“Please, Liis. Please sing it. It comforts me,” Alba pled, and Ghisla relented as she always did, but Alba was not consoled. Her misery echoed in her memories, and Ghisla, with their hands clasped and the song reverberating between her and the princess, could not escape them.
Six-year-old Alba sat atop Bayr’s shoulders. Her arms were spread and her hair streamed out behind her. He was running, making her fly, and her remembrance was painted in joy.
“Bayr promised me he would come back,” Alba cried as the song ended. “He promised.”
“Someone I loved once promised me the same thing,” Ghisla said.
“What happened?” Alba almost sounded afraid to ask, as if she knew.
“He never did.” Until now. But had he come back?
“Why?” Alba asked, mournful.
“I don’t know. Some promises . . . are impossible to keep.”
“I fear that’s true,” Alba murmured. “But . . . you’re not angry?”
“Sometimes I am angry,” Ghisla admitted. Sometimes she was so angry she lay facedown and sang her anger into the earth until the grass turned brown and the ground around her cracked with her furious song. “But most of the time, I simply miss him.”
Oh, how she had missed him.
He had lived among the Northmen, that much was evident. But why? And why was he here? How would she see him? How would she tell him she had given up long ago?
“I miss Bayr every day. There is a hole in my heart,” Alba said. “And I fear it will always be there.”
“You were very close,” Ghisla said, her voice strangled.
“And now . . . we are nothing,” Alba said dully.
For a time, they lay together in the dark, their hands clasped, and when Alba finally found relief in sleep, Ghisla allowed herself to grieve.
Hod did not leave the chieftain’s keep with the Northmen but doubled back on his own. In the darkness, everyone was a threat, and he did not want to be seen lurking in the shadows. He found the room where Ghisla and the princess were quartered and climbed a tree where he could eavesdrop without being observed.
The North King had created a spectacle in the hall. He’d dangled Hod like a carrot with his ridiculous talk of a trade, insulted the princess, and tossed Ghisla’s history onto the pyre all to provoke the king. She’d had no warning of his presence, and Hod had heard her distress, her racing heart and her constricted breath, and he’d put up a wall against her, unable to concentrate on his audience—and the things they hurled at him—and still listen to her. But he was listening to her now.
The two women were comforting each other, their voices bleak and their conversation quiet. Alba begged for the song about the bat, and Hod was catapulted back to the temple mount, standing in the shadow of the temple listening to little Alba plead for the same song.
“Bayr promised me he would come back,” Alba mourned.
Bayr had never returned to the mount?
“Someone I loved once promised me the same thing,” Ghisla murmured.
Someone she loved once. Did she love him still?
“What happened?” Alba asked, almost fearful.
“He never did.”
Hod’s heart cracked and bled, knowing Ghisla spoke of him. No, he never had . . . and she’d given him no reason to believe she would welcome him.
“You’re not angry?” Alba asked.
“Sometimes I am angry. But most of the time, I simply miss him,” Ghisla answered.
He was angry too. The anger had become a constant companion. But he had missed her more than he hated her. He had loved her more than he hated her. And right now, he could not hate her at all.
Eventually, Alba fell asleep, the cadence of her breathing and the tempo of her heart signaling she’d succumbed to slumber. But Ghisla did not sleep. She cried. Her weeping was not a moan or a wail. It was a catch in her chest and an ongoing, valiant attempt to breathe quietly so Alba would not hear her distress.
A soft knock on her chamber door came after she’d just begun to drift off, her tears finally abating, her weariness deep. She woke immediately, her pulse quickening.
“The king is asking for you, Liis of Leok,” the guard murmured.
Her heart raced, but she rose and, after a moment of shuffling, followed the guard down the corridor to the king’s chambers.
Hod’s anger rose again, so palpable it flooded his mouth. He should have left then and saved himself the agony of their interaction. But he couldn’t pull