Work Text:
Lukas had no strength left to fight them.
The two larger vikings held him by the arms, their grips iron-hard, hauling his weight as though he were already half a corpse. His wrists were bound tightly where the rope bit into his skin, cutting off what little feeling remained in his hands. Even if they had released him, he knew dimly that his legs would not have carried him. His feet barely left the ground at all, toes dragging through mud and crushed leaves as they pulled him forward.
“Emil…” The name slipped from his mouth more breath than sound.
He tried to lift his head, to focus, to search the blurred mass of unfamiliar faces around him. He could not see his brother anywhere. Panic flared weakly in his chest, dulled by pain and exhaustion, like fire smothered under wet ash.
This—this moment—would become his first memory of Mathias. The first violence Mathias had dealt him. The first time Lukas had been reduced to a state where he could no longer sustain his own life, no longer even pretend at independence.
His one dignity, stripped from him. Independence.
The forest swayed around him as they dragged him onward. Between the trunks of pine and fir, he caught glimpses of movement ahead—shadows resolving into tents, fires, figures moving with purpose. An encampment. There would be no escape from it. He understood that much with a distant, lucid calm.
Warm blood still seeped steadily from the wound at his neck, soaking into the wool of his tunic. Lukas could feel it—slick and heavy—spreading across his chest. Each step sent a dull throb through his body, and with it the unmistakable awareness that something vital was leaving him.
Soon, he thought—not with fear, but with weary certainty—soon this would end.
The endless repetition of violence. The echo of the first wound replayed again and again. The long years of enduring pain would end.
Death, at least, would be quiet. It would be final. It would be merciful.
His gaze drifted upward as his strength ebbed completely. He hoped that they spared Emil. That they would take care of him; make him one of them, if they must.
The tops of the pine trees blurred together, their needles dark against the pale sky. A cluster of black ravens sat among the branches, watching.
As if summoned, they took flight all at once—wings beating, voices rising in harsh, echoing caws.
Lukas exhaled.
The forest, the men, the pain—all of it slipped away as darkness drew over his vision like a veil.
.
Years earlier —
Lukas remembered it as a summer that smelled of tar, salt, and fresh-cut pine. It felt like something from another life, something he could never return to, for this world had stopped existing.
He had been fifteen then. Old enough to be expected at the docks, old enough to be expected to look at girls the way the other boys did. Instead, he sat behind his father’s house with a pile of driftwood, bone offcuts, and a half-finished mechanism spread out on a cloth.
“Lukas,” his father had called from the doorway, not unkindly. “You’ve been out here since dawn.”
“I know,” Lukas had answered without looking up, fingers steady as he fitted a carved peg into a grooved wheel. “It works better when the grain runs like this.”
His father stepped closer, crouching to see. Father smelled of the sea and dried fish, his once blonde beard threaded with gray despite his strength. Time caught up with everyone. He watched the little device turn under Lukas’ hands—wooden teeth catching cleanly, smoothly.
“You’re making the net winch again?”
“A smaller one,” Lukas said. “For boats with fewer hands. If the weight is balanced here, one man can haul it alone.”
His father hummed thoughtfully. “You think of things no one else bothers with.”
Someone laughed nearby.
Two women stood a little way off, pretending to sort herbs while watching him openly. Lukas could feel it—the weight of their eyes, the whispering that followed him like smoke.
“That’s the fisherman’s boy,” one murmured, not softly enough.
“The strange one.”
“He never looks up.”
Lukas tightened his jaw and kept working.
Later that day, when the village gathered to prepare for Midsummer, the neighbours‘ girl, Ingrid, with her braided hair and quick smile — had come looking for him herself.
“You’re missing all the festivities,” she said, crouching beside him, skirts brushing the dirt. “There’ll be dancing. Fires. My mother made honey cakes.”
“I know,” Lukas replied.
She watched his hands move, the careful precision, the way he frowned at a stubborn joint as though the world depended on it. “Why do you always prefer this?” Over me, is left unsaid by her. She sounded half teasing, half hurt.
“You never even try.”
He paused then. Looked at her. Really looked.
“I don’t want to,” he said simply.
Ingrid blinked. “Don’t want to… dance?”
“Any of it,” Lukas said, matter of factly. He gestured at the mechanism. “This makes sense to me. People don’t.”
She flushed, rising quickly. “You’ll regret it,” she said, sharp now. “When you’re alone later.”
He hadn’t answered. He hadn’t needed to.
That night, while laughter and music drifted from the fires, Lukas sat with his father on the shore, testing the device by lantern light. When it finally turned smoothly, his father clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“You don’t owe the village anything but honesty,” he said quietly. “Let them whisper, boy.”
Lukas remembered the way that had felt with his father‘s blessing — safe, certain. Purposeful.
Dignified.
He hadn’t known then how fragile that life was. Only that even then, he had belonged more to his mind and quiet thought than to crowds, expectations, or anyone else’s idea of who he should be and what he should do.
.
A few months later —
Lukas remembered the raid as a sequence of images, not as a story with feelings attached to it.
He was fifteen, maybe sixteen. The exact number had never mattered afterward.
There had been the sound of a horn blown first. A call to war, to attack.
Then the smoke rose. Thick, dark columns rising where roofs should have been. He remembered thinking, very distantly, that it looked wrong, like a mistake in the world’s construction. Fire was not supposed to move that fast.
Men with axes. That detail was clear. Broad shoulders, fur-lined cloaks, iron catching the light. Their voices blurred together into noise rather than words. He could not remember what language they shouted in, only that it was loud enough to drown everything else.
He remembered running.
Not deciding to run—just being in motion. His feet slipped on wet ground. Someone fell near him. He did not look back long enough to know who it was.
A house collapsing inward, the sound like a deep cough. Nets burning. Fish barrels splitting open. Grain spilling uselessly into the mud. Tools he recognized—hooks, knives, a hand drill—trampled under boots.
He remembered hiding beneath a broken dock, water lapping at his calves. He stayed very still. He knew how to stay still. He counted breaths without knowing why. He watched shadows move across the surface of the water above him.
There was a moment when a face appeared at the edge of the planks. Bearded. Foreign. The man looked down, eyes scanning. Lukas did not move. The face disappeared again.
Later, there was quiet.
Not peace—just absence of sound. Smoke still hung in the air. The village was no longer shaped like a village. Structures had lost their meaning. Nothing stood where it was supposed to.
His father was not there.
That fact did not arrive with emotion. It simply existed, like an unchangeable property of the world.
Lukas walked. He did not know where he was going. He avoided fire. He stepped around bodies without identifying them. He remembered noticing how strangely small people looked when they did not move.
He remembered blood on his hands and not knowing when it got there.
After that, the memory broke apart.
There were gaps. Long stretches of time with no images at all. When the memory returned to him years later, it did so without sound, without heat, without fear—only with clarity. As if he were looking at a set of carved panels, each one depicting a moment, none of them asking anything of him.
He understood, intellectually, that it had been terrible.
But what remained with him was not terror.
What remained was vigilance. Silence. The knowledge that structures could fail, that safety could burn, that anything built—no matter how carefully—could be reduced to ash in an afternoon.
That understanding settled into him and stayed.
.
Lukas’ life after the raid did not continue. It reassembled itself into something narrower and sharper.
He lived in the forest.
At first, it was not a decision. It was simply where he ended up—moving north and inland, away from smoke and roads, until the trees grew dense enough to swallow sound. He learned quickly which places stayed dry, which hollows filled with water after rain, which slopes caught the most light. He learned to read the forest the way he had once read grain and wood: by patterns, by cause and effect.
His days arranged themselves around necessity.
Hunting came first. Small game at the beginning—snares, traps, stones thrown with careful aim. Later, a bow. He made it himself, carving the curve patiently, testing tension again and again until it sang the way it should.
He discovered early that strength was not his advantage. Distance was. Precision. Timing.
He taught himself archery with the focus of someone who had nothing else to rely on.
When he wanted more certainty, he built something new. A prototype, really—wood, cord, carved fittings scavenged from broken tools. A crude crossbow, awkward and heavy, but powerful enough. He refined it slowly, improving the trigger, adjusting the stock to his frame. It felt right to solve problems this way.
If the world was hostile, then it could be negotiated with leverage and design.
He learned to fight close, too, though he avoided it when he could. He learned where to strike, how to move inside a larger man’s reach, how to slip away before brute strength could close around him.
Agility and strategy over dominance. Always.
Food was prepared carefully. Dried meat. Roots. Berries he tested in small amounts before trusting them. He built a fire pit that smoked little. He left no obvious tracks. He slept lightly, waking at every unfamiliar sound, body already coiled to move.
Loneliness did not announce itself. It seeped in quietly, like damp.
He spoke aloud sometimes, just to remember the sound of a voice. He named things. Tools. Trees. He found comfort in repetition, in routines that responded predictably to effort.
Eventually, the forest alone was not enough.
He began visiting ports.
At first, he watched from a distance—sailors unloading cargo, fishermen shouting over one another, merchants arguing prices with performative outrage. He learned how people moved when they felt safe, when they felt superior, when they felt drunk.
Blending in was another craft.
He cleaned himself, cut his hair, learned to hold his shoulders differently.
He listened more than he spoke. When he did speak, he mirrored accents just enough to pass. He traded pelts and small mechanical fixes for things he could not make alone—salt, cordage, metal fittings.
Taverns were useful for that purpose. Dangerous, but useful.
He gambled with men who underestimated him. He learned which smiles meant confidence and which meant desperation. He let himself lose just enough to seem harmless before reclaiming it all with interest. He scammed without cruelty, taking from those who would not miss it, from those already drunk on their own certainty.
.
The tavern was loud in the way that only ports ever were. Voices layered atop one another, boots scraping, mugs slammed down too hard. Smoke hung low beneath the rafters, and the air smelled of ale, salt, and unwashed wool.
Lukas sat with his back to a beam, where he could see the door and most of the room without turning his head.
The game had started innocently enough. Dice. Coins on the table. Four men already well past sober, their laughter too quick, their movements sloppy. Lukas had let them teach him the rhythm of it—when they boasted, when they cheated, when they assumed they were cleverer than the quiet boy with the pale face and the steady hands.
He watched everything.
How one man favored his left hand when shaking the dice. How another counted coins wrong when annoyed. How the oldest of them—broad, red-faced, beard soaked with drink—grew careless when he thought he had already won.
Lukas lost the first few rounds on purpose.
Just enough to be dismissed.
Then he began to win.
Not dramatically. Not suspiciously. Coin by coin, turn by turn, correcting nothing aloud, letting the men argue among themselves when the numbers didn’t add up the way they expected. His expression stayed mild, almost bored, as he gathered what was rightfully his.
When the last round ended, there was a brief, stunned silence.
The older man stared at the table. At the empty space where his coins had been. Then at Lukas.
“That’s not right,” he slurred.
Lukas met his gaze calmly. “It is.”
A chair scraped. Someone laughed too loudly. The air shifted—subtly, but unmistakably. Attention turned their way.
The older man pushed himself up to his feet. He swayed, but he was still bigger than Lukas by far. Broader. Older. Used to being obeyed.
“You think you’re clever,” he said, leaning over the table. His eyes narrowed, drifting over Lukas’ face in a way Lukas had learned to recognize.
Assessing. Reframing.
“What could you possibly know of the world, pretty boy?”
The word landed heavy.
Lukas felt it ripple through the room. Not with laughter this time, but interest. Appraisal.
A few men glanced over more deliberately now, eyes lingering, recalculating.
Lukas did not step back, but he knew he had to act immediately.
He stood.
Slowly, deliberately, he rose until they were chest to chest. Lukas pushed forward just enough that the man had to straighten to keep balance. He rolled his shoulders back, planted his feet, and let his voice drop low—too low for anyone else to hear clearly.
“Say that again,” Lukas said quietly.
The older man blinked, surprised by the lack of fear. Lukas could smell the ale on his breath, could see the moment of hesitation flicker behind his eyes.
“You stole my coin,” the man growled instead, trying to recover ground.
“I won it,” Lukas corrected. He leaned in closer, close enough that the man could feel his breath. “And if you want to argue that, we can do that outside. Or you can sit back down and continue drinking.”
The man’s jaw tightened. For a heartbeat, it looked like he might swing.
Lukas did not move.
He held the man’s gaze steadily, unblinking, letting him see the calculation there.
Not bravado.
Not panic.
Just readiness.
The older man scoffed at last, breaking eye contact. He spat on the floor and shoved his chair back roughly.
“Not worth it,” he muttered, loud enough to save face.
Lukas watched him sit.
Only then did he relax—barely. He gathered his winnings without haste, nodding once to the others at the table. A few looked away. One raised his mug in grudging respect.
The game was over.
Lukas slipped the coins into his pouch and finished his drink. He did not stay long after that. Taverns remembered moments like these, and he had learned not to linger where attention sharpened too much.
As he stepped back out into the night air, he pulled his cloak closer around himself.
He had what he came for.
And when he had, what he had come for, he left.
Always before dawn. Always alone.
There was a pervasive sense, threaded through all of it, that he was passing through life rather than inhabiting it. That he was adjacent to warmth, adjacent to belonging, never quite stepping into it.
People came and went, faces blurred together, names forgotten on purpose.
Lukas survived.
Because he observed, adapted, and refused to rely on anyone long enough to be taken from again.
But the loneliness remained.
.
Lukas frequently moved camp. Settling down in one place was far too dangerous and it would exhaust resources over time — forcing him to travel further and further regardless.
As such, he wandered through the Norwegian forests, in search for a suitable place to camp for the night.
The smell reached him before the sight did.
Smoke—old, sour, clinging to the back of the throat. Charred wood and wet ash. Lukas slowed instinctively, lowering his steps as he moved through the trees, one hand already resting near the knife at his belt. He did not need to see the village to know what had happened. The land carried the story plainly enough.
When he reached the edge of the clearing, he stopped.
What remained of the village lay broken and blackened below him. Roof beams collapsed inward like snapped ribs. Walls had burned down to knee-height rings of stone. There were no voices, no movement—only the quiet aftermath of violence, the kind that came after men had taken what they wanted and moved on.
Lukas did not go down immediately. He scanned first, eyes sharp, listening for anything that did not belong to stillness.
That was when he heard it.
A sound so soft it almost blended with the wind—a thin, reedy wail, uneven and weak.
His body went rigid.
The sound came from behind the village, closer to the treeline. From the small pagan sanctity half-swallowed by ivy and soot, its wooden posts charred but still standing. The carved statue inside—some old god, faceless now—had cracked down the middle but remained upright, stubborn as a spine.
Lukas approached slowly, heart hammering harder with each step.
The sound came again. A whimper this time.
“Fuck,” he breathed under his breath.
He stepped into the ruins.
Behind the statue, tucked into the narrowest space between broken stone and scorched wood, lay a bundle of cloth. Someone had wrapped it carefully—too carefully for panic. A last, deliberate act.
The bundle moved.
Lukas crouched and pulled the cloth back.
A baby stared up at him with startlingly bright eyes. Blonde hair stuck out in soft tufts, skin pale and too loose over tiny limbs. The crying was weak now, exhausted more than desperate. The child smelled faintly sour, of hunger and neglect, but it was alive. Barely.
Too small. Too light.
Lukas closed his eyes.
“No,” he said quietly, to no one at all.
His mind moved quickly, ruthlessly. He lived alone. He barely fed himself. He traveled light, slept rough, disappeared when he had to. A baby would slow him down. Endanger him. Kill them both.
He straightened, taking a step back.
If he left now, the forest would take care of the rest. The cold. The animals. Hunger.
It would be easier.
He stood there, jaw clenched, staring at the cracked idol behind the child—as if the old god were watching him, silent and judging.
The baby whimpered again. One tiny hand flexed, grasping at nothing.
Lukas swore sharply and knelt again, this time faster, angrier—at himself, at the world, at the inevitability of it.
“Damn it,” he muttered, already pulling the bundle into his arms.
The child quieted almost immediately at the warmth, eyes blinking slowly as if confused by the sudden change in fortune. Lukas held him awkwardly at first, unused to the weight, the fragility. The baby fit too easily against his chest.
“This is a terrible idea,” Lukas told the empty ruins.
The baby yawned.
Lukas huffed a short, humorless breath and adjusted his grip, tucking the bundle more securely under his cloak. He looked once more around the sanctity—at the ashes, the broken god, the silence.
“I’m not doing this because I’m kind,” he said, as if that mattered. “I just… can’t leave you.”
The baby made a small, questioning sound.
Lukas hesitated only a moment longer.
“Emil,” he said finally, the name surfacing without thought. It felt right in his mouth. Solid. Real. “Your name is Emil.”
Emil blinked up at him.
Lukas turned away from the ruins and stepped back into the forest, the weight in his arms unfamiliar and terrifying—and utterly impossible to put down.
.
A few months later —-
The woods had taught Lukas silence.
Snow muted everything. His breath, his steps, even the scrape of bark against his gloves as he gathered firewood. Winter had settled deep this year, the kind that crept into bone and thought alike. Emil would still be asleep, curled close to the hearth stones, wrapped in furs Lukas had stitched and restitched until they barely held together. Lukas quickened his pace at the thought, unease prickling at the back of his neck.
Then he saw the tracks.
Too many. Heavy boots. Not animals.
Lukas stopped at once, crouching low. The trees ahead thinned just enough for him to see the slope where his hut lay hidden among rock and pine. Smoke still curled faintly from the roof hole. And around it—dark shapes moving against the white.
Vikings.
His stomach dropped, sharp and cold.
He did not shout. He did not run.
Lukas slid the bundle of firewood from his shoulder and let it fall soundlessly into the snow. His hands were already moving, shrugging the crossbow from his back, fingers steady despite the sudden pounding of his heart. He climbed a fallen log, boots finding familiar holds, and angled himself higher, farther back—where he could see without being seen.
One of them stepped toward the hut.
Young. Broad-shouldered. Fur cloak, light but well-kept. He moved like he owned the ground beneath his boots—careless, confident. Lukas tracked him without thinking, eye following the line of his body as the man reached for the door.
Emil was inside.
The bolt left his crossbow with a sharp thrum.
The man shouted—not a scream, more of a startled roar—and staggered back as the bolt buried itself deep into his shoulder. Blood bloomed dark against fur. He fell sideways and scrambled, swearing, knocking into a stack of half-buried barrels before collapsing behind them for cover.
Lukas did not exhale.
He was already moving, already reloading, fingers flying with practiced efficiency. His eyes stayed on the man behind the barrels—on the way he clenched his jaw, teeth bared, pain burning bright in his expression.
Then the man lifted his good hand and made a sharp, deliberate gesture toward a tree off to Lukas’ left.
Not alone, Lukas thought.
He finished loading and swept the landscape with his gaze, breath shallow. Snow-laden branches. A rock outcrop. Shadows that did not sit quite right.
Too late.
Something slammed into him from the side.
The world lurched.
Lukas’ finger spasmed and the bolt fired uselessly into the grey sky as he was tackled hard around the middle. They hit the ground together, snow exploding up around them. Lukas twisted, reaching for his knife even as the breath was driven from his lungs.
The man was on him instantly.
Heavy. Solid.
Strong even with the blood soaking his shoulder. He straddled Lukas’ hips and forced him down into the snow, knee digging in, weight crushing. Lukas fought—kicked, bucked, tried to roll—but it was like trying to throw off a boulder.
The man only laughed, breathless and wild.
“You shoot well,” he panted, eyes bright with something feral. He grinned like it was a game, like pain only fed him. “But I‘m stronger.”
A knife flashed into view and pressed cold and sure against Lukas’ throat.
“Stay still,” the man said, voice low with triumph. “Or I open you.”
Lukas’ jaw tightened.
Snow melted against the back of his neck. His arms trembled with the effort of pushing against a body that refused to yield. From the corner of his eye, he saw other men moving closer—shadows between trees, boots crunching now, careless of noise.
I won’t get free like this.
The thought came calm, almost detached.
So Lukas stopped fighting upward.
Instead, he moved one hand—not fast, not obvious—down along his side, fingers finding the familiar grip of his small knife. He waited for the man’s attention to flick, just for a breath, just long enough.
Matthias’ head turned just enough for him to bark an order over his shoulder—something sharp and commanding, words Lukas barely caught over the rush of blood in his ears.
But he understood enough.
“Search the hut—”
Pillage.
Find what’s hiding.
The word didn’t need to be spoken.
Emil.
The name tore through Lukas with a force stronger than fear. Stronger than pain. Stronger than reason.
He did not hesitate.
Lukas drove the blade hard into the side of the man’s thigh.
The knife drove into Matthias’ thigh with all the strength Lukas had left, angling up and in, seeking muscle and nerve.
He felt it bite deep. Felt resistance give way.
Matthias roared. It was not a human sound.
His weight lurched forward, crushing Lukas’ chest, snow filling Lukas’ mouth as he gasped. For a heartbeat Lukas thought he had done it—that the man would collapse, that the pressure would lift—
But Matthias did not let go.
“You little shit, I‘ll —” the man cursed.
His hand shot up and closed around Lukas’ throat.
His grip like iron.
Lukas again tried to wriggle free desperately, his breath strangled off in his lungs as the blade in Mathias‘ hand tore into his skin. Pain flared white-hot along the side of Lukas’ neck.
Something warm spilled down his collar.
There was only pressure on him. Noise. He felt the desperate need to move, to break free.
Now.
He clawed at Matthias’ wrist, kicked, twisted. His vision tunneled. He reached for his crossbow with blind urgency—
“Oh, I don’t think so,“ Matthias snarled and kicked it away with his injured leg.
The crossbow skidded across the snow and out of reach.
That was when fear truly sank its teeth into Lukas.
The shoulder. The thigh.
Either wound should have slowed this guy.
They hadn’t.
Matthias loomed over him, breath ragged, eyes bright and unfocused. Snow clung to his hair. Blood streaked his arm and leg—but it might as well have been paint.
He looked alive, thrumming with energy in a way Lukas had never seen in another human being.
The other men now entered his hut, breaking down the wooden door.
Lukas thrashed harder, desperation lending him speed if not strength. He drove his knee up, aiming blindly between Matthias’ legs. He tried shoving his thumbs toward the man’s eyes, again to no avail.
Matthias caught his wrists and slammed them down into the snow, leaning his full weight into Lukas again.
The knife pressed back against Lukas’ throat, steady now.
“Good,” Matthias panted, grin stretching wide and feral. “Struggle some more, you‘ll wear yourself out in no time.”
Boots crunched closer. Voices. Shadows at the edge of Lukas’ vision.
Then—
“Matthias!”
The shout cut through the chaos.
A man emerged from the hut, fur cloak thrown back, a bundle clutched awkwardly to his chest. Lukas recognized him dimly—broad, pale-haired, sharp-eyed. One of Matthias’ men.
Berwald.
“There’s—” Berwald broke off, staring down at what he held. His voice changed. “It’s a child!”
At that exact moment, Emil began to wail.
The sound ripped through Lukas like a blade. He sounded just like that day, when Lukas found him hidden behind a pagan deity.
Matthias froze.
“A child?” he called back, incredulous. There was irritation there. Almost disappointment. “That’s it?”
Lukas strained against the hand on his throat, vision swimming now, the cold no longer cold but distant. All he could hear was Emil crying—sharp, frightened, alive.
Lukas felt the weight on him change.
Not lift—just hesitate.
Matthias’ body was still over his, knees planted in the snow on either side of Lukas’ hips, but the knife no longer pressed harder. The hand at Lukas’ throat loosened by a fraction. Lukas sucked in a ragged breath, lungs burning.
Matthias looked away from Berwald and the crying babe.
He looked down at Lukas.
The shift was immediate and unnerving.
The wild triumph in his face faltered, replaced by something searching, almost disoriented. His gaze traced Lukas without restraint: the loose braid slipping apart against the snow, pale hair darkened with frost and sweat; the sharp line of his cheekbones flushed pink from cold; his slimmer frame half-pinned beneath a much larger body.
Lukas saw none of this meaning. He only knew the pressure was easing—and that something warm was spilling freely down his neck.
Blood.
The pain caught up with him all at once.
He gasped and brought his gloved hand up, pressing hard against the side of his throat. The glove soaked through immediately. Blood slid hot between his fingers, stark against the white snow. His vision dimmed at the edges, the world tilting slightly as cold crept deeper into his bones.
Matthias’ pupils widened.
For a heartbeat he simply stared, frozen—not in fury now, but in shock.
Then Lukas’ breathing hitched. He groaned and his knees drew up weakly, signalling the man to get off of him.
It was over. He was wounded and would not be able to continue fighting for long with an injury like that.
Lukas‘ eyes fluttered, half-lidded with the effort of staying conscious, of staying here.
Matthias swore under his breath and finally shifted fully back, hands coming away from Lukas as if he had been burned.
Lukas turned his head toward the sound that mattered most.
Emil.
Berwald was closer now, the child clutched awkwardly but securely in his arms. Emil’s wailing filled the clearing, sharp and desperate, cutting through the ringing in Lukas’ ears.
Lukas tried to reach out. His arm barely lifted before falling back into the snow.
Berwald slowed, eyes flicking between Lukas’ bloodied hand and the child in his arms.
“Is she the mother?” he asked behind Matthias in Danish, voice uncertain.
Lukas didn’t understand the words. He only heard the tone and saw Berwald’s gaze settle on Emil, then on him.
Matthias’ eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
“You have a child?” he asked him abruptly, in Danish, disbelief bleeding into his voice.
Lukas stared back at him, uncomprehending. The sounds meant nothing. His fingers tightened reflexively at his neck, trying to keep the world from slipping away.
Matthias leaned forward again—not violently this time. He grabbed Lukas by the shoulders, hands rough but no longer cruel, and searched his face with open confusion.
“Er du en pige?” Matthias demanded. Are you a girl?
The word didn’t register. Lukas blinked at him with much effort, dazed.
Behind Matthias, Berwald snorted softly. “Ikke for meget barm til at fodre babyen, vel?” he said dryly. Something about ‚breasts‘ and ‚baby‘.
Matthias glanced down at his torso, then back at Lukas.
His brows knit.
He shifted closer again, one knee sinking into the snow beside Lukas’ hip, and stared at Lukas’ chest through the layers of wool and leather.
Mathias cleared his throat, looking almost sheepish.
Then, baffled, he reached up and without heeding the injury tilted Lukas’ chin with broad fingers, forcing his face up despite the blood and trembling.
Lukas cursed weakly, gritting his teeth against the searing pain that came with the stretching of his neck.
Matthias’ thumb brushed Lukas’ throat—too close to the wound—searching, until it pressed against his adam‘s apple.
Lukas swallowed and felt Mathias‘ thumb press down on it.
“Er du kvinde?” he asked again, this time sounding more doubtful.
Kvinde; woman. That word Lukas understood. Mathias was asking him if he was a woman.
Fear flared sharp and sudden through the haze. Somehow the notion of these men thinking he was a helpless woman made this situation even worse.
“No,” Lukas spat, voice hoarse. He jerked his face violently out of Matthias’ humiliating grip and turned his head away.
“Don‘t touch me,” Lukas hissed in Norwegian.
Emil screamed louder.
Matthias rocked back onto his heels, clearly startled. As he shifted his weight, pain seemed to finally catch up with him. His face twisted; a harsh curse tore from his mouth as his injured leg buckled beneath him.
Only then did he seem to remember the knife still buried in his thigh.
Berwald let out a short laugh. “He got you good,” he remarked, almost impressed.
Matthias growled something unintelligible and forced himself upright, limping sideways until his shoulder hit a tree trunk. He braced himself there, breath coming hard, eyes still locked on Lukas.
“Tie him up,” he snapped to his men. “Take them with you.”
Hands seized Lukas before he could react. Rough fingers tore his hand from his neck just long enough for someone to wrap cloth tight around the wound. The pressure made stars burst behind his eyes.
He sagged bonelessly between them as they hauled him up.
The forest spun.
As they carried him away, Lukas’ vision blurred—but one image burned itself into him with cruel clarity.
Matthias, bloodied and limping, watching him go.
And on his face—not confusion, not regret—but the echo of that same beastly grin Lukas would never forget.
It was the look of a man who had almost claimed him, his life—
and had felt powerful and righteous in doing so.
.
The cold finally reached him once the noise faded.
Matthias leaned heavily against the tree, breath steaming in uneven pulls. Pain throbbed in his shoulder and flared sharp in his thigh where the knife still jutted, but it only grounded him now, anchoring him in his body after the frenzy.
His men hauled the stranger away.
The boy—no, not a boy, not quite—hung limp between them, head lolling, flaxen braid soaked dark with blood. Snow crunched under their boots as they disappeared into the trees, the wailing child carried after them.
Matthias’ gaze stayed fixed, mesmerised.
This stranger had really managed to injure him.
Blood had dried across his hand, sticky and dark against the creases of his thumb. He flexed his fingers slowly, eyes never leaving the retreating shape. The memory of resistance replayed itself in his muscles—the way Lukas had thrashed beneath him, the way he had refused to break even as his strength failed.
The way his red, hot blood oozed out of the wound on his neck, spilling over Mathias‘ fingers, and yet he refused to yield.
Defiance like that was rare.
Absentmindedly, Matthias lifted his thumb to his mouth and dragged it between his teeth, licking the man’s blood from his skin, as he remembered the pained gasps forced out of him.
Salt. Iron. Warmth lingering despite the cold.
He didn’t smile at first. His brows knit, expression distant, thoughtful—then the corner of his mouth twitched upward into something feral and satisfied.
Mine, something wordless and ugly murmured in his chest as he watched his men drag the boy away.
Berwald glanced at him. “You’re bleeding.”
Matthias swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and finally tore his eyes away from the trees.
“So is he,” he said simply.
He pushed himself upright with a sharp hiss, bracing on the trunk until the world steadied. His pulse still thundered, not fading, not calming—coiling tighter instead.
Mathias wrapped his fingers around the knife sticking out of his thigh and with one powerful move, pulled it out.
He gasped, the pain surging through him.
The boy’s face lingered behind his eyes: pale against the snow, beautiful and defiant in a way that unsettled him; neither one thing nor another. Impossible to categorise, to define, to figure out definitively.
Too proud. Too sharp. Too dignified. Too stubborn to accept being prey in this world.
He would make a fierce, indomitable warrior by his side.
Matthias chuckled low in his throat.
“Yes,” he murmured to no one, starting after his men. “Mine.”