He guided me over to the bed, and like he had the night before, he tucked me under the covers. But this time, when heturned for the chaise on the other side of the room, I patted the enormous bed. “Stay with me.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BASTIAN
Iwas frozen in the bed next to Sigrid, absolutely terrified to move in case I spooked her. We’d forged a new bond, but every time I thought I’d knocked her walls down, she found a way to rebuild them stronger.
My heart beat so rapidly, I could hear it pounding in my ears.
“My father uses the people I love against me too.” The words tumbled out of her like she hadn’t entirely meant to say them aloud.
She continued in a soft but steady voice. “As my father’s heir, I was treated differently from my brothers, expected to do more. It felt like an honor when I was younger, one I was eager to live up to, but when my powers manifested in adolescence, his demands changed.” She rubbed her temples, like dredging up the memories was exhausting and I wanted to lift the invisible burden for her. “I was terrified when I first began to sense people’s fears. It’s like living in a constant hellscape ofhumanity’s horrors, and I cowered from it, begging him to make it stop.”
I dared to reach out a hand and place it on her knee over the blanket, and she didn’t shove me away. To be a child who constantly experienced people’s fears?
“My father was…less than sympathetic. He grew determined to train the weakness out of me, so his answer was to expose me to the worst fears. If I could handle myself through inflicting torture, their everyday, mundane fears wouldn’t be so overwhelming. I became what I needed to be to survive.”
She paused like she was digging for a long-buried memory. “He was careful at first to only send me people who’d done heinous things, people I’d be able to justify torturing. But that didn’t last. Once he saw my powers in action, he wanted to use them on his enemies or anyone he suspected of being disloyal. He knew how I hated it, so when he found something he wanted from me more, he offered me an out. I could stop torturing if I married a Viking of his choosing.
“Arranged marriages are common for Viking royals, so I should’ve realized there was something wrong when he saw reason to bribe me into doing it, but I was only sixteen and far too relieved to have an escape. I didn’t meet the man until the wedding. He was the son of an influential warlord my father needed to bring in line to consolidate his power, a godsdamned animal who’d been raised to think he was a god. He knew who I was and what I was capable of, and the sack of shit’s answer was to try to cow me that first night, to claim his marital rights by force when I refused to offer them freely. I cut off his head and carried it out to the feast. What a sight I must’ve been in my torn and bloodstained white gown.”
A vicious grin I could see even in the dim glow of the fire replaced her scowl. “How many times I’ve gotten to relive that memory in my father’s fears. How many times he’s imagined meholding his head by the braid, gore dripping from his severed neck.”
“So he sent an assassin after you?” She’d survived, and yet it twisted my guts to think of what she’d gone through.
She nodded slowly, her smile replaced by a haunted look. “I thought he might do something to punish me, but I didn’t expectthat. Sending a Banamaðr isn’t a scare tactic. He meant to kill me and wanted to be sure it was done swiftly. That very night, the Banamaðr attacked.”
It was hard to imagine a creature of death that scared even Sigrid. “How did you defeat him?”
A humorless smile curved her lips. “Luck and my berserker. Even Banamaðr have fears. There is no record of them ever failing, but this one was afraid to be the first. It was his downfall when he imagined his weaknesses and I exploited them. Even then, it was the closest I’ve ever come to death. His weaknesses would’ve been an accomplished warrior’s strengths.”
She fingered a sharp tooth on her necklace. “I wear the trophy I took before I deposited his head outside my father’s chamber. He never said a word about it, but he left me alone…for a time. We were at war, and I was too useful to him in battle to push the issue. I thought we’d reached an understanding, but years later, he found himself in need of another alliance, and he’d discovered a better way of controlling me.
“During the war, he’d seen how much my brothers meant to me, and this time he called me back to the palace and made it clear he’d kill them one at a time. He marched Axel, who was still only a child, into the throne room and handed him a blade. Axel eventually became a master weaponsmith, and even at that age, he’d been fascinated by a beautiful blade. As he examined it, my father asked if I was ready to marry again. The threat was clear. If I didn’t do my duty as his heir, he would’ve seen Axel killed with the blade he was so delighted by.”
“My second husband tried something similar to the first. When I agreed to wed again, my father held a tournament to find the strongest Dane to breed with me. I was notorious for killing my first husband at that point, so you can imagine the type of man who felt up to being my second. The bastard who won was a brute. I should’ve been able to handle him, but my father tricked me, and before I knew it, I was chained to the bed.”
She shrugged like it was nothing. Shrugged like she could handle what had happened. I might’ve hated that shrug more than the rest of it. That she’d endured enough in her life to even be able to shrug at it…I’d never known such violent rage.
“How did you get away?”
“It took me a while, but he was afraid. Even when I was in chains, he feared me. His fears told me that he’d underestimated my strength and wasn’t sure the anchors on the chains would hold. He’d been warned to reinforce them, but the fool didn’t listen. He died too quickly.”
She idly dropped her hand onto mine, not quite holding it but tracing her fingertips over my knuckles.
“I’m surprised your father still wanted you to be his heir. Why not one of your brothers after you defied him?”
She laughed low in her throat. “He loved that I was strong enough to defy him, takes such pride in my viciousness. I was the strongest and fiercest of my siblings, and he thought he could shape me into his image if he only found the right way to control me.
“He trained the weakness out of me but never managed to strip me of my love for my brothers. And he can’t stand it. He thinks that as the heir, I must be willing to use them as tools to maintain power, just as he did. He’ll keep exploiting my weakness, using my brothers against me, until he breaks me or one of us kills the bastard. While he lives, our freedom is only temporary.”
I’d seen the look she got when I told her about my mother. Whatever she’d been feeling then was what I felt knowing she had to live in fear of the day her father would try to use her again. I trembled with the need to fight for her freedom, even if I’d likely end up dead in the process.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone standing against you, Talon, and Thorin together. Why haven’t you killed him?”
She snorted. “In a fair fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance.”
It was odd that I’d never caught so much as a whisper of what the Viking king’s unique berserker power was. Talon was the only one besides Sigrid I knew for sure—he could sense people’s intentions. “What gives him such an advantage?”
