ASTRID’S POV

I was in my healing hut, grinding dried willow bark with my pestle, when the commotion outside made me look up from my work. Through the small window, I could see men running toward the training grounds, their voices urgent and panicked.

Something was wrong.

I set down my tools and hurried outside, my heart already racing. In the three weeks since Ragnar had given me permission to open the healing hut, I had treated nothing more serious than cuts from training swords and the occasional sprained wrist. But the tone of those voices told me this was different.

When I reached the crowd gathered near the practice area, I pushed through the circle of warriors until I could see what had happened. My breath caught in my throat.

One of Ragnar’s men was lying on the ground, his face pale as death and his breathing shallow.

Blood was seeping through his leather vest from what looked like a deep gash across his chest. But it was the strange color of his skin that worried me most – a grayish tint that I recognized from my training back home.

“What happened?” I asked, dropping to my knees beside the injured man.

“Training accident,” said Bjorn the Red, his scarred face grim. “Erik’s sword slipped and caught him deep. But it’s not just the cut that’s the problem. Look at his arm.”

I followed his gaze and saw what he meant. The man’s left arm was swollen to twice its normal size, with red streaks running up toward his shoulder. The skin was hot to the touch and had an angry, infected look that made my stomach clench.

“How long has his arm been like this?” I demanded.

“Few days,” one of the other warriors admitted. “He said it was just a scratch from last week’s training. Didn’t want to bother anyone with it.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, fighting back frustration. Men and their pride. This warrior – I thought his name was Olaf – had let a small wound fester rather than admit he needed help. Now the infection was spreading through his blood, and combined with the fresh injury, it might kill him.

“Help me get him to the healing hut,” I said, getting to my feet. “Quickly.”

Several warriors moved to lift him, but I could see the doubt in their eyes. They had heard about my healing skills, but none of them had actually seen me work on anything serious.

To them, I was still just the foreign woman their jarl had claimed as a bride.

But I didn’t have time to worry about their opinions. Olaf was dying, and I was the only one who might be able to save him.

We carried him into my hut and laid him on the narrow bed I had set up for patients. His breathing was getting more labored, and when I checked his pulse, it was racing like a frightened bird’s.

“Everyone out except two men to help hold him steady,” I ordered, my voice carrying more authority than I felt.

To my surprise, they obeyed without question. Maybe the seriousness of the situation had overcome their doubts about taking orders from a woman.

I worked quickly, cleaning the fresh wound and stitching it closed with careful, even stitches. That was the easy part. The infection was what would kill him if I couldn’t stop it.

I reached for the pouch that held my most precious possession – a collection of herbs and roots that my mother had given me before she died.

She had learned the old ways from her grandmother, knowledge that went back generations to times when healing was as much about intuition as it was about medicine.

I mixed a paste from ground garlic, honey, and a rare fungus that grew only in the deepest parts of the forest.

The smell was sharp and bitter, but I had seen this combination work miracles on infected wounds that other healers had given up on.

“This is going to hurt,” I warned Olaf, though he was barely conscious. “But it might save your life.”

I spread the paste over the infected area, and he screamed even in his weakened state. The two warriors holding him looked at me with alarm, but I kept working.

Sometimes healing required causing pain in order to prevent worse suffering later.

Next came a tea made from willow bark and meadowsweet, sweetened with honey to help him keep it down. I lifted his head and managed to get most of the liquid into him, though much of it ran down his chin.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

I sat beside his bed through the rest of the day and into the night, checking his pulse, monitoring his breathing, changing the dressing on his chest wound. The other warriors took turns looking in on us, their faces grave and worried.

By morning, I was exhausted but hopeful. The angry red streaks on his arm had faded to pink, and his fever had broken sometime during the night.

When he opened his eyes and asked for water in a voice that was weak but clear, I nearly cried with relief.

Word spread through the settlement like wildfire. By the time Olaf was sitting up and eating broth, half the warriors in Ragnar’s army had found excuses to walk past my healing hut and peer inside.

I could hear them talking outside, their voices carrying through the thin walls.

“She saved his life, no question about it.”

“Did you see how she worked? Like she’d been doing it for decades.”

“Fenoj said she used some kind of magic paste. Made from things I’d never heard of.”

“Magic or not, Olaf would be dead if not for her.”

Their praise made something warm bloom in my chest. For the first time since I had been brought to this place, I felt useful. Valued. Like I had a purpose beyond just being Ragnar’s unwilling bride.

I was checking Olaf’s bandages that evening when I became aware of someone watching me from the doorway. I looked up to find Ragnar himself standing there, his massive frame filling the entrance to my small hut.

“How is he?” he asked quietly.

“He’ll live,” I said, unable to keep the pride out of my voice. “The infection is gone, and the chest wound is healing cleanly. He should be back to training in a few weeks.”

Ragnar nodded slowly, his ice-blue eyes taking in the neat organization of my supplies, the clean workspace, the patient resting peacefully on the bed.

“My men are impressed,” he said.

“They should be impressed with Olaf’s strength,” I replied. “He fought the infection as hard as I did.”

But even as I said it, I felt a flush of pleasure at his words. I had proven myself to his warriors, shown them that I was more than just a pretty face or a political pawn.

“Walk with me,” Ragnar said suddenly.

I glanced at Olaf, but he was sleeping peacefully, his breathing deep and regular. There was nothing more I could do for him tonight.

I followed Ragnar out of the hut and into the cool evening air. The settlement was quieter now, with most people gathered in the great hall for the evening meal. We walked in silence toward the walls that surrounded the stronghold, our footsteps echoing on the wooden walkways.

“You saved his life,” Ragnar said finally.

“I did what any healer would do,” I replied, though we both knew that wasn’t entirely true. Not every healer would have known to use my mother’s old remedies, or would have had the courage to try them on a dying man.

“My mother used to say that healing was a gift from the gods,” he said, surprising me. “That those who possessed it were marked for something special.”

I looked at him sideways, trying to read his expression in the dim light. “I didn’t know you believed in such things.”

“I believe in what I can see with my own eyes,” he said. “And I saw you bring a man back from the edge of death using nothing but plants and determination.”

We had reached the wall now, and he stopped walking. Below us, the settlement spread out like a collection of toy buildings, warm light spilling from windows and doorways. It was starting to feel less like a prison and more like… something else. Not home, exactly, but maybe someplace I could belong.

“The men respect you now,” Ragnar said. “That’s not something that comes easily for them.”

“I noticed,” I said, thinking of the warriors who had been finding excuses to visit my hut all day.

Some had brought small injuries they wanted me to look at, but others had just come to thank me for saving their friend.

“You were smiling today,” he observed. “When they were praising your work. It was the first time I’ve seen you truly smile since you arrived here.”

Had I been smiling? I supposed I had. It felt good to be appreciated, to know that my skills mattered to these people who had seemed so foreign and frightening just a few weeks ago.

“It felt good to help someone,” I admitted. “To do something useful instead of just… existing.”

We stood there in comfortable silence for a while, looking out over the settlement. The evening air was cool against my face, and I could smell the salt from the sea mixed with wood smoke from the cooking fires.

That’s when it happened.

I was pointing toward one of the buildings below, asking Ragnar about something I had seen earlier, when his hand moved to cover mine on the wooden railing. It was just a light touch, barely more than a brush of skin against skin, but it sent a shock through my entire body.

His hand was warm and rough with calluses from years of wielding weapons, but his touch was surprisingly gentle. He didn’t grab or demand, just let his fingers rest lightly over mine.

For a moment, neither of us moved. I could feel my heart beating faster, could sense the tension in the air between us. This was different from his earlier attempts to touch me. This wasn’t about claiming or possessing. This was something else entirely.

I should have pulled my hand away. I should have maintained the careful distance we had established since that night in my chamber. But I didn’t. Instead, I found myself looking down at our joined hands, at the contrast between his large, scarred fingers and my smaller, paler ones.

The touch lingered, neither of us quite willing to break the connection. And in that moment, something shifted between us, something that changed the very air we were breathing.