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For many weeks now, every sunrise has greeted Leofrith the same way.
Each night, long after the rest of the village has settled down to sleep, Eivor steals away into the little house of his that is tucked away in the northwest corner of the settlement. She rarely says a word as she strips herself of her outer layers, folding them haphazardly in a pile next to the hearth. She crawls under his furs and turns her back, hauling him closer by their entangled fingers until his arm lays over her waist, his palm resting over her heartbeat. She falls asleep almost the instant her head hits the pillow.
Sometimes he joins her. Sometimes he lays there, for moments or for hours with his nose nestled into her hair, and listens to her breath growing slow and deep.
She doesn’t speak of what draws her away from her own bed and into his arms at night, and he doesn’t ask. He can guess it has something to do with the way the air in the longhouse has become stifling ever since Sigurd’s return, an occasion that should have been a celebration but has instead become a torment, especially for Eivor, who is most often the target of her brother’s ire.
There is a familiarity in the routine, a comfort. Every night she nudges her way into his arms—sometimes just to sleep, and sometimes for more than that—and every morning he wakes up alone. Sometimes his bed is cold and she is long gone. Other times, the sheets still cling to the warmth left behind by his newly absent bed partner, and he can close his eyes and run his palm over the rumpled blankets and fool himself into thinking she is still nearby.
Either way, the other side of his bed is always empty come sunrise.
This morning Leofrith doesn’t know what stirred him, but he suspects it has something to do with the frost biting at his nose and the tops of his ears. The morning air smells sharp and clean in the way the arrival of autumn often does. Even with his eyes closed, he knows the sunrise is already beginning to seep through the shades over his windows.
He sits upright and his eyes crack open to greet the day, to leave the warmth of his bed, to stoke the hearth. He freezes.
He is not alone.
Eivor’s cloak, breeches and boots are still stacked next to where the fire has burned away to ash overnight, leaving the air in the cabin stark and cold. He lays back down slowly and turns.
In all the weeks she has joined him at night, Eivor has never stayed past dawn. She is either gone before he is awake to notice, or some unknown force pulls him to consciousness just in time to watch her through the cracks of his eyelids as she makes her silent retreat from this space they’ve carved out for themselves.
She is still here now, even as the sun blooms over the horizon. She is on her side and facing him, another oddity; he had nearly been offended the first night they had slept together, when she had immediately turned away from him and pulled him close to curl around her back as if she couldn’t bear to look at him, as if he was nothing more than a thing to warm her bed. But since then he has seen her jerk awake in the middle of the night enough times, and has felt her searching hands pulling him close after the fact. He has spent enough of his life as a soldier to know the value of having someone trusted to watch your back. He knows now that he is one of those people for her, even as he finds it hard to believe she needs protection from anything or anyone.
Leofrith reaches for her tentatively, not wanting to disturb her slumber, but he can’t help himself. Here and now in the dim light of morning, she looks more at peace than he’s seen her in weeks, in months. Her brow has been freed from the frown that seems ever present as of late, and her jaw is soft and slack, her lips parted. His fingertips glance over the skin of her face, barely making contact until his palm lands on the side of her neck where his thumb can brush over the birthmark on her jaw. Seeing Eivor at rest reminds him how young she is, even as she carries the burdens of someone decades older with such careful, practiced control.
But the cracks have begun to form. After all, it is sunrise and she is still asleep.
He doesn’t notice her move until her fingers wrap around his wrist like icy tendrils. He twitches and the corner of her lip pulls up, a shadow of a smirk. When she opens her eyes he feels caught, though his hand doesn’t leave its place over the curve of her jawbone. No point in hiding now.
“Your hands are cold.”
“Yes,” she says, smile growing. “That must be it.”
She closes her eyes again and leans in to kiss his palm, his wrist. She stays there with her mouth still pressed to the beat of his pulse and breathes. It feels dishonest to keep her here when the room grows brighter by the minute, when he knows she is usually long gone by now. Perhaps she doesn’t realize how late it is.
“The sun has almost risen,” he says, even though everything in him begs her to stay.
She hums, the vibration shooting up the length of his arm. “Let it rise,” she replies. Then, after a brief pause: “I'm tired.”
She pulls him in by the wrist, her hand growing a bit warmer now with the skin contact, and folds herself into his chest. Her nose is colder than her hands and he shivers when it brushes his collarbone. Right now she could ask to break open his ribs and burrow herself into the space between his lungs. He thinks he would let her. He is already breathless enough.
Eivor is always gone by sunrise, and he has never asked why. Perhaps he worries she will stop showing up at all if he gives voice to his thoughts, especially right now. There are some things that feel safer to speak of under the cover of night. He already feels as if he is tempting fate with every breath and every movement, as if she will turn to smoke under his hands. The ice upon which he treads is paper-thin and the light of day reveals the cracks.
“Speak your mind, then,” Eivor mumbles into his neck.
Leofrith swallows. “The sun has almost risen,” he repeats, “and you are still here.” He feels her stiffen in his arms.
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” he says urgently. His fingers gently wind their way through her hair where it’s fanned out on the pillow. “No. You are usually gone by now, that's all.”
She relaxes again, but not totally. “I'm tired,” she repeats. “That is all.” Her voice is rough with sleep and something else that he can’t quite decipher. He has not always been good at telling truths from lies—his many years serving under Burgred are surely proof of that—but he has spent enough time with Eivor by now to recognize a half-truth when he hears it from her.
She is tired, that much is true. He can see it in the slant of her shoulders, the shadows under her eyes. He sees it in the way she shrinks ever further under every cruel word from Sigurd's mouth. But there is something else there that he cannot place. Something that has always been there, bubbling under the surface for as long as he’s known her, that has only just begun to boil over in these last few weeks.
“I think there is more to it than that,” he says, soft and even, trying not to spook her.
She is still for a moment, and he can feel the grit of her teeth on his chest. “You would be wrong.”
“Am I?” he presses.
He grunts as he is flipped onto his back. Eivor is straddling his hips with her hands locked around his wrists—not too securely, he could break out of the hold if he wanted to. But it does the trick of forcing him to pay attention. Her eyes are sharp and clear when she speaks again.
“If you insist on keeping me awake, will you at least make it worth my time?”
Leofrith is keenly aware of the heat of her resting on his stomach. When she leans down to press a kiss to his neck the scent of her hair, of honey and woodsmoke, fills his nose. It makes his head spin. As always, Eivor knows exactly what she is doing to him. She drags her mouth down to his collar, to where his tunic opens over his breastbone, and loosens her grip on his wrists as he grows pliant under the touch. Her kisses grow more frantic, his breathing more laboured, and one of her hands releases its hold entirely so she can reach down toward his waistband.
Any other morning, he might allow her this victory. Instead he slips free of her grip and rolls them over, and she huffs in annoyance as her back hits the sheets again.
“What?” she snaps.
“You have been out of sorts,” Leofrith says, dropping all pretense. His first mistake had been in thinking that he could gently coax the answers he seeks from her. That forcing her to speak her feelings on this matter would be anything other than a bloody fight. “I have been patient. I have not pushed you to speak about what is on your mind.”
“Let me go and I’ll show you,” she says through gritted teeth, threatening.
“You know exactly what I mean,” he presses.
She tilts her head. “Do I?”
They could run in circles like this until the sun has already hit its highest point and fallen back below the horizon again.
“I have never seen you so hesitant to speak your mind. I don’t think I have ever seen you truly hesitate at all. And yet your brother stomps about this village with no regard for the life you’ve nurtured here, and you have let him.” His eyes never leave her as he speaks and as he does, he sees the cracks in the ice growing larger, digging deeper.
She closes her eyes. “He is my jarl.”
“He has lost his mind.”
“Is there a point to this?” she spits out, now glaring at him as if she can silence him with the venom in her gaze and little else. “Because I can find half a dozen others in this settlement who would gladly warm my bed without any questions.”
The words hit him square in the chest before rolling off of him like water. First she grows irritated, then angry, then mean. He has dug his way inside of her these past months. He knows her.
“Yet your bed is empty, and you are still here in mine.”
Eivor huffs again but this time, she shifts her gaze up to the ceiling. Searching, avoiding.
“Get off of me,” she bites. “Get the fuck off.”
He does. Eivor pulls away at last and he immediately misses the warmth of her, even as her glare feels like being dragged over hot coals. The space left behind welcomes a rush of cold air as she turns away from him, stopping only when she is sitting on the very edge of the bed with a white-knuckled grip on the sheets.
“Eivor—”
“I don’t have time for this,” she hisses, but makes no move to gather her clothes. Her shoulders are fixed in a taut line and her head hangs low. Her body shakes, the movements so slight that he might have imagined it, but it only grows more intense. She takes in a single quaking breath and regains her composure, stilling the tremors before speaking again. “I need something easy. I need—” she pauses again and Leofrith waits. He has always been more patient than she.
“I need quiet. I need my every action to not be under scrutiny. And I need you to stop asking questions about things that I cannot possibly expect you to understand.”
Leofrith is out of bed and kneeling at her feet before he even registers the instinct to do so. He peels her fingers from her iron grip on the bedding and threads them through his own, squeezing back, grounding her. She flinches, but does not pull away and he takes it as tentative permission to keep touching her. His other hand cups her jaw just like it had before, but where that had been based purely on his own self-indulgence, this now comes from a need to talk her down from whatever ledge she dangles from.
“Try me,” he says.
She laughs, humorless. “I should go.”
“I’m serious.” His voice is softer again. “Tell me. Please. Help me understand. Let me listen.”
Eivor meets his eyes again from under her lashes, silent and unconvinced. She lifts a hand to where he is still cupping her jaw and wraps it around his wrist. Not pushing him away, just holding. Their eyes lock and he doesn’t waver. The ice melts a little bit more until it’s clear enough for him to see her on the other side.
“Okay,” Eivor says, resigned, and Leofrith finally breathes deeply again.
“Okay.”
He carefully extricates himself from her hold with a shiver. The air outside their blanket cocoon is crisp, and he can tell from the shiver of her hands and the goosebumps on her thighs that Eivor is starting to feel the bite just as much as he is. He reaches around her, gathering one of the furs from the bed and silently resting it over her shoulders before turning to stoke the fire.
When the hearth is bright and warm once again, he returns to her side and draws her into his arms, back under the bed covers. There, she burrows back under his chin and begins to weave a tale of gods, of visions, of death.
Of betrayal.
She speaks for a long time, her forehead on his chest, murmuring into the steady beat of his heart. She speaks long enough that the sun begins to breach through the trees in sharp beams of light, filtering through the threadbare curtains and reflecting off the brass buckles of her boots near the fire, the edge of his father’s sword where it rests next to the door, the gold wisps of her hair. As he runs his fingers through her braids to the rhythm of her words, so much of her actions these past weeks finally make sense.
His little house by the waterfall comes alive with every word from her lips, with every moment passed. She has never been here during daylight hours, but Leofrith thinks—dangerously so—that he could get used to it.
“I do not think you capable of betrayal,” he says, when Eivor finally stops speaking.
“I am capable of a great many things,” she says, finally looking up at him again now that all her secrets have been aired. “Is it not a betrayal to find relief in the times when Sigurd unleashes his temper on my people, instead of me? To trade their comfort for mine like a coward?”
“You are no coward,” he says quickly. The words spill out of his mouth unbidden. He doesn’t have to think about it. He knows it to be true, and the very notion leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“Perhaps I am. I would come by it honestly, after all.” Her voice is flat and unfeeling. As if she doesn’t have the energy to be affronted at the thought. They have run each other in circles about this too, about what Varin did to his daughter. For his daughter. Leofrith passes over the subject just this once. An argument for another time.
“You are no coward,” he repeats. “I have known cowards, and they do not look like you.”
“Oh, is that right?” she asks, with a barely noticeable wry lilt to her voice. “And what look is that?”
He reddens slightly under his beard, to her obvious delight. Her lip curls up ever so slightly as she watches him search for an answer. He could list any one of her qualities, but he doesn’t think any words can compare. He could tell her he thinks that her fear of being remembered as a coward renders her incapable of it.
“You are strong, and stalwart, and kind-hearted,” he settles on. “And I do not think it is cowardly to want rest.”
Eivor’s smile bows slightly as she searches his gaze for something. Sincerity perhaps? She does not have to look for long; she knows as well as Leofrith does that he is a terrible liar. She swallows. “Those are not words for things that one can see.”
“There are no words,” he murmurs. “This is just what I feel.”
She kisses him, soft but urgent. There isn’t much space for her to cross, as close as they already are, and even with no space left between them she makes a valiant attempt to pull him closer still. She winds herself into the gaps between limbs, her knees between his, her arms around his sides, her fingers gripping his shoulders, his hair. Clutching, embracing. Leofrith gives as good as he gets, his hands trailing around to her back and anchoring them together, chest to chest. The heat on his cheeks fans out to his ears, down the length of his neck and his spine.
Leofrith is the first one to pull away for air, and he snorts as she turns away while her jaw almost immediately cracks open with a yawn so big and long that it makes her eyes water. When it’s done, she threads her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck and yanks .
“Don't laugh at me,” she says, even while her composure cracks into a grin at the breathy groan that forces its way out of his chest. “I told you. I’m tired.”
This time when he rolls them over, she goes willingly. He kisses her again, soft and unhurried, before trailing his mouth to the scar on her cheek, to her jaw, to the divot in her neck. Following a path visible only to him, going wherever her heated skin and her tiny, hitched gasps command him.
When he finally looks up at her again, her eyes are closed. She is relaxed, breathing slow and deep once more. Content. The only hint that she is still awake is the hand at his nape, now loosened from its grip on his hair and instead gently stroking, mindlessly. He looks at her, observes the rise and fall of her chest, the rare smoothness of her forehead, the trail of flushed skin where his beard has been. The angle of the sun is just right now and the soft light illuminates the rosy sheen on her cheeks.
The sun has risen, he remembers, and he is late.
Leofrith begins to pull away before there are hands in the front of his tunic, tugging him close once more.
“Wait,” she breathes, her voice rough with sleepiness. “Come back.” Her eyes are cracked just enough for him to see the shade of blue. He leans in to kiss her again, barely a glance of lips.
“I should go. Hytham will be expecting me.” He says it into her mouth, and he stays close enough to feel her sigh. When she moves with the clear intention of rising to face the unforgiving day, he holds her there.
“Stay,” Leofrith says. “Sleep. I will not tell anyone where you are.”
It may be a silly promise for him to make, and by the look Eivor gives him she knows it too. Anyone in Ravensthorpe with eyes or ears knows the nature of their relationship by now, perhaps except for Sigurd, who is buried too deep inside his own mind to notice much of anything these days that doesn’t cause him outright offense. If Eivor is missing within the settlement, someone will likely know where to find her. But Leofrith promises it nonetheless.
He unwinds his limbs from hers as gently as he can, unfurling his back, rolling his bad shoulder. She watches him dress from her curled position on the bed, letting out a low whistle when he strips himself of his nightshirt. He balls it up and throws it at her for her trouble, but it flutters before landing in a harmless heap at her feet. Her laugh rings out, echoing in his ears as he covers his flushed skin with layers of linen and leather.
“Stay here,” he repeats as he secures his cloak. He kneels at the edge of the bed and kisses her one last time, light and quick, lest he be tempted to stay for more. “Stay. I’d better not see you outside this room before midday.”
She turns her head just enough to kiss the sensitive flesh of his inner wrist, and he can’t contain his shudder.
“If the gods are so kind,” she says and thankfully, blessedly, she listens for once and closes her eyes instead of testing the limits of his self control. “Best not to keep your mentor waiting.”
Leofrith stands once more, at last taking up his sword and sliding it into its sheath before slinging it over his back. When he opens the door he is immediately hit with the crispness of the morning air, the fresh smell of leaves and overnight rain. The frost that climbs the grass in front of his hut is melting away now, late as it is. He very suddenly misses the warmth of Eivor’s arms. He yearns for it. She was born of winter and yet she is so, so warm.
“I will see you tonight,” he hears her say. He turns to look at her one last time and finds her with one eye open, just enough to look at the blur of him in the doorway. He smiles with an aching fondness.
“Tonight,” he agrees, and closes the door.