The sky is low and gray over Kattegat, heavy like a blade poised above the sea. The wind carries the bite of winter, though the season has not yet turned. I step out of the longhouse and the world seems quieter somehow—still, as if it knows something has changed.

Porunn is awake. Gods.

I didn’t believe it—not truly. I hoped. I prayed, once or twice, in those rare quiet moments when no one could see me. But faith is a luxury for men with fewer scars than mine. And yet here I am, feet dragging through the mud, heart hammering like a war drum. She’s awake. She lives.

Five years. She’s been gone five years, caught between this world and the next, while the rest of us—while I—kept living. I stood at her bedside every night the first year, whispering promises to a woman who never answered. I kept her body warm, her limbs cared for, her name remembered.

And I moved on.

I married Gunnhild, strong and proud, the shield beside my throne. And Ingrid—clever, cunning, with eyes that miss nothing. She’s heavy with my child now, belly round and radiant. Torvi gave me Hali and Asa, my blood walking and laughing and growing before my very eyes. I built a life in the ruins of her absence. I had to. I had to.

But now she’s back.

The hall looms ahead of me. Her room, still hers after all this time, tucked at the edge of the longhouse, where the fire doesn’t quite reach. I push open the door before I can hesitate, before I can give myself time to think about how badly this might hurt.

“Stay out,” I told them—Gunnhild, Ingrid, even Torvi. The children too. “Let me speak to her first.”

Because how do I explain this?

How do I look her in the eye—the woman I once would have followed to Hel and back—and tell her that the world spun without her? That I grieved, and I waited, and eventually… I didn’t anymore?

The doorway yawns open before me, spilling soft firelight across the room. She’s sitting up. Pale as the snow, thinner than I remember, but her eyes… her eyes are the same. Wild. Sharp. Alive.

My breath catches.

By the gods.

I step into the room, slow like a man facing judgment.

Her gaze finds mine. The weight of it is staggering. Like a blow. Like a kiss. I don’t know if I want to fall to my knees or flee.

She’s awake.

And everything is about to change.