Page 37 of Kept By the Viking (Forgotten Sons #1)

“He told me enough.” She fisted well-traveled coins against her breast bone.

The flat tang of metal in her sweating palm reached her nose.

Vlad stood shoulder to shoulder with her, watching the two dying ships.

A slow crackle. A hiss. Wood collapsed, and the Seine devoured the jarl’s small fishing boat.

From her side vision, she caught Vlad’s stony profile. It buckled a split second. In pain ?

“It’s a mistake for a son to raise a sword against his father,” he said, folding beefy arms across his chest. “I left after that, but he probably told you that too.”

In the river, the larger drakkar ship wasn’t giving up without a fight.

It listed sideways. The center snapped, and water crept up the prow.

Merchants and patrons alike paused to shade their eyes for a view.

Three boys raced to the riverbank to watch the drowning dragon head until it disappeared for good.

The people of Rouen went about their day, herding goats and children, buying and selling goods.

Conversation buzzed. Trade carried on. A breeze kissed Safira’s cheeks, and she checked the southern forest line.

A no man’s land of wildness and violence.

Rurik had ridden headlong into those dark woods.

“My son will return. I am sure of it.” Vlad toed a rock through a patch of grass.

Was the brash Viking...nervous? They’d carried on a stilted conversation staring at sinking vessels.

Bored of waiting, she faced him. “What do you want from me?”

His laugh was a valiant effort. “Who are you? Why does Rurik keep you?”

“I am Safira of Paris. As to your second question, you’ll have to ask Rurik.”

“Don’t play me for a fool, woman. What were you? A wealthy man’s concubine?”

She laughed bitterly. Men. Even free-thinking Vikings wanted to reduce a woman to a role, whatever worked neatly with their needs.

“Rurik asked me the same question.” A light shake of her head and, “I spoke the truth to you. What more can I say?”

Vlad’s mouth was a hard, familiar line. Like father, like son. The old Viking warrior looked ready to chew rocks and spit them out as pebbles.

“How did you come to Rurik’s keeping?”

“What makes you certain he keeps me?”

“Because the Forgotten Sons have held fast to their three laws for years.” He stared down at her. “Something made Rurik break his own law. I want to know what.”

Rurik. She swallowed the pain of yearning for him and the wrongness of it. This was confusing, her body and heart wanting one thing, her mind another.

“It was a simple bargain. I saved his life. He saved mine.” Head tipped high, she refused to let Vlad cow her. “He doesn’t keep me.”

Vlad’s face lit with Think what you want, woman . A sinew in his neck stood out. The corners of his mouth pinched white as if he bit back words...as if he had something to say and didn’t know how. He bent down and picked up three small stones and let them roll across his palm.

“You didn’t seek me to hear womanly whispers about a man,” she said.

Vlad threw a rock into the Seine. “I want you to give a message to Rurik.” He hesitated. “I want... I want you to tell him I didn’t know Longsword had promised the land to him.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

“Because he won’t listen to me.” His voice was a desperate bark.

“Have you tried?—”

“Tell. Him.” The corner of Vlad’s scarred eye ticked.

She gasped, truth hitting her deep in her midsection.

“This isn’t about the land. You don’t wish to fight him.”

She shouldn’t have said that aloud. Her feet shifted in clumps of grass. Two wolfish warriors, father and son, would face each other in combat. Her bargain with the jarl assured it wasn’t a battle to the death. Flesh and bone wouldn’t die. Something else would.

A chance of reconciliation?

Forgiveness and healing?

Or was this simply one man setting out to destroy the other’s pride? The answers to her questions were difficult to find. Rurik was sparing with words and more so with his emotions. The father was likely the same. Or worse. This time she tried a different tactic.

“You don’t have to fight Rurik.”

His glance was sharp. “This battle has been long in coming. I can’t stop it.”

“You mean you won’t.”

He snorted and lobbed another rock far into the river.

“If Rurik won’t accept the words from your lips, what makes you certain he’ll accept them from mine?” she asked.

Vlad ignored her question. “Tell him...tell him I swear it is the truth on his mother’s amber pieces.”

The words punched her. The two half-carved amber stones. Rurik, the man, said he’d never sell them, but it was Rurik, the young boy with fierce eyes, who haunted her.

“The amber pieces,” she said at last.

“They belonged to his mother’s mother and her mother’s mother. Oddny refused to part with them.”

“Oddny?”

“His mother. I took them to trade for a new sword.” Head shaking, his rusty laugh drifted.

“Rurik tore through Birka...never saw him run that fast, but he pummeled my leg and challenged me in front of the blacksmith. He was eight years old.” The older man cut her with an unforgiving glare. “I knocked him to the ground.”

She sucked in a harsh breath. The cruelty…

“I did what I had to do. He needed to learn.” Lips curled against his teeth. “Good warriors react. The best warriors act first.”

“But he was a boy.”

“Who learned a man’s lessons.” His chin jutted at the southern forest in the distance. “Now he reaps the benefit. He rides with Jarl Will Longsword. Skalds will tell stories of his well-earned fame.”

Air chuffed from her lungs. Fame. Destiny. A life’s weave. Were these the only things Vikings cared about?

“I could not imagine my father doing such a thing to my brother.”

Light sparked in his eyes. “Your father in Paris?”

She caught herself. The fistful of coins dug into her skin.

Rurik was cut from the same cloth as Vlad.

Bred on battle, a leader of men, fighting hard for a swath of land, and ready to expand more of it for Longsword.

Would Rurik be of the same bent as Vlad?

Rurik was gentleness in private, brutish in others.

How well did she truly know him?

He made her heart and body soar, but they’d shared a journey from the Saxon outpost to Rouen. Beyond that, they had nothing. Rurik was strangely single-minded about keeping her, and he’d already planted his seed in her womb because she’d wanted her maidenhood gone.

Her hand slipped to her abdomen. If she was with child...

Rurik . Eyes closing, she felt him. Rough hands achingly gentle, imprinting on her body. His name was a whisper on her soul. Confusing. Heart-melting. Freeing her and binding her all at once. But the Viking didn’t love her. He wished to own her.

She was done with being owned.

Eyes opened again, she breathed the Seine’s clean air. “I will give your message to Rurik, but you must do something for me in return.”

“Name it.”

She opened the handful of coins and poured them into Vlad’s broad, calloused palm. “You will need this to buy a horse.”

Calmly she eyed the river, its gentle waters flowing home to Paris. She laid out her plan. Vlad, to his credit, listened. The Viking’s stony eyes never wavered as their bargain was struck.

She trod thoughtful steps to the blacksmith’s shop.

Life was different on this side of the Epte River.

Violence a strong thread. If fighting was the warp on their looms, passion was their weft.

A weave of men and women. Strong Viking women like Ellisif and Astrid made the intricate fabric of Rouen, women unwilling to let a man decide their destiny.

She would be no different. In Rouen. Or in Paris.

Whatever her path, she would not be controlled like a docile prize. Never again.