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If what Maude said was true, the raiders were never going to stop coming at them.

She had spoken with one and then snapped.

Herrick had a pretty good guess at what was said, but he needed Maude to confirm it.

She would only have reacted so violently if it concerned Helvig.

His thoughts circled as to why Maude had chosen the way she did.

Endless possibilities spiraled through him, but he came to the same conclusion each time.

Maude seemed to walk through her life like she was the worst evil in the world when everyone around her knew that was not true.

She had a temper and pushed people away, but she was not evil.

If those raiders were sent to kill her instead of him, and Herrick had been the one to face the impossible choice of wiping out the raiders, he wasn’t sure he would choose differently than Maude had.

And that was what was bothering him more than anything.

Everything Herrick knew and believed about the world started to fracture.

With Maude, he found himself straying from the rigid black-and-white view he had given to the world and started seeing the gray in between.

With her, he could see that sometimes there was no right or wrong path but the only path forward.

Hakon’s footsteps echoed behind him, and it was only another moment before his brother sat next to him on the stairs in front of the temple.

“Do you want to talk about what is bothering you?” Hakon asked, handing him a bowl of stew.

“No,” Herrick said, spooning the hot liquid into his mouth.

“Okay,” Hakon said, leaning back on his hands.

The silence of Ljosa pressed in on him as he ate his meal but tasted nothing. Herrick spoke when the weight of the silence was too much for him to bear .

“She picked me up, threw me from the fight with her wind, and then took matters into her own hands,” Herrick said quietly, but anger was laced in his words.

“And you feel emasculated?” Hakon offered, biting on the inside of his cheek.

“No, asshole,” Herrick snapped. “She didn’t want my help.”

They were quiet for a time.

“Or,” Hakon said, breaking the silence again. “She knew you would get hurt if you stayed that close to her when she erupted. She got you out of harm’s way when she was at the end of her rope.”

“How do you know she lost her temper?” Herrick asked, eyeing his brothers.

“Eydis just told me.” Hakon’s ears turned bright red. “I guess Maude had roused enough to tell them about it. Shame seems to be riding her pretty hard right now, but she doesn't regret her decision to save your life. I can't say I can disagree with her.”

Herrick had no response. She had thrown him out of the fight and made a choice that had made Herrick uncomfortable for reasons he could no longer claim were valid. She chose his life over those of the raiders, just like he would have chosen her life over theirs.

That fact settled in him like a stone sinking to the bottom of a raging river of his emotions. Maude had chosen him even though she pushed him away.

She had tried all morning to pull him from his mood, had helped him build the longboat in silence, and had swiftly moved him from harm's way when the fight would not be won honorably. He had been trying to reign in his worry over seeing Gunnar seize the way he did all morning. Then, when she was trying to draw him out, he was angry that she couldn’t make up her mind about how she wanted to be treated .

It was clear that they were unable to stay away from each other, but what Herrick was feeling was more than a pull toward her. What he was feeling for Maude was terrifying if it was real. And Herrick thought today, for a moment, that she was feeling them too.

Foolish , he thought. She will only ever look out for herself. She told you as much.

The thought lay with him for a long while, but it still rang untrue in the echoes of his chaotic mind. Hakon went back inside, unwilling to encourage Herrick’s brooding, but not before he put a hand on Herrick’s shoulder and encouraged him to try and see things from Maude’s perspective.

His brother's footsteps echoed as he left Herrick with his thoughts on the steps of the temple.

He heard his friends laugh from where they sat inside the temple, the sound drifting out to him.

He wondered if Maude was laughing with them or if she had peacefully fallen into sleep for the night.

He wondered if she really was ashamed of the blood on her hands.

She will only ever look out for herself , he thought again as he stared into an empty night sky.

But he did not believe it for one second.

The moon was high in the sky before Hakon came back to relieve Herrick of his watch. Sleep was heavy in his eyes, and Herrick thought about offering to stay on watch so his brother could sleep, but Hakon put a hand up to stop him.

“Go talk to her,” was all he said before he sat down where Herrick had been, hands scrubbing the sleep away.

Choosing not to argue, Herrick walked back into the temple and crept around his sleeping friends. He saw the outline of Maude’s form on her bedroll and started to walk toward her but found himself unable to keep going. He shook his head and turned to his bedroll.

Coward , he scolded himself.

Gunnar was snoring on the bedroll next to his, with no evidence of his fit from this morning. Herrick sat down, ready to settle into sleep, when he saw Liv turn toward him.

“You’re not one to run from a fight,” Liv teased, her white teeth peeking out from the darkness as she shot him a wide smile.

“Who said I’m running,” Herrick grumbled as he lay back and stared at the ceiling.

The swirling pattern of stars that had been painted on the ceiling must have been a nod to the Light Elven’s northern allies, the Shadow Elven. Worshiping all things night and shadow, the Shadow Elven cities were rumored to be just as beautiful as the Kingdom of Light, just colder and darker.

“You need to talk to Maude,” Liv said, her smooth face serious for once. “She told me what happened.”

“Lovely,” Herrick muttered.

“You’re being a brat, Herrick,” Liv sighed. “Don’t push away the people you love because you were too stubborn to resolve something. Maude does that enough for the both of you.”

Herrick stiffened at her words.

“What’s gotten into you lately?” he asked, shifting the focus to his friend abruptly.

“What do you mean?”

“You were so focused on getting us to Ljosa that you barely spoke to anyone or ate anything,” Herrick pointed out.

Liv was quiet for a long time before she answered him .

“Being here just brought up a lot about my past,” Liv said quietly. “I used to come here a lot when I was young. I guess being so close to Ljosa made me remember my childhood.”

“Before you became a nomad?” Herrick asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

Liv cleared her throat. “Yes. This city is just as beautiful now as it was then.”

Herrick glanced at his friend, spying a single tear making its way down her ebony cheek.

“I used to want to live here, you know,” Liv chuckled a bit. “I guess that seems silly now, but I wanted it so badly.”

“It’s not silly,” Herrick murmured quietly.

He turned to look at Liv fully, but she was now staring at the ceiling, her gray eyes glazed over like she was gripped in a memory.

“The last thing I said to my father was that I never wanted to see him again,” Liv whispered. “I told him that I wanted to live here, and he told me it was impossible.”

Silence.

“I guess he was right. But back then, I so badly wanted to be on my own already. I felt like I had grown up and was ready to take on the world. He reminded me that I was, in fact, not more than a child. We fought. I told him I hated him, that I never wanted to see him again, and stormed out.”

Herrick was still, not wanting to break the memory she was seeing play out before her eyes.

“I ran away from my town and didn't come back until the next day, needing the space.” She paused. “I saw the smoke before I saw anything else. I remember how quiet my head got when I saw the black tendrils reaching up to the gods. Then smelled the sickly sweet char of burnt flesh.”

The air seemed to pause and listen to Liv’s tale .

“There were Flame Soldiers still patrolling the area, but I managed to sneak past them. I tried to find my family home, but the smoke was too heavy, so I crawled across the entire town to get to my house. When I finally did, my father was huddled over the rest of my family. My younger siblings, my mother—”

Her voice broke. Thickness settled in Herrick’s throat.

“There was nothing I could do to save them,” Liv said, her voice smaller than he had ever heard from the strong warrior. “They were gone, and the last words they heard from me were words of anger and hate.”

Liv was quiet for so long that Herrick thought she might not speak again. She had never told them the details of how her family died.

“I was pulled from my burning home by the local seer, an old, cranky woman who had always had an opinion on everything from your hair to your choice for supper.” Liv cracked a broken smile.

“She had always hated me, said I had too much fire in me. But she got me out of the burning town and told me to make it right. She told me that I would find the right path to avenge my loved ones.”

Liv shook her head and the memories away.

“I took off running north and didn’t stop until snow settled on the ground around me. I moved from town to town after that. Then I found you, Hakon, and Gunnar. I hadn’t thought of that cranky seer once until I saw you all on the bridge.” She paused. “I knew then that you were my path.”

She looked at Herrick now, more serious than she had ever been with him before.

“I felt that again when I met Maude. I was an insufferable asshole the first few days with her because I thought that maybe I had been wrong before. But the more I got to know her, the more I realized that it's the two of you together that will lead us all down the right path. ”

Herrick, unable to form any words in response to her revelation, only stared at Liv.

“So make it right,” she continued, voice hard. “Talk to her, listen to her side, instead of being an equally stubborn asshole.”

Liv turned over and put her back to Herrick, ending their conversation.

Herrick’s mind turned over again and again at Liv’s story when he realized the quiet rumbling of snores belonging to Maude had stopped at some point.

He sat up abruptly, looking over to where Maude slept, but found her bedroll empty.

He didn't know when she had crept away, but he knew he couldn’t wait until tomorrow to speak with her.

Herrick got up and started to search for her in the small space.

A flash of red came from a side entrance overlooking the ocean.

Herrick would make it right with Maude. He wasn’t sure if it was Liv’s story about losing her loved ones or if it was that Hakon was right about him feeling upset with Maude for pushing him away, but Herrick knew he needed to talk to Maude so he could make this right.

The last thing she saw of him was anger and disgust at her saving his life. She needed to know that he had been the ass who couldn't look past his nose to see the big picture, the gray between the blurred lines of right and wrong.

There was nothing to forgive her for, and she needed to know that.

Maude made hard choices for the good of other people, choices that Herrick had always struggled with.

She saw the world for what it was and tried to make it better, even if that meant taking out a legion of raiders to protect her friends.

With little consideration as to what he would say, Herrick moved through the open archway and into the cool night air to find the woman who continued to show him a better way to live.