Chapter 10

The show that night went as well as all the others before it. Our following was growing and the reception we got from the Scottish rockers was amazing. Brida and I watched most of the Vikings' performance from the wings, and I found myself watching Skorpa's every move. He was a great frontman and as the hard fast music made my body vibrate, my heart pounded along with it in excitement. Reminding myself that the band lived in Denmark and that getting too involved wouldn't do me any good didn't really work.

Once the show was over and we'd spent some time mingling with the fans, I was just as eager as Brida and Aethelflaed to get back to the motel. As they went off to Ragnar and Erik's rooms, I went to Skorpa's. We fell upon each other like we were starving and later fell asleep wrapped around each other.

During the next couple of weeks, I spent more and more time with Skorpa. I didn't spend every night with him, only most of them. I kept telling myself it was fun and exciting, and I enjoyed the sex, but there was more to it. I didn't miss the way he looked at me when he thought I didn't notice, and it made my heart flutter. Part of me hoped that somehow things could continue when the tour was over.

We were in Wales now, although I couldn't remember which city we were in. They had all begun to blur into one as we zigzagged back down from Scotland, playing in all the venues that hadn't been able to fit us in on the way up. Tours often didn't happen in order. We had a night off and Gisela and I had been catching up on some sleep after a late night and a long and frustrating bus ride. I crawled out of bed, showered, and put some clothes on. I had a text from Skorpa asking me where I'd been all day and telling me his room number.

"Where are you going?" Gisela asked as I headed for the door. "Oh, don't tell me." She rolled her eyes.

I grinned and let myself out. Skorpa's room was on the floor above ours, and when I approached his door I heard him playing a guitar. It sounded like an acoustic one and wasn't plugged into an amp. I listened for a minute, then knocked. He opened the door quickly.

"Hey. Where've you been?" He pulled me into the room and kissed me.

"Sleeping." I glanced at the bed where his guitar lay, and noticed a notepad and pen too, and a keyboard on a stand stood nearby. He didn't usually have instruments in his motel rooms. "Are you writing?"

"Yes, something a bit different. Do you want to hear it?"

"I'd love to."

He sat back down on the bed and picked up the guitar. "It's a sort of rock ballad. It's not finished. I wrote the tune and the verses, but I need a bridge and chorus. Erik and Ragnar will need to put rhythm to it."

I sat cross-legged in front of him as he began to play the tune I'd heard from outside the door. Then he sang, deep and husky:

"Love that once hung on the wall

Used to mean something

But now it means nothing

The echoes are gone in the hall

But I still remember

The pain of December…"

He paused and playing a few bars. "Next verse:

"You came back to find I was gone

And that place is empty

Like the hole that was left in me

Like we were nothing at all

It's not what you meant to me

Thought we were meant to be…"

He stopped and grinned. "That's all I've got so far. I've just been messing around with it for an hour or so."

"You wrote that in an hour? Wow. I love it." I picked up the notepad to read the lyrics.

"Feel free to add to it if you like," he offered.

"Are you sure? I don't want to butt in."

"Go for it." He grinned.

I indicated the keyboard. "Can I?"

"Sure."

I sat on the chair in front of the instrument. "Can you play the tune without singing?"

Skorpa began to play and I picked out a few bars on the keyboard. It was set up to sound like a regular piano. After a few repetitions of the verse, I was playing the entire thing with him and adding extra notes. When I glanced at him, he was gazing at me with admiration. I paused.

"Let's go from the beginning. Could you sing the first verse?"

We started again and he sang. Lines began forming in my head as I listened to his voice. When he reached the last line: "The pain of December—" I continued.

"Oh, there isn't one thing left you could say

I'm sorry, it's too late—" I stopped. "I don't usually write like this. It's normally me in a room on my own. I feel sort of self-conscious."

"You've no reason to. Keep going."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "Start again?"

We started from the beginning. When Skorpa finished singing the verse, I added the bridge, then carried on:

"I'm breaking free from these memories

Gotta let it go, just let it go

I've said goodbye, set it all on fire

Gotta let it go, just let it go."

Skorpa stopped playing. "That's exactly what I was looking for."

"Serious?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "You're talented."

"Thanks."

"I want to try something else. Will you sing the first verse?"

"Okay."

We ran through the song again with me singing the first verse and the bridges, both of singing the chorus, and him singing the second verse. When we finished, he put his guitar down and wrote out the lyrics for the parts I had made up. I left the keyboard and sat on the bed with him.

"This isn't your usual style."

He shrugged and smiled. "It was just an idea I had."

"I really like it," I added.

"Maybe we should sing it at the last show. Give our followers more to talk about."

"We?"

"Would you? If I decided to do it, would you join us on stage and sing it with me?"

It wasn't what I expected from him. It seemed like a pretty intimate thing to do, but then again, like he said, it would get people talking—Pagan Rock followers as well as the Vikings fans.

"Sure, I'll do it if you want to," I agreed.

"In that case, let's run through it again and I'll record it on my phone. Erik and Ragnar will need to work on it."

"I'll record it too, so I can practise."

We set our phones up, I got back behind the keyboard, and we played the song again. The moment we stopped, someone knocked on the door.

Skorpa grinned. "Either that's the management complaining about the noise, or we've got an audience." He got up and opened the door to find Erik and Aethelflaed outside.

"Writing without us?" Erik teased. "Bit soft for you, Skorpa."

"I'll look for another drummer to work on it with, shall I? Get in here."

Erik and Aethelflaed came into the room and closed the door. "I was just playing around," Skorpa said. "It wasn't meant to be much of anything, then Skade wrote some of it. I want to play this at the last show. I'm sending you a recording of what you just heard." A moment later Erik's phone beeped. "You got time to work on it with Ragnar?"

"Sure, I guess. We've still got two weeks until the last show. We're on our way out with Ragnar and Brida, so I'll talk to him about it then. Are you gonna play lead?"

Skorpa nodded. "We won't need Uhtred and Sihtric for this, or it'll be drowning in guitars."

"You gonna have a keyboard on stage?"

"Yeah."

"Mildrith's will already be set up from our performance," I said. "I can use hers." Suddenly, I was excited. Playing and singing a duet with Skorpa at the biggest show of the tour—the Astoria in London—would be something else.

Erik and Aethelflaed left us, and the moment the door closed behind them, Skorpa pulled me close and kissed me. There wasn't the usual heat in it—it was slow and sensual. When it ended, he held me tight and pressed his face into my hair. He seemed different from usual—almost as if he didn't want to let go of me. The song-writing had surprised me, too. I ran through the lyrics in my head. It wasn't a love song—it was about loss. Had he based it on something specific?

"Skorpa, are you okay?" I murmured.

"Yeah." He loosened his grip on me. "Not really. I want to tell you something. I just don't know if it's a good idea."

"You can tell me anything you want."

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I don't open myself up to anyone about this. Not even the band. Ragnar knows, but only because he was around then."

"You can tell me," I repeated.

He let go of me then and moved away a little. I studied him, wondering what he was about to tell me. Obviously something about his past, and it didn't seem like it would be anything good. His hand shook as he reached for mine and gripped it tightly.

"Well, you know I was married. But I doubt you know we had a kid."

"No." My eyes widened.

"We kept it quiet. Mette didn't like being in the public eye and she didn't want that for a child either. You could probably find a couple of things if you looked hard enough." He swallowed.

I squeezed his hand. "I'm listening."