Gods, but I understood that feeling. “You must have felt miserable,” I said to her, though my eyes drifted from Bodil’s face to the other fires, hunting and searching for Bjorn, whom I’d not seen since we’d returned to Halsar. He was the one I trusted above all others, yet he was the one person I had to guard myself against the most.
“It was,” Bodil answered. “I found peace only when I learned to tell the difference between mistruths told from empathy, shame, or fear, and those told with malice. Knowledge of that came not from magic but from experience.”
“It’s amazing that you didn’t go mad in the intervening period,” I mumbled, then I heard a familiar tread coming up behind me, and I turned.
Bjorn approached, firelight casting shadows across the hard angles of his face in a way that made my stomach flip.
“Bodil.” He nodded at the jarl. “Freya.”
“Where have you been?” I asked, then instantly cursed myself for doing so, swiftly adding, “Avoiding real work, as usual?”
He sat next to me, sending my heart into a gallop as I inhaled the scent of pine and fjord. “Why? Was there something you needed me to do for you?”
My cheeks instantly reddened, and I prayed he’d only think it the light cast by the fire. “Other than cutting off heads, the list of things that you can do that I can’t do better is very short, Bjorn. So to answer your question, no.”
Bodil cackled and slapped her hands against her thighs. “She speaks the truth, boy.”
Bjorn’s smile turned sly. “Maybe so, but the items on that list I do very well indeed.”
Memory crashed over me, of his hands on my body and his tongue in my mouth, heat flaming in my core. “So say all men,” I muttered.
Bjorn laughed, but Bodil’s eyes narrowed on me. “Truer words never spoken.”
True words. False sentiment.
Shit.
Knowing I needed to recover the situation, I said, “Besides, napping isn’t a skill, so you shouldn’t brag about it.”
“I beg to differ,” he answered. “But the point is moot, given I wasn’t exercising said skill. Liv’s home and all her supplies were burned in the fire, so Ylva requested those with knowledge search out plants needed to help the injured.”
My chest tightened, partially in shame that I’d accused him of sloth and partially because I was reminded of the fallen healer. Liv and all the others had died because their warriors weren’t here to defend them. “That was good of you.”
Bjorn shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a jar. “Given my relationship with fire, Liv taught me how to make your salve years ago. It’s likely not as good as hers but it should do until another healer can make more.”
Of all the things that needed to be done, of all the things Bjorn could’ve been doing, he’d been making more salve for my hand. A flood of emotion made it abruptly impossible to breathe, but I managed to choke out, “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
It was everything, and my eyes burned, tears threatening. I hoped both of them would think it smoke from the fire.
Bjorn took hold of my right hand. Though I had little sensation in the scars, I could still feel the heat of him, and my breath caught.
“How were you burned?” Bodil asked, and I jerked, realizing how this must look. Extracting my hand from Bjorn’s, I took the salve and rubbed it over my scars, more than aware that this was something Bjorn excelled at. But if I allowed him, I’d feel things that I shouldn’t. I knew that while I might be able to hide those feelings from most people, Bodil would sense the deception.
“Born-in-Fire needed a weapon and the closest one to hand was my axe,” Bjorn answered the jarl, his voice clipped. “She’s a woman who does what needs doing.”
“The best kind of woman.”
My cheeks heated at being so discussed, and I bent over my hand to put extra vigor into my application of salve so as to seem not to have heard.
Silence hung among the three of us, thick enough to cut with a knife, then Bodil said, “You left in the middle of your father’s speech, Bjorn.”
He huffed out an irritated breath. “Grindill has never been assailed. That’s one of the reasons Gnut can afford to be an unapologetic prick—his position is strong. The only way to take it is by starving those inside, which I suspect is not the glorious victory my father has in mind.”
“So you left because you disagree with his strategy?”