"Growing up in this palace was not what people assume it was from the outside. People see the wealth and the title of the king’s son, and they project a certain idea onto it. The reality of being a bastard in the Lamorian royal palace was considerably less comfortable than that."

He said it without a trace of self-pity. He stated it with the same calm detachment he might have used to discuss military reports.

"Nheera despised me from the first day she laid eyes on me. She did not bother hiding it, not in public, not in front of her sons, and not in front of the servants who understood exactly how she felt about me. I was evidence of her husband’s infidelity, and she wanted me to know exactly what that made me. Which, in her eyes, was nothing. I was filth. A child undeserving of love. In her view, which was also the view she ensured was shared by most people, I was an inconvenience that the king foolishly allowed to live under the same roof as his legitimate children."

Now that he had started, it was as though something had finally broken loose. Years of carefully contained thoughts and memories spilled out with surprising ease.

Morana had gone so still she was barely breathing. Her heart ached with sadness and sympathy for the lonely child he had once been.

"My father was not cruel to me. I want to be fair about that. He was not Nheera. But he was largely absent in the ways that matter to a child. He was a king before he was a father, and he was Nheera’s husband before he was my protector. I learned early that I was not worth the particular effort it took to be noticed by him."

Tears gathered in the corners of Morana’s eyes.

More than ever, she wished she could go back in time and undo every mistake she had made. She wished she could take back every choice that had led to this moment. She wished she had never left him.

What good had reclaiming her birthright done? What value was there in recovering her dukedom when her own son had been forced to grow up carrying burdens that no child should have endured?

For a very long time, Ragnar had been desperate to be wanted. Not admired. Not feared or even respected.

Wanted.

To have someone look at him and see more than the bastard. More than the warrior. More than the inconvenient complication everyone wished would quietly disappear.

Beneath all the fighting, beneath the endless need to prove himself, beneath every battlefield victory and every title he had earned, there had always been a much simpler desire.

He had wanted someone to choose him.

To look at him and decide that he was worth keeping around. Worth loving. Worth staying for.

He had never had that growing up. Everything he possessed, he had built from nothing.

The soldiers who followed him did so because he was a good and effective leader. The respect he commanded had been earned through blood, discipline, and determination. The reputation he carried had been forged through years of hardship because it was the only thing this kingdom had ever been willing to give him credit for.

For a very long time, he had nothing else.

But he had more than that now. He had Circe.

He had people who chose to remain at his side even when they gained nothing from it. People who cared about him beyond what he could accomplish for them. People who were truly present.

Slowly, piece by piece, he was building a family. He had friends who had become family and a future he had once been unable to imagine for himself.

He was grateful for it in a way he could never fully put into words, because for most of his life he had been convinced that none of it would ever happen.

"I was angry with you from the moment I knew who you were. I am still angry. I am being honest about that. I do not know how long that will last because it has been part of me for too long." He confessed. "But I can also see what you did yesterday for what it was. I can see what you have been doing to help me ever since you came back into my life. I am not going to pretend otherwise. I do not hate you. I have been using my anger to avoid saying that, but it is true."

In that moment, Morana could not trust herself to speak.

Relief, gratitude, heartbreak, and hope crashed together inside her chest so violently that it was difficult to separate one feeling from another. She had not expected forgiveness. She had not even expected acceptance.

But this?

This felt like the first fragile step toward something she had feared was forever beyond her reach.

Morana took a calming breath and she was proud of how steady her voice sounded when she finally spoke.

"From the moment I held you in my arms, you were everything to me," she said. "Every choice I made afterward, even the ones that cost us all those years, began with not wanting you to have less than you deserved. I made bad choices and I have regretted them ever since. There is no version of that story where I did not fail you when it mattered most. I know that. But I never stopped loving you. Not once. Not for a single day."

"You can stay," he said at last. It was obvious that her words had affected him. "For as long as you want. And when we return to the capital, I am not going to ask you to keep your distance anymore."

Morana felt her breath hitch.

"I was so consumed by my anger over being abandoned that I never stopped to think about what those years were like for you. I only saw my side of it." He shook his head slightly. "It truly must have been difficult. I don’t think I would have survived it if I had been in your position. Being forced to be away from my wife. Being unable to watch my child grow up. Missing every year, every moment I could never get back. It would have destroyed me."

"Thank you," Morana said quietly. Her voice creaked. No language she knew could fully express what it felt like to hear him say that. To have him finally acknowledge the pain she had carried for decades.

"That is more than I expected."

A faintest hint of amusement bled into Ragnar’s expression. "Don’t thank me yet. I’ve been told that I can be difficult and stubborn."

The hard look in his eyes whenever he stared at her was absent now. The walls he had spent years building between them had not vanished completely, but for the first time, there were cracks in them. Openings large enough for either of them to slip an entire arm through and touch the person on the other side.

Deep in her heart, Morana believed this was the beginning of something she had thought was lost forever. Not a perfect reconciliation. Not a way to reclaim the years that had been stolen from them.

Nothing could return those lost years.

But this was a chance to know her son again. A chance to build, piece by fragile piece, the bond that time, distance, and circumstance had torn apart. It would take patience. It would take trust. It would take time.

Yet for the first time in many years, she could see a future where they were no longer strangers trying to navigate old wounds.

It felt like a second chance at the life they should have shared all along, and she intended to cherish every step of it.