Page 43 of The Thornwyck Rose

Henry’s harsh grunts resounded in memory from that morning.

“She is not what I asked for. You were made to breed men, not cradle daughters.”

She’d turned away from him, but he’d grabbed her arm, slapped her for turning away when he was not done speaking. She apologized as she always did. Her prayer was to stay humble, to survive, and not let bitterness corrode her heart.

Seren sat beside him on the dais, her body still swollen and raw beneath the folds of blue damask. Her belt was tied so tight it mocked comfort. The bruises across her ribs, the milk still sore in her breasts, the aching hollow where the child had been—all of it tucked neatly behind embroidered velvet and the pretense of resilience.

The smell of roast boar and crushed thyme curled in her nostrils. A slow, crawling revulsion started in her gut and pulsed beneath her skin in waves.

Henry reclined as if at ease, legs sprawled wide, the picture of masculine command. One ringed hand curled lazily around the goblet stem. The other—absentmindedly, possessively—rested on her knee beneath the table as if he were chaining her to him.

Below them, nobles gathered in curated arcs, their voices a low ripple of conspiracies masked as cheer.

Lord Basile whispered something to the fat steward from Stafford, and both chuckled behind their sleeves. Lady Cléroux, lips bit to a nice pink hue, tapped her goblet in staccato rhythm against the table, the clinking sharp enough to grate. Her daughter, the fresh-faced Lady Adelais, cast sidelong glances toward the commander’s corner of the hall.

She didn’t need to follow the young unmarried maiden’s eyes. She already knew where they landed.

Seren’s gaze dropped to her plate.

A slow, unexpected ache stirred in her chest—jealousy. She was not a girl who could cast glances across a hall, not a maiden hoping to be seen. She had no freedom to want. And yet, Erik had held her close as she cried. She had never cried in front of anyone, not her kin.

Perhaps he was the only kindness she had met. And in the corridor, blood still drying on her skin, he had offered itfreely. Not out of duty. Not even out of pity. He had spoken to her as if she were still someone worth defending.

He had called her Valkyrie.

Not lady, not lamb, not breeder.

Valkyrie.

The word clung to her memory like a baby’s curled grip. A warrior maiden from the old gods—those Erik still half-believed in, though she’d seen the shame he carried for it in Henry’s court. A woman who was selected by his god. A woman who bore the fallen with mercy. Who knew violence and still did not lose her soul to it.

She was not one of his gods. She had never carried a sword. Though her father taught her to fight, she’d never seen battle. One life saved was not worth the name Valkyrie in a Norseman’s eyes.

And yet, he had called herValkyrie.

He hadn’t seen her kiss David’s curls when Henry would not, nor hold Ragnar in a tight embrace, or stitch knights’ wounds behind closed doors. He didn’t know she’d swallowed her fear with every breath she took in that keep.

He said he honored her because she came for peace, knowing what her life would be. She had kept that peace with her body, knowing what it would endure, and never faltered, even in a room full of nobles and holy men watching Henry’s power theater.

Perhaps he had seen that in her. Perhaps that was why he called her Valkyrie.

He had called her what no one else dared to see or to acknowledge.

And it fractured her resolve.

Because she was not made of smoke and myth. She was a woman in pain, a woman with bones that ached from kneeling too long at the feet of a man, her husband, who would never honor her. And yet—when Erik looked at her, he did not see a failure of a wife or a spoiled vessel for sons. He saw the fight in her. The war she waged every day to keep her children alive. To not become like the wives who vanished before her.

And for a moment—just one stolen moment between the noise of nobles and Henry’s heavy hand—she believed him.

She believed she might be something more than what the world demanded her to be.

A Valkyrie in velvet. A mother made of mercy. A woman unbowed, unbent, and unbroken.

Erik was her friend, and she begged herself not to see him as more, for what use was there in wishing for a life not hers?

She lifted her eyes back to the pretty Lady Adelais, who still stared at the handsome commander. She allowed herself to glance, too.

Erik stood where he always did—flanked by the black-and-crimson banners of Thornwyck, posture straight, jaw set beneath a hard stare. His surcoat was simple but cut with authority, a shade darker than the night sky. He looked at the entry as if he longed to escape.