The Throne of Ice & Ash (The Runewar Saga #1) (PREVIEW)

2: A Woman's Place

A woman's place is before the hearth, for unto the wife is laid the duty to keep home and land in sound health and regard.

- The Inscribed Beliefs; Verse the Second, Line the Fourth

The day began with golden promise.

The morning's chill clinging to her skin, Aelthena watched the distant peaks that ringed the valley brighten with the rising sun. The gentle tilt of the land, from the high Teeth to the valley below, gathered the warming light. Trees, their boughs sagging with snow, sparkled on the hills surrounding Oakharrow. The long, wide vale of the Seven Jarlheims of Baegard inevitably emerged from the tors' shadows.

Someday, I'll have my part of it.

Only in her head did the thought not sound like an unlikely prospect. She was not the jarl's heir, nor did she have the slightest chance of becoming so — unless her brothers perished, a thing she could never earnestly wish for. If her mother had her way, Aelthena would be relegated to little more than the matron of a household, leaving politics and power to the men.

Yet each day, she looked over the valley and made herself the same promise. I will make a difference. I will matter. Somehow. Some way.

"Ael?"

The voice came from the bed behind her. Aelthena turned back toward her betrothed. "I'm here," she said.

Asborn, propped up on an elbow, stared at her with half-lidded eyes. His red hair, unbound, tumbled loose across his shoulders. His expression was not yet lined from the day's cares, for, unlike herself, Asborn left his worries behind when he slept. His face was open and honest, only the wan complexion hinting at the stress he felt as the successor and the son of the infamous thane, Eirik Bloodaxe.

He gave her a tentative smile. "Worrying again?"

"I wouldn't call it that exactly."

"Oakharrow will take care of itself for a night, you know."

She returned his smile with a coy one of her own. "Are you worried about Oakharrow being taken care of, or yourself?"

Asborn's eyes brightened at that. "Perhaps both might benefit by your coming over here."

Aelthena laughed, yet the moment's levity was fleeting. Dawn's arrival should have seen her long on her way back home to the Harrowhall. Her liaisons with Asborn were still supposed to be a secret, as they were only promised and not yet married. Though that would change with summer's coming, being caught before the final vows were spoken would stain her perceived virtue and provoke a lifetime of scorn and shame.

But the chances of consequences were slim. Her father, with his mind lost to ice, could not chastise her for any indiscretions. Her brothers had been too long accomplice to condemn her now. Lady Kathsla, Asborn's mother, surely had to know, but the bowed-back woman had never mentioned a word of it to Aelthena, and had more than once given her a knowing smile. Aelthena's own mother also never spoke of it, but cast her disappointed looks instead.

Yet even if the need for secrecy had passed, her departure remained urgent. Her mother expected Aelthena to review her duties for the upcoming Winterbirth festival. And as little as she wished to comply with her mother's expectations, Aelthena was nothing if not a dutiful daughter.

"I can't," she said finally. "I have to meet my mother. Winterbirth, you know."

"Ah." Asborn ran a hand through his tangled hair. "Have to attend to the baking of bread and the polishing of silver?"