The sea breeze at the harbor was sharp, carrying the scent of salt and old timber, but the heat radiating between Erik and Greta could have melted the Baltic ice. Greta's grip on Erik's hand was almost painful—a desperate, defiant hold that refused to let him retreat into his naval shell.
"My lady… your brother, he…" Erik started, his voice cracking slightly. He looked everywhere but at her eyes—at the gray waves, at the mud-stained boots of the dockworkers, at the rigging of the distant frigates.
"Gustaf is a fool who talks too much," Greta interrupted, her voice a low, fierce tremor. "I want to hear it from the 'talent' himself. What did you say to my father?"
Erik finally forced his gaze to meet hers. His face was a brilliant, burning crimson that clashed with the dark blue of his captain's coat. The shy boy who usually commanded hundreds of men with a single shout was currently being held hostage by a 5'11" whirlwind in a woolen cloak.
"He offered me an alliance," Erik whispered, the wind whipping his dark hair across his forehead. "He offered me wood for the fleet. He offered me your sister's hand. He offered me the Stenbock name to lift my own."
Greta felt a cold spike of dread in her chest. "And?"
"I told him I didn't want his wood," Erik said, his voice suddenly gaining the steady strength of a man on his own quarterdeck. "I told him I didn't want the Stenbock name. And I certainly didn't want Magdalene."
He took a step closer, not pulling his hand away, but instead lacing his fingers through hers. "I told him I wanted the girl who broke a carriage and called me a puppy three years ago. I told him I wanted the woman who punches captains when they try to save her from drowning. I told him I wanted Greta."
Greta's breath hitched. The air felt thin. "You… you've been coming to the estate for three years. For me?"
"I'm a navigator, Greta," Erik said with a small, lopsided smile that reached his eyes. "I know how to find a star and follow it. I've been following yours since I saw you standing in the wreckage of that carriage, looking like you were ready to fight the sun for setting too early. I don't want a 'lady' to sit in a parlor. I want the storm. I want you."
The battle of secrecy was not just lost; it was decimated. Greta's face was hot, her eyes stinging with a mixture of salt spray and a rare, overwhelming joy. She looked down at their joined hands—his calloused and scarred from naval life, hers bruised and split from her secret brawls. They matched.
"You're still a puppy, Larsson," she murmured, her voice thick. "A stubborn, sea-salt-soaked puppy."
Erik laughed, the sound warm and grounding against the cold harbor wind. "And you're still a wild cat. Does that mean the answer is yes? Or do I need to get punched again to seal the deal?"
Greta didn't answer with words. She pulled him forward by his collar, her forehead resting against his. In that moment, the docks of Sweden, the wars of the empire, and the expectations of her noble bloodline faded into the gray mist.
"Don't make me ask twice, Captain," she whispered.
Erik didn't. He leaned in, and as the gulls wheeled overhead and the tide turned, the "Baltic Wolf" finally caught the storm he had been chasing for three long years.
The engagement of Margareta "Greta" Stenbock and Erik Larsson was the scandal that turned into a legend. When the official declaration was read in the royal courts of Stockholm in 1672, the nobility whispered of the "Lioness of Stenbock" finally meeting her tamer. But they were wrong. Erik hadn't tamed her; he had given her a kingdom where she could finally breathe.
As a dowry and a final, unspoken apology for the years of "piety" he tried to beat into her, Sir Otto granted Greta the Toftaholm Manor in Småland. It was a sprawling, lakeside jewel surrounded by ancient oaks and the whispering reeds of Lake Vidöstern. Greta moved in immediately, turning the manor into a fortress of her own design. She spent her days riding Tom across the estate and her nights writing letters to the coast, where the horizon smelled of salt and the man she loved.
But the 17th century was a jealous god. In 1675, the Scanian War erupted. Denmark and Sweden clashed for the soul of the Baltic, and the empire's finest were summoned to the wooden walls of the navy. The wedding, planned for the spring of 1676, was delayed indefinitely. Erik, now a commander of rising fame, was called to the pride of the Swedish fleet: the Skeppet Kronan.
The fog hung thick over the Skeppsholmen docks, tasting of tar and impending grief. Erik stood at the gangway of the Kronan, a behemoth of 126 guns that loomed over the harbor like a floating mountain of oak.
Greta stood before him, her short hair windswept, her eyes burning with a fire that refused to be extinguished by the mist. She didn't cry. Stenbocks didn't cry. Instead, she reached into her cloak and pulled out a small, heavy object wrapped in linen.
"It's a Silver Trollkors," she whispered, pressing the traditional Swedish protection charm into his palm. It was a forged iron-cross shape, meant to ward off the evil spirits of the deep and the iron of the enemy. "My mother's people said the sea cannot claim a man who wears the heart of the earth."
Erik closed his hand over the silver, pulling her into a final, crushing embrace. He smelled of tobacco and the cold Baltic. "I will return to Toftaholm, Greta. I have a sparring partner waiting for me, remember?"
"If you don't," she said, her voice a jagged blade of a promise, "I will find you in the halls of the dead and punch you for making me wait."
Erik laughed, the sound haunting the rigging of the Kronan. He stepped onto the ship, and Greta watched until the white sails vanished into the gray maw of the sea.
The Battle of Öland was not a battle; it was an execution by fate.
The Kronan, the most powerful ship in the world, was making a sharp turn in the high winds. Suddenly, through a combination of poor seamanship and a sudden gust, the Great Ship tilted. The lower gunports were open. The sea rushed in, hungry and absolute. As the ship capsized, the gunpowder magazine—thousands of pounds of black powder—ignited.
The explosion was heard for miles. The Kronan didn't just sink; it disintegrated. Of the 800 men on board, Erik Larsson was among the hundreds who were vaporized or dragged into the lightless depths of the Baltic. The Silver Trollkors did not save him from the iron of destiny.
The news reached Toftaholm on a Tuesday. The sun was shining with a cruel, indifferent brightness over Lake Vidöstern.
Greta was in the garden when the black-clad messenger arrived. Her maids, who had grown to love their "wild lady," stood in a semi-circle of trembling silence. When the messenger spoke the words—The Kronan is lost. There are no survivors of the command.—Greta didn't scream.
She simply turned and walked into the manor.
For three days, she didn't speak. She sat in the library, staring at the maps Erik had once used. Her maids brought her food; she didn't touch it. They brought her wine; she let it turn to vinegar. The "wild cat" had gone silent, and in that silence, the storm was finally winning.
"Mam," her head maid, Maria, whispered on the third night, tears streaming down her face. "You must eat. Sir Erik wouldn't want—"
"Sir Erik is at the bottom of the sea," Greta said, her voice sounding like dry leaves. "And I am a woman who hates to be kept waiting."
She dismissed them all. She told them to go to their quarters and celebrate the midsummer early. She was kind—unnervingly, perfectly kind.
The night was still. The moon reflected off the lake, a silver stag's head in the water.
Greta Stenbock dressed in her finest wedding gown—the one that was supposed to be worn two months prior. She looked in the mirror, her short hair finally growing long enough to frame her face in soft waves. She looked like the lady her father wanted, and the warrior Erik loved.
She climbed the stairs to the rafters of the grand hall, carrying a sturdy length of naval rope she had kept as a memento of Erik's first visit.
She tied the knot with the precision of a captain. She didn't leave a note. There was nothing left to say to a world that took the only man who saw her as a person rather than a prize.
"I told you, Larsson," she whispered to the empty, shadowed hall. "I wouldn't wait."
She stepped off the beam.
When the maids found her the next morning, the "Wild Cat of Stenbock" was still. She hung there in her white silk, a silent ghost in the manor that was meant to be her home. The empire mourned a naval hero, but at Toftaholm, they mourned the woman who was too much for the world, and the love that was too deep for the shore.
The storm had finally subsided. Greta Stenbock had gone to find her Captain.
(To be continued)