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“I’m glad the Society is excavating,” she said, dashing away sudden tears. “It would have taken me another year to accomplish what took them weeks.”

“Yes, of course, many hands make light work.” Georgie shot the bluff a leaf-singeing glare. “But in this case, they’re ghastly, acquisitive, antiquarian hands, and they should have leave to dig only under your direction. At the very least, they shouldn’t obstruct you.”

She rubbed her calloused palms together.

She itched to dig. But on the bluff there was a chair set up for her, away from the trenches, near the refreshment table.

She did not itch to sit, serving coffee to Simon Sykes, watching Nicholas Fluff shake her sieve with all the skill and intention of a puppy with a stick. She wouldn’t.

She put her back to the bluff. A breeze was rustling the nearer leaves of the woodland. Mr. Peach and Lord Phillip had disappeared into its fragrant, sun-dappled depths.

“The only gold I want to find today is buttercups.” She started along the path, casting a wickedly mischievous glance over her shoulder that caused Georgie’s face to blank with shock.

But they were more than equal to the suggestion.

One moment later, their eyes kindled, and they bounded up to her, wrapping an arm around her waist and growling in her ear.

“Onward to the secluded dell.”

—

The itch to dig didn’t subside completely, but as midsummer approached, it ceased to irritate.

The days were long and diverting, the nights warm, the secluded dells plentiful, and so too the meadowsweet and lady’s bedstraw.

She went whole hours without lamenting her removal from the winter camp of the Great Heathen Army.

And then, a Northman burst into the Redmayne library.

She was sitting at the desk, ostensibly working on her manuscript, and yet her eyes kept wandering to the windows.

This library was cheerful, furnished with relatively few books and antiquities, and relatively numerous sofas and soft reading chairs, and the windows were tall, fitted with panes of clean glass that displayed the fineness of the day.

It was almost too cheerful. It recommended walks and frolics as much as study and conversation.

She had just put down her pen. She had just succumbed to an urge for more sun. The door flinging open snapped her head around. And the axe—the axe rooted her in place. She might have been a Saxon nun, staring down her doom.

The Northman held the axe aloft, the blade red with rust, contours jumping out against the leaf green of the library paneling.

Not a woodcutter’s axe. A weapon. An axe that had chopped bone.

The blade was bearded, the long hook ideal for catching and yanking an enemy’s shield.

The Northman was ducked behind a shield of their own, or rather a round serving tray, strapped to their forearm by a cravat tied to the two brass handles.

They wore a fur cape, an untucked shirt that hung like a tunic, buckskin breeches, and riding boots.

“To Valhalla!” they roared, and leapt forward, swinging the axe in a figure eight.

“Georgie.” She stood. “Is this an attack?”

“A display.” They lowered their shield. “I thought it would feel more exciting if you saw the axe in action.”

“Where did you find it?” She rushed to them, seizing the axe by its wooden handle. She could smell cold iron on the air, taste it as a tang at the back of her throat.

“Hibbert found it. Repairing the wall in Peach’s field.”

She turned until light from the windows struck the blade. The metal didn’t glow. Runic markings didn’t appear beneath the rust. The axe was ancient, though, irrefutably ancient, and it had once been deadly—to whom? She touched the blunted edge, nicked from repeated impacts, and shivered.

“You do think it’s exciting?” asked Georgie.

Exciting? It required significant effort to remain calm. She could only nod, rotating the axe, unable to tear her eyes from it.

“And you think it belonged to a Northman?”

She nodded again.

“Peach said he’s found all sorts of things plowing by that wall. He has a whole collection, a cabinet of curiosities, except it’s a refurbished chicken coop. Elf, there’s a large piece of granite incorporated into the wall.”

Her gaze flew to their face. They’d roughed up their hair to wildness—their notion of a Northman’s coiffure—and lined their eyes with lampblack. The effect was a beauty so ferocious her knees went wobbly.

“Hibbert pointed it out,” they said. “And I thought…”

“A grave marker,” she whispered. The Northmen had camped on the bluff, but they’d buried their warriors down below. She realized she’d forgotten to breathe. “Can I dig? Will Peach allow it?”

“He will.” Georgie was smiling. “Now that I’ve given him a better piece of land in exchange.

Also, he’s as keen on historical remains as Phipps.

Another thing those two have in common.” They gave a bemused shake of their head.

“Phipps is already talking about the day they merge their arrowhead collections.”

She pushed the papers on the desk to one side and laid the axe down. She needed both hands free to push on her chest, to keep her heart from beating through it.

“Notify your father. The Barrow Prince. Whoever you please. This is my property.” Georgie’s chuckle was evil.

“No one can wrest away control. If some Fellow wants to participate, he must beg my permission, which I will grant only if you want assistance, and only if he submits to instruction. It’s your dig. ”

Her heartbeats filled her hands.

They were grinning at her, face flushed, tousled hair sweaty at the temples—they were draped in fur, for heaven’s sake.

She filled her hands with them , their damp, satiny face, then their fur-draped shoulders, and then she slipped her arms inside the cape, over the lawn on their shirt, hugging them fiercely.

“Shall we go right now?” Georgie gave her a wry and tender look as she released them. “You’re eager to begin, I can tell.”

“I’ve begun,” she said, thickly. “It’s begun.”

They inclined their head in puzzlement.

“My life,” she explained, everything blurring, because she was crying again.

When had she ever cried so much, or laughed so hard?

Never. The answer was never. She felt so raw these days, so open, so new, so needy.

Needing Georgie frightened her, and simultaneously overflowed her with glee.

It felt delicious to acknowledge a need, to allow them to meet it, with all of their being.

She was going to keep needing, willfully, needing and receiving, offering everything in turn, a giddy cycle without beginning or end.

“My life.” She swallowed hard. “ Our life.”

It felt like stepping off a cliff.

Georgie was immobile. Except for their eyes. Those pale, bright, black-lined eyes widened. “Our life?” Their grin returned, and they leaned toward her. “Are you saying there’s more to it than digging for the bones of long-dead Danes?”

She kissed them, because yes, there was, there was more to it. And then she dragged them out the door in quest of the bones of long-dead Danes.