“It didn’t even occur to me,” she whispered. It had not. She had sat where she was, the picture of obedience. So much so that Osthryth had been disgusted. That was why she’d gone to seek healer women in the market. Perhaps I might find an herb to break this spell he has you under, she had said.

  Because Eithne had not been sitting there like that out of fear. She’d been sitting like that because she had wanted her behavior to reflect well on Ulfric.

  One more truth she little wished to face.

  “I cannot change this world we live in,” Ulfric said. “I cannot change our fates. Only we can do that for ourselves by trying, every moment, to make the most of what we have. And I, who consider myself a brave man who fears nothing, cannot lie to myself about this any longer.”

  That shaking deep inside her turned to a kind of anguish. “Ulfric, I don’t—”

  “I can tell myself in a thousand ways that I can predict your every move. And that is so, but only because you are my slave. Because, as you have said to me on too many occasions to count, you have no choices.” There was pain on his face, and she hated it. She hated it. Even his hand at her cheek was pain. But he did not pause. “And so this is the gift that I give to you, Eithne of Dublin and Northumbria. Your choice.”

  She couldn’t have spoken then if her life had hung in the balance. Her heart beat too loud. Her bones ached. Eithne searched his face, not sure she hoped or disbelieved—

  “You have earned your freedom, little slave,” Ulfric told her, with great solemnity, though his dark eyes burned. “You are a free woman.”

  And she knew not what moved over his face then, only that it made a kind of sob burst free from her chest.

  Joy, she told herself firmly, for what else could it be?

  And on the other side of that narrow blade, grief.

  Ulfric shifted his hand from her cheek to her neck, and caressed her there, in that place that longed for him to hold her. Then he led her out of the alley and onto the street, not using the nape of her neck to compel her to go where he wished, and she felt lost.

  It only dimly occurred to her that he did this that she might not look back and see what had become of Feargal.

  Because even now, he thought of her. And was this not the whole problem with this man? Her captor and owner? Was this not what had torn at her all along?

  For he had never given her the opportunity to hate him as she should.

  Not even back at the start, where trying to hate him was all she thought about.

  Out in the busy street, he looked down at her again. His hand not at her throat, but on her arm, and when he dropped it, she let out a small sound of distress.

  And more, saw that same distress reflected in him.

  As if it was as he said, and the two of them truly were one. One dark heart that only beat as it should together.

  “Be well, Eithne,” he told her, his voice gruff. Darker in that moment than she had ever heard it. “For I release you. You need only come to Sitric’s hall tonight and I will tell them all. That I have freed you, and they must all treat you as they would any other free woman, with the rights and respect you deserve or they will answer to my sword. Even if it be Sitric himself.”

  Then he stepped back, and she had the notion he forced himself to do it. For a moment he did not move. And though she wanted to reach out, put her hands on him, do something—

  She could not.

  Ulfric inclined his head, though his eyes were fire.

  Then he turned, and walked away, leaving her clinging to the side of a thatched hut in a city no longer hers, free at last.

  He did not turn back. He did not stop. He walked until she could see him no more.

  She took a breath. She took another, and the ropes that yet clung to her body dug deep, holding her as he had done.

  As he never would again.

  When she loved him as she did.

  When he must love her, too, to call her the other half to make him whole.

  When he had set her free, not because he wished to be done with her, but because he knew it was what she wanted above all things.

  She was free, at long last, and she knew she should have been overcome with joy...but that was not what washed over her.

  Because the thing she’d thought would never happen had happened, and she could not enjoy it as she had imagined she would all this time.

  For now she could have the life she wanted, the life she deserved. The life that her brother had taken from her. She was no longer stranded in a foreign land. She was come home at last and Dublin was hers once more. She was sure she could find those who might know her family, if she wished. Or build a new life all her own. She could take up with Osthryth and dance as she pleased in the forests, no longer looking back over her shoulder.

  She could do anything she liked. Anything she wanted, or near enough, for she was still a woman and men were ever men.

  But it turned out that all she wanted was Ulfric, slave or free.

  And so it was that Eithne’s first act of freedom, so hard won after all these years, was to burst into tears.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That night Ulfric was given a place of honor at Sitric’s table. His cup was filled first, and often. He knew well that he sat in Ragnall’s stead, and so he drank for his King and honored his King’s kin. He acquitted himself in a manner he knew could only be pleasing to Ragnall once he heard of it, for hear of it he would. Not only from Ulfric’s own mouth, but from his many spies, too—some known to Ulfric and some not.

  He should have been paying more attention to these weighty matters, he knew that well.

  But all he could think of was Eithne.

  His Eithne, who he had left behind. Who he had set free.

  Already, everything in him roared at him to seek her out. To find her, now, and do whatever he must to bind her to him forever.

  He did not know how he stayed at this table, the mead in his cup like ash to him.

  All he could see was that scene in the alley. Eithne could not have known that he would not have let her fool of a brother stick that knife into him. She had defended him as if he faced mortal danger.

  He would have handsomely rewarded any man who had done the same.

  Surely it meant even more that she was a mere woman, who could not have imagined she could cause too much harm. And more, a slave, whose love for her master could never be assumed.

  The word love echoed inside him unpleasantly, as if it lodged in his bones.

  “I keep looking to see a new scar upon your face,” Sitric said from his place at the head of the table.

  Ulfric tried to school his expression to stillness, but when the King laughed, he accepted it was likely he’d failed. “I have enough scars as it is,” was all he said in reply.

  “The last time your slave girl left you, she marked you on her way out.” Sitric leaned back as he sat, looking merry and humble, lazy and unimposing. All of Ulfric’s instincts told him to beware—for this king was none of those things. He only wished to let others think he might be. “And yet she lives on. Or so I have heard it told. Where is she now? Did you finally strike her down?”

  Ulfric liked this man talking of Eithne so little it was tempting to do something to show it, but he hoped he was not so much of a fool. Especially when it was almost certain that Sitric was testing him. As kings loved to do, in his experience.

  He set down his cup and prepared himself to play these games—

  “He did something far worse than that, sire,” came a voice he had not expected to hear again. Not here. Not now. He didn’t believe it, yet when he looked up, she was there. His Eithne, standing before him, straight and tall in a way that told him at a glance that she yet wore the ropes he had tied around her. But her gaze was on Sitric. “He gave me my freedom.”

  Sitric propped up his chin on his fist, considering her. “Did he now?”

  “It is true,” she said, with remarkable calm and the sort of voice that reached every ear in the hall without seeming to try, Ulfric thought with more pride in her than she would likely wish to know he felt. “I stand before you a free woman, back at last in the place where I was born, raised, and sold.”

  “Yet with a different king upon the throne.” Sitric’s voice was a silken menace. A trap, and Ulfric could not warn her. “How does your freedom feel, if it not be Irish?”

  But he had underestimated his Eithne.

  “I am lucky,” she said, and he saw that gleam in her green eyes that had always told him how clever she was, even when she did not speak. “For well do I already know the rules of life with a Northman.”

  Sitric found that entertaining enough. His laughter was uproarious. Ulfric tore his gaze away from Eithne long enough to look around the hall. Others were laughing—more than not, indicating that she was finding favor here. And far beyond the tables of laughing men, he saw Osthryth sitting with the women.

  For once the crone was not looking at him with murder in her eyes. He would not say the look she gave him was fond. But it was not violent and that was something.

  He looked back to Eithne, who still stood there with her hands folded before her, her head not quite bowed, but certainly not lifted higher, either. The way any woman might stand before a king, and he, who had always found courtly intrigue tedious, could still recognize what she was doing here. First, proclaiming her freedom. Possibly to prove she had won it, here where Ulfric could gainsay her if he wished. And second, to make certain that all these men who knew her as a slave knew better now.

  She was protecting herself and she was using Sitric to do it.

  And even though everything within him yearned to stand up and roar out that he alone would stand as her protector, if the need arose, he did not.

  He only waited.

  And quickly found that he was no better at it than he had ever been.

  Sitric turned his attention back to Eithne. “You amuse me,” he told her. “A slave who dares leave her mark on her master. A free woman who presents herself to the King who burned down her city. Ask me for a favor, woman, and I tell you now, I will grant it.”

  Ulfric thought he knew exactly what favor the King wished to grant her, and he knew not what he would tell Ragnall about this night. For if Sitric thought he would put his hands on Eithne, Ulfric would kill him, their linked kingdoms be damned.

  “Thank you, sire,” Eithne was saying, and very prettily at that. “I have but one wish. For I am as new here as if Dublin was never my home. I have no friends here.”

  She did not look at Ulfric when she said this and still he knew that she was thinking of that alley, and the sound her brother’s neck had made when Ulfric had concluded that he could not be allowed to live. For he would only come for Eithne again.

  Ulfric would not allow it.

  “Kin is everything,” said Sitric, who would have claimed sheep were everything, too, if he’d imagined that would sweeten Eithne toward him, Ulfric had no doubt.

  “I know not how I will live.” Eithne lifted her head then. She looked at Ulfric but briefly, a flash of the deepest green, then at Sitric. “I find myself in need of a husband.”

  Ulfric did not realize he stood then, but there he was. He pushed back from the table and stood there on his own feet, his hand already on his sword.

  He hardly recognized the King’s laughter, so focused was he on the other men and the way they looked at Eithne now. One move and he would kill them all.

  He did not realize he had shouted such a thing until he heard his own voice come back at him.

  And perhaps, later, he would regret saying such a thing out loud in the hall of a king not his own.

  But he could not regret it now. He meant it.

  “I have a hall full of men,” Sitric told Eithne, sounding merrier by the moment. “I’m sure there must be one to your liking here.” He waved a hand. “You may pick any one you like.”

  Ulfric heard some noise to suggest that there were men putting themselves forth as candidates, risking certain death the moment he turned, but his eyes were only for Eithne.

  His beautiful Eithne, who gleamed before him, as if to lead him from the dark.

  For her, he would follow. Only for her.

  “I have requirements,” Eithne said, but she smiled, lest anyone think a woman late a slave dared make demands of a king. “I am a free woman now. But I have been a slave and found my treatment there far better than many women who have always been free. I have no doubt that every man in your hall is honorable.”

  “Else they would not enjoy my mead,” Sitric murmured, a clear warning.

  Eithne inclined her head. But she glanced over toward Osthryth and the other women. “I know that is so. Yet I know, too, that women know men in ways that other men cannot. And you have given me a choice, sire. So I would choose, as my husband, the only man I can trust to treat me well.”

  “Eithne,” Ulfric gritted out, from somewhere deep inside of him.

  Where there was nothing but her.

  “But I am not a slaver,” she said, and then, finally, turned to face him, her lovely face solemn. “So it must be your choice, too, Ulfric.”

  Ulfric would have said that he knew joy. That he had experienced it a thousand times in this life. For he knew the teachings, that every man must make his life matter, taking every moment and using it to meet his fate as best he could. He would have said that joy was no stranger.

  But he had never felt anything like he felt now.

  And he did not trust himself to speak. Indeed, he had said enough already.

  Instead, in full view of Sitric and the rest of his men, he swept Eithne up and into his arms.

  And then kissed her, full and deep, there where they could all see.

  Let them sing about it throughout the ages.

  Eithne melted beneath him and he lifted his head before he took the kiss too deep, meeting the King’s gaze.

  “I will marry her,” he said. “And I will beat off any other man who tries with my own hands.”

  Sitric nodded as if this were his plan all along. Maybe it was, for there were few craftier.

  “I will pay her dowry,” the King declared, pounding his cup against the table in emphasis. “To her grandmother over there.” He lifted his cup toward Osthryth, who did not bare her teeth in reply—a gift indeed. Then he turned his gaze to Ulfric. “And we will have a wedding, Ulfric. A story worthy of sharing with others, perhaps those to the west of us.”

  Ulfric understood what he was saying. Sitric would send him on to Ísland—

  But he didn’t care. Sitric could send him to Yggdrasil, the tree of life itself, to hold the nine worlds together with his own hands and he would not mind.

  Not if Eithne was with him.

  He waited for Sitric’s nod, and at a wave of the King’s hand he turned, carrying her away from this hall, and all these watching eyes. As he moved, he heard the songs, the laughter.

  They could sing the hall down for all he cared.

  Ulfric did not intend to notice.

  He took her back into the room that he had been given, which were simple enough. More than adequate for what he had planned.

  First, though, he kissed her. He kissed her and he kissed her. He set her down and then they stared at each other, both panting. Both out of breath.

  But both here.

  “I did not think you would return,” he growled at her.

  “I love you,” she said, as if it was a curse. “I thought I did before. Now, I know it.”

  “And I you, little slave,” he said, and watched her face change. All of that light. All of that wonder. All of it his now. “Now that you have chosen me, there can be no question.”

  And as he looked at her, he felt his mouth move into a smile he could neither stop nor control. He watched her wonder grow complicated. Then, best of all, he watched that delicate shiver.

  “Remember,” she said, as if was warning him. As if she dared. “Once I marry you, I can divorce you.”

  “But you won’t.”

  It was not arrogance. Not with Eithne, who knew his darkness. Who had lived with him there. And had come back to him anyway.

  She had left him once. She would not leave him again.

  He knew it as surely as if he were the Fates themselves, and had planned it to be so.

  “Ulfric,” she whispered. “You set me free.”

  “I should have done it years ago,” he replied, as if he confessed these things to her, as her people did their sins. “For there are any number of ways I might like to cause you pain, but like not that. Never again, my little slave.”

  She pinkened. “You will need to call me something else. I’m not a slave any longer. You made it so. And did you not hear your King?”

  “But you will always be my slave, Eithne,” Ulfric said then, his voice rough. “Or did you forget who we are?”

  And he watched as she flushed his favorite shade of red, then. He watched as her eyes heated and became glassy. He watched his woman as she wanted him in all the ways he wanted her.

  This time, freely. Wholly.

  “We will celebrate your freedom,” he told her. “We will have a wedding. We will drink deep and dance. And someday you will give me sons, Eithne, who will grow up strong and brave and will tell stories wherever they go of the woman who raised them. Of her courage and her cleverness. Her loyalty and her love.”

  “Perhaps sooner than you think,” she whispered, and only smiled a little when he lifted a brow. “When is the last time you gave me herbs to drink?”

 

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