It was a spineless act, but Kael was stripped of his inheritance, his house name, and left to serve his own blood as a stable boy—no family, no title.

Jakobson saw it as a mercy to allow his son to remain in the house at all.

All the folk living along the shores of the Green Fjord knew his birth house.

No one mentioned it.

Kael was given the name Darkwin, a title from a Skald saga of a prince who fell from his throne to the dark roots of the gods’ tree and lived out his days in shadows.

“It is the way of things, Ly,” Kael told me once when we were tasked with watching a line of fishing nets. Jakobson and Mikkal, his second son, had ridden past without a glance our way. “He hardly spoke to me anyway. Thorian said I remind him too much of my mother, and it pains him.”

“That is nothing but weakness,” I spat.

Kael nudged my shoulder. “Let it be and don’t harbor such ill will toward the man. It’ll pinch your face.”

I did not speak of it again, but I never was the first to bow the head to Jarl Jakobson.

Inside a narrow alcove in the back rooms shared by the servants, I ripped off my dirty tunic, next my trousers and boots, tossing them on top of the narrow cot where I slept.

From a small wooden crate, I scrounged through my meager belongings, snatching up a plain woolen dress.

Simple. Dull. Invisible.

With trembling fingers, I stroked my braid free and knotted my dark hair behind my neck. Another horn blared from the watchtowers.

“Shit.” By now the jarl would be greeting the Stav Guard, and the rest of us would be expected to do the same.

I hopped on one leg, trying to shove my toes inside thin leather shoes.

On this side of the longhouse, I could see a portion of the main road. Like a pestilence, Stav Guard entered the inner market, spilling their blight across our dirt roads and blotting out any peace that lived here moments ago.

Doors on homes opened and people staggered into the streets. Others wore bemused expressions or carried platters of offerings and ewers of honey mead for their arrival.

Once dressed, I added more stinging dye to my eyes, wrapped the knife I’d thrown at the scavenger in a linen cloth, and used a thin leather belt to secure the blade to the side of my calf. Kael would roll his eyes, but the notion of remaining unarmed near Stav Guard rushed a noxious sort of panic through my veins.

Outside, sunlight spliced through the mists of early morning, dewdrops sweated off bubbled glass windows, and the damp, briny air dug into my lungs with each breath. As if Skalfirth wanted me to always remember its taste, its scent.

As if it knew this day would change everything.