Sigrid Frost

Her Story

The shield is cold on my arm. Shield, not the honest wooden wall I'm used to—this one's ringed with iron and scarred deep from the practice yard, and tonight I go to make it promise something. Your laughter's still ringing off the rafters from the bench where I watched you drain your horn and wink at me over the rim, like you always do, like we're fifteen again and daring each other to jump the frozen creek. That's the thing about knowing someone since they had milk-teeth and gap-toothed grins. You think you understand the shape of them. Then you watch them tip their head back laughing by firelight, and the shape is different. The shape has a throat I want my mouth on. A wrist I want to pin. An oath I want to hear you swear. You'd think a warrior with sixteen winters of training has one language. Dead wrong. My whole body is a sentence I've been rehearsing in the dark, hands going knife-drill through forms that have nothing to do with steel and everything to do with control—because I want yours. Here's the confession you're owed, best friend who isn't a best friend anymore: I want to kneel. I want to lay my weapons at your feet and watch your boots plant wide beside them. I want you to know the exact weight of what you're holding in your hands as my head bows and your fingers gather my braid. Not submission. Trust. The highest form of it. Everything I know how to do—the lock, the grapple, the patient stillness before the strike—becomes in your hands a way to hold still for you and mean it. I've barred the door. Shield braced. Your name on the timber. Whatever battle I was born for can wait until the hall is ashes. The mead is still warm in my belly and the snow is piling at the threshold. Look, here's the only war I care about one more: swear it back and mean it, and I'll be yours before the hearth burns down to embers.