“I Can’t Bear Children,” She Told Giant Viking — He Grinned, “My Five Sons Already Love You”

Chapter 8

The news spread through Hehalt like wildfire.

Hal Stoneback was courting the barren widow. The warrior with five sons was choosing the woman who couldn’t give him more.

The village council called a meeting. The elders spoke of propriety, of duty, of the need for a man in Hal’s position to secure his legacy with more heirs. The women whispered in corners, their voices carrying the sharp edge of judgment. The men shook their heads and said Stoneback had lost his mind.

Through it all, Brinhild kept her head high and her hands steady. She tended her garden. She healed the sick. She held Ulf when nightmares woke him, taught Olaf the names of herbs, listened to Leif’s endless stories, watched over Bjorn’s careful kindness, and met Eric’s serious gaze with steady warmth.

She was more than the thing she couldn’t do.

She was the woman who had saved a child’s life, who had fed a grieving family, who had filled a cottage with laughter and love. She was the woman Aar had loved and Sigrid had trusted and Hal had chosen.

And when the village women came to her door — not to apologize, but to ask if she had any remedy for Anna Thorson’s fever — she gave them the herbs without bitterness and sent them on their way.

The silence that followed was its own kind of victory.

—

The proposal came on the first day of spring.

The snow had melted, revealing the green shoots of new life pushing through the thawing ground. The fjord had shed its ice, and the fishing boats were returning to the water. The world was waking up, and Hehalt was waking with it.

Hal found her in her garden, kneeling among the herb beds, her hands buried in soil. The sun was warm on her back, and she was humming the old lullaby without realizing it.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, lowering himself to the ground beside her.

“Dangerous habit.”

He smiled, but his eyes were serious. “The hall is repaired. The boys are settled. The winter is over.”

“All true.”

“And I’ve been thinking about what comes next.”

She sat back on her heels, brushing dirt from her hands. The ring was gone from her finger — she’d put it away after the night of the storm, tucking it beside Aar’s letter in the pouch where she kept her most precious things. Her hand felt lighter. So did her heart.

“What comes next?” she asked.

“I want to marry you.”

The words hung in the air between them, simple and absolute. No grand gestures, no elaborate speeches. Just a man and a woman in a garden, telling each other the truth.

“I have five sons,” he continued. “A past full of scars. A future full of uncertainty. I’ll probably make you angry more often than I should, and I’ll definitely forget to say the right thing at the right time. But I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of you.”

“You already are.”

“Then say yes.”

She looked at him — at the mountains that had shaped his shoulders, at the storms that lived in his eyes, at the gentle way he held her hand, as if she was something precious.

“I have seven years of grief packed into a small cottage,” she said. “I have a dead husband’s memory that I’ll carry forever, and a friend’s dying wish that brought us together without either of us knowing. I have more healing herbs than any woman needs, and a tendency to hum lullabies when I’m nervous.”

“I know.”

“And I think — I think I’ve spent so long believing I wasn’t enough that I forgot to notice I was already everything someone needed.”

He took her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away tears she hadn’t realized were falling.

“Is that a yes?”

She laughed — a sound that surprised them both with its joy.

“Yes. It’s a yes.”