“Lady Mira?” Rowan appeared utterly dumbfounded, his pale green eyes wide in bewilderment, his mouth hanging open, his eyebrows lifted further up his forehead than Mira had ever seen them go. In his pause, one of the Northmen slammed a massive fist into his face. Rowan fell to the sea, and the Northmen dragged him onto the wrack-filled shore, seemingly not caring at all that seaweed and the crumble of shells stuck to the boy.

Mira ran and knelt, lifting Rowan’s head and wiping the blood off his upper lip with her sleeve. He seemed disoriented—coming back to his mind slowly, frowning and relaxing and frowning again.

“Mira?” he said. “How—but—what are you doing here?”

“Soten,” one of the Northmen said. “Soten, we must tie him; he will try to fight again.”

“Why did you take him?” Mira’s voice was so forceful that she surprised herself with the tone.

The Northmen merely laughed. “He will make for us good steel.”

They dragged half-conscious Rowan to a nearby tree and tied him to it. Though he still seemed lost in the daze of the hit he’d taken to the face, he pushed their hands away and kicked at them and reached for one man’s blade. Mira stayed by his side, trying to settle him with hushed coos as she waited for him to fully awaken. He was slow to become himself again.

“My lady… where am I?” he said, looking at his surroundings and shivering.

“Somewhere in the North, the town is called Gittenurg.”

Rowan’s thick black brows pressed together in confusion. “And you’re here too.”

“I am.” Mira laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

She laughed a second time, just like a Northman. “It is funny to see you again. I thought that I wouldn’t.” She shrugged. Have I become so much like them? I speak like them, even in my own language.

Rowan smiled. A smile that unsettled her heart so quickly it caused a lump to form in her throat. He was as beautiful as ever. He looked older, too; a dense black beard covered the lower half of his face. Mira had only seen him clean-shaven before. She wanted to hug him, to kiss him, to tell him everything would go well. But she didn’t. Tears sprung from deep within her.

“My lady, please, do not weep.”

“I am happy to see you. But also, I’m sad to be seeing you here, like this.”

There was a long pause where the truth rested on his face. The same truth she saw many moons ago when Loric kissed her and rode off to fight the Northmen.

Mira gathered herself. “What do you need? I can fetch water, food, blankets… you must be cold from being on the sea...”

“I need to be untied.” He smirked.

Mira laughed again as she wiped her tears away. “That is the one thing I cannot offer you.”

She ran to town, gathering some of Fell’s clothing, a wine sack, one of the large furs she slept with on cold nights, and some cherry bread from the hearth. She wrapped the drenched boy up as best she could with his hands bound as they were and poured strong wine into his mouth. She broke off bite-sized pieces of the cherry loaf and fed him. As Rowan warmed and felt a full stomach, he became more of his own mind.

“My lady, there’s something I must tell you.” His face revealed to her that she would not like what he had to say. She held her breath as he mustered the courage to speak. “It’s about your father, he… he passed when the Northmen attacked Arcliff the second time….”

Mira’s mind emptied. Her face became hot. Her chest felt wooden and flimsy like thin branches just about to snap. “The second time?”

“After the night you were taken, three more raiding parties came.”

Mira was not sure if she wanted to hear any more. It was not an appropriate reaction, but she was angry with Rowan for having told her this. She wanted to shout at him and kick him and tell him he was lying.

“The rest of your family is well. Dayne and Loric have joined forces to expel the Northmen from the continent. They are building an armada. Most of the eastern lords have joined them. They are coming North, my lady. They will come.”

It was all too much. “Dayne is Lord of Arcliff now?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Surely, they won’t be coming until after winter passes?”

“My lady, I don’t know.”

Mira sat back in the pebbles in awe. How quickly things can change in the world when you look away. Her heart tied itself into a knot as she thought again of her father. “I… I must uhh… I’ll come to see you again.”

“My lady.” Rowan nodded his head to her.

She did not have much time to get back to the tent, a fit of panic was approaching, and though she walked quickly, the fear was faster. Steady yourself. The baby needed calm. This was not something she had ever been told but something she knew in her bones.

Her body did not listen, and the weight of the world bore down upon her. She choked on her tears and stumbled, managing to grasp onto the branch of an ashen, dead tree. It was cold and smooth, worn soft by sea-winds. She stayed there suffocating on her dread, clenching the sun-bleached branch with all her strength, her knuckles growing pale. It is all a mistake, she thought. Rowan has gotten it wrong. It cannot be as he said.

Suddenly, every flaw in her foolish plan was laid out for her. She had been pretending the world was not as it was to keep herself happy, but she could remember now the fears she’d held back home. She could remember why she focused on obedience, not pleasure. She did not want her countrymen to come and see her. She did not want them to judge her. They would think her evil. There were other worries as well. Would Fell fight against Dayne if he came? Would one of them die? Like her father?

Father.

Mira sank to the ground, setting her forehead against the dry, smooth trunk, the coldness of it soothing her clammy skin. She thought of the way her father’s beard tickled her shoulder when she was little and hugged him, or the way he would sometimes wink at her when she was being reprimanded by her mother and then later would allow her to do the thing she was forbidden to do. It was he who had given her harp lessons when her mother complained about Mira’s wandering hands.

“Let’s put them to use,” he said, smiling.

She vomited.

“Mira?” It was Toke, the man who slew his father. “You are ill?” He knelt and pulled Mira’s hair away from the mess of it, but his hands felt hot against the back of her neck, and she wanted to push him away. “Come,” he said, lifting her to her feet and taking slow steps with her.

Walking did help in one way, but still, she could not speak or breathe rightly in her trembling state. She gasped and choked and sputtered. She thought of being tied to the stake and vomited again. Would they wait for the child to be born before they burnt her? Or would they not care as it was a bastard and let it turn to ash inside her?

Finally, her voice came. “They will punish me,” she said. “They will come and find me and burn me for my sins.”

Toke said, “Use Norsen words.”

They’d arrived at Myret’s tent—as this was where he was taking her—but Mira fought against his lead. She did not want to go inside and breathe in the thick, smoky air. Instead, Myret came out and told Toke to let Mira down on the ground and to step away from her to give her “untouched air.”

“I have doomed myself,” Mira cried in her first language. The child would prove it. All that she had done in the North would be visible soon. Her father was not living, so he could not save her from their wrath.

Father.

Ødger was nearby. “Mira.” He knelt and spoke to her in the words of the Isle. “Tell me why you cry. Are you ill?”

“They will come and find me and burn me,” Mira said.

“Who is they?”

“From the Isle.”

He chuckled. “Women are stolen from the Isle every year, and no one comes for them. You will be safe.”

The fit eventually settled, and Mira’s ears burned with embarrassment because of the group that had gathered around her to watch her cry and be sick.

She could hear Toke ask Ødger what she’d spoken of.

“She is afraid of being taken back to our country,” Ødger said.

“Why would she think of this happening?”

Ødger shrugged. “In our country, they teach us to be afraid of everything. We can even be punished for our thoughts, so we are afraid of thinking.”

Myret watched with a piercing intensity, and Mira knew that not a single detail had gone unnoticed by the woman. She waited patiently for Mira to speak, but Mira was too ashamed to. She avoided Myret’s eyes and walked home in silence.

With her harp close to her chest, Mira played one of her father’s favourite songs. It was about two foolish knights who kept getting into trouble and out of it completely by mistake.

“What has happened?” Fell was back far earlier than usual, and Mira wondered if someone had gone to fetch him because of her incident.

She wanted to explain everything but managed only one piece of the whole before she started weeping. “The soter that came off the ships today—he told me... my father no longer lives.”

Fell did not even take his boots off before lying beside her and brushing her face with his giant hands. “Was he a good father?”

Mira nodded.

Fell pulled her into his arms and wrapped the both of them in furs. “I am sad with you, then.”

They lay for hours, with their foreheads pressed together, Fell running his hands up and down her back, making soothing noises when her sobbing grew loudest, kissing the top of her head. When she had been steady for some time, he began whispering in the old Northern words. Mira knew none of these words, but she knew he was praying. It was comforting to feel his deep voice rumbling within his chest.

“What did you pray for?” Mira whispered when he was done.

“I pray that even though your father is soter, he be allowed in the great halls of Hyrold. I would like to meet the man that made you one day.”

Mira was moved to her core. She traced Fell’s eyebrows, his lips, his beard with her fingers. Tears in her eyes, she said, “There is something else, something happy.”

He did not rush her, but his icy blue eyes stared so deep into her that Mira thought he might already know what she was to tell him.

“I am...” Mira became aware that she did not know the word she needed. “I have child.”

Fell’s eyes lit up, and he laughed. A deep, hearty, beautiful laugh.

I hope the child laughs like him, Mira thought.

“Vaneurigk. That is the word.”

“Vaneurigk,” Mira repeated.

Fell rolled onto her, still laughing. He had her many times that night. When the sadness returned, he took her slowly and with gentleness. When the joy returned, he lay with her playfully, the two of them laughing into the late hours of the evening. In this way, Fell kept Mira’s dread far from her mind.