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"You should make an offering before you go," Sigurd says.
It's the first thing he's said all day, which is not unusual since the two of them returned from Norway. Sigurd has never been as quiet in his life as he is now, though Eivor supposes he understands that; things have changed for him, and Eivor doesn't only mean his lost right arm.
He didn't notice Sigurd as he left the longhouse, sitting on the bench by the bell Eivor rings to sound a feast. He's been like a red-haired ghost around Ravensthorpe for weeks now, and Eivor has found him in the unlikeliest of places - lingering mutely by their friends' graves or walking in the woods, or leaning quietly against the trunk of a tree as the foxes run by. More than once, he's found him sitting on the dock with his legs swinging over the edge, and unlike Eivor he's tall enough that the soles of his boots kick ripples on the water. Once, he'd have rather argued over orlog than watched the fish swim by. He'd have rather laughed or fought or both things together until Eivor couldn't help but find himself caught up in it, too. That's happened so many times before, but not in months now. Maybe not in years.
He misses the man his brother was: sharp and joyous and quick to anger, but who he'd have followed straight to Hel. Mostly, though, he just misses him, even though he's there.
Eivor stops abruptly. He turns, and Sigurd's looking at him from the bench, and he can't say it's only the fact he's spoken at all that gives him pause. Sigurd looks at him, steadily, and Eivor wonders if he meant to make his heart beat faster in his chest with what he said or if he should take his words at face value.
It's probably the latter, he thinks. But he can't help but remember another time when he said almost the exact same thing.
---
"You should make an offering before we go," Sigurd said.
They were sitting at the table in their father's house - Sigurd's father's house, Eivor supposed, as he'd never quite managed to apply that term to Styrbjorn himself, at least not without a pang in his chest by the name of Varin. They were by no means alone at the feast but what Eivor cared about was the fact they were together. It had been two full years since he'd last seen his brother, and even the fact that Kjotve was alive and well and likely preparing to attack their home hadn't been able to keep a smile from creeping up onto his face. Even the thought of their preemptive strike, and the battle that lay ahead, felt less important than Sigurd's tattooed fingers slipping down and circling his wrist.
Two years. He'd missed him bitterly, and now here he was.
"You want me to go all the way up the mountain to Valka's hut and back again before we set sail?" Eivor asked. "Sigurd, you've--"
"I'll go with you."
"Shouldn't you spend the night with Randvi?"
Sigurd smiled wryly. "Don't tell me my wife missed me," he said. "Tell me you did and I'll believe you. But Randvi?" He chuckled darkly. "Better I'd found my way to the All-Father than come back here, I think. To her."
"Sigurd, that's--"
Sigurd held up a hand and Eivor knew better than to keep on going. He'd have liked to have told him what he'd said wasn't fair and that Randvi had missed him, but in all honesty he understood that what Randvi had missed was more like the idea of him. They hadn't married for love, after all - they'd married for peace and solidarity between their clans and the truth of their marriage was twofold: Sigurd had been absent for two thirds its length, and he hadn't tried to like her even in the time before he'd left. He hadn't tried very hard at all and even if she might have expected him in her bed that night, Eivor knew she'd hardly be surprised by his absence.
He'd have also liked to have pointed out that climbing a mountain of snow in the dead of night, tired and half drunk with a battle ahead, probably wasn't a good use of their time. He didn't point out that Kjotve's death itself was likely more than enough of an offering for any of their gods, and that avenging his parents' deaths was more than enough for him personally. He didn't, though; he just laughed exasperatedly and clapped Sigurd on the back, then he finished off his current cup of mead.
"Shall we go, then?" he asked. "Before I come to my senses."
Sigurd nodded. Unsteadily, they rose. Then, with three drunk members of Sigurd's raiding party for company - Eivor wondered precisely how drunk they must all be to find the prospect at all appealing - and Basim and Hytham tagging on behind, they made their way out of Fornburg and up the fucking mountain. Almost three full freezing hours later, in the middle of the night and somewhat more lacking in enthusiasm, they finally arrived.
"The ritual will require sex," Valka said, once Eivor had knelt by the fire and explained to her exactly why they'd come.
Eivor glanced around the room, at bones hanging from the ceiling and in every doorway, at Valka's herbs and potions that he'd tried so many of over the years. He glanced at Sigurd, and at Basim and Hytham who stood neatly by the door, and at their three more drunken companions who were presently falling over one other. If he'd thought about it long and hard enough, he might have conjured up their names, but he decided it was better he didn't remember. Not until they were sober, at least.
"Who exactly needs to have sex?" he asked. His tone was more skeptical than he'd have liked, but no more than the sniggering drunks deserved.
"You, Wolf-Kissed," she replied, with as patient an expression as if talking to a small dog, and one of the drunks behind him snickered like sex was the most hilarious thing he'd ever heard. "The goal is yours, and so the ritual is yours also."
"And who do I have to do it with?" he asked. He made an awkward face. "You, Valka?"
She laughed. "No," she said, "tempting as the notion is. It must be someone who will fight this battle with you. Someone who you would trust with your life. With whom you share a bond."
"Me, then."
When Eivor turned, still kneeling there by the fire but so abruptly that he almost wrenched his neck, Sigurd was pulling himself up to his feet. He stood up tall, and when their drunk comrades snickered again, one pointed look from their jarl's son shut them up in an instant. Eivor, though, unlike them, could see nothing funny in it. He found himself looking up at Sigurd, his brother since Kjotve's blade had orphaned him seventeen years prior. Sigurd, brave and brash and harsh and handsome, who mattered more to him than any other living soul - everyone in Fornburg knew as much. Sigurd, for whom his awkward teenage crush had long since grown into something much less understandable. Time and distance hadn't helped that, not that he'd believed they would so much as he'd hoped it. So he looked up, he met Sigurd's eyes, and he clamped one hand down hard over his mouth until his cheekbones ached. That didn't help him, either.
"Perhaps--" he said.
"It should be me," Sigurd replied.
"But, Sigurd--"
"Do you want to fuck these idiots?" he asked, and gestured at their comrades who were just drunk and amused enough that they didn't protest the insult. "Or Basim or Hytham?"
"No," Eivor admitted. He couldn't even feel reluctant about saying so.
"Do you trust them with your life?"
"Not in their present state, no."
"Do you share a bond?"
Eivor rubbed his face. He tugged his beard. His mouth began to twist. "Not like the bond I share with you," he said, and he felt those words deep in his gut. The two of them had shared so many things over the years, from hunts and raids and hand-me-down clothes they'd altered poorly for the difference in height, to a pair of matched tattoos. They'd visited Svend's shop together two days before Sigurd's longship had been due to sail, and they'd had him ink the two of them almost identically: each had a raven in flight at the extent of one collarbone, Eivor's left and Sigurd's right. And perhaps he hadn't had the chance to see the bird by Sigurd's shoulder, not after the day he'd had it put there, but for two years he'd known it was there when he'd pressed his palm against his own. To his shame, he'd imagined Sigurd's mouth there on it, as his hands strayed down between his thighs.
"Me, then," Sigurd said again, holding Eivor's gaze a moment longer, and then he turned to Valka. "Here and now?" he asked.
"When else, when you leave tomorrow?"
"With this audience?"
"To witness what you do for the gods."
Sigurd nodded like he understood, and perhaps he did. Eivor swallowed. Valka stood. "I'll prepare the sacrifice," she said. "I have a wolf. A bear would be better, but with so little time..." She gave Eivor a pointed look and then moved; by the door, she turned back. "Take off your clothes," she told them both. "It would be best to be prepared." And then she slipped outside into the snow. Basim and Hytham, apparently less intrigued by Norse culture now they knew what it entailed, ducked out after her to wait by the horses.
Eivor's heart was racing as Sigurd held out one hand to help him to his feet, though he didn't really need assistance. He might have preferred to stay down there, he thought, just pulled his clothes away as much as needed, and Sigurd could have had him on his hands and knees. It could have been over quickly, a perfunctory performance so the gods would smile on their attack on Kjotve's fortress. But Sigurd's fingers closed around his wrist, warm and firm, and Eivor stood.
"We should do as she says," Sigurd told him, while their companions shared a lewd joke and then snickered loudly yet again. Sigurd made a face and said, "Ignore them. They have the intelligence of a goat fucking a barn door when they've too much mead in them." They snorted and Sigurd rolled his eyes and shook his head, then he stepped in closer and his fingers found the belt that held Eivor's father's axe there at his waist. When Sigurd untied the knot and unbuckled the belt and pulled the axe away, Eivor didn't protest it; his own fingers started their fumbling work on Sigurd's belt instead.
It wasn't the first time they'd undressed together - they'd lived shoulder to shoulder for so long by then, more than half of Eivor's life, that bathing in each other's vicinity and stripping off wet clothes after a sudden storm or the occasional summer skinnydip really hadn't been uncommon. It wasn't the first time one of them had undressed the other, either - there'd been injuries, the time Eivor slipped into ice-cold water and Sigurd warmed him with his body heat, an accident with a boat line that bruised Sigurd's fingers so badly that Eivor was helping him eat for the week that followed, never mind undress. But none of that obscured the fact it was the first time they'd undressed each other. Standing there in Valka's hut while the wind howled outside, Eivor could feel the heat of the fire against his skin as Sigurd eased his shirt over his head. He knelt bare-chested on the floor to help Sigurd take his boots off. And once they were both naked, all the layers of wool and cloth and leather stripped away, Eivor could see the matching raven there at Sigurd's shoulder. They'd never looked much like brothers, Eivor knew, with how much taller Sigurd was than him, his hair red to Eivor's blonde, all the little ways in which they differed, but it made his face feel warm to know they were alike in that at least.
When Valka returned, she was carrying a wooden bowl full of the same steaming blood that was dripping from her wrists. Once, another ritual, another time, she'd made him drink straight from the bowl, and as she passed the bowl to him he thought perhaps that was what she'd have them both do now; she'd probably mix in some of her foul-smelling herbs and the next thing they'd know they'd be high as the clouds in the sky. That might have made it easier, he thought, but what she did was take Eivor's hand and dip one of his fingers in the wolf's blood. It was still warm, like his own blood inside him, and the scent of it was thick and sharp with iron.
"You should paint each other's skin with this," Valka said. "Whatever words or marks or symbols come to mind. The gods will understand them." She passed Sigurd a second bowl, half filled with oil, and said, "You know what this is for" - the fact was that they both did. Then she stepped away, went back to her table that was covered up with herbs and bones, tools and jars and pouches, and sat back to watch the two of them.
"We don't have to do this," Eivor said, his eyes on the bowl of oil in one of Sigurd's hands, though then the fingers of Sigurd's other hand found Eivor's jaw and tilted up his chin.
"I think that would displease the gods," he said, and he stepped in close to rest his forehead against Eivor's. He slipped his fingers to the back of Eivor's neck, underneath his long hair, and he rubbed there lightly. Eivor closed his eyes. He sighed. He'd wanted this for so long but absolutely not like this - he supposed that was the gods' way of laughing at him for it.
"On your knees," Sigurd said, and a jolt of anxious desire shot straight through Eivor's mead-filled belly and flashed down to his cock. He knelt, and he put the bowl of blood down next to him, and he almost expected Sigurd to rub his lips with the tip of his cock but instead he knelt down, too, and put the oil down on the floor. He knelt close by, in front of him, sat back on his heels with his knees spread wide so Eivor's knees brushed the insides of his parted thighs. Then Sigurd dipped his fingers in the bowl of blood, all four of them on his right hand, and ran them straight down Eivor's chest from his collarbones down to his navel.
Eivor shivered. He looked down at the marks Sigurd had left on him, thinning the lower down they went. He looked at Sigurd's hand, which had turned to brush the trail of hair that led down across his abdomen, the backs of all four fingers there plus the side of his unbloodied thumb. Sigurd was touching him, right down by the base of his cock, and Eivor felt himself begin to stiffen. While he knew that was the point of this, it still felt strange to know that it was happening, and that people were watching it happen. Three drunkards and a seer were watching him get hard because his brother's hand was on him, and all that he could do was let it happen - not because he felt helpless to stop, but because he wasn't sure what else to do.
The next place Sigurd touched him, once he'd re-dipped his fingers in the bowl, was his collarbone. He drew a long line from one shoulder to the other, though it started to fade as the blood ran out just past his sternum. He felt for Eivor's ribs with his clean hand then sketched them in wolf's blood as Eivor's cock thickened, lengthened, stood up flushed between his thighs so obviously that Sigurd must have noticed, but he went on drawing on his skin instead of giving any sign. He drew symbols down the outside of one of Eivor's arms, maybe random runes, maybe words, but he couldn't turn far enough to read them. He used his thumb to smudge a crude red snake with its tail coiled around Eivor's navel, its tongue flickering down toward his cock. He left his fingerprints against one of Eivor's thighs. And then he sat back again as Eivor's pulse was thumping heavily inside his veins.
"Now you," Sigurd said, and he gestured to the bowl. And Eivor, dry-mouthed, his cock throbbing, would have rather drunk what was left of the blood than draw on Sigurd's skin with it and give all his desires away. But he dipped his fingers in, and not just because he wanted the gods' favour. Not just because Kjotve had to die, just like the wolf had.
He drew crisscrossed lines down Sigurd's chest, frowning as he concentrated, as if concentration might somehow make the situation better. He drew them down from a point by the base of his throat and moved lower, re-wetting his fingertips every now and then, the lines even, until he met the coarse red hair that led down to Sigurd's cock. He'd seen him naked before, more than once, but Sigurd took an unsteady breath as the inevitable happened. Eivor looked away, moved his hand away, let his gaze catch at the raven there at Sigurd's shoulder and fuck, it struck him like a punch to the gut, like it sucked all the air right out of him, that he'd have liked to have just leaned in and pressed his mouth there, to that place they matched. He didn't, though; he dipped his forefinger in the bowl of blood and traced the raven's outline instead, so that he couldn't be tempted. It almost felt like the next best thing.
Sigurd caught his wrist and Eivor's gaze snapped up. Sigurd's face was flushed, but that might just have been the fire. His light eyes seemed darker, though, pupils wide like he was just as drunk as their amused companions were. Their eyes met, and Sigurd licked his lips then took a slow breath in through his mouth that somehow made Eivor's face feel even hotter.
"Turn around," Sigurd said, his voice unusually thick, and that definitely made Eivor's face heat up. He turned, though, shuffling, careful not to knock the bowls, knees apart and cock standing up hard. When Sigurd moved in close until his chest was pressed against his back, Valka and the trio of drunks were still watching them. They were watching as Sigurd dipped the fingers of his clean hand into the bowl of oil instead of the blood and brushed them down against the cleft of Eivor's arse. They were watching as he used more oil and rubbed his fingertips against his rim, though Eivor supposed at least they couldn't see the details of it.
Eivor was wound up tight, red-faced and turned on, the tip of his cock a leaking mess, and Sigurd's fingertips pressed between his cheeks, first then second, first then second, not quite making their way inside until suddenly, one did. Eivor gasped as his forefinger pressed in, straight in, slowly but without pause or hesitation, until he'd taken its entire length. Sigurd pulled back out and did the same thing with his middle finger, first finger, middle, teasing but not quite, opening him up until Eivor's every inhalation hitched and each new penetration saw a fraction less resistance.
It must have been obvious that he wanted it, he thought, when Sigurd pushed both fingers in together and he took them easily, maybe even eagerly. He liked the way it felt as his hole twitched tight around Sigurd's fingers. He liked the way it felt when he pushed them in as deep as they would go, until his knuckles pressed up against his rim, before he pulled back to his fingertips and thrust back in again. Everyone must have seen how much he liked it as he wrapped one hand around his tightening balls and gave a firm squeeze to try to hold back his inevitable end. Then Sigurd pulled his fingers back and reached out to the oil again and Eivor wondered if he should go down on his hands, or to his forearms, arse up like he was begging for it because he really wasn't sure he wasn't. But then Sigurd settled close again. He rubbed his cock between Eivor's cheeks. He pressed the tip against his hole, and he began to push inside.
Once he was in him all the way, once Eivor's slick hole had stretched to take him, Eivor heard him take a deep, unsteady breath. He felt him rest his forehead down against his shoulder from behind and breathe out hot against his skin. He wrapped his arms around Eivor's waist and held him tight as his hips shifted just a little, the fingers of one hand wrapped around the wrist of the other. Then he sat up straighter, pressed his chest to Eivor's back and exhaled against his hair. He was big, a tight fit, just on the pleasurable side of pain, but that wasn't what Eivor found so fucking overwhelming. It was the fact that when Sigurd slipped his hands down to his thighs, spread wide and gripping at the insides like an anchor point, he could see all those familiar tattoos down the fingers of his right hand. He'd have known them anywhere, since he'd been the one Sigurd and Svend had let loose with Svend's inks and equipment. The runes on Sigurd's skin were in Eivor's handwriting. Sigurd, his perfectly imperfect brother, was the one who was inside him. For once, it wasn't a poor substitute for him instead.
Sigurd fucked him. His hands at Eivor's thighs made it easier - he held him there as he moved, half-breathless already, his fingers pressing as he thrust in him until the tips were white. He fucked him, slowly, breathing hard, the smell of blood and mead on him in almost equal measure. Eivor let his eyes close and his head tilt back and Sigurd's bloodied hand moved up, spread over his throat and stroked him there from the margin of his beard down to his sternum. He held him there, his palm hot over his windpipe, thumb over his pulse, and fuck, as Eivor's cock strained harder with the feel of him, Sigurd's other hand went down to wrap around it.
He knew Sigurd could fight with his sword in either hand - sometimes he used two, like Eivor and his axes. It turned out both his hands were skilled at this, too, as Eivor clenched his jaw and bared his teeth and hissed in a breath at the feel of it. Sigurd's thumb swiped through the moisture gathered at his tip and Eivor groaned, entirely unable to stop himself from doing so despite their watchful company. Sigurd's fingers wrapped around him, firm and hot. He stroked him, just at the tip where his foreskin and the leak of his arousal made it easiest, and Sigurd pressed his mouth against his shoulder as he fucked him harder, muffling a moan but not completely. He sounded so turned on that it made Eivor's chest feel tight, and his cock twitch a fraction harder, and he gripped his own thighs so tightly he wasn't sure they wouldn't bruise, and fuck, he could feel the rise and fall of Sigurd's chest against his back and his stray hair tickling his skin, and he bit his lip till it was almost bloody.
His hips jerked forward, every muscle in him wrenching tight as he came over his brother's hand so hard it left him trembling. And Sigurd, he didn't last much longer, either. Eivor felt him lose his rhythm, heard his breath turn quick, felt him shove in deep just one last time then pulse in him as he came, too. Eivor didn't care what a mess that would make. He didn't care that they were being watched, though one of their drunk comrades had nodded off and started snoring loudly. All he cared about was that when Sigurd pulled out, when he'd nudged him into turning to him, the look on his flushed face didn't say that he regretted it. That look, as he cupped Eivor's jaw and thumbed his cheekbones, was entirely full of wonder.
"Good enough for the gods?" Sigurd asked, and his eyes were still on Eivor but Eivor knew the question was not for him.
"I believe they'll be satisfied," Valka replied, and Eivor couldn't help but chuckle breathlessly.
"Satisfied," he said, incredulously, as he brought his hands to Sigurd's hips. He could feel a stray trickle of Sigurd's come making its way down between his legs. He could feel the warm ache in his hole where Sigurd's cock had been so recently. And all he wanted to do was kiss him, wrap Sigurd's long braid around his palm and pull him in till their mouths were pressed together. There was no need, though - Valka's ritual was over, and it was time for them to leave.
They dressed afterwards, over the top of the smudges of wolf's blood. They left and made their way back down to Fornburg, through the snow, the wind too loud to hold a conversation and Eivor couldn't help but think perhaps that was a good thing: for once, he wasn't sure what to say.
Back at home, Sigurd seemed to sleep soundly while Eivor barely slept at all. And in the morning, they left home to kill Kjotve. Kjotve died, so it was hard to say the ritual hadn't done what it was meant to do, but Eivor wondered if the things they did at the fortress that day were fate, or divine intervention, or just what Kjotve the Cruel had had coming.
Now, knowing what he knows, having seen the things he's seen, he thinks that it was probably the latter.
---
He remembers.
It's been years since they left Fornburg for England and made a new home here in Ravensthorpe, and even if they've never spoken about the ritual in Valka's hut that night, he remembers. Sometimes, at night, it's hard to think about anything else.
After her marriage to Sigurd ended, Randvi moved out of the longhouse. She went willingly, though with a look in her eye that screamed a friendly kind of trouble - she had Eivor build her a house, like he'd done for some of the town's other residents, and she comes back to her map in the longhouse every morning. She's good at what she does and Eivor knows they'd all be lost without her.
After his marriage to Randvi ended, Sigurd remained in the longhouse, sleeping alone in the room they'd shared during the brief times he'd been there long enough to share it. He's been sleeping there each night since he and Eivor came back from Norway, so close but still so far away. But now this.
"I'm not going far," Eivor says. "I'm not even leaving the scire. The raiders are getting restless and bandits have made a camp a few miles upstream. We're going to turn them out before they cause trouble." He pauses. He frowns. And he doesn't say this isn't exactly Kjotve because he's not sure if he should remind him or not.
Sigurd holds his gaze. Sigurd nods at him. "I know," he says, and he rises, and he steps up close to him. He reaches the hand that Fulke left him up to Eivor's shoulder and he squeezes there, over the tattoo that they both know lies beneath his clothes. It must be on purpose because he has to reach awkwardly across himself, putting his left hand to Eivor's left shoulder. He must know what he's doing, and that's why the pointed look he gives him as he turns and walks away into the longhouse lingers with him.
He's missed his brother. The shade of a man who's haunted Ravensthorpe these past few months might as well be a ghost for all the times they've spoken, but there's promise in that look and so he follows him to find out what that promise is. He goes back in though that's where he's just come from, from the letterbox in his room where he'd been reading news from Lunden. Stowe and Erke seem to be keeping well and if he reads between the lines correctly, they're still keeping well together. Sometimes he wonders what his friends elsewhere in England would make of his brother, who came there when his father gave away his birthright only to give up the jarldom he founded himself. He wonders if the ones who've met him - the ones who are still in possession of their lives - remember him well.
There aren't exactly many rooms to the longhouse but Sigurd still manages to surprise him with his destination. Eivor almost expected him to stop at one of the long tables and turn quiet again, or else lead him back into his own room and his half-finished letter that he'll send to Erke in the morning with a messenger. Instead, he goes into the map room and when Randvi looks up she smiles at him - Eivor can't see if Sigurd smiles back. Then she sees him, too, and frowns.
"I thought you were checking on the crew," she says, and glances at Sigurd who's paused there by the table, then back at him again.
"I asked him to come back with me," Sigurd saus, and he leans against the table's edge, closer to his former wife. "Randvi, I have personal business with my brother. Would you give us some privacy?"
She glances at Eivor; Eivor nods; she nods in return. "Of course," she says, and she steps back from the maps. "I'm pleased to see the two of you together, and on speaking terms." She moves for the door but pauses by it. "Eivor, I'll see you in the morning before you set sail?" she says, and he nods again, says, "Yes, in the morning," and watches her leave. He watches her as far as the door that opens on the path leading up to her house, not far from Valka's. It's not as snow-swept as the home that Valka kept in Norway, but it serves much the same purpose and he'd like to be surprised that this little talk of offerings hasn't led to her, but he's not surprised. They both understand now that there are no gods, not really, only the people who came before them. They both know how little an offering to their make-believe gods is worth.
Once Randvi's gone, Sigurd gives him a look he can't read and then turns and walks through into the room he used to share with her. Everything that was hers is gone now and when Eivor pauses in the doorway it strikes him that the room looks bare without her things in it. There's some armour Sigurd's never worn and weapons he hasn't even touched in months, but little else that's really his. This place was Sigurd's dream, their dream, until a few persuasive words in his ear dragged him away and made him different. But when Sigurd looks at him next, his expression isn't so unreadable. It's almost warm. It's almost a smile.
"Are you coming in?" Sigurd asks, and Eivor frowns at him from his spot in the doorway.
"I don't know," he replies. "Will you tell me why I'm here?"
"To make an offering." He raises his brows. "Didn't I say that outside?"
He wants to say, wouldn't that require Valka, three drunk raiders and a bowl full of blood? But what he says instead is, "You know, I don't believe that any gods exist for us to offer to."
Sigurd nods. He doesn't disagree. "But even if they don't, we do," he says.
"We're not gods, Sigurd. I don't even think the gods were gods."
Sigurd shrugs. "Maybe that's true," he says. His mouth twists. He tugs his beard. "Probably, that's true," he says, and Eivor understands what an admission that truly is for him. "But you know, I'm not asking for divinity."
"Then what do you want?"
When Sigurd stretches out his arm toward him, slowly, when Sigurd gestures at him with that same not quite wry smile there on his face, understanding comes to Eivor in a heady rush that sweeps straight through him. When Sigurd says, "I want this - this place, this country, everything we talked about before we came," Eivor understands he's trying to look forward now instead of looking back. When Sigurd says, "I want to stop pretending that I don't want you," Eivor understands he's not the only one who's hidden things. And finally, he comes into the room.
They kiss by the bed with Sigurd's fingers in his hair, pressed tight together till they're very nearly breathless, and when they strip each other, when they stretch out on the bed together, it's not wolf's blood that they use: it's Eivor's. He puts the tip of a knife to the crook of his arm and he smudges the raven at Sigurd's shoulder; Sigurd does the same to him so they match again, while Eivor recalls: the matching tattoos were Sigurd's idea. He swipes his bloody thumb over Sigurd's lips and when they kiss again it's bright and hot with metal like a new-forged blade. And when they stiffen in each other's hands, when Eivor slicks Sigurd's cock and rides him, slowly, gazes locked and fingers twined, they make it last so long it almost hurts. Somehow, that seems fitting.
He doesn't know if Sigurd will be better or worse in the morning after what they've done. But when they've finished, when they settle side by side in Sigurd's bed with no intent to leave it, Sigurd smiles so Eivor smiles back, too.
Any offering that he could make would be worth that.