Page 24 of Claimed By the Viking

“Nothing is what it was! Can I live like this, cursed to more darkness than I ever knew in the mine? There is no escape from it, and I fear… I cannot…” His voice cracked at last.

Signy threw her arm about him, holding him close. She longed to tell him that she yearned for him to stay, wished she could say how much she’d come to need his touch, but in the end, the revelations were not forthcoming.

“Let me care for you, and trust in the gods. They haven’t abandoned you, and neither shall I.”

CHAPTER 9

The fourteenth day of the men’s sojourn on the island

Sitting at the open doorway,Viggo turned his face to the sun.

Working long hours in the confined mineshafts, it had seemed a rebirth of sorts to emerge from the depths into the light. The thought of breathing fresh air had sustained him; that and the hope of the day’s warmth to welcome him.

Not that such things were guaranteed in Skálavík. Even at the height of summer, when the sun barely dipped below the horizon, the fjord was as likely to be drenched in rain as blazing sunshine.

It bathed him now, strong enough to burn, but he resolutely held himself in the same position, reveling in the sensation.

Soon, he would feel nothing—neither cold nor heat.

Nor the touch of her lips.

He shook that thought away.

It would be a relief, wouldn’t it… when the time came for all this to end?

I’m damned!Damned to the shadows… until she finishes me.

There was no denying what lay in his heart—a desolation stronger than any comfort Signy might offer.

He was no fool. However much he craved her touch and the soft lilt of her voice, this couldn’t continue.

The tide was high, waves brushing the stones upon the far side of the dunes in a rhythm as regular as his own breathing. But while the sea might be eternal, his span would soon cease. There could be no other way.

Only when she was with him did consolation come, and he allowed himself to believe, for a short while…

Nay! ‘Tis futile!

Signy had departed some time before. He couldn’t say when. The hours lacked substance in the darkness.

She was visiting her cousin, she’d said.

As if she needed to provide an excuse! ‘Twas a wonder she stomached spending as much time with him as she did. Leaving was no doubt a relief to her, as sought after as his own escape from the cloying, deadened air of the mines. She must feel suffocated here with him.

Why she bothered with him, he couldn’t fathom. As to the affection she bestowed, he knew it must be feigned.

She hadn’t hidden her desire for a child, and he knew she sought his seed for the purpose, but that didn’t explain her soft murmurs after coupling nor the way her fingers trailed across his skin. He wanted to believe she craved the intimacy, that she’d come to long for him the way he wanted her…

Again, you torment yourself. Fool!

Such a woman can take any man as her husband. Why should she want me—weak and useless!

‘Twas a wretched truth, that she’d be better off without him.

The gods were punishing him, and he knew full why. They’d bided their time, but they were showing him there was no escape from his sins.

Not for him a swift death, such as had come to his brothers. This anguish was far more piercing. A slow, drawn-out torture. Misery conjured not just from blindness but from bittersweet yearning.

Oh, yes. The gods were clever!

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