In which ten years have passed since the Second Siege of Paris and everything has changed for Ylva and Bjorn Ironside. Upon the sudden arrival of Ragnar Lothbrok, they choose to sail on their journey to the Mediterranean instead of joining the man o...
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The cities of Ashton and Kattegat had been filled with both joy and celebration now that Bjorn and Ylva were King and Queen of both lands. While Bjorn rejoiced and enjoyed his newfound power, the same couldn't be said about Ylva.
There seemed to be only three people in both cities who were left saddened by the victory. Those people were Hvitserk, Halig, and Ylva.
Hvitserk found himself drinking himself half to death, burdened with the pain of losing not just the woman he loved but the child of his that he hadn't even had the opportunity to meet before Ivar took the child's life.
Hvitserk had learned the child had been born blind and with Sigurd's eyes, but he didn't care. He knew he and Freya would have loved the child anyway. It was still their child. But no, the child had been taken from him and so had Freya. He had nothing left now.
Halig was saddened as well but instead of drowning his sorrows with mead like Hvitserk or hiding away from everyone like Freya, Halig was taking a page out of Freya's book and was channeling all of his pain and heartbreak into anger. It was unhealthy but it made him fool good.
He was fourteen now. But he was still a child. Despite that, it didn't stop him from picking a fight with a random man. The man was so drunk that despite being twice the size of Halig, the latter had won and had killed the man in blind rage.
With blood covering his face, he had roared out in anger and repeatedly punched the wall of a nearby cabin until his knuckles were covered in blood. It hurt so much but it was nothing compared to the pain of losing his sister, his caregiver.
Other than Hvitserk, Freya had been the only one he had even spoken to in the year he had been trapped in Kattegat. It formed a bond he couldn't understand. A bond that made him feel almost dependent on Freya and now that she was gone, he felt lost. It was unbearable.
While Hvitserk and Halig had their own ways of dealing with their pain and heartbreak, Ylva had refused to deal with it altogether.
She tried to contain it all, but of course, it began to hurt so much that she couldn't take it anymore.
It was how she found herself standing in the woods with a wooden pyre in front of her.
Freya's body laid on top of it. She was pale and lifeless but she still managed to look beautiful in her mother's eyes.
Ylva had built the entire pyre. It made her wonder how in Odin's name Floki was able to build boats three times that size in the same amount of time.
She knew it wasn't wise for her to have done so much work on her own while being pregnant but she didn't care. No one else wanted to help her. Not even Bjorn. He was too busy with his newfound kingship.
She could have asked Gunnhild but she didn't see the point. Gunnhild had never been a mother before. She didn't know what it was like to lose a child. If Ylva had company at that moment, she wanted someone who could have understood her pain.
