The rain cleared. The wood was strangely quiet. No sounds of roosting pigeons or the evening caw of rooks, as if they knew to keep a respectful silence for this king so lately laid in his grave. The mound itself seemed out of place. The newly turned brown earth was only lightly covered with a dusting of snow, rising like a stranger above the clearing. Nine stones to the north, nine to the south, marked out the shape of a war-ship around Ringast’s resting place.

Thrand’s deep breaths clouded in the gloom as blood-red sunbeams sank through the branches. For a while, neither said a word. Lilla thought of her husband, solid and dependable, the presence that she had learned to rely on. But instead of sadness, she felt anger, anger that he had left her all alone.

‘Did he speak of me?’ said Thrand hoarsely. ‘At the end?’

‘Aye.’ Though what, Lilla would never admit.

‘What did he say?’

‘He. . . He wasn’t making much sense. By the end.’

Thrand stooped down and scraped some loose dirt from the forest floor at his feet, then tossed it onto the mound. ‘Poor bloody brother. It would’ve been better if he’d died on that plain with a sword in his hand and his head held high. Ready to ride for Valhalla’s gates. Instead he got a stinking bed-death, coddled by a woman into the arms of Hel.’ He shook his head. ‘He deserved better.’

‘Better than dying with the taste of the woman he loved on his lips?’ Lilla snorted. ‘What does it matter whether he died with a blade in his guts or some wound-rot poisoning him by inches? He’s dead. And wherever he is, I hope he has found some peace.’

Thrand raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘I meant not to offend.’

‘Yet you did.’ She stood taller, challenging him, but he only chuckled.

‘Forgive me, sister. I thought he might have made provision, that’s all. If he had so much time.’

‘Provision for what?’

‘His successor, of course. Far as I can see, there’s only one name to consider.’

‘He did consider only one name.’

Thrand nodded, and she saw the beginnings of a smile creep into the corners of his mouth. She hated him for that.

‘Mine.’

His big head turned sharply. ‘What?’

‘I am Queen of the Twin Kingdoms, High Ruler of Sveäland and King Sviggar’s only living offspring.’ Staffen had been murdered; Sigurd slain in battle. As for Saldas’s children. . . their fate was too cruel to contemplate.

‘Your father was a bastard, which makes your claim as false as his—’

‘How dare you.’

‘—And makes me sole male heir to both kingdoms. Or do you have a swelling beneath those robes the rest of us don’t know about?’