Dawn breaks cold and gray. Erik doesn't let go of me until a knock forces us apart.
Gunnar enters, followed by half a dozen warriors. Erik's war council.
They study me with varying degrees of suspicion. I'm acutely aware that I'm still in my sleeping shift, that Erik's bed is rumpled behind us.
"Tell them," Erik says quietly. "What you saw."
I force myself to meet each warrior's eyes.
"Bjorn will attack from the sea at dawn in two days. Dragon ships, maybe twenty. He wants you to think that's the main assault."
"And it's not?" Gunnar's voice is flat, skeptical.
"No. The real force comes from the forest at dusk. A pincer attack—he'll have you focused on the water while his army surrounds you from behind."
The room erupts.
"How would she know this?"
"Why would she help us? This could be a trap—"
"Enough!" Erik's voice cuts through the chaos. The room goes silent.
He turns to Gunnar, something dangerous in his expression. "Why would the oath-breaker's daughter help us?" he repeats slowly. "Because she knows what Bjorn truly is. And if you question my judgment again, I'll let you take her place on the front lines. Alone."
Gunnar's jaw tightens, but he nods once.
Erik's eyes never leave mine as he speaks. "See what I put up with for you?"
The dry humor makes something flutter in my chest.
He turns back to his council. "We reposition based on her vision. Double forces at the forest edge. Ships stay ready but not committed. And someone find me better maps of the northern approach."
The warriors exchange glances. Then, one by one, they nod.
"You're betting your people's lives on her word," Gunnar says quietly.
"Yes." Erik's voice is absolute. "I am."
The weight of that decision settles over me. He's trusting me. Not because he has to—because he believes what I saw.
The council disperses. Erik catches my hand in his—gentle and warm.
"Get dressed," he says softly. "You'll want to see this."
What I see is Úlfheim transforming. Warriors drill new formations. Scouts disappear into the forest. Everything Erik planned, all based on fragments of my vision.
I find myself in the kitchens. Women work in organized chaos—preserving food, preparing supplies for wounded.
An older woman glances up when I enter. "You're the seer."
"I'm Astrid."
"Katla." She gestures to a pile of vegetables. "Those need cutting if you're here to help. Otherwise, you're in the way."
No deference. No fear. Just blunt practicality.
I pick up a knife and start cutting.
Around me, women talk and joke and prepare for the possibility that their husbands and sons might not come home. They glance at me occasionally, curiosity warring with suspicion.
"You work like someone used to kitchens," Katla observes after an hour.
"My mother believed everyone should know how to feed themselves." I finish another turnip. "Nobility doesn't exempt you from practicality."
One of the younger women laughs. "Tell that to the previous jarl's wife."
"She knew which end to stick in her husband's back," another woman mutters.
Dark laughter ripples through the kitchen.
"She helped kill him?" I ask.
"Helped?" Katla snorts. "She poisoned his mead, then held him down while Erik finished it. Earned her freedom and passage south." Her eyes find mine. "He kept his word. Some jarls would have killed her for knowing too much."
Another piece of the complicated man who brought me here.
As the day wears on, the women warm to me. Not friendly, exactly, but less hostile. Especially when I refuse special treatment.
"You're not what I expected," Katla says as afternoon light slants through the windows.
"What did you expect?"
"A prize. Something delicate and useless." She studies me with knowing eyes. "But you have calluses. You know how to work. And you don't flinch when we talk about blood and death."
"I was raised by Vikings," I say simply. "Death isn't foreign to me."
"No." Katla sets down her knife, really looking at me now. "But the way you look when someone mentions the jarl—that's something else entirely."
Heat crawls up my neck. "I don't—"
"You have the look of someone caught between worlds," she interrupts gently. "Hating what you feel for him but not hating him. It's a dangerous place to stand."
The observation lands too close to truth.
"I don't know what I feel," I admit quietly.
"That's the most honest thing I've heard all day." Katla's smile is knowing. "But you'll figure it out. Usually happens right when you least expect it. Now go. Get rest. You’ve done enough."
So I do—partially to escape her perception. Evening finds me on the cliffs, watching the sea turn silver under the dying sun.
I hear him approach—recognize his footsteps now.
Erik stops beside me, close but not touching. For a long moment, we just stand there, watching waves crash against black sand.
"Thank you," he says simply. "For the warning."
"I didn't do it for you," I reply. "I did it because innocents don't deserve to die for our mistakes."
"You saved them today."
"I saved people."
"Same thing to me." His voice carries something I can't quite name.
I try not to think about how his people started becoming our people, whether I intended it or not.
He moves closer. Not crowding, just... present.
"Everything I've done, I've done for them," he says quietly. "Including bringing you here."
The honesty stings. "So at last I was right? What happened between us was for your people too?"
He turns me to face him, hands gentle on my shoulders. The raw honesty in his eyes steals my breath.
"No." His voice drops. "That was purely selfish. That was for me."
The words hang between us, weighted with everything we haven't said.
"I wanted you," he continues. "Not the seer. Not the prophesied woman. Just you—fierce and furious and refusing to be broken. I wanted you so badly it terrified me, because wanting something that much means it can destroy you."
My throat tightens. "Erik—"
"I brought you here because prophecy demanded it. Because my people needed it. Because strategy required it." His thumb brushes my cheek. "But what happened in that boathouse? That was just me being selfish enough to take what you offered, knowing I had no right to it."
"You manipulated me."
"Yes." No excuses. No justifications. "And I'd do it again, because any path that didn't lead to you here, now, with my people safe because of your vision—I can't regret it. Even knowing how much it cost you."
I should pull away. Should hold onto the anger.
Instead, I find myself leaning into his touch.
"I don't know how to trust you," I whisper.
"Then don't." His forehead touches mine. "Trust your gift. Trust your instincts. Trust what you see with your own eyes." He pauses. "But maybe... give me a chance to earn it. The trust, I mean. Everything else I'll take as it comes."
The vulnerability in that admission breaks something open in my chest.
"One chance," I hear myself say.
"One chance," he agrees.
We stand there as darkness falls, caught between war and prophecy and something fragile that might be the beginning of trust.
Tomorrow, Bjorn's army arrives.
Tonight, for just a moment, I let myself believe that maybe—just maybe—I chose the right side.