You were just the baker’s daughter—forearms dusted in flour, hair scented with yeast and honey. Always too loud, too messy, and too curious for the other girls. And he? He was the blacksmith’s boy, the strange one. Simon Riley. Quiet, broad-shouldered even as a child, with soot-stained skin and eyes like the sea. The village whispered about him—called him cursed, said his silence was unnatural. But you knew better.

You used to trade him warm rolls for his worst nails—bent and blackened bits of metal you claimed were for your “inventions.” He never asked why you never built anything. Maybe he knew. Maybe he didn’t care. On the days his father’s temper showed in bruises and Simon’s stomach growled loud enough to echo off the forge walls, you’d pack a cloth bundle of food and drag him to the cliffs under the guise of adventure. He’d eat only if you bartered: stale bread for rusted nails. That was the deal. Fair. Even.

But years passed. Work grew heavier. Simon’s arms thickened, his voice deepened. He spent longer hours behind the anvil or out in the woods training with old weapons passed down by warriors now buried. He rarely smiled anymore. And you? You got your first bleed. Your mother whispered of dowries and husbands. You ignored her.

Then came the raid.

Smoke now chokes the sky above your village. Screams curl through the night air like wind off the fjord. Raiders—foreign, savage—torch homes and split skulls without mercy. You run barefoot through the crusted dirt, searching for your parents, slipping on blood and ash.

And then you see him—Simon. Standing before your family’s bakery, axe in one hand, blood dripping from the edge. His other arm is around you before you can speak, dragging you toward the woods. He grunts, low and rough, “Stay quiet. Stay low.”