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“Yea, but—”
His heart thundered in his rib cage. His blood raced. He felt light-headed. Little by little, one at a time, the facts registered in his dumbstruck brain. Signe was not dead. Drifa had somehow rescued her. All these years of guilt and grief, his daughter had been alive ... a daughter whose name had been changed, for gods only knew what reason. And Drifa had failed to tell him.
“You bitch! You flailed me with remorse for taking your virginity and introducing you to unnatural bedsport. All the time you cast insults at my honor, you were living the biggest lie. Have you no idea the guilt I have suffered all these years for failing to rescue Signe? And you waited until we were in the midst of a dangerous desert escape that might very well end one or both of our lives?”
“I did try to find you.”
He made a snorting sound of disbelief.
“I sent Rafn to Jomsborg and all the market towns, Norsemandy, the Saxon lands, even Iceland. We believed you were dead.”
“And since you arrived in Byzantium? What held you back since then? What feckless excuse do you have for that outrage?”
“Fear.”
“Of what? I have ne’er beaten a woman.”
“Not that kind of fear. I feared ... I feared you would take my baby from me.”
“Your baby?”
He yanked on the camel’s reins, pulling it to a stop, then called out to Ivar, “Princess Drifa will be riding with you now. I need to go on ahead. Alone.”
Ivar looked surprised, but stopped his camel and made quick work of transferring her from one camel to the other. The whole time Drifa just barely held back her welling tears. The whole time Sidroc refused to look at her.
Still, she persisted, “There is more I need to say if you will only—”
He cut her off with the slice of his hand in the air. “No more! If you say anything else, I cannot guarantee I will not go berserk with rage at you.”
She decided to tell him one more thing, anyway, despite his warning. “I love your daughter as if she were my own. She is adorable. Everyone thinks so. She has everyone at Stoneheim under her little thumb with just a smile.”
“Is that supposed to convince me to give up rights to my own child?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“How would I know? You jabber, jabber, jabber, and what is the point? How would I know what are lies and what is the truth with such as you?”
“Here is a truth for you. Runa looks just like you, and I have told her about you, her father, and how you saved her life. And, yea, you did save her life, Sidroc, by forcing your father to give you time.”
He froze, closed his eyes for a long moment, then rode away in silence.
Chapter Twenty-one
The saddest words: What might have been...
It was evening before Sidroc was in Drifa’s presence again. He’d ridden all day, never stopping, until he found a small watering hole that was too tempting to pass up, especially since a large, tattered but useable tent had been left behind. He’d first had to evict a snake, two lizards, and a hairy spider.
Despite keeping his distance, he never went so far in advance that he couldn’t see Ivar and Drifa to make sure they were in no danger. The whole time he pondered and pondered what little Drifa had told him about his daughter. That event—the death of his daughter—had been such a turning point in his life, and he was having trouble getting past the implication of her being alive.
Skinning and roasting the snake for dinner was a possibility, but then he snared a skinny lamb that had managed to survive somehow here in the desert, probably lost from some passing caravan. He packed the snake meat in wet palm leaves with hot coals beneath the sand, and erected a makeshift spit for the lamb.
After that, he’d bathed, changed clothing, and set up a campfire, with the lamb spitting succulent juices, by the time Ivar and Drifa caught up with him
He saw immediately by Drifa’s puffy eyes and red nose that she had been weeping profusely. He did not care.
He saw immediately that Ivar was furious with him for making his princess cry and probably for riding separate from them. He did not care.
Sidroc helped a glaring Ivar unload the camel and told the man, but for Drifa’s benefit, that the watering hole was clean enough for drinking and there was enough for buckets to bathe with. She walked silently past him, her red nose raised pridefully.
