The Runaway They Mocked Is The Protector Of Midgard

2

“Father… my birthday is coming soon,” Astrid murmured to the jade pendant. “Are you going to come this year?”

Across the yard, a boy her age was pointing at her—Torsten, dressed in silk that had never touched a broom in its life. The children around him burst out laughing at whatever he said, and then they were coming her way, mischief spreading across their faces.

Torsten cornered her against the wall. “Give me that.” His hand shot out for the pendant.

Astrid twisted away so fast she landed on her backside on the cold stone, both hands clutched over the jade. “This is mine!”

“This is mine,” Torsten mimicked, high and whiny, and the other children howled. “You’ve been staring at that trash around your neck for hours. What is it going to do? Your mother got dragged off to be someone’s mistress—I watched them take her. And your father?” He leaned down, grinning. “Calling him irresponsible was me being kind. Being irresponsible would require him to be alive.”

“My father is not irresponsible!” Astrid’s voice came out shrill from where she had fallen—thin from the cold, from a whole day with nothing in her stomach. It came out anyway. “My mother said my father is the best man in the whole world!”

The punch caught her square in the nose. Blood came at once, hot down her lip. The children clapped and cheered.

“Don’t you ever raise your voice at me.” Torsten hit her again. “Your father is useless!”

Useless.

The word hit harder than his fist had. Something in her small chest went past fear. She kicked—one desperate kick at his leg—and Torsten crashed onto the stones with a shriek. The cheering stopped dead.

“What is going on here?!”

A woman came hurrying across the yard—Torsten’s mother, Gunnhild, all silk and perfume and fury. She saw her son on the ground. She saw Astrid standing over him with blood on her face. That was all the investigation she needed.

“Mom, I didn’t do anything! She pushed me!” Torsten was already crying.

The slap landed so hard it spun Astrid’s whole body around and put her back on the ground.

“You worthless little thing,” Gunnhild hissed. “I should cut off that hand you used on my son.”

Astrid scrambled onto her knees—not for her own sake. Her mother was already suffering enough in this family. Whatever Astrid did wrong today, her mother would pay for tomorrow. “I’m sorry, Aunt Gunnhild. I shouldn’t have done it. I’ll wash the whole family’s laundry. I’ll sweep every yard on the estate. I’ll take no food for a week, I’ll—”

“Mother, don’t listen to her!” Torsten cut in, tears gone the moment they were no longer useful. “Every gift you’ve ever bought me—she begs to look at them, and then she steals them!”

A small smile curved onto Gunnhild’s mouth. Somehow, it was worse than the slap.

“Stealing,” she said softly. “Then you need a proper lesson. My son’s new hound hasn’t been fed today. You can keep it… entertained.”

The blood drained from Astrid’s face. She had seen that hound—a black thing the size of a calf, all teeth and chain. She shoved the pendant down under the collar of her rags, out of sight, out of reach. “Please. Please, Aunt, forgive me—”

Torsten crouched beside her and lowered his voice so only she could hear. “You can call your useless father to come save you now.”

Gunnhild flicked two fingers. Guards seized Astrid by the arms and dragged her toward the kennels, ignoring her screams, her heels carving lines through the dirt she had swept all morning.

They were halfway across the front yard when the estate gates swung open.

A man stepped through.

Astrid saw the silk sash knotted around his arm before she saw anything else.

“…Father?”

She didn’t decide to move. Her body simply wrenched free—twisting out of the guards’ grip the way only something small and desperate can—and ran. The guards lunged after her, then pulled up short. The stranger’s cloak alone was worth more than a year of their wages. One of them turned and sprinted for the inner house instead.

Astrid crashed into the man’s legs and held on with everything she had. “Father! You came back—mother said you would come back—” The rest drowned in her own crying.

Kaedric looked down at the child fastened to his legs.

Carefully, he pried her small arms loose and crouched to her level. Up close, he saw it: the blood drying under her nose. The full handprint blooming red across one side of her face.

A grown hand. A six-year-old’s face.

Some of the flatness left his voice without his permission.

“I’m not your father, little one. You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“You are my father!” The tears cut off as suddenly as they had started, replaced by something far older than six years. “Why did you never contact mother and me? Not once, all this time—do you know how we have lived?”

No child should be able to sound like that, Kaedric thought.

He studied her—the rags, the bones showing at her wrists. A servant’s daughter, surely. What kind of people starved and beat a child in their own courtyard?

“I’m sorry,” Astrid said suddenly, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I forgot. You have never met me before.” She reached under the collar of her rags, to where she had hidden it from Torsten. “Mother said if I showed you this, you would know who I am.”

She drew it out, still on its cord around her neck.

A jade pendant.

His mother’s jade pendant.

Kaedric’s pupils blew wide—and a terrifying, suffocating aura erupted from his body.