The Scarred Viking's Bride (On Temp. Hold)

Seventeen

"The other, one of you shall perish."

Silence embraced the small hut before Aderick stood up with a roar, making me jump in my seat. "Lies! You spill nothing but lies, you old witch!" He shouted, his chest heaving with anger and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

I glanced nervously to Eir, expecting a harsh, angered reaction rising from her at Aderick's blatant defiance of the gods and her words.

"I do not tell fabrications, Jarl Aderick. I simply interpret what I see from the gods and only what they let me see. Fate is subject to change at any time, Aderick, but this is the future I see now," Eir remained calm, gesturing towards the fire that held the secrets and fate of many.

I let out a shaky breath, daunted at her ominous words. I shifted my gaze away from Aderick towards the wall that contained herbs and pieces of unfamiliar items. And yet, I was not looking at them, my eyesight unfocused as I struggled to contain what Eir said. One path of happiness or one of death.

I inwardly laughed, although it was absolutely humorless. It seemed as though the gods were showing me a sign. I had a force following me since that disastrous night over a fortnight ago.

Death.

Death seemed to haunt me, my constant shadowy companion as I journeyed through the course of life. An unwanted attachment that I cannot seem to shake.

Death was to come to one of us, Aderick or myself. Which, I did not want to know. When - I did not know either. I gathered it would be soon...possibly as soon as the first snowflake touched the earth, or afterward when winter left the land and the beginning of the forest started to bloom with the rich color of green.

Then again...'twas only one of the two paths that could happen from the war.

What befuddled my mind was the "prize" aspect of it all....myself. Who would want to claim me as a prize? What war was worth shedding blood over me? It made no sense.

Unless...

A ragged face that I could never forget flashed in my mind, with eyes blue as the sea. I gasped at the realization that the stranger that kept chanting "my queen, my queen" could be the very same man who wished to start the war with Aderick. It is possible that we were connected somehow...but what did the stranger want with Aderick?

"I shall come for you soon, min dronning, very soon..."

I was terribly confused...and scared.

Underwhelmed.

Indignant.

Heartbroken.

I was not ready for another war to break out, emotionally, to witness more bloodshed.

I do not believe I could take much more.

The yawning black blanket of numbness, grief, denial, and pain would suck me back in, forcing me to become a skeleton without any sense of living, no motivation of doing anything...it would truly kill me this time. I escaped the first attempt, but I knew it would swallow me whole if the Dahlsten family and people were killed.

Tears flooded my eyes at the thought of all the numerous people I had met losing their lives for this predicted war, one that would encompass all of those who lived under the protection of Aderick. All of the children, Alva...everyone that resided within the manor. Ingrid and Ragnar...But most importantly, the man beside me who cast me under his spell, with his hypnotic eyes and heated touch, who I was beginning to fall for. I could not stand to see another person in which I cared for die.