For Milady

FIVE: Cast Off

FIVE: Cast Off

Astrid pushed the door to her home open, seeing her parents inside. It was a miserable, cold day with rain beginning so her mother was spinning wool while her father was whittling a new handle for a knife. She grinned at them and there was a pause-before both gasped in shock on seeing their daughter.

"Astrid!" Ilsa gasped and lurched to her feet, running to embrace her daughter with the tall, solid shape of her father a couple of paces behind, wrapping both in his powerful arms. After a long moment, they pulled back and her father inspected her, a small smile visible amid his luxuriant blonde beard.

"My daughter-are you well?" he asked her in a concerned voice and she nodded, a small smile lifting her lips.

"More than well," she reassured him, looking into his face. "Hiccup's come back as well. He's talking to the Chief now." She gave a wider smile. "He's asking his father to sort out the contracts, Dad. He's asked me to marry him."

Ingvar stared at her in shock and then lowered his eyes. She frowned, her blonde brow furrowing.

"Dad? What's wrong?" she asked, unnerved by his silence. "You always said how much you liked Hiccup, what a great warrior and leader her was becoming...surely you don't object to me marrying him?" Her father glanced over to his wife and to Astrid's horror, there were tears trickling down her cheeks. "Mom? What's wrong? Will someone just please tell me?" Her voice had risen and she was almost shouting, her anxiety now pounding in her chest. Ingvar stared into her eyes, his joy departed.

"Hiccup can't marry you, Astrid," he said heavily. "He's already betrothed."

She stared at him in utter shock.

"What?' she yelled. Her mother nodded, another sob shuddering through her. "Why that lying, treacherous, slimy, back-stabbing..."

"He doesn't know!" Ilsa blurted out, her eyes shining with tears. "He didn't know. He must now...but he didn't before..." Astrid stared at her.

"What? How can you know that...?" she asked and Ingvar sighed.

"My daughter-I know how much that boy means to you," he admitted, sitting down and staring mournfully at the fire. "Every time you would come back, it would be 'Hiccup this' and 'Hiccup that'! You would sometimes think there was only the two of you out there on the Edge. And any fool can tell the boy is crazy about you-his puppy eyes follow you whenever you two are back on Berk! So we both knew he was in love with you-and he's a decent lad. He would never lead you on if he knew he was promised to another." He sighed again. "And then after you last went back, I approached Stoick...to sound out if he was averse to making a contract. I had to do it discreetly...people talk, you know? Especially since we aren't the most well off and some families would think we were aiming above our position. So I went to see him on a pretext about some lumber rights...and I found him looking at a letter..."

"A letter?" Astrid asked, her fists balled.

"He was reading it with a look of guilt on his face," Ingvar explained. "It was a letter from the person he betrothed Hiccup to years ago when he was much younger. It seemed he had forgotten that he had betrothed Hiccup to the daughter of another Tribe. He was shaking his head and seemed horrified." He looked up. "And I knew then...that there was no way Hiccup could marry you. The Chief would never ratify a contract with me for your hand, daughter, because he had made an agreement, a Treaty with an allied tribe and breaking that would put us all in danger."

Astrid stared.

"So that's it?' she said, her voice suddenly toneless. "It's over? I'm expected to give up the man I love, the man who completely owns my heart?" She dropped her hand to rest briefly on her lower abdomen. "The father of my child?"