He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. His pupils were blown wide, his breathing uneven, but through the desire there was something else—a tenderness that made her chest ache.
“Aye.” He regarded her for a long moment, his thumb tracing absent circles on her hip. “There is... somethin’. I should have shown ye before now.”
“If it’s another sword drill, I swear?—”
“Nay.” He released her waist, and the loss of his warmth felt like a small injustice. “Come.”
He led her through the corridor that connected the solar to the eastern wing of the keep, past the main staircase, past the main library. He continued down a narrower passage she’d never explored—one that ended at a heavy oak door reinforced with iron bands, the wood dark with age.
Ragnar produced a key from inside his tunic—small and blackened, threaded on a leather cord that looked as though it had lived against his skin for years.
“I didnae even ken this room existed,” Isolda said, watching him work the lock.
The mechanism clicked, and he pushed the door open.
The room beyond was small—half the size of the solar—with a single narrow window that let in a shaft of pale afternoon light. The walls were bare stone, the floor covered in a worn rug that had once been fine. A heavy wooden chair sat near the window beside a battered reading stand, and against the far wall stoodthree iron-banded chests, their lids closed, their surfaces layered with dust except where hands had recently disturbed it.
Ragnar crossed to the nearest chest and knelt, he lifted the lid, and the hinges groaned softly.
Inside, stacked with care, lay books.
Not many, but they’d been handled so often that the leather bindings had gone soft at the spines. Some were vellum-bound, others wrapped in cloth. A few had gilt lettering that had worn almost entirely away.
Isolda moved closer and saw histories, a collection of Norse sagas, two volumes of poetry, a translated bestiary with illustrations that had been touched so many times the ink had smudged at the corners.
“Yer maither’s?” she asked softly, kneeling beside him.
“Some.” He lifted a slim volume and turned it in his hands.
Isolda reached for one, its pages yellowed and fragile. She opened it carefully, feeling the texture of the vellum beneath her fingertips, the weight of something treasured. She looked up at Ragnar.
“The library upstairs,” she said slowly, connecting the pieces. “That’s fer everyone. This is...”
“Mine.” The word came out plain and unadorned. “Just like ye.”
Isolda traced the page with her fingertip, trailing over handwritten notes in the margin. “Ye didnae learn as a bairn, did ye?”
The silence that followed was its own answer. Ragnar sat back on his heels, his forearms resting on his thighs, his gaze fixed on the open chest.
“When I became jarl, I could barely sign me own name. Freyr was the only one who kent. He’d sit with me in this room at night, after everyone else was asleep, and we’d work through the letters taegether.” His mouth curved, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Why did ye nae just tell?—”
“Because a leader who cannae read is a leader men doubt.” He said it simply, without bitterness. “And I couldnae afford doubt. Nae then.”
She studied his face—the hard line of his jaw, the way his blue eyes had gone distant, fixed on some point years in the past where a boy who’d already killed his own father sat in this room and fought his way through the alphabet by candlelight.
“Ye taught yerself, then. And Freyr helped.”
“Aye. It took years. I still read slower than most.”
“Ragnar.” She waited until he looked at her. “Ye’re one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever kent. Ye rule an island, manage alliances with five other jarls. The fact that ye taught yerself tae read while leadin’ a clan daesnae make yeless.It makes ye remarkable.”
She could see in his eyes that no one had ever said that to him before, and the weight of hearing it now, from her, was settling into places that had been empty for a very long time.
Isolda reached for another book—a collection of Norse sagas, this one more worn than the rest, the spine held together with careful stitching that spoke of repair after repair. She opened it and found margin notes, the handwriting gradually improving across the pages like a record of its own quiet battle.
“This was the first one ye read on yer own,” she said.
