When Aella next awoke, she was alone. The chains had been replaced by a single collar — polished bone, carved with runes she didn’t understand. It lay heavy around her throat, fastened at the back with leather cord. The skin underneath burned with humiliation.
Outside the longship, snow had begun to fall. Thin white flakes drifted through the high slats of the hull, melting on the wooden floor beside her. Her breath rose in cloudy wisps.
She tried to pry it off, but the leather cinched tight. Even twisting her fingers beneath it did nothing but bruise her skin. Rorik had bound her like an animal.
She was dressed now, in furs and coarse wool — warmer than her thin dress, but still foreign, still chosen for her. Someone had cleaned the blood from her face. Not her. Not willingly.
The door creaked. She turned her head.
Rorik ducked into the low underdeck. He carried a wooden bowl in one hand, a steaming cloth draped over the other. His hair was wet from snowmelt. He looked more like a man than a monster, which made it worse.
“I brought stew,” he said. “And your wrists need binding.”
He crouched beside her, placed the bowl between them. “Eat. You’ve gone two days without.”
“Poison it first,” she muttered.
He gave a short laugh. “If I wanted you dead, little flame, I’d have left you in the fire.”
His eyes darkened. “No. You wouldn’t.”
She glared as he dipped the cloth into the bowl’s steam, then reached for her hands. She tried to yank them back, but he gripped her wrists firmly — not cruelly, but with the strength of someone used to being obeyed.
The cloth touched raw skin. She flinched.
“You did this yourself,” he said. “Tearing against the iron.”
“I was trying to kill you.”
He bound her wrists with careful movements, wrapping soft cloth around the cuts. When he finished, he held her gaze.
“You will wear the collar,” he said, voice low. “But you are not a thrall.”
Aella snorted. “And what am I, Warlord?”
He leaned close. “Claimed.”
“You think that word means something.”
She scoffed and turned her face away, but he caught her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“You are not a slave. You are mine.”
“Perhaps. But I do not lie.”
He let her go. Rose. Left her alone with the bowl, the heat, the collar.
She waited ten full minutes.
The snow thickened as they reached the northlands.
Mountains rose like jagged teeth from the sea. Black cliffs, howling wind, smoke curling from distant halls. The longship creaked toward the docks beneath a sky that never lightened.
Rorik stood at the helm, cape snapping behind him. She sat beside the mast, watched him with narrowed eyes. The collar weighed heavier with every mile.
When they reached the dock, she was hauled onto her feet. Not by Rorik — by one of his warriors, a giant with a broken nose and no name.
But Rorik stopped him with a look.
“I’ll take her,” he said.
He lifted her himself, again — over his shoulder like a sack of grain. She pounded at his back, but the blow barely registered. The crowd at the gates parted as he approached.
Aella saw torches, stone walls, black banners with red runes. The fortress loomed above them, ancient and cruel.
He carried her through the gates.
And the collar burned hotter than ever.
