Being in the wrong place at the wrong time was all it took for Adelasia's whole life to turn upside down. After being captured by the heathens raiding her city and taken all the way to the cold North, the youngest Ragnarsson takes an interest in her...
Biting the corner of her lip, she finished up the last stitches for Queen Astrid's dress before putting the fabric away. She rubbed her red eyes tiredly, let out a loud sigh and leaned back in her chair. She was in her and Hvitserk's shared room, the latter occupied with the training of the younger warriors. They had been in Tampdrup for a month now, which meant that the attack was only a moon's time away, but so far Alasia was bored out of her mind. It had never actually happened that she and Hvitserk slept in the same room, because nine out of ten times she slipped away at night to sleep with her siblings and the one-time Hvitserk had other nightly plans. Not that anybody else in the town knew that, for as far as they were concerned, she and Hvitserk made a lovely couple.
Ivar didn't draw her in on his war plans, told his brother and King Harald even less and appeared to be in a terrible mood whenever she saw him at dinner. Every now and then he would give her a nasty glare, especially when she was laughing at something Hvitserk said and she was growing immensely tired of it. All the relationship and bonding she felt she had built with him was fading away, all because of some stupid decision for appearances' sake.
Just as she was about to stand up, ready to take a leisurely stroll through the town, someone else rushed into her room. Two persons to be exact, looking a lot like each other and both completely out of breath. Smiling, she leaned back in the chair and regarded the two children. "Hello Liv, Svent," she said. "Shouldn't you be training with Hvitserk and the other children right now?"
"Yes, we should, but," Svent began, sounding out of breath.
"But you told us to come to you if we ever saw something strange," Liv finished for her brother, looking urgent.
Frowning, Alasia leaned into the two children, motioning with her hand that the two children could take a seat if they wanted to. "What is it that you've seen then?"
Liv started the story again, brushing her blonde and sweaty hair away from her face. "We were training and then we noticed Queen Astrid sneaking away from a backdoor into the town, but she looked like nobody wanted to see her."
"So we sneaked away from the training and followed her," Svent continued, looking eager. The little boy was sitting on the edge of his chair, his legs bouncing up and down from excitement. "We couldn't get close enough, but we overheard her asking some whalers if they were going to Kattegat soon and if they could deliver a message for her, but we couldn't hear what message and to whom."
