- "perhaps I can teach you something unholy, my sweet monk"
lady alora of mercia was always seen as a witch, a devil worshipper, but she was none of those things, and the baby monk was going to learn who she was...
[the last kingdom]
[doesn't follo...
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CHAPTER ONE
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Alora was the sister of Aethelred, and she had wished it not so. Her father, Aethelwulf of Mercia, had not been a kind man to her. From the moment she first bled he had tried to sell her off like a brood mare, but Alora had different plans. If there was one thing in life, she looked for it was pleasure, and she would find it from whomever would give it to her.
Her first time was with the stable boy, the poor lad had been in over his head when the idea was proposed to him. Alora was a girl of 16 at the time, nearly a woman grown, and the stable boy had been nearing his 18th birthday, something he couldn't wait for he had told her. She had pushed him into the hay of the stable before she treated him like a horse and rode him until her own completion, she did not care much for that of the boy, and by the time she fixed her dress, she had been caught by her father.
Ever since then, no man would have her, yet Alora kept all the fun. She known to entertain men for her own pleasures, and many started to whisper she was a witch or a devil worshipper and that any man who would lay with her, would soon meet Death. But many men she laid with had still lived, which made every single one of them look ridiculous. She was nothing more than a woman out of her time, enjoying the pleasures of life.
She was left by her father, who died just before a visit to Wessex, to Winchester. She had gone with her brother on the orders of their overlord Ceolwulf, but that was short lived when the poor man died suddenly. Alora had nowhere else to go and her brother was not someone who helped her much, she didn't care for him like a sister should, it had mostly to do with the fact that while she sought pleasure from people willing to bed her, Aethelred did not.
She had made the best of it in Winchester, working as a maid in the alehouse. She helped clean and it made her earn enough coin to share a small house with Thyra, who had been shamed by most of the people in Winchester because she believed in the Pagan gods, but not Alora, she didn't care which God or Gods you prayed to, she herself found the ones the Danes prayed to more satisfying, and intriguing but the Old Greeks also had a few good ones. She mostly prayed for her health and to not be with child.
She wanted the pleasures out of her life not ground herself with a child she never wished for.
She was a good and kind friend to Thyra, who spend a lot of her time with Father Beocca, and Alora had always teased the two of them, because it was clear they loved each other, but neither of them acted on it.
"There are whispers of Lord Uhtred returning" some of the men who frequent the alehouse said to each other. "Some have said they saw him ride to Winchester, to welcome Aethelred and approve of the union between Mercia and Wessex" another said, and Alora rolled her eyes. The union was nothing more than a scramble of power from her brother's side.
