.”
All of that was true. He and Leif had spoken on that matter, and they had agreed that Ivar and Finn, who had apparently—and rightly—been unhappy with the way Åke had bound them in, holding lands on either side of theirs, should be offered the respect of a visit to hear about Åke’s demise.
But Ivar’s seat was Halsgrof, the town of Vali’s birth. Brenna, too, had been born in Ivar’s territory. They had met in the woods outside Halsgrof. He wasn’t sure how she would feel about returning so close to her birthplace. She had run away from there long ago and never returned.
“You and Leif spoke and agreed on this?”
“We did. Don’t make more of it than there is. I am willing to consider him an ally. Nothing more. We agree on this point.”
And Vali intended to forge bonds with both jarls during these visits, bonds that he might draw on should Leif turn from their alliance.
Undeterred, Brenna smiled. “It’s a sound plan, and I am glad you agree. Each time you agree with him, there is less for you to be suspicious of.”
He didn’t wish to be distracted by talk of Leif. “How would you feel about returning to Halsgrof?”
Her smile faded; she clearly had not made the connection until now. “Oh.” She looked away, thinking, and then brought her eyes back to his. “How do you feel? You lived in Halsgrof itself. What about your father?”
“Love of mead and hatred of everything else took my father long ago. I have no strong feeling about Halsgrof.” He smiled. “Except that I met you there, and you changed my life.”
“I would like to see that old tree again.”
He didn’t understand, but she’d said the words in a way that seemed almost private, so he didn’t ask her to explain. Instead he pressed the point of his own concern: “Would you wish to seek out your mother?”
Brenna frowned. “I’m not sure if she yet lives. My parents were already growing old when I came to be.”
“If Dagmar Wildheart had died, surely the news would have traveled.”
“I suppose.” She sighed and rested her head again on his arm. “I did love her, and she me. She meant a terrible life for me, but she meant it well. I’m not sure. I will decide while we’re in Halsgrof.”
“Well enough. If you are rested, I would begin our preparations. I’m eager to put Geitland at our backs today.”
Raising up on her elbow, Brenna smiled at him. “Must we rise just yet? I am eager, too, but not only for the voyage.” She brushed her nose through his beard, and then, as if he might somehow have missed her meaning, she tucked her head and drew his earlobe into her mouth.
Vali chuckled and pulled her over so that she straddled him. “You are my wanton wife. And I am already risen.”
~oOo~
Vali and Brenna stood on the dock with Leif, beside their laden karve. The men who went with them were all on board.
“Fare you both well,” Leif said. “I will send word after Calder’s return. If I can, and if I would be welcome, I will sail to you and tell you myself.”
“Of course you will be welcome.” Brenna then lifted her arms and threw them around Leif’s neck. Vali could see that Leif was as surprised as he was by such an impulsive display of affection.
When Leif returned her embrace, Vali felt a queer mix of jealousy and doubt. Not doubt in Brenna, but in his own feelings about Leif. Brenna was stingy with her personal affections. To see her so unreserved in her faith in and affection for Leif did make Vali wonder if he were too harsh regarding the man.
But then she stepped back, and he saw her neck. She made no attempt to hide her new scars; they were, to her, battle scars and no source of shame. But they reminded Vali of what their ‘friend’ had, at best, made no attempt to prevent. No. Brenna had had a blind spot about Åke; she might well have the same blindness about Leif.
Leif held out his hand to Vali, who took it after enough pause to convey his disdain.
“I regret any part I had in all that befell you both, but I did all I could think to do to save you. I would have us friends again. If it is proof you need, Vali Storm-Wolf, proof you will have.”
Vali nodded once, and took his hand back.
With that, Leif gestured to a young man behind him, one Vali did not know. That young man stepped up and brought a bundle of white linen forward. He held it out on
his two hands, and Leif unwrapped it.
The longsword that Leif and the other men had presented to Vali on the day of his wedding. Meant for Brenna to hold in safekeeping for their descendants. Vali watched as Leif took the sword and handed it to her. He could see the emotion roiling in his wife’s eyes.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft with feeling.
Leif smiled at her and then turned to Vali. “Åke took it to claim as his own, as he took Brenna. I only return it to its rightful place.”
Vali was moved; to himself, he would not deny it. The sword was important, a symbol of the strength of his union with Brenna. And, as well, a symbol of their friendships in Estland.
God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) Page 29