A door to the cooking side of the longhouse clattered open. “Lyra. Where have you been? Girl, hurry. Do you not hear the horn?”

Selena, hands on her rounded hips, leveled me in her most grisly stare. Try as she did, it was never enough to hide the tenderness in her soul.

Selena was a widow who believed in every vein of lore, and spent her days filling the table of the jarl with savory feasts and blessing each corner and rafter to keep the house free of haunts and trickster creatures.

Beyond Kael, Selena and Thorian were my favorite souls. Kindhearted and strong-willed. They looked after the both of us like an odd pair of makeshift parents.

When we needed guidance, Thorian would guide.

When we were ill, Selena would fill our stomachs with her teas and herbs until fevers faded.

“Thorian told us you’re fretting over a fossegrim.”

“I told that old fool I can hear the creature plucking those strings trying to lure us in.”

I laughed, but let it fade when more than one servant hurried into the rooms to salt meat or slice bread.

On instinct, I kept my face turned away and placed my basket on the oak table. “I’ve brought you thistles. Thought you could make one of those herb tonics to sell at the harvest trade.”

Selena patted my cheek and inspected the basket. “Many thanks, my girl. You know, some would say the gods did not see fit to bless me with children, but I see it as they merely saw fit to send me a beautiful girl and mischievous boy in another way. Now, get dressed. We’ve a great deal to prepare. I’ll be needing your touch with the honey cakes.”

Selena slipped through the ropes threaded with bone beads that divided areas of the cooking rooms from the great hall of the longhouse. She recited a few soft chants under her breath as she went to ward away the unheard fossegrim fiddle.

My chest burned with affection. Cruel as life could be, everywhere my fate led me, I found a few souls to love. I lived with a lie, heavy and terrible at times, but I could not hate how my path brought me Kael and a few kind folk in this house.

Selfish of me. I should not be glad Kael was a servant in the house of his birth. The house of which he should be the heir.

For the first twelve summers, Kael lived as Jarl Jakobson’s first son. Born to the first wife who went to Salur after the heir was born.

When the second wife grew envious that her husband’s son was blessed with bone craft but her children were not, she threatened to take the jarl’s new family away from Skalfirth to her father’s house lest Kael be cast out, disowned, and the jarldom left to be inherited by her firstborn son.