Steel struck steel beneath a sky the color of old iron.

  The training yard of Vestfold was rimed with frost, the ground packed hard from boots and blood. Warriors formed a loose circle, their breath steaming in the cold. At the center stood Dagny.

  Sixteen.

  No longer thin from hunger. No longer small.

  She held her axe low and relaxed, waiting.

  Across from her loomed Erik Stone arm, broad as a gate, grinning as though this were sport.

  “First blood?” he asked.

  She shook her head once.

  “Until you fall.”

  A ripple of laughter moved through the men.

  Above them, on the timber platform overlooking the yard, King Haakon watched without expression. Grief had not left him in eight years. It had only hardened into something sharper.

  “Begin,” he called.

  Erik charged.

  Dagny did not retreat.

  She pivoted just enough to let his swing pass, then drove the haft of her axe into his ribs. The crack was solid. Deliberate.

  He grunted and adjusted.

  She watched his footing.

  His breathing.

  His hesitation.

  He swung again, faster.

  This time she allowed the edge to kiss her shoulder. A shallow slice. Blood welled, bright against pale skin.

  She did not flinch.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  If anything, her eyes sharpened.

  The next exchange ended it.

  She stepped inside his reach, hooked his ankle with her boot, and as he stumbled she drove the blunt head of her axe up beneath his jaw.

  Erik collapsed to one knee, gagging.

  The yard fell quiet.

  She circled him slowly.

  Waiting.

  He tried to rise.

  She struck the back of his leg.

  Bone cracked.

  He screamed and fell into the snow.

  “Enough,” someone muttered.

  Dagny let the axe drop.

  The sound it made against frozen earth was small. Controlled.

  She drew the seax at her hip.

  Now the silence deepened.

  From above, Haakon’s posture stiffened.

  “Dagny.”

  She ignored him.

  Erik crawled, one hand digging through snow.

  She caught him by the hair and wrenched his head back. The wooden practice blade pressed beneath his chin.

  Her voice was calm.

  “If this were real, you would already be dead.”

  He nodded frantically.

  She leaned closer.

  “Why are you still breathing?”

  It was not a taunt.

  It was a genuine question.

  “Dagny.”

  Her father’s voice cut sharper this time.

  Her eyes flicked upward.

  For a heartbeat, something unreadable passed across her face.

  Then she released Erik and stepped back.

  The circle broke into uneasy murmurs.

  She wiped her blade clean and sheathed it before walking toward the platform.

  Haakon descended to meet her halfway.

  “You pushed too far,” he said quietly.

  “He hesitated,” she replied.

  “It was training.”

  Her gaze did not waver.

  “It should never feel different.”

  For a moment, he saw her as she had been at eight — soot-streaked, silent, watching smoke rise over their broken hall.

  He exhaled slowly.

  “You fight well.”

  “I fight correctly.”

  He studied her wound.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s shallow.”

  She didn’t seem to notice it at all.

  Haakon placed a hand on her uninjured shoulder.

  “You will have your vengeance,” he said, low enough that only she could hear. “Ivar will answer for what he did.”

  At the name, something shifted behind her eyes.

  Not heat.

  Not fury.

  Something colder.

  More focused.

  She remembered the way he had moved that night — too fast, almost unreal. The blur of him. The way his blade had separated flesh from bone as if the world itself parted for him.

  She remembered the sound her stepmother made.

  She remembered watching.

  She had not screamed.

  She had learned.

  “I know,” she said.

  Haakon mistook the steadiness in her voice for strength.

  He did not see the truth.

  Revenge was no longer the center of her thoughts.

  Ivar would die.

  That was certain.

  But death was too simple.

  Too quick.

  She did not want him to fall in battle.

  She wanted him to understand.

  She wanted him to watch everything he built unravel piece by careful piece.

  Speed meant nothing if the trap was already set.

  “I am proud of you,” Haakon said.

  She met his eyes and offered him the faintest smile.

  “Yes, Father.”

  Below them, Erik was still groaning in the snow.

  Dagny glanced at him once more.

  Measuring.

  Calculating.

  Then she turned her back on him completely.

  He would live.

  For now.