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Absolon didn’t understand what he had been through. How could he? He was young, carefree, low born, and knew nothing of the pressures of leadership. He only cared for his own selfish ends, one of which Ragnar had enjoyed many times. But no matter how many nights of passionate rutting they shared, the dawn light still came and shone on all of Ragnar’s failures. His ambition did not tolerate distractions, and he would not suffer another.

Ragnar had given the apology Absolon sought, but if he didn’t recognize it, that was his own foolishness and Ragnar’s boon. Absolon would keep returning until he got it and the more singular his focus became, the more he would become blind to a surprise attack.

He fought Absolon’s expectant gaze and relinquished nothing until the force of it drove his captor from his cell with a curse. The door closed and locked, but it would not stay so forever.

* * *

Ragnar considered starvinghimself to death and stealing Absolon’s victory. There was always something aggravating about a prisoner who went to his death willingly, as if it were their choice all along. Where was the justice in that? He’d hanged a soldier who refused to fight another war—against the Danes, against the Russians, against anyone. He didn’t resist when they took him, didn’t cry when the noose went around his neck, didn’t even ask for a bag over his head, though they’d put one on him anyway. He called them cowards but had died just the same. To that hanged man, death was not punishment but triumph. Ragnar couldn’t remember his name, but he’d taken his lesson.

Only death was not an option. He wanted his freedom. And with Absolon’s considerable strength and the cursed touch of his hands, there was little hope of besting him in a fistfight. He would have to sneak away. But to do that he had to win Absolon’s trust.

Before, he had earned it in his bed, but that now seemed an unlikely option. He had time, limited though it was. He could find a way. All heroes needed some skill at diplomacy, at wringing secrets from their foes, and dripping poison into their ear. He already knew plenty of Absolon’s: his need for companionship, his tenderness for weaker things, his trust in those who were his betters.

Only he didn’t know who or what Absolon had become. He had to find out. That would be the key to his freedom.

He passed the hours listening to the sounds beyond his cell, using a concentration that started aggressive in its nature, but later softened to a meditation with each noise passing through his awareness. Much of the day was silent. Again, no people. Again, the wind. Again, the caw of ravens. But as for the sounds of farm life, there were none. Whatever Absolon was doing out there, it wasn’t much. For someone who craved the love of others, he had chosen a strange abode. It appeared the dog had been his only companion. Where was he? And why did Absolon live such a winnowed existence?

The only conclusion he could reach was that he was hiding.

This was not his true home, merely borrowed. If it were his, he would have filled it with horses and other beasts, but that required a working farmstead to keep them alive. Absolon knew this. He had been born on one but escaped its trappings. He should have been able to grow hay to feed them, so then why hadn’t he? Could it be that it would draw the attention of passersby, or the nearest village?

Absolon craved attention, Ragnar’s more than most, so what had happened to make him hide out there alone?

Ragnar hadn’t yet found a way to break his own chains, but he’d found a chink in Absolon’s armor.

Absolon didn’t return to him for the rest of the day and there was no sound that indicated he was even around, though he must have been. A jailer never wandered too far from their prison, otherwise what did they become without it?

When night fell and the air grew still and crisp, Ragnar stood and faced the window, getting as close as he could without straining. With face turned to the opening, he opened his mouth and sang.

His rich tenor voice had swayed lovers—women and men—into his arms, and Absolon had stared at him with adoring eyes more often when his mouth was engaged in song. His throat was still scratchy from its parching, but the more he sang, the smoother it became. The stone cell amplified and resonated the sound, pleasing even to his ears. He raised his voice louder, as he sang of love lost.

By the third song, his own heart was aching as he poured as near to true emotion into his words. The glow of a lantern appeared in the window, soft at first before getting nearer. Ragnar smiled but kept singing, and the light stayed. He finished the song and moved on to another; one he’d been saving for this moment. He allowed a moment of silence, to let anticipation fill the break between one and the next before he began.

Ragnar imagined he was singing to Absolon, that the berserker was in front of him, naked in his bed and looking up with admiring eyes. He’d sung this song to him so many times: in a crowded tavern when it had been a secret sign of their affection, or whispered in his tent before the start of that fateful battle, and as a gentle lullaby in that cold stone building in the forest while they fended off winter.

He sang all six verses, leaning heavy on the emotions. They were easy to draw on. The memories swept them into his arms. His voice broke more than once as he tripped over loving remembrances and the good times in the bad that they had shared before he’d had to do what he’d had to do.

He held the last note as long as he could, and when he finished, he was no longer looking at the window, no longer playing for Absolon, and no longer in the mood for singing. He retreated to the wall and slumped to the ground, his heavy heart bringing him even lower. He watched the window for as long as he could stay awake before sleep claimed him.

And the lantern never left.

* * *

Though his renditionshad brought no one to his rescue, he would try again—only when his heart was not so tender. The singing had affected him more than he would have imagined, stirring up recollections from a lifetime ago.

Absolon came in the afternoon with food and water, tending to him as he would a caged animal. He didn’t meet his eyes, merely looked at buckets, at manacles, at pieces disjointed from the whole, and not at the one they were all connected to. Ragnar had never felt more invisible.

Words pricked his tongue, eager to leap forth and ensnare Absolon, but he didn’t know which ones to use. He couldn’t talk about the singing without it sounding like he wanted his approval. He didn’t want to lead him into a fight that could push him away. He’d come two days in a row; breaking that streak could prove deadly.

Though Absolon ignored him, he studied Absolon. He forced himself to not linger on his broad build, on his thick arms and coarse hands, on the expanse of his chest and shoulders, the muscles that rippled beneath his clothes, the firmness of his legs or the solid roundness of his ass. All that was as much as it ever was. Even in his studied avoidance of focusing on them, snatches of memories of running his hand across Absolon’s naked body, gripping hard to his wrists and pinning him down with all his strength as he willingly submitted, of his hands at his throat—

Snatches that Ragnar had to dash aside in the hope Absolon didn’t see how the crotch of his trousers tightened.

No, what he was meant to be looking at was the effect of the songs, the effect of killing thirty men, the effect of being alone with a man he despised. He focused.

Absolon’s smile was gone.

That revelation struck him like Thor’s thunderbolt.