My Viking Son’s Two Fathers

* Ten winters ago *

The bolt slides home with a dull thud, and I find myself caged.

Beyond the barn walls, the feast roars like a living thing—laughter and singing, the clash of drinking horns raised to honor the konung's sons.

Through gaps in the rough timber, torchlight flickers like distant stars I cannot touch.

The warmth of the great hall, the scent of roasted meat and honeyed mead, the music that sets feet dancing—all of it exists in a world separated from mine by wooden planks and an iron bolt.

My only company breathes in the darkness around me.

The wet snorts of pigs rooting through their straw. The soft bleating of the nanny-goat whose yellow eyes watch me from her corner, patient and undemanding.

I pull a wrinkled carrot from my apron pocket and hold it out to her. "Only you understand me, Saga."

The goat takes it delicately, her rough tongue scraping my palm. She does not judge. She does not sneer. She does not look through me as though I am made of smoke and disappointment.

In this barn full of animals, I am simply another creature seeking warmth.

"At least you look at me," I murmur, scratching behind her ears. "That is more than most can be bothered to do."

I am eighteen winters old, tall and thin from endless labor, and invisible to everyone who matters. The bitter truth of my existence settles around me like the smell of pig dung and old hay.

My mother wanted a son—a child who might lift her from Jarl’s concubine to an honored woman, who might give her leverage in the delicate politics of my father's household.

Instead, she got me.

A girl-child where a boy should have been. A living reminder of expectations unmet, of prayers unanswered, of a gamble that failed the moment the midwife announced what is between my legs.

My father wanted nothing at all from the daughter who came. He has other children, legitimate children, golden children who carry his name with pride.

What use has he for the bastard born of a woman he keeps for warmth and convenience? I am a shadow in his hall, noticed only when something needs scrubbing or hauling or cleaning.

So I haul water until my shoulders burn. I scrub pots until my hands crack and bleed. I clean stables while the household feasts, and I do it all without complaint because complaint changes nothing.

Meanwhile, my half-sister Astrid sits by the fire draped in imported silk. Her hair braided with silver threads and her fingers soft and white and unmarked by labor.

We share a father's blood and nothing else—no affection, no loyalty, no bond beyond the accident of his wandering eye.

Since we were children, she has made my life a careful study in cruelty.

Hiding my food so I went hungry. Tearing my clothes so I faced my mother's wrath. Whispering lies to the servants until they looked at me with suspicion and contempt.

She wears her malice like fine jewelry, polished and proud, and I am her favorite target.

The bolt scrapes again, and my spine stiffens against the timber wall.

Astrid enters flanked by two giggling friends, their cheeks flushed with mead and malice.

Torchlight spills in behind them, catching the fine embroidery of her dress—flowers and vines stitched in thread. Silver gleams at her wrist like captured starlight.

She is beautiful in the way that sharp things are beautiful.

And I have the scars to prove how deeply she cuts.

"Poor little pig-girl," she coos, her voice dripping with false sweetness as she surveys my prison with theatrical pity. "Locked away with cattle while the rest of us celebrate the konung's sons. You must be absolutely starving, are you not?"

I say nothing. I have learned that silence is the only armor I possess against her cruelty.

"The roasted boar was magnificent tonight," she continues, exchanging glances with her companions as they titter like magpies. "And the honeyed mead flows like a river through the hall. But I suppose you would not know anything about such pleasures, would you?"

She holds out a thick slice of honeyed meat pie, steam still rising from the golden crust. The smell hits me like a blow—rich and sweet and impossibly tempting after a day of labor and an evening of nothing.

My stomach twists with hunger and suspicion in equal measure.

Astrid has never given me anything without a blade hidden inside. Every kindness from her lips has concealed a trap.

"Why would you give me anything?" I ask quietly.

"Why?" She laughs, light and musical and utterly false. "Because even pig-girls deserve scraps, dear sister. Perhaps I am feeling generous tonight. Take it. I insist."

But hunger gnaws at my resolve. When she extends the pie with that pretty, poisonous smile, hunger wins.