ओह! यह छवि हमारे सामग्री दिशानिर्देशों का पालन नहीं करती है। प्रकाशन जारी रखने के लिए, कृपया इसे हटा दें या कोई भिन्न छवि अपलोड करें।
"I can't just leave without her, she is my daughter!" Aethelwulf exclaimed, glaring daggers at his wife and father as they tried to reason with him.
"If she wishes to stay, you can't stop her. What's more important is that you look after your son's so that they might one day rule England." Ecbert explained.
But Aethelwulf knew the truth. They'd never been fond of her because of her mother and now they were glad that she'd chosen death over safety. Surely this was there doing. "No, you're right but you forget one thing; I'm King now father. If I choose for her to come with us, she does."
Ecbert and Judith both fell silent as they looked between eachother for an answer that would get him to leave. Just as they believed there was no answer they could give that would justify themselves, Alfred walked inside.
"She's gone." He broke the silence, everyone now looking over at him. "She's not in the Villa."
After many hours of searching high and low, they found no trace of her. To say that Aethelwulf was terrified would have been an understatement. Of all days in which she could've begun her rebellion, she chose the day that The Great Heathen Army of revenge was coming to kill them all. If this were any other day, he could've dealt with her running off; he would've likely assumed that she was looking for her brother Magnus. But today? Today of all days?
In the end, they had no choice but to leave. She was gone. Aethelwulf prayed to God that she was safely away from the Villa, but something within his soul told him that she wasn't. And though he tried to reassure his sons that she was safe, it seemed that neither of them quite believed it either.
Alvina emerged from the forestry around her home. It was about half an hours walk back to the Villa and then she would head straight for the library and wait in comfort with her books until the heathens arrived. She intended for this to end exactly how it had begun, some cyclical beauty in it she supposed. She would hear the commotion of the army and walk outside to be greeted by not just the sight of and old man and a cripple, but of the army that came to Avenue that old man's death and the cripple whom she had made such overwhelming promises to.
She still felt guilty over those promises. In the short time that the Vikings had been there, she actually rather liked them. And there was something about Ivar, something she couldn't place, that had drawn her to him from the moment she first made eye contact. He fascinated her. And though she regretted that now they were enemies, there was some odd comfort in knowing she wouldn't be killed by a total stranger.
As she stepped inside, her heartbeat slowed to a steady pace. The icey wind from outside had made her entirely numb, no tears falling anymore. She was frozen.
The woman who had raised her had murdered her mother, her grandfather wanted her dead, her brother had been sent away, she couldn't prevent King Ragnar's gruesome death and now an army of angry pagans were on their way to kill her. She should've been a petrified mess. But all her tears had been spent already, and now she found herself utterly uncaring. The passion that burned within her had snapped ever so slightly. The raw light that seemed to radiate from her every action had grown dim. She felt like a fraud.
This coldness began to grow within her, this jaded feeling of emptiness. The prospect of her brutal death did not bother her. In some odd way, perhaps she felt she deserved it. But more so, she felt glad that this torturous life would soon finally be over. No more betrayal. No more games and no more misery. Soon she would be with her mother, just where she'd always yearned to be.
But was that enough? All she'd ever known of this world was the path shed been set upon, the holy path of grace and goodness. She'd never sinned or deviated from a path of God. She'd never lived. And now she found herself questioning it all.
Why should she spend her eternity serving God when he had done nothing for her? Why be good when the sinners were rewarded and the saints punished? For that was surely how it appeared to the young Christian girl as she sat and pondered her existence with a newfound nihilism. She wanted to live, she truly did. She wanted a chance to prove herself and tell her God that she was no one's pawn. She wanted to make everyone who had wronged her and her mother suffer.
Her existential crisis was cut short, however, when she heard the gates slam open.
