Page 122 of The Thornwyck Rose

For several moments, David worked in silence. Then, so quietly Seren almost missed it, David whispered, “I always wished you were my father.”

Erik’s eyes fluttered, and his brow furrowed. He heard it.

David set the first stitch. The thread tugged tight.

“When I was little,” he continued, voice thin, “I thought . . . if you were married to her . . . Mother wouldn’t cry at night.”

Seren stared at her son, not realizing that was why he had asked her if she loved the Commander after Henry’s first attempt on her life.

Erik blinked slowly, the words seemingly piercing through his fog. His hand twitched.

David swallowed hard and kept stitching. He wiped his wrist across his eyes, his breath trembling once before he forced it down.

“Ragnar always spoke about you,” he said softly. “What you taught him. How he missed you—loved you. How you loved him. That you were a prisoner.”

Erik shut his eyes tightly at that—grief tearing through the haze. His jaw clenched. A low, broken sound escaped him.

Seren laid a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I used to envy him,” David admitted, voice dropped. “He had a father who cared.”

Another stitch.

“Mine only cared what I could do for him. If I was useful. If I obeyed. How good a man I made him look.” He swallowed. “Beat me. Beat my mother. Just because he could.”

Seren’s breath caught at the rawness in her son’s voice—so young, yet shaped by too much loss. She didn’t trust her voice not to tremble, not to spill everything she felt, so she kept silent and her hand on Erik’s shoulder.

David’s voice softened to a confession:

“I thought I’d be sad when my father died. I’m not. Maybe that makes me a terrible son, but . . . if you love mymother, and she loves you . . . I don’t care what anyone says.”

Erik’s eyes opened again with an unfocused gaze, but locked with Seren’s.

David tied off the stitch and whispered the words he’d held the longest:

“I’d be proud to call you father.”

Erik’s throat worked once. His lips parted.

“David . . . I—” he rasped, hoarse and uneven.

It was all he could manage, but David looked down quickly, hiding a trembling breath.

Seren stared into the windows of Erik’s soul.

If only it were that easy—that her son’s word allowed them to be together. But Erik was of a pagan faith and held no land or title. He was the object of the accusation made against her, and she was a noblewoman of birth with the promise of peace with marriage.

Oh, the scandals that would follow. She tried not to think of the future.

Had David been secure in his appointment of lordship—perhaps there might have been a chance, but as it stood—David had to prove he was a Marcher Lord to retain the blessing and appointment from the king. Every heir was met with violence. There was always someone who tried to pry a new lord from his title.

And it might be her own people coming to claim the lordship—to fight back against Norman control of the Marches. But it was a problem for the morning when she met her father on the fields of Mortlande beyond Thornwyck’s gate.

David rested Erik’s arm across the warrior’s chest before replacing the blanket and furs.

“Please stay alive,” David whispered. “For my mother. For all of us.”

Erik let out a thin, pained breath that might’ve been a promise.