Laurel
Someone was calling out to me from the darkness. I had to reach them--
I woke to cooling cloths suffusing my face.
“Ulf? Haakon—” I whimpered and thrashed, ripping at the bandages like they were chains.
“Shhh, Laurel.”
“Sister Juliet?” I recognized one of the nuns. She used to be an orphan, but had taken vows.
“Just Juliet,” she told me with a sad look. “The abbey is no more.”
I wanted to answer that her vows were still intact, but she looked shaken, so I held my tongue.
“How are you feeling?” she asked. I lay in a lodge on a soft bed, clad in a new, clean shift. My burns were bandaged and my face felt chapped, but didn’t throb too much.
“Where am I?” I croaked.
She lifted a horn of water to my lips and I drank.
“You’re at the home of the Berserkers, along with all of th
