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When he finally reached the longhouse, he found her on the wet ground, a gaping wound in her side.

“Svana!” Andor sank to his knees by her side, the battle be damned.

He knew Fridstein and his men were fighting off anyone who would consider attacking him and his wounded wife.

Andor scooped Svana into his arms and held her close. Her lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes. They fixed on him, and she smiled. “Andor.”

“Do not speak,” he said. “Kall is here, he will cure you.”

She shook her head. “Freya’s Valkyries are already waiting to take me to Fólkvangr. I am glad she let me see you before I go.”

Andor squeezed her tight to his chest. “No. I will not let her take you.”

“Why were you late?” she whispered. “You promised to be back to me a moon ago. Are you whole?”

Andor’s eyes burned, his muscles as tense as ropes. Guilt gripped him and smashed him like a boulder. The wound looked bad, but he was not going to let her die.

“Kall!” he cried for the healer. “Here!”

He turned back to her, his chest aching.

“I am whole. I was late because Ubba—”

He was late because Ubba Ragnarsson had asked him to raid a monastery in Wessex and bring him a Bible the Saxons valued more than gold. He’d rewarded him with land, silver, and treasure. Andor told himself he’d done all that for Svana, but Jarl Andor Thornsson was now famous in all the Norse lands and in Bretland. Which was the real reason he’d broken his word to the woman he loved.

Why was he thinking about land, treasure, and silver? He should be saying how much he loved her.

“It does not matter why I was late, my love,” he said. “I brought us riches and fame. But I should never have let you get hurt. If only I had come when I promised…”

Svana shook her head. “I am proud of you, my husband.” She touched his cheek.

Guilt gripped Andor’s throat. Svana had been everything he had hoped for in a wife. She loved him, she kept the household in excellent order, and her word was cast-iron. Pride for her, love for her, filled every part of him with warmth.

“Kall! Heal her!” He bellowed, but his voice was lost in the noise of the battle.

Svana swallowed. She was as pale as cotton grass, and her eyes closed. “I must let go now, Andor. I wanted to be a good wife to you…” she whispered.

And froze.

She lay motionless in his arms. Her chest did not rise any longer.

A gentle breeze brought smoke from the remnants of Andor’s house, and it singed his eyes and throat.

He pressed his wife against his chest, burying his face in her silky hair, inhaling her scent mixed with the iron tang of blood. “I should have been here,” he whispered into her ear. “I should have protected you.”

He took her hand in his, the hand that had caressed him, the hand that he had hoped would soothe their future children. The hand that would, one day, have waved goodbye to him, old and gray, on the way to his final battle. Andor kissed her still-warm forehead. Shame scorched his neck and face like the coals that were all that remained of the village he had failed to protect.

“I am sorry, Svana,” he whispered against her soft skin. The Valkyries would hear his words and carry them to her spirit. “You were everything a man could hope for in a wife. None can replace you. None ever will.”

He held her for a moment longer, then used his arm to sweep the tears from his face and beard. With guilt as heavy as a granite torc around his neck, he rose, the desire for vengeance sucking at his lungs, drying his mouth, making his bones ache.

“Who did this?” he roared. “Who killed my wife?”

Fridstein delivered a deadly strike to an enemy warrior. “It was that worm, Elgr,” Fridstein threw across his shoulder, his breath heavy. “Look! He is trying to cut his way to the ships.”

A predator’s roar shot up Andor’s throat and reverberated in his whole body. All his men fought the intruders and the ships were unguarded, there for the taking. If Elgr put just ten men on each ship, they could sail away with everything.

Andor would have given all of his treasure and all of his ships for a chance to save Svana’s life. But it was too late for that. Elgr had already taken everything he truly cared about.