God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) (22 page)

“I am not threatened by my wife’s greatness. They tell my story, too. And yes, I would have, and it would have gotten me killed, I think, to have kept you stifled.”

She took his hand from her hair and held it. “We save each other.”

“My shieldmaiden. We are destined.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it.

A knock on the door heralded the coming of the tub and hot water. Vali stood and called, “Come!” As the women came in, he smiled down at Brenna. “Now I ask, humbly, will you let me tend to you tonight? I would wash you and ease your aches, and I would hold you tight while we sleep.”

The thought of it made tears spring up in Brenna’s eyes. She blinked them away before they could fall.

“You save me every day,” she whispered.

As Brenna still slept in the dawn of an early summer morning, Vali lay on his side behind her and watched the subtle lift of her shoulders with each deep, peaceful breath. Her long, fair hair, its waves wild from sleep and from their tumble the night before, trailed over his arm, and he pressed his face into the flax and breathed deep.

He almost always woke before she did, and over the past quiet weeks, he had taken up this waking habit: to lie quietly and watch his wife. To bask in the peace of his love. The peace was hard won and not yet assured, but the love had come surprisingly easy.

After they’d defeated Prince Ivan and claimed his lands, Prince Toomas had sent an envoy; he’d wanted to meet. They had made a peace between them, with Toomas offering resources and assistance in rebuilding the village. He had even offered a daughter in marriage to Leif, but Leif, with no intention of settling here, had declined. Toomas had been insulted, and negotiations had been briefly tense, but when the parties bid each other farewell, a peace was in place.

Any lingering danger would come from their own people, it seemed. Now that the weather was warm and the snow and ice had been replaced by green buds and a rushing river, they had begun to watch for the ships, sending a team of two to the coast every day. It was early yet, but Brenna and Leif both expected their jarl to be impatient, and Vali knew his jarl would not seek a delay, either.

Leif had grown somber; he expected there to be trouble when Brenna and Vali’s marriage was known.

The trouble would come, Vali knew, if Åke resisted Brenna’s intention to settle in Estland. She had decided that, should he do so, she would forswear her fealty to him. As a freewoman, she had that right, but she would lose all that she had earned while sworn to him. Everything she had was at home, across the sea, and she considered it lost to her already. They intended to start anew here.

Åke would take the loss of her poorly, and he was a ruthless jarl, capable of extreme cruelty. Vali worried for her, and for them. If she had still been with child, or had babe in arms, when the ships arrived, Åke’s claim would have been weakened past argument, angry though he might have been.

Knowing this, and simply wanting to make a family with his love, Vali had wanted to get Brenna with child as soon as they were able again to try.

But Brenna would not allow him to sow his seed in her. His desire and her resistance was a constant source of tension between them, a low thrum under all of their interactions. They coupled nearly every day—their need of each other remained great, and their love was deep and true—and Vali had, for the most part, stopped pressing the issue. But he still felt frustrated, and she felt his frustration.

So it was in these moments, quiet, while she slept, that Vali could bask in nothing but their love.

He wanted children with her. He wanted her to carry his child. To have her with child now might protect her in a way he could not: without violence. She refused to see it, refused to acknowledge her full worth to her jarl, refused to believe Åke capable of things she knew full well he was. Instead, she argued that the time was not right, that there was too much work to be done to rebuild the village and to build a new life for them.

The truth, the real, deep truth, he knew, was that she was afraid. She mourned their son and was afraid to try again. He wasn’t sure even Brenna herself understood that, or if she did, that she would ever acknowledge it.

He brushed a finger down the length of the jagged scar over her shoulder, a wound that told that she had once been struck with a blow meant to remove her head. She was agile and quick, however, and Vali could visualize the way she had moved to save herself, taking instead a brutal but nonlethal slice. In battle, she was much like he was: single-minded and fiercely brave, without fear and with pure, consuming focus—a way of leaving one’s body to do its work while one’s mind saw above the fray.

In daily life, though, his shieldmaiden knew fear and doubt.

He loved her all the more for it.

He wanted to put another child inside her. Watching her grow with their son, seeing the mother in her rise up alongside the warrior, had stirred something vibrant in his soul. Losing Thorvaldr had been a pain greater than any he’d ever known, was pain still, but it had not quieted his soul. He wanted a family, children, a home. And he wanted every protection between Brenna and Jarl Åke that he could devise.

He swept her hair from her neck and shoulder and moved close, so that their bodies touched from ankle to head. Pushing his arm under hers and over her firm belly, he slid his hand between her legs while he brushed his beard over her neck and then kissed her, sucking lightly at her skin.

She sighed and stirred.

“Don’t wake,” he murmured at her ear. “Let me fill your dreams as I fill your body.”

While his fingers played through her folds, feeling her body go wet for him, he pushed his knee between her legs and lifted, making way for him to enter her. He did, his passage easy into her ready sheath, and he groaned, overcome with the delight of it. No matter how many times he took her, this moment was always the same: a marveling at their union, at the perfection of her body around his, at his good fortune in finding and claiming a love like this.

“Vali…” The word came as a vague breath; sleep kept her in its hold.

“Shhh.” He kissed her shoulder. “Sleep. Feel this as a dream.”

As he spoke, he thrust slowly, and she sighed out a deep breath and settled quietly in his arms.

In his heart, he knew that what he planned, what he hoped, was unfair. She wasn’t ready. He knew she wasn’t. She had not wavered in her resistance. But she was wrong and he was not, and he was her husband. Unfair he might be, but not wrong.

The thought that he might put a child in her now piqued his need, and he felt himself swell and throb as he quickened his pace. His fingers sought and found the bud of her best pleasure, and his other arm folded over her chest so that he could take hold of a full, perfect breast. He held her tight and groaned into her neck with each thrust, need for her taking over any plan he might have had.

She was waking fully, writhing in his arms, panting, beginning to moan, too. As she joined the action, he sped up, driving into her with force, holding her body as tightly to his as he could.

As his finish approached and he pressed his forehead to the back of her shoulder, grimacing through the tense fire knotting in his belly, Brenna stiffened.

“Vali…Vali, wait.”

He ignored her, driving even harder.

Now she fought his hold, trying to pull free of him, but strong as she was, he was much stronger. And even through her struggles, he could sense her pleasure, the way she gasped and whimpered.

“Don’t. Please don’t—please,” she gasped. “Vali—not inside me.”

Her growing anxiety finally overwhelmed her pleasure and made it more difficult to ignore her. Yet he clamped his arms and held her.

“Vali, please!”

He couldn’t. His conscience stabbed at him, and he finally, on the verge of release, stopped. For a moment, they were still, he inside her, they both breathing heavily.

Then he gave up and pulled out. He rolled to his back, still hard and throbbing, and stared up at the ceiling.

“Do you want children with me, Brenna?”

He was angry. He shouldn’t have been—disappointed, frustrated, yes. But it was wrong to be angry, he knew that. Brenna didn’t deserve his anger, no matter her reasons for resisting what he wanted.

No, she didn’t.
He
did. He’d tried to sneak this on her, to foist it upon her, to force something that she didn’t yet want.

While he grappled with self-loathing, Brenna rolled to face him. Then she did the worst thing she could have done in that moment. She apologized.

“I’m sorry. I know you want—I’m sorry.” She reached down and took hold of him. “I’ll bring you to your release this way.”

Disgusted with himself, he grabbed her hand. “No.”

Too harsh he’d been, he knew. Trapped in a whirlpool of terrible feelings, all directed inward, Vali tossed back the furs and got out of bed.

Brenna sat up. “I do want children with you. Very much. I—only—I’m not ready. Please don’t be angry with me.”

That was the closest she’d ever come to saying the truth of it. Vali turned back to her and saw his beloved wife, looking rumpled and sad, and felt even worse about himself. He bent over and swept his fingers down the side of her face.

“It’s not you I’m angry with, my love. I need to sort my thoughts. Forgive me for my brutishness.” He kissed her cheek and picked his breeches up from the floor.

When he was dressed, Brenna was still sitting in bed, quietly watching him.

“I’m going to ride out to the village and get an early start. Will I see you there today?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

With a smile and a tip of his head, he opened the door.

“Vali.”

He turned back to her.

“I love you.”

“And I you, shieldmaiden. In this life and the next. Never doubt that.”

~oOo~

Later that morning, after a few hours of good, hard labor, Vali felt clearer in his head. His regret for the morning remained, but he knew what he would do. When he saw his wife and they had a quiet moment together, they would talk. He would give her what she needed—what she told him she needed, not what he thought she needed.

And if Jarl Åke threatened her in any way or refused her what she needed, then Vali would kill him. Whatever the consequences.

Brenna had not yet joined the work at the village, and as it neared midday and the air filled with the savory aroma of the coming meal, Vali took on some small worry. Not for her safety—they were as safe as ever they’d been—but for her feeling. Even in his regret, he’d been harsh and distant to her before he’d taken his leave of her, and perhaps avowing his love had not been enough.

A commotion behind him drew him away from his thoughts, and he turned toward the rise where the freshly-hewn wood beams rested, awaiting their use. Four boys, none old enough yet to be called man, struggled to lift a round, rough beam that had the day before been a tree.

They were not rebuilding the village in the image of what it had once been. For one thing, there were more people now, as Ivan’s subjects were joining them and expanding the population—and making it, Vali thought, more of a true town, one that might draw its own commerce rather than be simply a place of dwelling and farming.

For another thing, more of the raiders than only Vali and Brenna had decided to settle here. Orm was staying. Harald had mated with a village girl and was staying, as well as a few of the others. So they were building longhouses in with the Estland huts.

They weren’t raiders at all any longer. They were settlers. Vali was finding that an easier adjustment than he had expected—although he had not yet spent much time in the fields.