Their future together had looked so hopeful then, and Roric had been so sure that Hadros, who had been a father to him his whole life, would raise no objections. That hope had lasted until last week when he had finally decided the moment right to raise the topic.

Karin scraped the last of the porridge out of the pot and sat down to eat at the opposite end of the table from King Hadros. “I went for a walk,” she said shortly when he looked a question at her. Her firmly set jaw and lowered eyes kept anyone else from speaking to her.

The king’s sons were discussing the horses. It was the season to bring the mares and the young foals in from pasture, to introduce the foals to humans and rebreed the mares, and almost time to start breaking the yearlings for riding. She listened absently to their conversation as she finished breakfast and braided her hair.

“We’ll have to see how well the foals came out this year,” said Valmar with a laugh. He was the king’s oldest son, two years younger than Karin, and had red hair and dark blue eyes with lashes that had always seemed to her too long for a boy. She still thought of him as her little brother, even though in the last few years he had shot up from boyhood to young manhood. Though most men stayed clean-shaven until marriage, he had managed to grow a somewhat patchy beard. “And we’ll have to see if the mares will be satisfied to be covered by an ordinary stallion this time. I’m afraid Roric’s troll-horse may have sired some of this year’s crop!”

His younger brothers, Dag and Nole, laughed too, then glanced toward her as though recalling her presence and stopped abruptly. They all knew better than to say anything that could possibly be considered crude or lewd in her presence, but King Hadros did not seem to have noticed.

Valmar rose. “Coming with us, Father? Or is your knee still bothering you?”

Karin looked up sharply at that. The king sat with one leg extended straight out from the bench. “Oh, my leg is fine,” he said easily. That was the leg, she recalled, that he had broken in the fall last year-or was it the year before? “But perhaps I shall let you go ahead and catch up with you.”