Chapter 202: I’ve Had Enough Stories

Chapter 202: Chapter 202: I’ve Had Enough Stories

He did.

We stripped without ceremony, coats and boots and the practical layers of a working day shed onto the floorboards. The bed took us with a familiar complaint of old wood.

Magnus’s mouth tracked down my throat, over my collarbone, lower, and I arched into the heat of it with my fingers in his hair. When he put his mouth between my legs I stopped trying to trade lines and just breathed, thighs tight against his shoulders, the day’s edges dissolving under the steady working of his tongue.

I reached orgasm with a broken sound I didn’t bother to swallow, pulling him up by the hair and the shoulders until he was over me and pushing in.

He fucked me deep and unhurried at first, forehead against mine, the rhythm of a man who knew exactly how I liked to be taken apart. I wrapped my legs around him and met every stroke. When I told him harder he gave it without question, the bedframe answering, his breath going rough against my cheek. The second climax hit me sharper than the first. He followed soon after, buried to the hilt, a low groan in his chest that I felt more than heard.

We stayed locked together until the heat started to cool. Magnus rolled to the side and pulled me with him, one heavy arm across my waist, face in my hair.

"Coastal headaches," he murmured. "Missing freighters. Astrid’s gap-runs. And you still had room for this."

"I always have room for this."

"Good. I’d start a different kind of war if you didn’t."

I pinched his ribs. He huffed a laugh into my neck and didn’t let go.

Outside, Frostfang slept the particular sleep of a pack that had hunted, eaten, and argued itself into peace. Somewhere in a real room Nils Bjornsen was waiting on scouts. Somewhere on the inland tracks Anders’s pairs were moving quiet and careful. The freighter was still missing. The day had still been mine.

I closed my eyes with Magnus’s heartbeat under my palm and let the keep’s ordinary dark take the rest.

---

I woke to a hard knock and Sigrid’s voice through the door, already clipped with the morning’s business.

"Lila. Erik’s inland pair came back early. They’re in the yard. You need to hear them before the rest of the keep starts inventing versions."

================

~Lila~

Erik’s pair stood in the yard with mud to the knees and the particular stillness of people who had ridden through the night without the luxury of a good story.

I came down with my cloak half-fastened and Magnus a step behind me. Sigrid was already there, slate in hand, expression flat. A few early workers had stopped what they were doing to watch. I didn’t send them away. Rumour grew faster in empty space than in open hearing.

"Report," I said.

The older of the two—Jonas Moen, who had run inland tracks since before I took the seat—tipped his head. "We found the freighter. Not on the water road. Inland, half a day west of the split-rock marker, pulled up a narrow creek that only runs high after melt. She’s grounded hard on the right side. Mast intact. Hull stove in below the waterline on the creek bed. Looks like they tried to take a shortcut when the main channel silted and misjudged the depth."

Magnus’s brows rose. "Crew?"

"Alive. Twelve of the fourteen. Captain’s got a broken leg. One hand took a bad knock to the head and still isn’t speaking sense. They’ve been camped under canvas off the port side for two days, living on the cargo and creek water. No banners, no foreign scent worth naming. Just a grounded Bjornvik freighter and a crew too stubborn or too embarrassed to walk out to the coastal dens and admit they’d stuck her in a mud cut."

The yard was quiet for a beat. Someone let out a short breath that might have been a laugh and then thought better of it.

"Cargo?" I asked.

"Mostly still aboard. Timber’s wet on the lower stacks. Salt’s mostly clean. They’ve been rationing. We left our second with them and rode hard. Figured you’d want the word before Nils started inventing worse versions."

I looked at Sigrid. "Get Nils. Quietly. And tell the kitchens to pack dry stores and a proper splint kit. Anders—four riders, a spare horse for the captain if he can sit one, and a flat-drag for what they can’t carry. We’re not leaving a Bjornvik crew sitting in a creek bed because they were proud."

Anders was already moving. Sigrid went for Nils without comment. Jonas waited, mud drying on his boots, until I nodded dismissal. He and his partner headed for food and a wash with the stiff gait of men who had earned both.

Magnus rubbed a hand over his face. "A silted channel and a bad shortcut."

"A silted channel and a bad shortcut," I repeated. "Harald’s going to be furious. Then he’s going to be relieved. Then he’s going to be furious again about the timber."

"In that order."

"In that order."

---

Nils came into the smaller chamber at a near-run, hair still rough from sleep, the leather case of counts under his arm out of habit. I gave him the report without dressing it up. His face went through the exact sequence I’d predicted—blood up, blood down, jaw tight.

"The split channel," he said. "Captain’s used the main marker for six years. If the silt built after the last coastal storm, he might not have seen it until he was already committed." He exhaled hard. "Fourteen people. Two hurt. Father’s going to skin someone, and it won’t be the creek."

"Your father’s welcome to skin whoever he likes once his crew is home and the cargo’s counted." I leaned against the table. "We’re sending a recovery party this morning. You’re welcome on it. If you want Frostfang hands on the timber until Bjornvik can take it overland, say so now. If you’d rather we only extract the people and leave the rest under your mark, say that instead."

Nils was quiet for a stretch, fingers tight on the case. "People first. Timber and salt under Bjornvik mark once we reach it. Father won’t want Frostfang holding coastal cargo even as a favour—it starts conversations he doesn’t have the patience for."

"Fair."

"And thank you." The words came out rough. "For not turning a grounded freighter into a story about southern exposure or northern reach or whatever the road dens are calling it this month."

"I’ve had enough stories for one season." I pushed off the table. "Go eat. We ride within the hour."

He left. Magnus watched the door close, then looked at me.

"You’re going."

"I’m going. Harald sent his son. The least I can do is not send only a note and a map." I found my heavier cloak on the peg. "You’re staying. If I leave the keep and the keep invents a crisis, I want you here to sit on it."

"I hate when you’re reasonable."

"No you don’t."

He caught my wrist as I passed, pulled me in, and kissed me once, firm and brief. "Don’t let Nils start a fight with his own captain before the man’s leg is set."

"No promises."

---

We found the freighter exactly where Jonas had said—wedged into a narrow creek cut, listed hard, the water around her cold and the colour of weak tea. Canvas shelters flapped on the port bank. A thin cookfire put up more smoke than heat. Faces turned as we came through the trees: tired, embarrassed, armed out of habit rather than threat.

The captain was propped against a timber stack with his leg bound in a crude splint and his pride in worse condition. He took one look at Nils and closed his eyes.

"Don’t," he said.

"I’m going to," Nils answered. "And then I’m going to get you home so Father can do it properly."

I left them to it and walked the bank with Anders while the recovery party checked the injured hand and started sorting what could be moved before night.

The hull damage was ugly but honest—rock and silt, not axe or fire. The salt bags that had stayed dry were still worth something. The timber would need drying and a different road out. No mystery. No foreign mark. Just a bad decision in a channel that had changed under a man who’d trusted it too long.

Astrid had insisted on coming. I’d allowed it on the condition she haul and not perform. She was currently doing both, arguing with one of the Bjornvik hands about the best way to float a salt bag without splitting it. Sigrid would have been proud. Or irritated. Often the same thing.

By mid-afternoon the captain was on the spare horse, pale and silent. The injured hand rode the flat-drag between two packs of dry stores. The rest of the crew walked.

We left a Bjornvik mark on the freighter and a small watch of their own people until Harald could send a proper salvage.

Frostfang took nothing except the weight of the ride home and Nils’s repeated, grudging thanks.