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“But we married only two sennights ago. You need moons to know…”

“No, this is an early prediction test. It shows—”

Einar roared, his hands curled into fists, his eyes dark and haunted, something terrifying lurking in their depths.

“No. You cannot do this to me,” he said. “You said you cannot have children.”

“I was wrong,” she whispered. “All it took was you. It’s a miracle, Einar.”

He shook his head, his eyes wild, looking like a cornered animal. Holly’s world was falling apart, the lightness, the happiness, the warmth gone. Her body hurt all over.

“But I do not want any more children. I do not want a wife who wants them. I lost the love of my life in childbirth, and I swore long ago I would never endure that again. I thought you were perfect. You said you could not get pregnant, but I still did not want to risk it by spilling my seed in you. And now this…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I cannot endure it if you die giving birth to this child.”

Holly shook all over, but this time, it was not nervousness. It was world-shattering pain.

Finally, the one man who mattered the most in her life, who had just said she was perfect, had found a flaw.

And that flaw was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Einar picked up his ax and shook his head. “You have just opened the gates to Helheim for me.”

Without another word, he left. And she bled and ached inside. She had been wrong. The glimpse of happiness she’d had with Einar had been an illusion. And she was back to being left, to being unwanted.

Except now, she was not alone. She had a baby to protect, and the safest place for her child would be in her own time, away from Thorir and all the other dangers of the Viking world.

Chapter Seventeen

Later that evening, Einar was on his way home with his hands full of hare and his heart full of pain. He had gone out after his talk with Holly, in desperate need of a distraction from the thing he had been afraid most in the world.

That, he would meet a woman he cared for. And that, again, she would risk dying because he impregnated her.

He did not want to think about Agdis or Holly, but as he’d set the traps and waited for game, his mind had raced back, plucking the most painful memories like the ripest strawberries in the forest.

He’d remembered the joy of holding Svanhild for the first time, and the scare he got while Agdis was in labor. He remembered how, during the second labor, her pains had been much stronger—so strong, the whole village must have heard her. Despite the midwife’s protests, he had rushed into their bedchamber. There was nothing that would scare him more than waiting on the other side of the door, not knowing, fighting an invisible enemy he had no power over—fate.

He’d held Agdis’s hand and wiped her forehead with a cool, damp cloth.

“The babe is too big,” the midwife said. “It will never pass.”

The meaning of her words fell on him like a giant tree, crushing him so that every muscle, every limb hurt with the agony of a thousand deaths.

If he could, he would die for her. He would take the burden, the pain, the desperation of being trapped in a body that could not do what it was supposed to do.

But all he could do was be with her, listen to her mindless screams, and wait until she died.

And then when she was finally gone, he had to go out of the room, his body numb, his world dark, and look at the two-winter-old Svanhild.

“Mama,” she said and chewed on the wooden doll he had carved for her earlier that year. “Mama?”

Even though she was so little, he could swear, she understood that she would never see her mother again. He saw something in her eyes dim, and she cried.

And he had walked away. He could not look her in the eyes. She needed her mother. She did not need him. She would never need him.

There was no way in the world he could endure this again with Holly or let Svanhild go through it again. That would be the end of him.

It would be better for Holly to go. Return to her time. Based on what she had said, the healers could help her. She and the babe would be alive. He would rather know she was alive and well somewhere else, with his child, than have her stay with him under the danger of childbirth, something he could not shield her from.

The sun was already setting when he approached the darkening village.