Nena by Ann Boelter (digital book reader txt) 📕

“That is what I feel for you,” Jarl said. “That is why I will not escape. I have nowhere to go where the spirit sickness will not follow.”

Nena finished and moved back around to face him. She knew she should leave, that her father was waiting for a report, but she couldn’t go.

Jarl could see she was upset, but could not read her to know for sure why. He pressed her further. “If you do not believe my words, or they are not enough, remember one important thing. You chose me. And through that choice your gods revealed their will. Your gods chose me for you, Nena,” he continued softly. “So how can you defy them now?”

Nena wanted nothing more than to flee the hut. He could not be right. Yet even she had once wondered the same. And if he was wrong and her choosing him had been only to allow her to escape, why had she balked at choosing a Teclan warrior once she was safely home? Why did her body, even now, yearn for his touch?

“I must go...to tell my father you are awake. He wishes to speak to you. He wants to hear why you are here from your own mouth.”

“I will not lie,” he warned, trying to gauge her response.

“I know.” Nena nodded and turned to leave.

In a sudden move that set his shackles rattling, he grabbed her arm. “Will you return?”

She nodded. “Yes. I will bring food and some ointment for your wounds....” Her voice trailed off as something occurred to her.

“You mean if I am still alive?”

Nena nodded as she stumbled for the door, unable to trust her voice to answer him. Gentok was waiting for her.

“Nena,” he said.

“Not now, Gentok,” she said in Dor and pushed past him. “I must find my father and tell him the Northman is awake.”

Nena stood frozen outside her father’s tent, unable to enter. Her steps there had been in a daze. Her father would have him killed. She knew that. She didn’t know how, or when, but she was certain of that fact. Nothing Jarl could possibly say would change it. Certainly not the truth of why he was there—that he’d come for her and couldn’t live without her.

Her mind drifted. He had come for her. Not the treasure. It had never been the treasure. She was shocked by his confession of love and what he was willing to risk for her. But that just made it all the worse. What did he think could possibly happen now?

Nena stared at the flap to her father’s tent, trying to compose herself, then lifted it and stepped inside. The tent was empty. Her father must still be consulting the gods. She chastised herself for the flood of relief she felt at the delay in hearing Jarl’s sentence.

Nena made her way to the bend in the creek in the Meadow of the Idols, where her father took his morning tea, but he was not where he normally sat. Perhaps he had already decided Jarl’s fate and had returned to the council tent. She couldn’t go there—not yet. She wasn’t ready to hear her father’s decree or face the joyous, raucous response of the tribe’s warriors to his decision.

She wandered among the idols, trying to sort through her tortured jumbled thoughts, still reeling from Jarl’s words and her own feelings. Her response to Jarl, first in the council and later in the cell, had been instantaneous and undeniable—as natural as when they had shared his tent after she had chosen him. There had been no trying, no searching for feelings or physical reactions that weren’t there. Their connection had been immediate.

Her father would have him killed.

Jarl had offered up his life for her. He was willing to die because he loved her. He had saved her life. The gods had chosen him for her.

Her father would have him killed.

Her feelings didn’t matter. Jarl’s feelings didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She was Teclan. He was the enemy. Her father would have him killed. Her mind raced in the same circles.

“Nena? Is that you?” Her father’s voice startled her. She hadn’t noticed him seated at the base of the large moss-covered monument to her left.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come join me. The gods have not yet seen fit to give me an answer. Perhaps they have questions for you.”

“Apologies, Father. I fear I have no answers, only questions as well.”

“Have you been to see the Northman?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he awake then?”

“Yes.”

“Did he speak to you?”

She nodded.

“Why is he here? Does he bring some offer?”

Nena hesitated. There was no sense withholding anything. Even if Gentok had not overheard them, Jarl had made it clear he would tell anyone who would listen. “He is here for me.”

Her father rocked backwards and sat in stunned silence while he considered her words and their implications, then thought back through everything that had transpired. “A man, especially a leader, does not risk everything for a slave prisoner—even a very valuable one.” He eyed her carefully. “So he is the one who held you captive?”

Nena nodded.

“And is he also the one the gods chose to be your first union?”

Nena could only nod again.

“That is irrelevant and changes nothing. The reasoning behind the gods’ choice is often impossible for men to understand. It could have been something as simple as the gods intent to lure him here for us to kill him. Or it could have been...” His voice trailed off. He could clearly think of no other reason—at least none he was willing to voice. “You are Teclan and he is Northman. He is the enemy,” he said with finality.

“I know. I told him that.”

“And what did he say?”

“He asked me how a Teclan woman chooses a warrior to marry after the gods’ choice. I explained to him that the man must be a good provider, a good hunter, a great warrior.”

Her father nodded in agreement.

“He said he is all of those