Ulfhild pulled her ear from the door as she heard the scraping of chairs and boots on wood that signaled the meeting was breaking up. She barely made it back down to the main room before the stranger and Sigurd, followed by the rest of the warriors left her father's office and came tromping loudly down the stairs. He was letting the man train with the warriors? A man he knew nothing about. Yet, she, who was battle-tested and trained harder than any of his warriors, was shunted aside.
Marching from the longhouse, she fought back angry tears. Nothing she did was ever enough for the man! She had proven herself over and over, but still he insisted on treating her as some useless female. Or worse, looking at her askance as if she might cast a spell on him at any moment. She'd never given him a
