Chapter 8: The Blessing

I walked away from Brage without answering him.

He did not matter.

The quickest way to ruin a man like that was to leave him standing with his mouth open.

At the high table, Vigdis had taken the empty seat beside Torin.

She was pouring wine into his cup with both hands, leaning so far forward that her silk neckline gaped.

"You must be so tired, my lord," she said, in the voice she used on dogs and old men.

"All those rumors about you. People can be so cruel."

"Yes," Torin said. "They can."

"It must have been lonely."

"Not lately."

She put her hand on his forearm, over the old scar, and let it stay.

The whole high table saw it.

I stopped behind his chair, and I did not say a word.

Torin looked down at the hand on his arm.

Then he took two of his fingers and lifted her hand off him, gently.

"Thank you for the wine," he said. "My wife will pour the next cup."

Vigdis flushed from her throat to her hairline.

I sat down in my chair on his right, reached across her without looking at her, and filled his cup myself.

Gudrun rose at the far end of the table with her goblet in the air.

"To the Treaty of the Pass," she said, in her warm, carrying voice. "May it hold for any daughter of Lowmere."

The envoys drank.

Torin did not.

I lifted my own cup and met my stepmother's eyes down the length of the table.

"To the daughter who signed it," I said. "May she never be sorry."

Somebody laughed, and the toast went round.

Gudrun drank without smiling.

After the feast, Torin took my hand under the table, and he did not let go of it until the hall had emptied.

"What did Falk say to you?" he said in the corridor.

I told him everything, and the gold of his eyes got brighter and brighter.

"Then Falk will not stop at one," he said.

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