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WITH EACH STEP, the weariness of today’s journey melted away as anticipation sank in until I hardly felt the weight of my satchel at all. The thick trees were difficult to track through, but I found my way west until reaching the small cave overlooking the fjord.

Trig was already there.

He knelt at the mouth of the cave, coercing flames to life with the strike of his flint against steel. He was trying to stay quiet, so it took longer to spark, but once it did, the dried leaves caught quickly. He set sticks over top to keep the flame burning.

I reached the cave before he looked up. He grinned. “Right on time.”

Trig was the eldest son of Jarl Hakan, and inherited his faoir’s broad frame and silvery eyes. His coarse blond hair was from his móoir, but the rest of him—the way his smile pulled to the left and the unbridled energy running through him—that was all his.

My heart fluttered at his presence. I dropped my axe first, letting it clang against the cave’s stone walls. Then my satchel. Here, with Trig, I wasn’t a warrior who needed her shield, I wasn’t a fighter protected by armor. Layer by layer stripped back until I was only Rune, second daughter to Jakob and Estrid, just a girl who was in love with a boy.

His arms were outstretched, and I folded myself into them.

“I’ve missed you,”

he whispered into my hair. His voice was like running water, a refreshing sound after a long day, and I could listen to him for eternity. I buried my face into the coarse fibers of his wolfskin coat and breathed deep. Then I breathed again. He always smelled of chestnuts after helping his móoir make soap, and I’d grown quite fond of that scent.

I clung to him tightly, the one good thing life had given me.

“I spoke to Móoir about you.”

Trig pulled his head back to see mine, and brushed away strands of my dark hair. “She told Faoir about it, I’m sure of it.”

I struggled to keep my smile from dipping. If she had told his faoir, his faoir had made no note of it when he saw me tonight. Either he didn’t know I was the girl his son cared for, or he didn’t care enough to look at me for more than a few seconds.

The possibility of it being the latter was high. None in the Fjord Clan would have paired me with Jarl Hakan’s son, and if they knew, none would guess I’d hold his attention long. It was all just a guess though. Trig had asked we keep the relationship quiet for a time, and now his móoir was the first to know of it. Not even Tova knew. “What did she say when you told her?”

It was the barest hesitation, but I caught it. “She’s happy to see me happy.”

I didn’t want to press to find out what she actually said.

After studying my face, he frowned. “Did Faoir say anything?”

I tried to look optimistic, but I ducked my head. “He didn’t have to. His face said everything.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad,”

Trig said. I refocused on him. He wore the goofy lopsided grin again that made me think I could conquer the world if only he would keep smiling.

But his faoir’s face was drilled into mine—the way his eye passed over me and how he’d frowned as I passed, and my spirits dampened. I removed myself from Trig’s grip to pull the sheepskin from my shoulders and set it before the fire. Without it, the night wind snapped against my neck, finding its way through the tight weave of the linen tunic and pushing me to draw close to the fire. Trig sat beside me, gathering my hand in his. My fingers were thin and bony, much like the rest of me, but they fit in his grip perfectly.

Being here with him, it was hard to worry about anything else. I tightened my hand in his.

“He doesn’t know me well, yet,”

I said. “He’ll approve once he does.”

It’d only been a month of us sneaking out to meet each other like this, and the thrill of it hadn’t died down. If Aegir came through, it wouldn’t matter what anyone else said about our relationship—this feeling would never fade. Trig and I would build a future side by side.

I turned my eyes upwards to the skies. You are the last one I have hope in, I reminded Aegir. And I am the only one offering you glory in the clan. Don’t let me down.

“Faoir will approve,”

Trig promised. “And I swear Móoir likes you, so she’ll help convince him.”

I hated the way that sounded, as if we’d need an army to convince Jarl Hakan I was worth his son’s time.

The truth was, we didn’t need his approval. Trig could spend time with whoever he wanted, and so could I. But Trig was set to be the next chieftain, and his faoir had already given Trig permission to challenge him for the position soon, and that meant I’d need the clan’s approval as well if Trig wanted to remain unchallenged during his leadership.

To become chieftain, you must challenge the current one to a fight to the death. They can step down, or they can fight.

Trig’s faoir challenged the man before him, who’d only held the position for four years after he’d challenged the chieftain before him. Just as the chieftain before him. For generations, all had chosen to fight. All had failed. Our fjord was stained with the blood of a string of chieftains, all serving for a short time before another took their place as head of the clan. It was not a role easily held.

Until Trig’s faoir. And I knew the clan was eager to see if Trig would last as long.

He’d need a wife who could sway the hot-headed men from challenging his place and keep him from going mad under the pressure. Yet I could hardly get even one man’s approval.

I snapped a twig in my hand and fed it to the flames.

“Where did this one come from?”

Trig asked, pointing to a curved scar on my wrist.

“We need to talk about this.”

I pulled my hand away.

“We will,”

Trig said. “But I haven’t seen this one.”

I sighed, and offered my hand back for him to trace his finger along the line, ignoring the shivers than ran up my spine at the delicate touch. Until a few weeks ago, I’d never been touched like that. “That one is a mystery to me as well,”

I said, eyeing the two-inch scar, thin as a thread of silk, etched into my skin. “Perhaps I fought a wolf as a baby and got away with only that scar.”

He chuckled. “That wouldn’t surprise me. The first time I met you, you were training in the fields, and I was certain you were a goddess descended from above.”

I bit my tongue. “I remember that day.”

It wasn’t me he’d watched train. It was Tova.

But we looked so similar back then, he hadn’t known the difference. I’d come upon him as he watched her, and his face was in such awe I couldn’t look away. He’d carried a stack of logs, but dropped them at his feet to better watch, and his mouth hung open in utter amazement.

His expression was so pure, I’d fallen in love that day. I fell in love with him as he fell in love with her.

But he loved me now, I reminded myself. It doesn’t matter who he saw that day. I turned my attention back to him.

“How’d this happen?”

I asked, thumbing bubbled skin near his ankle.

This was the game we played, trying to memorize every detail of each other as quickly as we could, making up for the years we’d spent around each other but never speaking. It was a game I’d happily play my entire life.

“That is less savage than I care to admit. I drew too close to the fire when boiling water, and it scorched the skin. I ran all the way to the fjord to cool my ankle in the sea instead of using the water from inside the hut, simply because it’s the idea I had first.”

That didn’t surprise me. Trig was, above all else, impulsive. He’d always been the first one to run through training simulations, always the first to speak and quickest to throw himself into the next adventure…and the next girl.

I tightened my grip on his hand. I’d waited my entire life to be the next girl he ran after. Trig shifted so I leaned against his back, with the fire at our side and the mouth of the cave before us, giving us the perfect view of the rippling waves hitting the shore down below. He sighed so contently, I had trouble believing he could be this relaxed with any of his other girls.

“Tova and I will approach your faoir in a few weeks to seek our shields,”

I told him. It was customary in our clan to fight the chieftain for our shields. No one expected us to beat him, especially not when no grown man could even beat him, but how well we fared in that fight determined whether he granted us our shield and allowed us on raids or if we had to wait another year.

I felt his body stiffen beside me. I shifted. “You believe I’ll get my shield, right?”

“I think there is no shame in getting it at eighteen.”

His words felt like betrayal, and I fought to not let them hurt me. “I will get it at seventeen.”

He softened as he ran a hand through his hair to see me better. “I know you will.”

Something in his voice shifted. He recollected my hands and pulled them onto his lap, taking his time to run his touch up and down my arms. “I don’t doubt your will, Rune. You’re strong enough to earn it, and then you’ll go on the first raid you can, because that’s who you are. But then your breathing will act up, and you’ll be left in a fight, struggling to breathe, and I might not be there to watch your back. I can’t—”

He shut his eyes. “I don’t want to lose you.”

The hurt I’d felt a moment before thawed into a warm pulse beneath my skin. I let his hand wander an aimless path down my back, each touch setting my skin on fire. “You are not going to lose me,”

I said. “My breathing gets stronger each year.”

That part was true. I had no doubt in five years, I’d be able to fight just as easily as anyone else.

From down the mountainside came the call from a horn. The clan would be lining up to spar together in an arena as a tribute of their talent to honor the gods. We needed to return soon if we wanted our absence to go unnoticed.

“Talk to your faoir about me,”

I said. “Remind him how devoted I am to the clan. He’ll give me my shield, and perhaps his blessing as well.”

Trig set his head on my shoulder again, speaking softly. “I will. Actually, I overheard him speaking to my móoir about marriage last night.”

My body froze. The rattle of wind through hollow branches and the clang of swords faded, even the snap of the fire at our side disappeared until all that remained was the echo of that word in my head. Marriage.

My voice trembled. “So he already approves?”

“He hasn’t spoken to me directly about it yet, but I expect he will soon.”

I chewed on my lower lip.

“Don’t worry about it.”

He tilted my chin toward him. “I choose who and when I marry. It’ll be my decision, not his.”

I tried to ease back against him, but my body remained stiff. I focused on the touch of his hand against my waist and the feel of his heart beating against his chest until my worries faded.

“I have a plan,”

he said, his words a gentle rustle in my ear. A strand of his twisted blond hair brushed against my cheek, contrasting the dark waves of my own. “I will go speak to the seer about our future.”

I shivered. It was a dire day when my fate rested on the words of the seer. The man stalked through the town like a bringer of death, seeing fit to deliver messages from the gods and read dice though he had no eyes to see them with. I didn’t care for the sunken pits where they should be, nor for the way he never had anything to say to me when I came. It’s not for me to say, he would tell me. But I was resilient back then, and eager to hear from the gods. I’d go back to him the next season to ask again, forcing myself to enter into the dark folds of his home just to hear a blessing from Asgard, but he’d turn me away with the same short answer.

My sisters all received promising prophesies about their futures, but the seer shrank back when I came and refused to speak with me. Finally, after I showed up at his home for the hundredth time bearing gifts to coerce the future from him, he gave me something more.

He spoke through his teeth like every word was painful to drag up through his chest. “I see heartbreak, betrayal, and a fight with the gods. They will turn on you, and you will lose the place you call home.”

His hand wavered over the dice before he yanked it away to cradle into his chest. He hissed, “All else is veiled from me.”

I stood, my legs shaking. Then I ran.

It’d been years, but I never told anyone the prophecy. And I never called upon the seer again.

“Let me know what he says,”

I told Trig in a flat tone.

He didn’t catch it and continued on, “I’m going to ask him about my future as a clan leader as well.”

There was something buried in his voice there, and I shifted to see his face. Worry lines cut deep across his forehead.

“You will be a great leader,”

I assured him.

He looked at me hopefully. “Do you mean that? I can take the truth.”

I held both his hands in mine. “I know it. It was your smart rationing that kept us going through many winters, and your relentless work replanting the fields after that storm last year. And when people are sick, sometimes they don’t even go to the altars of the gods to pray; they come to you, because they know your word moves the hands of the gods. You are a strong man and a wise one. That makes a great leader.”

His lips barely turned up in a smile. “Faoir thinks I should have done more after the storm. I helped with the fields, but he wanted me building the homes.”

“He’s wrong. We needed you in the fields, and there were enough men rebuilding the homes. But you kept working when many others stopped. Don’t forget that.”

He smiled then, and relaxed into me. I rested against him, combing my hands through his hair and watching the fire dance. “I just want to be a good chieftain,”

he whispered.

“You will be,”

I whispered back. “I believe in you.”

That was what drew me to Trig—even with his strength and his connection to power, he wielded his kind heart as boldly as he wielded his axe, and that made him loved by many. He was so worried about making a fine chieftain while none of the other men in the clan even came close.

We stayed that way for a while, at peace even as we heard the tribute fighting below, until a different sound cut through the night. “The second trumpet.”

He exhaled. “We really should—”

“I know.”

I stood. “We should get back before the feast begins.”

I saved him from having to say what he meant. Before anyone suspects you’re with me.

But even as I said it, Trig laced his hand in mine and tugged me back to the ground. He wrapped his hand behind my head, and that was all it took to forget everything else. His lips were on mine, and I melted into his touch.

“I don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s you and me, taking on the world together,”

he said between kisses. And it might have made me a fool but I fully believed him. I could see our future as clearly as I could see my reflection in the stream that ran outside our house, and it was a glorious one filled with leading the clan, fighting side by side on raids, and keeping the Fjord strong amongst the clans of the north.

I kissed him once more, feeling the scratch of his beard brush against my chin and the pull of his hand against my back. “If we fight for this,”

I said, “the gods will reward us for our determination, and nothing can separate what the gods put together.”

I sent a silent prayer up to Aegir. This is what I ask for. Keep your end of the deal, and I will move your altar to the front.

For one tender moment, all was good.