“Thor’s hairy balls,” Kolbjorn spat as he left Rachel and rushed towards the hole, even though his body burned to continue what they had started.

The kiss had made all his thoughts evaporate, and with them—logic. She must be a witch. How else could she make him forget the most important goal in his life?

He must take her to Father, who would surely punish her. He could not give in to the urge to have her, to kiss her till the end of eternity, only to have her killed when the storm ended.

The wind that now wailed in brought the smell of snow and chilled Kolbjorn’s skin—and his desire—returning him to sanity.

He studied the damage. The wooden beams supporting the roof were still intact. It was the thatch and two rotten planks that had broken from the pressure of snow and the strength of the storm.

“I must fix it or we’ll be dead,” he muttered.

“Let me help,” Rachel stood next to him.

He ignored her and looked around. The shack had not been repaired for a while, and this was the result. What Kolbjorn needed was an ax, nails—some of which must still be in the wood rot—and fresh planks, which he did not have.

But firewood lay in the far corner of the hut, and maybe he could cut the bigger pieces to cover up the hole temporarily.

He wouldn’t be able to do it alone though—not before they froze to death, at any rate. He glanced at Rachel, who eyed him with a frown. “Quick”—he gestured at the planks—“find nails that are salvageable.”

Rachel nodded and sank to the floor to rummage in the rotten planks lying in a small pile of snow that was growing bigger with every blast of wind. Behind the firewood stash, Kolbjorn found a log and placed it in the middle of the room. There was also a woodcutting ax. Kolbjorn took it, propped his battle ax against the wall, and began hacking at the log.

“I got six nails,” Rachel said. “Is that enough?”

“No.” First flitch flew from the log.

The smartest thing for Rachel to do now would be to make wooden nails with the woodcutting ax while he worked on the flitches, but there was no way Kolbjorn would trust her with an ax.

“What do you want me to do now?” she said.

“Nothing,” he barked, and the next flitch flew.

“Come on, I am not some blue-blooded princess. I can do stuff. I know how to work with metal, the basics of jewelry.”

“What?” The next hack sent a third flitch flying.

“My mom is a jeweler. I watched her often when she still worked.”

“Jewelry won’t help here.”

“Well, no, not technically, but I can do something. Let me hammer the planks to the roof. You said we must hurry.”

Kolbjorn straightened up, took a breath and regarded her. She stood straight and proud like a goddess of battle, with that wound on her forehead and blood caked against her pale skin, her lips full and dark, her cheeks red from frost, her auburn hair blowing in the wind. What he wanted most was to scoop her into his arms, take her to the sleeping bench next to him, and make her lips swell and her cheeks burn for very different reasons.

He chased the thought away.

“Can you make wooden nails?”

“I can figure it out.”

Kolbjorn was surprised by her keenness. He pointed at the opposite corner of the room. “Go there. I will trust you with the ax for now. If you make one wrong move, you’ll be dead sooner than you can think your next thought.”

Rachel frowned. “Why are you so jumpy?”

“You could kill me to get your necklace, couldn’t you? Your mother’s life against mine, who would you choose? Though if you killed me, you wouldn’t be able to fix the roof on your own. So you’d be dead, and with you your mother.”

“But I’d never kill you, Kolbjorn.” She reached out her hand. “Give me that ax. I’ll figure out what to do.”

Kolbjorn handed her the woodcutting ax and watched carefully as she moved away from him. Then he turned to the firewood stash and found a few wooden twigs that were thick enough and hard enough to become nails. He handed them to Rachel together with a couple of pieces of firewood.

The wind blew in more snow, and after another blast, the roof cracked. Kolbjorn’s eyes shot to the direction of the hole to see if any more planks had flown off. But, for now, they remained secure.

In between the hacks of his battle ax, Kolbjorn threw glances at Rachel to make sure she was not making any moves or planning any tricks on him, but she seemed to be completely occupied by her task. The tip of her tongue peeked out the corner of her mouth, which made her look like a little girl, and Kolbjorn hid a smile.

“So, how’s your dad doing?” Rachel said, and Kolbjorn froze with his ax above his head.

“Why?”

“Dunno. He is so intense.”

“That’s none of your business.” He cut another flitch.

“I’m just curious.”

He smashed the ax into the log, but it went in at the wrong angle, and a fountain of splinters sprung from under it. “Loki’s hundred-year turd! You dare to ask about my father. You! Do you know what you cost me? Do you know that he took away everything?”

And he did not mean his possessions. He meant things more important. Everything he had worked so hard for his whole life. His father’s approval. The chance to belong to his family.

Rachel froze, the wood and the ax in her hands. “I never meant for you to get into trouble.”

The wind blew in another shower of snow, some of which hissed in the fire. “That is why I need to deliver you to him, so that he forgives me. Being a bastard does not play in my favor.”

“Are you illegitimate?”

“I am his oldest—and yet, a bastard. He has two legitimate sons.”

“And your mother?”

“She was a slave. She died. I never knew her.”

Rachel cut another splinter. “I’m sorry that she died. That’s crazy. You never knew your mother, and yet your father is in your life every day. And I am fighting to keep my mother alive when my father abandoned me like a sack of garbage.”

Kolbjorn regarded her intently. What was this strange situation they were in? Rachel and he were opposite in many ways, and yet something visceral connected them and resonated deeply in him when he looked at her, when he heard her voice.

He understood well the fire in her that made her do anything to save her mother. He’d also rather die than let harm come close to his father. Somewhere in his gut, he felt that Rachel was the same.

Kolbjorn’s throat clenched. The Norns who spun people’s fates were so cruel. In another life, under different circumstances, he would fight for Rachel, too. Kolbjorn hit the log for the last time, and a perfect flitch flew out.

He straightened up. “That should do. Come, help me fix the roof.”

They hurried to the opening, and Kolbjorn stood on a small stool to hammer the flitches with the back of his ax. Wind blew snow right into his face, choking him, but he went on. He’d gotten it right—the flitches were long enough to cover the gaps between the beams.

“I don’t understand something about your dad,” said Rachel when she handed him the next flitch and the nails. “He knows you are his son. He trusted you with the most important treasure—not his legitimate sons. But you are still not in the family? Why can’t he just acknowledge you? Like, can he say, ‘Legally, Kolbjorn is my son.’ ”

Kolbjorn’s jaw bones clenched. She hit right in the eye, didn’t she?

“Yes, he can.”

“So why doesn’t he? Why does your father manipulate you like that?”

Kolbjorn froze and glanced at her. “Manipulate me?” The suspicion had turned in his stomach before, but he did not want to believe it. He couldn’t give up his quest after all this time. Kolbjorn drove a nail in, and the flitch covered part of the hole, which stopped the wind from blowing in his face. “He does not manipulate me,” he mumbled. “He has conditions.”

“Oh. Conditions.”

“Yes. And because of you, I broke them. So I’m further away from my goal than ever.”

“Your goal? So you do want him to legally take you into the family.”

It was as if she lashed his heart with a whip. Everyone in the village knew about the situation, the unspoken agreement between the jarl and his bastard hung like a tapestry on the wall of the mead hall. Modolfr was the only person who asked him about it to Kolbjorn’s face, but Kolbjorn only answered yes or no or hmmed in response.

Kolbjorn had never pronounced the words, as if saying them out loud would bring a bad omen and make his goal unattainable.

But something about Rachel—her strangeness and her familiarity, the fact that her own father had abandoned her, the fact that she cared about her family as much as he did about his—made him feel that she might understand him like no one else could.

“There’s nothing I want more,” he croaked, “than to have my father acknowledge me.”

Kolbjorn froze and so did Rachel. The words briefly hung before him in a white cloud and then evaporated on the wind.

“The worst of it is, he promised it to me a long time ago. Until I was five years old, I did not even know I was a bastard. He had even told me he was so glad when I was born, he had given me a version of his name. Kolbjorn. It means ‘dark Bjorn.’ The tradition is to name every first-born son after his father, but I was a bastard, so that was as close as he could get.”

Kolbjorn hammered the nail deep into the wood. “Kitchen maids and slaves made sure I was fed and dressed, but every day of my life, he was there. I slept in the alcove in his longhouse, he let me eat with him at the table. He handed me his sword the moment I was big enough to hold it and gave me my first fighting lesson.”

Kolbjorn took another nail from Rachel’s hands. His fingers burned when he touched her, but he did not hurry to take them away. Rachel listened and said nothing. He hammered the nail into the flitch, and it blocked a bit more of the endless storm.

“Then he got married and everything changed. Before the wedding feast, he told me he’d make me a Bjornsson if I proved myself a great warrior and an honorable man, and my whole life filled with this purpose.”

Kolbjorn grimaced from the bitterness in his mouth. “Then Alfarr was born, and he couldn’t name him Bjorn anymore, because I sort of took that name. But there he had his real, legal son. He forgot about me. He still talked to me from time to time, to make sure I trained well. Maybe he saw something in me.”

Kolbjorn swallowed and thought that perhaps, as Rachel said, his father had just wanted to manipulate him, to keep him close in case he needed him.

He continued, “Father kept saying that because I was a bastard, he could only accept me into the family if I was worthy, if I was the example of honor and the best warrior in the whole of Norway. That if I would accomplish every single task and bring him everything he asked me to, he’d make me his real son one day. That I should make him proud.”

Rachel’s eyebrows knit together. “He should have done it a long time ago. I think you fulfilled his tasks and more. He should not make you work so hard for his attention. No parent should.” The last words came out choked.

What Rachel said resonated in Kolbjorn as a dull ache, but even though doubt turned in his stomach, he refused to see it her way. “You don’t know anything.”

“Anyone who has eyes and sees you, knows that. I bet he won’t find a more worthy son than you if he searches the whole world.”

Kolbjorn’s eyes prickled—surely from the wind blowing right in his face, not from her words. They gave him strength and energy, though, and he continued hammering the nails into the flitches as the storm continued to fight him—and as the beautiful woman, who had made him talk better with her questions than a torturer with hot coals, stood by his side.

Every time she handed him the flitches, he touched her fingers, lingering. And she accepted his touch with a smile, the moments of connection stretching into eternity. As warmth spread through him at the contact, it warred with the cold certainty that their future would be all too brief.