‘It’s good to be back,’ Kjell replied.
‘Is it?’ his father asked, seeing more than he would ever say.
‘No. Not really,’ Kjell said, not having the will to mask the hurt with a laugh.
His father kicked out a stool for Kjell to sit on as he carried on tinkering with the piece of equipment half dismantled on the bench. Kjell sat on the stool and leaned back against the side of the workshop, letting the sounds of the night seep deep into his soul.
‘Start at the beginning,’ his father commanded, as if knowing that he needed to talk but wasn’t quite sure how to.
With a voice rusty and raw, Kjell told his father about his first deployment with Enzo, what it had been like working with the UN. Kjell admitted how hard it had been coming back to Svardia, knowing that he couldn’t stay but also feeling guilt for not wanting to stay.
Brynjar poured a couple of inches of theakvavithe kept in the drawer of his old workbench and passed a glass to Kjell. They drank their first mouthful to the woman they both loved, the second to absent friends and the third to the old Norse god of war, Odin, for allowing Kjell to return alive. The alcohol burned Kjell’s throat and stung his eyes like a young boy taking his first sip. But his father never said a word.
‘I’m not sure I can be a solider any more,’ Kjell admitted, the words scraping his throat raw and unable to meet his father’s eye. He held his breath until his father’s next words, surprised by the question.
‘Why did you want to be a soldier?’
Because of you.
But they didn’t have the kind of relationship that would welcome such raw honesty in that deep visceral way.
‘Because I wanted to serve my country. Because I wanted to give myself to a greater cause. But... I’m not sure it’s enough any more.’
‘Do you know why I left theFörsvarsmakten?’
‘Because Mum needed to be here?’
When there wasn’t a reply, Kjell looked up at his father, realising for the first time that they’d never actually spoken of it. He had always assumed that his father had sacrificed his career for his wife and that resentment had been thrust so deep that it had kept Brynjar Bergqvist short worded and silent. He realised in that moment that he’d done his father a great disservice in thinking so.
Brynjar nodded sadly into the silence, as if divining his son’s thoughts. He grabbed a stool and brought it beside Kjell and sat, finally putting aside the piece of metal that had consumed his attention.
His father took a deep breath. ‘No. I left because I found that my heart had a new duty. A new purpose that would always come before King and country. And I didn’t feel that I could honestly give Sweden my whole allegiance when it would always be elsewhere.’
‘Mum was that purpose,’ Kjell said, beginning to see his father in a different light.
‘Yes,’ his father admitted. ‘And you.’
Kjell felt the sting of wetness press against his eyes. ‘I’m not sure I’m worthy of it.’
‘The fact that you even doubt that makes it clear thatIam the one not worthy.’
Shock marred Kjell’s features and heart.
Brynjar frowned into the distance. ‘Your mother, she is the one who is good with words. I find them...difficult. My father? Now, he was truly terrible. At least you are better than I. It will bode well for your children.’
His heart lurched. ‘I’m not sure that...’ He bit off the words that cut his heart in two. There would and could never be anyone other than Freya. But even if they had come together, her infertility meant that was an impossibility. But something in his heart turned over. The memory of the children Enzo had saved, the savage destruction of communities he’d witnessed, the thousands of orphans he’d encountered over the years. There were so many children who needed and deserved the kind of unconditional love Freya was capable of. Thathewas capable of. The thought vanquished what he’d been about to tell his father and planted a seed in his heart that would one day grow into something more beautiful than he could ever have imagined.
‘I think you have found a new duty,’ his father said, nodding sagely. ‘Well, she is definitely worthy of it.’
Kjell looked over at his father in shock, and not only because of the wry humour in his father’s tone. ‘You know?’
‘About Freya? Yes,’ Brynjar concluded.
‘How?’ Surely he hadn’t caused that much of a scene at the palace.
‘Because I told him.’ The strong, authoritarian voice came from the other side of the garden and Kjell’s head snapped up to see the King of Svardia. Pinpricks of shock and self-recrimination covered his skin. No one should have been able to sneak up on him like that. But he was beginning to suspect that Aleksander wasn’t quite what everyone seemed to think he was.
In his peripheral vision Kjell saw his father pick up the piece of machinery and resume his focus on the object as if the King of Svardia wasn’t there in his garden at three o’clock in the morning.