She Sat Alone at the Wedding Feast — Until a Giant Viking Said, “Act Like You’re With Me”

Chapter 2

“Dance with me.”

It wasn’t a request.

“I can’t.” Freya shook her head. “People will—”

“People will talk regardless.” Rolf extended his hand, calloused palm upward. “At least give them something interesting to discuss.”

She stared at his hand.

To take it would be to step back into the light. To claim a place she had lost. It would announce to every person in this hall that she existed, that she mattered, that someone had chosen her—not despite her shame, but as if her shame had never mattered at all.

It would also paint a target on his back.

“This is madness,” she whispered.

“The best things usually are.”

She placed her hand in his.

His fingers closed around hers with surprising gentleness. He led her toward the dancing floor, and the crowd parted around them like waves before a ship’s prow. She felt the weight of every gaze in the hall—the collective intake of breath, the careful calculation of social implications happening in real time.

The music changed. Slower. Deeper. A melody she remembered from childhood, from before the world broke, when her mother was still alive and her uncle still laughed and the future stretched before her like an open road.

Rolf placed one hand at her waist. The other held hers. And suddenly they were moving together to the ancient rhythm, his body guiding hers through steps she had nearly forgotten.

He was graceful for such a large man. His movements carried the economy of someone who had learned to conserve energy, to waste nothing, to make every motion count. He had not danced in a mead hall for years, she realized; he had danced in the courts of foreign kings, had learned steps that no one in Jorvikstead had ever seen.

“Breathe,” he murmured.

She had forgotten how.

“Everyone is staring.”

“Let them. Some sights are worth staring at.”

For a breath—just one—she almost smiled.

When the song ended, Rolf did not release her. They stood in the center of the floor, surrounded by whispers and wide eyes, and she realized that something fundamental had shifted. She had crossed a line she could not uncross. She had announced herself to the world.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“Why did you?”

He studied her face. His gray eyes moved across her features as if memorizing them. “Because sometimes the loneliest people recognize each other across a crowded room.”

She wanted to ask what that meant. She wanted to know why a legendary warrior would risk his reputation for a disgraced woman he had never met. She wanted to understand the shadows in his eyes.

But before she could speak, heavy footsteps approached.

Jarl Eric Goldbeard stood before them, his face flushed with mead and something uglier. Behind him loomed Torstein the Bitter—a thin man with hungry eyes, whose family had profited most from the redistribution of Bjorn’s lands. The lands that should have been Freya’s inheritance. The lands that had been stolen from her along with her name.

“Rolf Thundertamer.” Eric’s voice carried false heartiness, the tone of a man trying to maintain civility while delivering a blow. “I didn’t expect to see you at our humble celebration. I thought you’d be halfway to Greenland by now, chasing your next fortune.”

Rolf remained seated, but Freya felt the tension coil in his muscles. “Eric. Good to see prosperity agrees with you. That’s quite a belly you’ve grown since I left.”

The Jarl’s face darkened. “Always had a sharp tongue, didn’t you? Though I wonder if your wit extends to your choice of companions.”

His gaze fell on Freya like a physical weight.

“Some associations carry consequences, Thundertamer. Some stains wash off. Others don’t.”

“And some jarls talk too much after their third horn of mead.” Rolf’s voice dropped to a register that made the air itself grow heavier. “Perhaps you should return to your high table before you say something that requires an answer.”

The challenge hung between them like smoke from a funeral pyre. Freya’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was exactly what she had feared—her presence dragging others into conflicts they did not deserve.

“Rolf,” she began. “Perhaps I should—”

“Stay.” His hand found hers beneath the table. His fingers intertwined with hers, warm and steady. “We were having a pleasant conversation.”

“You would defend the niece of a traitor?” Eric’s voice rose, drawing the attention of nearby tables. “A woman whose very name is poison in decent company?”

“I would defend anyone who deserves defending.” Rolf rose slowly, unfolding to his full height. He was taller than Eric by half a head, broader by a handspan. “And I wonder what decent company you think you’re keeping, Eric. Considering the lands you were so quick to claim when Bjorn fell.”

The words landed like a thrown axe.

“What are you implying?” Eric’s face drained of color.

“Nothing at all.” Rolf’s smile held no warmth. “I’m simply making an observation. The fall of Bjorn Leost was remarkably convenient for certain people.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Freya felt the floor drop out from under her. Because Rolf had just said aloud what she had only dared to think in the darkest hours of sleepless nights. He had given voice to the doubt she had buried so deep she had almost forgotten it existed.

*The fall of Bjorn Leost was remarkably convenient for certain people.*

She looked at Eric’s face.

And she saw something there that made her blood run cold.

Not anger.

*Fear.*