The Runaway They Mocked Is The Protector Of Midgard

5

The whole of Askheim was boiling.

Banners the size of ships’ sails rose over the arena. Tonight, the next Lord of Askheim would be chosen—and the winner would rule for ten years, unless death itself unseated him first.

High above the noise, Rothgar watched from his window the way a man watches a meal being cooked for him. In a few hours, all of it would kneel.

“Lord Rothgar.”

A woman had entered with a cup of water on a tray. Her voice was quiet and worn. She was still beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that had seen better days and outlived every one of them.

Her name was Liv. She was Astrid’s mother.

They had dragged her from her family’s estate weeks ago. Refusing was never an option; they made sure she understood what would happen to her daughter if she did. So she carried trays, swallowed whatever was thrown at her, and sent every wage back to her cousin Gunnhild—for Astrid’s food, Astrid’s clothes, Astrid’s safety. Every insult she survived here was a meal in her daughter’s bowl.

Rothgar turned, smile growing. “Did I send for water? Or did you finally invent an excuse to come look at me?”

Around the room, heads turned. The courtiers knew this show.

“No, Lord Rothgar.” Liv kept her eyes down. “You are my fiancé’s uncle. I would never hold such thoughts.”

“Fiancé.” Rothgar tasted the word and found it delicious. “I would have married you myself, back when I was still asking nicely. All you had to do was leave Kaedric.”

Liv lowered her head.

Six years since he vanished.

Six years of knocking on doors with Astrid strapped to her back, still small enough to sleep through the humiliation. Of watching stewards read her father’s letter, look up at her with a changed face, and close the door without a word. Her own father had written those letters. Her own father had made sure every noble house in Askheim knew his daughter was a disgrace before she ever reached their gates.

And Kaedric—

In six years, nothing. Not a letter. Not a message passed through some merchant’s mouth. Not a rumor. Not even a body she could bury and finally be allowed to weep over.

On her worst nights, Liv hated him. Hated that she was still waiting. Hated that six years on, she still caught herself listening for the gate like a fool. And then the thoughts would run loose and she could not stop them: Why had he never sent word? Not once? Was he lying dead in some ditch on the border? Or was he alive somewhere—warm somewhere—with someone—

No. She stopped herself there. Every time. The boy who had pressed his mother’s pendant into her palm, bleeding, in the rain, would never have stayed away by choice. He was dead, or something was keeping him from her.

Six years, and she still could not decide which one would hurt more.

“I knew my nephew better than anyone alive.” Rothgar shook his head in mock pity. “I told you he would abandon you. Was I wrong?”

The courtiers nodded along like it was wisdom.

Out of habit, her hand drifted to her collarbone and found bare skin. The pendant was with Astrid now, where it belonged. The last piece of him, given away to the only other person who loved him.

“Lord Rothgar,” she said, as gently as her voice would go, “you asked for water. I brought it.”

He took the cup and made a show of peering into it. “You haven’t slipped anything in, have you? Some herb to make me fall in love?” Laughter rolled around the room. “Save your coin. A maid with a child—the best you will ever be under this roof is my mistress.”

Liv said nothing. Her hands stayed steady on the tray. They had had six years of practice.

Rothgar, drunk on a lordship he hadn’t won yet, spread his arms. “I told her years ago—get rid of that child. If she had listened, who knows? She might have sat beside me tonight as a lady.”

“Who marries a woman with a child?” one of the courtiers laughed into his drink.

“But I am feeling generous today.” Rothgar’s voice softened into something worse than mockery. “Swear obedience to me, here, in front of these men, and I will consider elevating you. Mistress to the Lord of Askheim. A better ending than a dead man’s promise and that little mistake you insisted on keeping—”

“Go to hell.”

The room went perfectly still. In the silence, a courtier choked on his wine.

Liv could swallow anything they said about her. She had done it for six years and called it the price of keeping her daughter alive. But Kaedric was not theirs to touch. And Astrid was not a mistake.

Six years, and those were still the only two choices she had never once regretted.

Rothgar looked slowly around the room. Every man in it was watching him. Waiting. If a maid could tell him to go to hell in front of them today, not one of them would kneel to him tonight.

The slap cracked her head sideways. The tray hit the floor and rang like a dropped bell.

“You worthless thing.” The performance was gone from his voice. “On your knees. Lick my shoes clean, and I may yet forgive you.”

Liv pressed a palm to her burning cheek, straightened, and turned for the door.

Rothgar closed his fist.

The air thickened. Crimson runes spilled from his sleeve like living thread, snaked across the floor, and wrapped her—wrists, ankles, spine—in cords of burning light. Her body stopped answering her. Her own magic rose to fight and guttered like a candle against a furnace.

She fought anyway. Sweat broke across her forehead. Her teeth ground together. For three whole heartbeats, the cords actually trembled.

Then her knees buckled. The cords walked her forward, one dragging step at a time, and folded her down at Rothgar’s feet.

He lifted his boot and set it in front of her face. “Clean it.”

Her neck bent. Not by her. Her tongue touched the dust on the leather—once, twice—in front of every laughing man in the room, and there was nothing in this world she could do to stop it.

The room exploded. Courtiers pounded the table. Rothgar looked down at her the way a man looks at a stain.

Liv fixed her eyes on nothing and sent herself far away, to a rainy night in an abandoned cottage, and let her body stay behind without her.

A bell tolled across the city. The selection had begun.

The runes released her. The courtiers poured out toward the arena, Rothgar at their head. He paused over her on his way past.

“Watch from the maids’ row,” he said pleasantly. “Tonight you’ll see what a real man looks like.”

Then he was gone.

She wiped her mouth and got up without help, the way she had her whole life.

Beneath the roar of the gathering crowd, Liv made herself one quiet promise: she would rather die on that sand than live a single day as that man’s mistress.

###

Hundreds of miles away, a silver dragon burst through the clouds, flying harder than it had ever flown for its old masters.

On its back, a little girl pointed at the walls rising on the horizon. “Father! Is mother there?”

Kaedric’s eyes were fixed on the distant arena, golden light already gathering in them.

“She is,” he said. “Hold on tight.”