A faint, unnerving smile touched his lips as he lifted a hand. His fingers, cool and deliberate, traced the intricate arrangement of her hair before slipping beneath to touch her scalp. The contact was not rough, but slow, almost exploring, a violation disguised as a caress.
"My… my king, I…" Her voice was a thready whisper, shaking with the effort to speak.
"Quiet."
The single word was a command, flat and absolute, leaving no room for protest. Something within him, a dark and restless hunger, stirred at her palpable fear. His thumb abandoned her hair to trace the trembling line of her lower lip, a gesture of possession so intimate it stole the breath from her lungs.
"Gisela," he said, her name a sharp, pointed sound in the silent room. He held her captive in his hazel gaze, studying the silent terror in her amber eyes as if reading a fascinating text.
Then, with a scoff of disdain—or perhaps frustration at his own inexplicable impulse—he abruptly withdrew. He turned on his heel, the moment shattered. In perfect, silent unison, the guards fell into step behind him, and he strode from the parlour, leaving her alone at the ravaged table, the ghost of his touch still burning on her skin.
Gisela sat frozen at the ravaged table, the scent of him—spice and cold malice—still hanging in the air. She could feel the invasive trace of his thumb on her lip, a mockery of a caress. She scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, but the violation was in her bones.
The luxury of shame was shattered by the great brass horn from the watchtower—three short, blaring notes, then one long, mournful wail that shook the castle stone.
Invasion.
Before the echo died, the door flew open. A guardsman, breathless and pale, knelt. "Your Majesty. The King commands your presence. The Great Hall. Now."
The personal terror crystallized into a sharp, public dread. She stood, her legs steady, the heavy gown now feeling like armor as she followed him through the buzzing corridors. The castle was a stirred hive of clattering metal and wide-eyed fear.
The Great Hall had been stripped of feast-day pretense. The high tables were gone. In their place stood the grim assembly of the realm's power: the ealdormen and thegns in worn wool and wolfskin, their faces carved from the same hardy oak as the land they held. Henry stood before the dais. He had shed his fine doublet for a dark tunic and sword belt, the warlord eclipsing the tormenting bridegroom. His gaze swept over her—assessing, impersonal.
"Sit," he commanded, jerking his chin toward the smaller chair beside his massive oak throne.
Gisela climbed the dais under the weight of a hundred stares. She sat, back straight, hands folded, a statue of composure erected over a chasm of fear.
A grizzled man with a beard like frosted wire stepped forward. Ealdorman Aldric. "Danish longships," he rasped, no ceremony. "A score of them. They've burned Lindisfarne and ride the south wind. They'll be on our shorelands in two days."
A rumble of anger and fear moved through the men.
Henry's face was cold stone. "Then we meet them at Whitby. We hold the cliffs."
"We hold the cliffs," Aldric agreed. But his old, shrewd eyes flicked to Gisela, then to the empty space beside Henry, heavy with meaning. "But do we hold the future?" He let the question hang before pressing on, his voice graveled with blunt truth. "The men will fight for their homes, Sire. But to follow a king into a pre-emptive war… they follow more than a man. They follow a line. A certainty."
Thane Godwin, lean and sharp as a fox, stepped into the silence. "Our rivals watch. They see a king who rides to war, yes. But what do they see riding behind him? Shadows." He dared a slight gesture toward the dais. "A new-made queen is a promise. An empty cradle is a vulnerability."
Henry's knuckles whitened on his sword pommel. "You speak in riddles."
It was Aldric who delivered the blow, plain and hard as a smith's hammer. "We need an heir, Sire." His voice cut through the hall. "Yes, we understand you are just married. The blood on the sheet is noted. But a consummation is not a confirmation. A child is. A king with no son…" he paused, letting the ancient, brutal logic settle on every man present, "…is a king fighting for a legacy that ends with his own breath. It invites a knife in the back. It makes every man here ask: What am I bleeding for?"
The silence was profound. It was the sound of a throne cracking beneath its king. Every eye, heavy with judgment and calculation, fixed on Gisela. She was no longer a person, but a function—one that had, as yet, failed.
Henry looked as if he had been struck. The fury that rose in him was volcanic, but it was trapped—because the old warrior was not wrong. The law of kings was the law of blood, and his was unproven.
From the shadowed gallery, Gisela saw Queen Caroline watching, a pale, still figure of expectation.
The sight was a spark.
Slowly, deliberately, Gisela moved. She did not look at the lords. She did not look at Henry, vibrating with rage beside her. She reached out and placed her palm flat on the carved oak of Henry's own throne—the seat of the heir. A silent, defiant occupation. A claim staked not in words, but in action.
A sharp intake of breath rippled through the hall. Henry's head snapped toward her, shock stripping his face bare before his mask slammed back down.
Aldric's bushy eyebrows rose. Godwin's gaze turned speculative.
Henry found his voice, using the disruption as a weapon to regain control. "The Danes do not raid cradles," he roared, turning his fury outward. "They raid silver! They raid cattle! And they will find English steel waiting to greet them! We ride for Whitby at dawn. Summon the fyrd. Ready the ships. Go!"
The spell broke. The hall erupted into motion, lords turning to bark orders, the immediate threat of war overriding the slower threat of a dynasty's end.
As the last of them filed out, Henry turned to Gisela. The intimate tormentor was gone. In his place stood a king cornered, seeing in her not just a victim, but a pivotal piece in a desperate game.
He looked at her hand, still resting on his throne, then into her amber eyes.
"Come," he said, his voice low and stripped of all artifice. It was the command of a sovereign to a necessary ally."We must talk."
The war outside the castle walls had just become inextricably linked to the war within its heart. And Gisela, by the mere placement of her hand, had enlisted.