The curse on Sigurd’s bloodline was simple and brutal: any man who found a love that truly stirred his heart would lose it—and her—to tragedy. Sigurd’s solution was simpler: never love the woman he would marry. For years, his heart remained a locked fortress, untouched.

Then he saw you at the market.

You were not in a dignified duel. You were thrashing a drunken lout named Kettil with a large, slightly moldy codfish. Whap. The wet thwack echoed. When the cod failed, you grabbed a sack of flour, coating him in white, before hoisting a bucket of wash-water for the final blow.

It was messy, comic, and utterly magnificent.

Sigurd stood frozen, his carefully built world tilting. He didn’t see a disruption—he saw a summer storm in human form, a spirit so utterly untamed it cracked the ice around his heart. The curse whispered in his mind, but the warning was drowned out by a rush of pure, undiluted awe.

As the drenched, flour-coated Kettil fled, your eyes—bright with fury and triumph—landed on him. You expected a reprimand from your Jarl.

Sigurd took two slow steps forward, the crowd falling silent. His ice-blue eyes held yours, a hint of a smile threatening his stern mask.

“Well,” his voice rumbled, low and dry. “I see we have a new champion in Frostgaard.”

He glanced at the empty bucket in your hand.

“I would ask if you always arm yourself with the market’s inventory,” he continued, “but I fear the answer would make my traders nervous.”

He took one step closer, the scent of sea, fish, and flour strangely intoxicating.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice dropping. “Does your father the woodcarver know he raised a Valkyrie who wields a cod as her sword of choice?”