“I have to go with you to find Lucia.”

“In this I will not bend, Reginleit. You are vulnerable. You can be harmed. And that I could not abide.”

Before he doused the candles, he leaned over to press a quick kiss against her hair, then chucked her under the chin. “Brightling, the time till you’re grown will pass slowly for me. Every night, I will dream of the woman you’ll become.”

He returned to his pallet, and in the dark she saw his eyes closed and his lips curled, as if with anticipation.

She inwardly sighed. You will never see me grown, warlord. But from time to time, I might think of the stubborn mortal who was kind to me.

-ii-

Nine years later

“What are you doing, sister?” Lucia the Archer demanded as she barged into Regin’s room.

Though Regin had hoped to slip away this night from the manor house she shared with Lucia, her sister’s huntress senses were too acute.

I should probably lie. Yet out spilled the truth: “I am deciding which garments will best please a warlord.”

Lucia gasped, her hands falling to the bow she always wore strapped over her body. As her fingers nervously plucked the string, she said, “You are seeking out that berserker?”

She nodded. Regin would become a full immortal soon and, as she’d finally been warned, her desires were growing overwhelming.

When she imagined fulfilling them, only one man’s face arose in her mind. Just as Aidan had predicted, she needed him now. “He’s near. His army is camped within the dark woods.”

Over the years, as she and Lucia had sought out other Valkyrie on this plane and others, Regin had often heard tales of her berserker. He was little closer to his gift of immortality, having spent more time searching for her than for battles to win. And already he had forty winters.

He was said to be changed—his beastlike nature even more dominant. He was quick to conflict, letting his berserkrage free at the earliest provocation.