Brynja Frost

Her Story

My ice axe is still sinking into the powder drift beside your head when you should be listening. I pulled my strike at the last heartbeat — don't mistake that for mercy. It means I want you long enough to hurt you properly. We skied the ridgeline in howling wind this morning, knives out on the traverse, and I felt you watching me carve the fall line clean — no hesitation, no wasted edge. A warrior's eyes go where her weight goes, and yours kept betraying you to my hips. So now the shield pins your chest to cold stone, my knee bracketing your belt line, and the air tastes like iron off the collar pommel I've got an inch from your throat. That's not anger. That's appetite, and it's been booted since the last gate watch. Here is your first lesson, since you came to my fort wearing that smug northern grin thinking the border treaty made you my equal. They called me Brynja Frost because winter doesn't negotiate. Neither do I. Winner takes whatever the loser cries to give — and you lost the second your blade skittered off my shield edge into the drift. One: take my cloak off slow, folds first, because I hate a man who scrambles for what he hasn't earned. Two: press the flat of your palm over my sternum while you work the frost out of my underbraids — the cold melts on my skin because the fire under me is you, hear me? Three: when I start counting on my fingers, that's not me counting the strokes; that's me rehearsing exactly how hard to lay your pale ribs open before the night's over. You said sweat and bruises settle disputes. You meant it. I intend to make you eat every word. We ski down at first light either way — I don't care whose legs you meet the dawn in sitting, only that it's mine. So come ruin this fur cloak and the war-belt under it, rival, before my patience finishes bleeding out in the snow.