“She’s touched with visions. What is your explanation?”

He looked to stifle a grin. “You are direct, a good trait. But I’m not mad. I’m a berserker. Do you understand what the men of my people are?”

“I’ve heard tales of your kind. You’re stronger than other mortals, faster. And you’re all possessed by the spirit of a beast. The snarling, the fighting, the possessiveness—all the traits of a lean bear in winter.”

“’Tis true. And the beast in me sensed its mate, rousing inside me from your very first words. I thought you would be older when we met, but I feel fortunate just to have found you.”

He said this as if it was an understatement. She was speechless. A rarity.

“In the morn, I will take you to my family’s holdings in the north,” he continued. “My parents will complete your upbringing and keep you safe until I return for you. I will bring your sister there to join you.”

An actual madman stood before her! This situation grew interesting. Regin found she might like to play with mad mortals. Feigning an earnest tone, she asked, “And how long would it be until you returned for me?”

“Mayhap in five or six years. When you are grown, and I have warred enough to earn my own immortality. Then we would wed.”

Ah, she remembered now. Berserkers could earn ohalla, deathlessness, from Wóden once they’d won two hundred battles in his name. They tattooed his mark—dual ravens in flight—upon their chests.

She wondered if the battles had come before the rule, or if the rule had spurred the battles. “I’m to sit there and wait for you? What if another mortal decides I’m to be his chattel instead?”

His hands clenched. “You are meant for me alone,” he said in a strange tone. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I’m not ignorant of such things.” She was almost completely ignorant of such things—of men, of coupling. She couldn’t comprehend why her sister would ever voluntarily leave the paradise of Valhalla to follow a man.