The tension instantly fled from his brows, his obvious relief wholly unexpected.

Roth rushed therewith to her side and knelt before her. "Is that all?" He then pulled her in for a brief but deep kiss, his mouth warm and calmative — this was not a kiss to incite, but one to soothe. "Gods, Heida," he said, pulling her with him as he settled them on the hearth rug, "I thought you had changed your mind."

"No! Never!" She could see how he might have thought that and was instantly remorseful. No wonder he had been furious, for he had feared for her safety, and convinced himself of her forthcoming abrogation.

"I know what people will say, because I have thought it myself more than once before — sweet, snowy, Heida, with the moon in her complexion, what does she want with the black-hearted, Roth? The dark twin."

"And I can not but wonder why you should want a wife that has just declared herself to be barren?

"I do not want a brood mare. I do not care to populate the earth with monsters. I only want you, and I shall take you howsoever you come — whether toeless," he jested, alluding to their earlier badinage, "or barren, it matters not to me."

With a happy cry she pressed her lips to his in exultation and squeezed him so tight that he fell over laughing.

"Woman, you do not know your own strength!" He chuckled as she lay atop his chest, gratified and happy ... finally. Well, save for Frida's draugr-like shadow overhead.

"For my part, I do not care what people think!" she said, alluding to his earlier comparison. "The moon belongs to the night; and I to you. Whatever darkness you think you have, I will never let you dwell there alone. I promise you that, Roth."

His eyes dropped to her mouth as she spoke, as if reading the truth of her conviction, lest his ears deceive him. "Eirik is right, I do not deserve you."

Heida sat back up and took his hand in hers to press his palm at her heart. "Whatever you think you deserve, you have my heart." She watched his eyes drop to her chest, and after a moment his lips curled wickedly. "Why do you smile so?" she asked, earnestly.

"Because I am distracted by where you have laid my hand..."

When his meaning became clear she laughed and gave him his hand back, watching as he sighed wistfully.

"It is I, Roth, who does not deserve you, for I will be an unproductive wife," she said, endeavoring to hold her smile despite the relapsing solemnity.

"As to that, you will not be childless," he said. "My sons are motherless now ... no thanks to me." His jaw clenched.

Considered him quietly, she lay back atop him and rested her chin on her hands that were splayed over his sternum. The mood was now thoroughly subdued, the mirth of earlier having vanished, for he had obviously not forgiven himself for Frida's death, and nor had Heida forgiven herself. Perhaps they never would; and was not that their shame to bear? It was right that Frida should weigh heavily on Heida's conscious, but Roth had not been in his right mind, so the fault could not possibly be his.

They lay still a while, each in their own thoughts, and the quietude that thence settled over them became steadily thicker with tension as he stroked her back. Puckering wherever his fingers trailed, her flesh began to heat even as her blood began to simmer.

She traced the veins running just below his skin and wondered at the blood that pumped therein. Realizing that they still had not discussed the matter of his bloodline, she stilled her hand. "So you know who my mother and my father were, but I am acquainted with only one half of your parentage." Biting her lip, she scooted further up his body and kissed his neck. "You still have not told me who your father is."

In fact, he had spoken little to her since the night of Frida's death. When he had emerged from his cave that fateful morning, blood-soaked and grim of mouth, no words had been adequate; or needful. What with the burial — and no body to mourn over — and the rumors of war, much had still been left unsaid between them. His demeanor alone had communicated his withdrawal; had been such as to dissuade her from approaching him altogether.

Roth, she knew, was one to hold his gentler emotions in abeyance until he better understood how to manage them. She suspected that he had, until today, avoided her company, lest he see the same loathing in her eyes that he had likely turned in on himself. If that was the case, then he did not know her at all, for she would never have done that! She was ever on his side because he was inherently a good man.

"People shall always wonder about your parentage," he said after a while, "but they must never know of mine." His eyes drifted to the wooden beams that spanned the large room overhead. "Did you really think that yours was the only lineage spawned of the otherworld. That Harald and Aila, two perfectly mortal beings, could spawn one such as I?"

"Truly, I have considered it overmuch and have reached no definitive conclusions; but I love you no matter how you came to be."

He brushed his thumb at the side of her jaw, his grin one of deep satisfaction. "I have waited a long time to hear you say that."

"I have said as much before."

"Not like that." And he kissed her.

When he lay his head back down, she decided that his grin was far too smug, though, it pleased her that he seemed so contented now. More content than she'd seen him in a very long time. "I'd not have said it at all if I'd known you to be so easily distracted."

"Ay and why not? Any man with blood in his veins would be ... when there is a beautiful valkyrie mounted atop him."

Mounted? With a curious frown she looked down at their bodies. Her chest was slanted slightly over his, but she was lying on her side next to him, flush against him. Did he want to be mounted? That position had merit and she was more than happy to look down on him from that perch.

His eyes flared briefly as she brought a leg over and straddled his hips, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she endeavored to maneuver herself comfortably. But there was an infernal hardness at his groin that was becoming harder still, so she scooted further down and eyed the bulge in his pants curiously. She'd seen him naked before, and would likely do so again ... very shortly, in fact.

"Are you ... quite comfortable?" For his part, he looked anything but. Quite the contrary, in fact.

"Continue," she commanded imperiously from her lofty seat. "You were about to tell me about your father."

He chuckled. "Where was I?"

"The question of whether Harald and Aila, two perfectly mortal beings, could spawn such a one as you," she reminded him. "I know Harald was just a man. It was my mother that was not ... mortal."

"Yes, and there was no valdyr, nor any legends of suchlike, in the time of Harald. No, my legacy is the first; although, I am sure your mother was not the first valkyrie to consort with a man of Midgard."

Why was he not getting to the point? "Roth, who is your father?"

"My progenitor," he said, distastefully, "is none other than Loki himself."

"Loki?!" she gasped. "The god?"

"Ay, the very same; and he told me so himself." He gestured towards the hearth. "With blue flame and brimstone no less, posturer that he is."

Heida's eyes rounded with understanding. "What does he look like?"

"Like Renic."

Her lips flattened, ironically. "You might not have noticed ere now, but you and Renic were mirror images of one another."

He turned the left side of his face to her. "But no longer."

"I think it suits you well," she said, studying the scarred flesh. "You were always too pretty till you earned that."

Roth snorted as he brought his gaze back to hers. She meant what she said because his character had always been darker than Renic's and his beauty was much improved by the mark across his face. It dighted his face the way Brenna's fiery hair suited her wild and independent nature. It was meet that the dangerous Blackmane jarl should wear a fierce scar.

So Loki looked like Renic, did he? "I think he has revealed himself to me." Though he certainly possessed the black hair that he had bequeathed his sons, his flesh was paler and his smile colder. If the man she had seen was indeed Loki, then it was her opinion that he looked nothing like Renic.

Renic had been somber-looking, the last few years before he'd died, yes, but not cold.

Roth pushed himself onto his elbows. "When did you see him?" His tone was hard.

"I saw him the night you ... the night Frida died. He was with Finn and Freki. I think he was telling them stories and legends. Was I wrong to leave your sons with him?"

She watched Roth's brow beetling ominously, but eventually the tightness at his mouth and eyes relaxed a fraction. "I cannot say." And then he gave a thoughtful grunt. "Do you know, I think I remember him doing the same with Renic and I when we were Finn's age. Howbeit, I cannot remember what stories he told us all those years ago."

"Your mother trusts him. Should we?"

"I trust only five people and he is not one of them; he has not earned it."

"Am I the fifth?"

He closed the distance that separated their lips and brushed his gently over hers a sweet moment. "No, you are the first. It was always you and Renic that I trusted most."

It was sentiments like that, uttered in just such a way, with a wealth of passionate feeling, that made her love him the more. And to think, he was hers now! What a heady thought that was. "When shall we be married?" she asked, breathlessly, momentarily forgetting her guilt.

But like a miasmic fog, her happiness was overcome with it again. Frida's wight floated over them once more. Endeavoring not to let Roth perceive the upheaval over her mind writ over her countenance, she pressed her forehead to his chest and hoped he would think it only a gesture of her shyness.

"As soon as may be arranged," he replied. "Tomorrow if I had my way." He wriggled his thick brows at her when she lifted her face again, but the laughter he sought to elicit never came.

"No, not tomorrow. And not so soon as to disrespect Frida's memory."

"Ay, you are right, but the entire clan knows that our union was enforced, ergo it will not surprise them if I should be remarried sooner than what is customary."

"And what of Thorgny?"

"Faugh! That man will have war no matter what I do. He has long envied our lands and bided his time from afar, waiting for me to misstep, thereby giving him the perfect excuse to attack." His face darkened. "And you can be sure that I shall be ready for him when he comes. It never did sit well with him that I was not more severely punished; which is why he will devise a way to strike at me when he thinks me least prepared."

"Then let us not fuel his rage by marrying so soon. We can wait a year-"

"No! I am done pleasing others! I will do right by my sons, and by my people, but I will do nothing to appease the pig that spawned the man that nearly killed you. He will have not an ounce of my regard, nor my respect. I owe him nothing and I neither welcome his support nor the farcical peace that stands between us.

"Do not think it did not infuriated my clan to watch one of their own beaten nearly to death."

"They think me merely a bastard, Roth. My worth is in Aila's love for me, that is all."

"You do yourself an injustice. You are well liked and respected; and you are my future wife. Let me hear no more of those untruths."

"In sooth, Roth, I no longer feel that way about myself. Not anymore." She would not have him questioning her mettle, for it had been many years since she'd thought herself unworthy. "And I am well aware of how much Thorgny is despised here."

"As to that, we were forced to swallow further insult when the heir of the chieftaincy was forcibly wed — forever united to the daughter of the very man who would hold a sword perpetually over our heads. Nay, Heida, my people will fain welcome a war with Throgny, so that we might crush him to silence forever. I say, let him come."

"Be that as it may, my own guilt prevents an early marriage. Do you know that the last thing Frida said to me was that we had betrayed her. She witnessed our kiss in the woods, Roth." And her accusatory face would forever haunt Heida's conscience.

Roth's eyes rolled back up to the ceiling. "I had already made my choice, Heida. I was never going back to her bed; it would have been her choice whether she stayed or returned to her father. I have long suspected that my men and my people would have respected me more had I challenged Thorgny's tyranny. But I gave my mother her peace and I took a wife that I could never respect nor love ... all for the sake of an ephemeral peace. It was all for nothing."

"Not for nothing! She gave you two strong sons." Children he would never have had had he married Heida.

He acknowledged the truth of that with a slight dip of his head but nothing more.

She trailed her fingers over his strong jaw and along his deep scars as she weighed what he had said with what she now felt. She sighed heavily. "Still and all, that does not change the fact that I could have saved Frida. She could have remarried and lived happily. Any man would have taken to wife the mother of the Blackmane heirs."

"And why should you feel guilt?!" Roth growled. "Do you control the runes; the Nornir; the valdyr?"

"Well ... no."

"Then you are not to blame." He shook his head in vexation when she continued to look doubtful. "Let me wear your guilt if you insist on keeping it, but speak no more of your supposed faults. You have no blame in this."

"But Roth-"

"But Heida!" He sat up to pin her with a hard look. "Answer me this: will you continue to live in the past or will you meet me in the future?"

He was right. That said, he silenced her forever on that score; but, with respect to Frida's memory, she was steadfastly resolved to wait. There was no rush to marry; and this she told him.

Lips compressing into a resigned line, Roth collapsed back onto his back and glared at the ceiling like Finn might have done in a pout. "Very well. One year."

She leaned over him and flicked a strand of dark hair from his brow. "That isn't to say that I will make you wait to ... consummate a delayed marriage." Before he could say anything more, she leaned down and opened her mouth hungrily over his.

Roth had been her very first kiss and, gods willing, he would be her last ... starting from tonight.

🌟I suppose you want the smut?🌟