Chapter 13: Chapter 13

FJORN

“Who, Kendra?” I shouted, my rage spiraling out of control. I needed to regain my composure, but how could I? She remained silent, her gaze fixed on the water. Was she afraid? I hoped it wasn’t of me. She should have known I’d never harm her. Was that why she never let me hold her completely?

“KENDRA!” I bellowed, gripping her arm and causing her to flinch. I released her and walked toward the shore, picking up the bag. I pulled out a deep green dress—the one I’d taken from the hut when we first met.

I extended my hand to help her out of the water. Using my shirt, I dried her off and slipped the dress over her body. It hugged her hips snugly. She remained silent. I kissed her forehead. “Kendra,” I said gently, turning her toward me. I cradled her face in my hand. “I’m only going to ask one more time. Who did this to you?”

Tears streamed down her face as I watched fear consume her—worse than the day I found her. Her legs began to shake before giving out, and I had to hold her against me for support. As her lips trembled, she managed to utter a single word.

“Brother.” As if uttering it would conjure his presence, she hid by burying her face in my chest.

“Your brother did this to you?” I asked, wrapping my arms around her in a comforting embrace, my chin resting on her head. She nodded, her arms weakly wrapping around me.

I kissed the top of her head and tried to pull away to get dressed, but she clung to me.

“No, please don’t,” she whimpered.

“All right,” I said, lifting her up by her ass. She clung to me as I walked back to our tent. I received a few stares, walking naked through the camp, but I didn’t care. She needed to be held, and nothing else mattered.

As we entered the tent, she lifted her head from my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed to get dressed?”

“Because you needed me,” was all I said. Her face tightened as if she were trying to hold back tears. I leaned down and kissed each eye. “If you want to cry, then cry. I’ll hold you and kill any man who dares to speak a word.”

She chuckled, wiping away her tears. “Why do I believe you?”

“Because I would. I would go to war if it meant you were happy,” I said, rubbing her arm and intertwining our fingers.

She pulled away from me and sank to the furs on the ground. “I suppose you want to hear about it,” she said as her fingers caressed the hides.

“Only what you want to tell me.” I hoped she would confide in me, and I dropped to the ground as well, urging her to rest her head on my thigh.

She closed her eyes. “I didn’t always live as you found me,” she started. “I had a good childhood, loving parents. My father was a merchant, and he did well in providing for us. We never went without.”

She sat up and drew her knees to her chest. “My mother was a wonderful seamstress. She made the most beautiful clothing. I had a younger brother and sister, too.” She smiled wistfully, a tear escaping her eye. “They were always getting into mischief. And then there was my older brother.”

As she sat in silence, I leaned back on my elbows, attempting to appear calm despite the anticipation coursing through me.

“In my fourteenth winter, our village was raided by Vikings.” She looked at me sharply. “My father fought with all his might, but he was killed.”

My head dropped. “May he rest in Valhalla,” I whispered.

“Because our shop and home were burned to the ground, along with the rest of the village, there was no shelter.” Her fingers absentmindedly picked at invisible lint on her dress, and when she spoke again, her words dripped with bitterness. “Winters can be particularly brutal, and that night, there was a storm. My mother and younger brother and sister froze to death. So did everyone else that was left alive.”

My heart ached for the pain I knew she felt in losing her loved ones, but I knew better than to focus on the fact that fellow Vikings had led to her family’s downfall.

“How did you survive?” I asked.

“My brother and I were sent to the next village to deliver supplies. My mother didn’t want me to go—I was a girl, after all—but when my father heard I was willing, he insisted. He was needed at the store, and the man who was supposed to go with my brother had some sort of emergency and couldn’t go that day. I was the only able-bodied person available, and the customer was an important one.”

“Your brother gave you the scars on your back,” I pressed, knowing the story was taking a lot out of her but needing to know what happened.

She nodded. “We didn’t know what had happened until we returned two days later. The storm had kept us away, and we knew our parents would expect us to travel only when safety permitted it.”

She drew in a breath. “We found them—” She broke off on a sob, her shoulders shaking. “And my brother… That was the first time he struck me. He had never been a warm person, but at that moment, it was as if any remnants of kindness within him vanished entirely.”

I drew her to me and held her as she cried. “He blamed me,” she said. “If I hadn’t gone with him, he wouldn’t have had to go at all. He would have been there to fight.”

“He would have been killed!”

“It didn’t matter! We lost everything, our family and everything that would have been his one day. Better to fight and die than live with nothing, right?” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and sat up. “Anyway, that was the first time.” She sniffed. “It only got worse as the years went by.”

“With a lot of hard work, we procured another shop, and business thrived, but that didn’t change how he felt about me, so when he told me I had to marry, and I refused, he did this.” She pointed to her back. “Two days later, I was thrust into the arms of my husband.”