Page 124 of Storm of Fury
Tormund blew on the coals, earning a hot spark that flickered and then caught in the kindling. He sat back on his heels and fed more dry bracken into the meager flame. “Because he needed me.”
“So you gave up your entire life to protect his?” She’d seen his family, and the life he’d left behind him. For an orphaned child, it must have seemed a heaven of sorts.
Tormund rested his palms on his thighs and looked up at her. “He is my cousin.”
More of this nonsense about love.
Bryn’s knuckles tightened as she tugged sharply on his bedroll and laid it next to her own.
“You had a life,” she said. “And he was so consumed with his own loss that he barely spared your sacrifice a thought. That’s what he said. You could have died many times over. You could have married. Had your own children. Why?”
“Are you trying to understand why I followed him? Or are you trying to understand what sort of man I am?”
“Both.”
Or maybe she was trying to define what love truly meant.
His words of the other day lingered in her heart like a festering wound. What was love? She’d thought she’d known once, as she shared in a celebratory hug with her sisters. They’d laughed and drunk themselves stupid after surviving the trials. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t been alone.
Sisters forever, they’d promised each other.
But where was Ragnhild now? Where was Lina?
When her exile was pronounced, she’d met their eyes and given them a grim nod—a sign that she would make this sacrifice so that she wouldn’t drag them further into this mess.
But had they ever fought forher? Would either of them have made such a sacrifice if they’d stood in her place?
Or did they grieve her and then forget her? Did they ever even spare her a thought?
Bryn stared down at the bedrolls, her eyes hot. The closer she came to her goal, the harder it was to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Especially when this man turnedeverythingon its head.
“Bryn?”
She shook the thoughts off like water from her cloak. Doubt was a death blow in her world. “You never answered my question. Why give everything for him when he was so consumed by his grief that he gave nothing back?”
Tormund squatted on his heels, watching her with those implacable eyes. “He saved my life once. Did I tell you that?”
Bryn shook her head.
Tormund sighed and fingered his side, where she’d once traced her fingers over the enormous scar that ran across his ribs. “If you ever repeat this, I will deny it to my dying day, but when we were younger, Haakon was the type of young man that drew all eyes. Even mine. He was a gift of the gods to our village. Tall, handsome, and blond. He won every race. He could outfight any other young man. And the girls…. The girls loved him for it, though he never looked twice at them. And then he met Árdís.
“I don’t think he even knew what it was that we saw in him. We all wanted to be him. We all wanted to be his friend. And I more than most.”
“Because of your father?” she whispered.
His lips thinned as if he’d bitten into something sour. “There were boys in the village who liked to call me names to make themselves feel bigger. Bastard. Giant’s spawn. I shrugged them all off, but there was one name they called my mother, and I couldn’t let that go unchallenged.
“I was bigger than most of them. Had a temper on me too, unsurprisingly. I spent most of my days picking fights until Haakon dragged me out of a pack of rowdy boys and told me I was shaming myself. He said, ‘Real men don’t pick fights with those who are smaller than they are.’ I took that about as well as you could imagine, and tried to shove him in the river. Well, it turns out he’s a right mean little prick when he wants to be, and he knew a few more tricks than I did.” Tormund shook his head. “Damn near broke my fingers, forcing me to yield.”
Bryn sank down onto her knees on the bedroll.
“And then he gathered those boys off to the side and had a quiet word with them. He told them I was his cousin, and that if they spoke even a single word against me or my mother, then they’d be having words with him.” Tormund breathed out a laugh. “You had to know him back then—you had to see him. He was two years older, built like Thor’s younger brother, and could wither your privates with a single stare. Every boy in my village worshipped him, and he chose me—the village bastard—as a cousin.”
“You’re not related?”
“Not by blood, no.”
“You said he saved your life.”
