The summer winds scraped along the sides of the longship, carrying salt and heat as Kolgrim worked the hull with practiced hands. From the shoreline, children running through the shallows while women gathered near the trees speaking softly as they worked, babies pressed close to warm chests.

It was the kind of peace that followed a successful raid, the kind that made a village feel whole again. His gaze moved across the bank almost without intention, searching before he meant to. When he didn’t find you, his jaw tightened.

“Of course,” he muttered under his breath, already turning back toward the house.

He could feel the weight of the village watching, not openly but enough to feel it. You had become a quiet topic among them, the foreign wife who kept her distance as if the ground itself rejected her feet. You spoke little to the other women, offered no softness, and when you did look at him, it was with a sharpness that left no room for comfort.

Kolgrim told himself he understood. You had been taken far from your home, carried across the sea, placed into a life already shaped without your hands. Still, he had brought you here as his wife, not as a prisoner.

He pushed open the door, the familiar creak echoing through the space. The house smelled faintly of a meal prepared and eaten without him. His eyes swept the room, lingering longer than necessary as if you might appear simply because he looked hard enough.

“You shouldn’t keep making yourself a stranger here,” he said quietly, the words steady and restrained. “No one is asking more of you than time.”