Page 112 of The Thornwyck Rose

Erik didn’t slow.

He ripped both axes from his belt in one harsh pull.

His boots pounded the wood floor, garnering attention.

He swung.

The axes crashed onto the sword’s crossguard with a crack that echoed through the hall. The blade tore from Geoffrey’s hands and clattered across the floor.

Momentum carried Erik forward—straight into Geoffrey’s back. His shoulder slammed into the man hard enough to send him skidding on his belly.

A guard lunged at him.

Erik flipped one axe in his hand and drove the butt end into the man’s forehead. The guard crumpled but would live.

A second guard charged. Erik kicked him square in the chest—felt ribs give but not break. The man collapsed backward.

Erik pivoted, breath ragged, chest heaving, voice raw from cold and sprint and fear.

Then he bellowed—a guttural, feral sound that froze the hall:

“I am not your enemy!”

He stepped around Seren, into her space, to put himself between her and Lord Henry—to shield her body with his own. No one was going to touch her, not while he was alive.

Behind him, Geoffrey pushed up on an elbow, touched the back of his neck, and stared at his fingers as if expecting blood. Finding none, he looked to Erik instead. A silent exchange passed between them—stunned respect, or something closer to surrender. Geoffrey knew how easily he could be dead.

Erik only hoped it was enough to clear the water between them—maybe have an ally if it came down to it.

Seren’s forehead pressed against the back of his trembling thigh, her fingers grazing the torn fabric by his ankle.

Her breath hitched.

His chest seized.

He glanced down, and the sight almost undid him. He swallowed hard, forcing air through a throat linedwith ice. This was neither the place nor the moment to break—but seeing her alive, weeping, touching him as though afraid he might vanish again—it cracked something deep inside him. It melted the iron in his spine.

Her mouth was ajar. Her chest rose and fell in an unsteady rhythm. Tears streaked her cheeks. Her knuckles were white around the cross in her hand.

“You’re alive?” Her whisper trembled so faintly he barely caught it, but it struck his heart.

Alive.

For a moment, he believed she had called him back from death itself—his Valkyrie, touching earth instead of Valhalla. Some wild part of him begged any god who would listen to hold him upright, because for an instant, he wanted to fall to his knees before her.

He’d made it.

He’d reached her in time.

Henry’s laugh split the room and his thoughts. “So you rose from the dead and returned to your savage roots. Is that it, Payen de Montfort?”

Erik’s eyes snapped to his lord—a blurry streak, focus lagging until it settled on Henry. He rasped, “Chief Madoc’s message is this:”—he gulped air—“The northern chiefdoms are marching on Castel Thornwyck. He will kill everyone in this keep if you harm his daughter.”

“Let him try,” Henry said with a flippant wave of his hand. “Madoc is nothing compared to my stone citadel.”

Erik’s body was spent past reason, but still he bared his teeth and stood tall. The room spun, but he fixed his focus on Henry.

“Not just Madoc,” Erik spat through clenched teeth, breath tearing at his lungs. “Allthe chiefdoms.”