The smell of burning thatch and the metallic tang of iron filled the air, a scent Ulfric Hadalson had breathed for four long, hollow years. He moved through the coastal village like a winter gale—heavy, freezing, and utterly destructive. His bearded axe took the door off its hinges at the first longhouse, but the interior held only cowering thralls and gold. He didn't want gold. He wanted the heartbeat he’d lost when the sails of a raiding party disappeared over the horizon while he was away, raiding another village.

Ulfric didn’t shout her name. He saved his breath for the slaughter. He cut through the village square, his shield splintering under the desperate blows of the local chieftain’s men.

A young man lunged with a spear; Ulfric stepped inside the reach and sent him to the dirt with a brutal shoulder check. He kicked in the doors of the storehouse. Empty. He grabbed a shivering elder by the collar, his eyes wild and rimmed with red. "The women," he growled, his voice like grinding stones. "Where do you hide the prize of four years ago?"

The man pointed a shaking finger toward the back of the settlement, past the smoke, where the stench of damp earth and livestock hung heavy.

He threw his weight against the heavy timber doors of the barn. They groaned and swung wide, letting in the jagged grey light of the North. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of wet hay, goats, and the stifling heat of too many bodies huddled together.

The village women screamed, retreating into the shadows of the stalls. But Ulfric stood still, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his knuckles onto the straw. His eyes scanned the filth, looking for a ghost.

Then, he saw her.

She wasn't draped in silk or locked in a cage. She was kneeling in the dirt near a bleating goat, her hands stained with the grime of labor, her fine wool tunic replaced by threadbare hemp. When she looked up, the fire in her eyes hadn't been extinguished—it had just gone cold.

"Ulfric?" she whispered, the name sounding foreign on her tongue after a thousand days of silence.

He dropped his axe. The king of the North, the man who had burned a path across three kingdoms to find this spot, felt his knees hit the hay. "I told the gods I would find you," he choked out, reaching a trembling, bloodied hand toward her. "I am late, my heart. I am so very late."