Torden had warned Skop what his father would do. He’d known what he risked.

And yet Alfödr’s hypocrisy gnawed at me. He had eight children by six different women, and no one had called him a disgrace to Asgard. At least Dronning Rihttá’s moral qualms might be sincere. The king was only afraid his bargaining chip had been sullied.

“Is this true?” I whispered to Skop, hardly moving my lips as I took my place beside them. “Is it just hearsay? Please tell me there’s some circumstance they’re leaving out.”

“It’s quite simple.” Huginn impaled me with his sharp blue stare. “We received information. They were found together.”

I crossed my arms, steeling myself. “So you were informed,” I fired back. “Have you been spying on my people? On your guests?”

Muninn shook his head. “We cannot disclose that.”

“Konge Alfödr, First Mate Koniag is a good man,” Lang offered earnestly. “His intentions were honorable. They were only talking.”

The king’s jaw tightened. “More is at stake than their feelings. Your first mate tried to seduce Asgard’s prinsessa.”

Skop burst forward. “I’m not the one using her, you selfish piece of—”

Alfödr cut him off with a punch to the jaw.

It was quicker than a drop from a gallows. One minute, Skop was upright, and the next, he was sprawling.

The sound of the blow was sickening, like a stone being dropped in the mud. But the empty silence that followed was worse, a world away from the Asgard boys’ cheerful scrapping. Even the fireplaces were quiet, their embers cold and lifeless.

Torden looked stricken, but he and his brothers kept quiet.

I was going to cry. I was going to throw up right on the floor.

I stared at the konge’s clenched fist, at this man who commanded his servants and his armies and his children with equal ease and total confidence he’d be obeyed. Before his confidence and power, I felt weak, chubby, timid, foolish.

Anya’s chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Skop panted on his hands and knees, his face an angry red where the king had struck him. One hand rose to his cheekbone, and he flinched.

Nobody spoke up.

I was still in Norge, but somehow I was back home in Arbor Hall, aching and humiliated; I was at the Council meeting in the Roots, in a room full of silent men and entirely at Alessandra’s mercy.

It was the pain in their eyes that did it—the pain in Skop’s and Anya’s eyes, and the total lack of awareness in Alfödr’s.

Nobody had stood up for me at that meeting in the Roots. But I was not going to leave my friends twisting in the wind.

My feet grew roots into Valaskjálf’s floor. “Lay a hand on one of my people again, Alfödr, and you will regret it.”