Thrand’s deep breaths clouded in the gloom as blood-red sunbeams sank through the branches. For a while, neither said a word. Lilla thought of her husband, solid and dependable, the presence that she had learned to rely on. But instead of sadness, she felt anger, anger that he had left her all alone.
‘Did he speak of me?’ said Thrand hoarsely. ‘At the end?’
‘Aye.’ Though what, Lilla would never admit.
‘What did he say?’
‘He. . . He wasn’t making much sense. By the end.’
Thrand stooped down and scraped some loose dirt from the forest floor at his feet, then tossed it onto the mound. ‘Poor bloody brother. It would’ve been better if he’d died on that plain with a sword in his hand and his head held high. Ready to ride for Valhalla’s gates. Instead he got a stinking bed-death, coddled by a woman into the arms of Hel.’ He shook his head. ‘He deserved better.’
‘Better than dying with the taste of the woman he loved on his lips?’ Lilla snorted. ‘What does it matter whether he died with a blade in his guts or some wound-rot poisoning him by inches? He’s dead. And wherever he is, I hope he has found some peace.’
Thrand raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘I meant not to offend.’
‘Yet you did.’ She stood taller, challenging him, but he only chuckled.
‘Forgive me, sister. I thought he might have made provision, that’s all. If he had so much time.’
‘Provision for what?’
‘His successor, of course. Far as I can see, there’s only one name to consider.’
‘He did consider only one name.’
Thrand nodded, and she saw the beginnings of a smile creep into the corners of his mouth. She hated him for that.
‘Mine.’
His big head turned sharply. ‘What?’
‘I am Queen of the Twin Kingdoms, High Ruler of Sveäland and King Sviggar’s only living offspring.’ Staffen had been murdered; Sigurd slain in battle. As for Saldas’s children. . . their fate was too cruel to contemplate.
‘Your father was a bastard, which makes your claim as false as his—’
‘How dare you.’
‘—And makes me sole male heir to both kingdoms. Or do you have a swelling beneath those robes the rest of us don’t know about?’
She didn’t like the way his eyes lingered on her flat belly, nor the sneer in his voice. ‘My father may have been baseborn, but my grandsire Ívar Wide-Realm conferred on him true title, according to Sveär law. Your Danes may have slain five thousand of my people, but fifty thousand would stand in their place at a word from me.’
‘Horse shit! They wouldn’t lift a finger for you. You stood on our side of the field, Sviggarsdottír, remember? So don’t pretend you weren’t complicit in every Sveär death. You’re a traitor to your people. They know it. So do you.’
That was no lie, although she had done her best to justify it, to herself if no one else. ‘I’ve no time to bandy words with you. There’s your brother. Make your peace with him. I must go back.’
She turned to go but he snatched her arm. ‘You’re a conceited little bitch, aren’t you?’
‘Let go of me!’ Her reaction was pure instinct, her hand swinging with full force at him, cracking across his jaw. She felt her father’s ring smash against his teeth. For a second he was stunned, although his grip around her arm loosened not a whit, and slowly he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away smeared red. ‘You fucking whore.’
She made to scream but before any sound could escape the crook of two massive fingers jammed around her throat. Seeing the sudden wildness in his eye, a wave of panic rose in her. She tried to hit him again but her fist merely glanced off his chest. His wild look turned into a bloody grimace. ‘Let’s have some fun, eh? What do you say, sister? Any objections?’ His grip squeezed harder. A feeble gargle sounded in her throat. ‘No?’ He gave an ugly laugh. ‘Nice to see you’re as game with one brother as another.’
Out of nowhere, the back of his fist struck her. Pain exploded through her skull like a starburst. She dropped onto the slope of her husband’s grave.
Blood started streaming down her cheek. But before she could get up he had locked her neck in a grip as strong as Volund’s tongs. Her nose was buried in the loose earth. She tasted its metallic tang. In her panic to breathe she sucked lumps of it into her mouth. She felt him behind her, heard his panting and then the weight of him on her squashed her flat. His arms were so long that it was no trouble to crush her face in the mud while he kicked her legs aside. He threw her skirts up over her back. Cold air coiled up her calves and thighs. She screwed her eyes shut in a horror of anticipation, powerless to move. Thrand was laughing at her, tugging at his breeches, pinching her hips cruelly to tilt them forward. ‘Hold still, you silly bitch.’
She screamed in her head but all it amounted to was a faint moan into the damp soil. Maybe Ringast could hear her, buried beneath her with his sword and his silver. No one else could.
The red dusk was bleeding to grey. She felt fury and fear and pain and. . . suddenly every sense rushed to the outrage in her most secret parts. And all she could do was squeeze her eyes tighter shut and taste the iron earth. . .
Afterwards, after he’d subsided, he bent low over her, his breath hot in her ear. ‘Whatever you have, Sviggarsdottír, I will take from you.’
Then he shoved her and sent her sliding down the shoulder of the mound. She lay face down, not moving. Breathing, nothing more. She listened to the buckle of his belt, the pad of his footsteps growing fainter through the wood, and then the yammer of her outraged heart.
When she was sure
