. . .

And through all these things, and while these things endure, the wolf shall be bound and held to you, Vaenwode, to you and to your family, and you shall keep it close.

“You will not touch my family,” blusters Vaenwode.

Brygmir laughs.

Vaenwode looks over at her.

“We will leave, if you like,” she says gaily. “Or you can overpower us, no doubt. Much good that will do your family! Hail Vaenwode, slayer of smiths! Vaenwode, thief and traitor, all-devourer!”

“Well, no,” says Vaenwode. He shifts uncomfortably. “I mean, you can extract the wolf and bind it, sure, but not to my family. Only to me.”

Brygmir meets his eyes. There is a tiny ring of gold around each of her pupils; these swell as she looks at him, and he loses himself in that darkness, it is as if her eyes are the table of the earth and the bowl of the sky, and she is saying something that he does not hear or understand until he shudders a moment later and picks it out of his mind.

She has said: “You have nothing to compel us.”

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