DIVINE [HVITSERK RAGNARSSON]

28: RUNNING AWAY

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT — 'RUNNING AWAY'

"What? Where are you going?" Asta Stensdottir furrowed her eyebrows in confusion as she followed her frantic mother around the house.
"Your father has a plan, Asta. I am simply supporting him." Signe sighed, not looking at her daughter.
"Father!" Asta yelled, walking through the cabin until she found Sten by the small hearth.
Sten looked up, holding his head tightly in annoyance. "Asta, what do you expect us to do if we lose this war? We cannot stay here, Ivar will run Kattegat into the ground."
"We will not lose this war, Father. How can you think that?" Asta's eyes widened.
"I do not want to think it, child. But I need to ensure my family are safe either way."
"Then what are you doing?" She sat down on the wooden chair opposite him as Erik walked into the room.
"There is a town not far from here, Halsarby. I have been meeting with the Jarl. He is someone I can call a friend, now." Sten looked away from his daughter, suddenly sounding uneasy. Asta noticed the change in his mannerisms and looked to Erik, but he suddenly avoided eye contact and stared at the ground.
"Father?" Asta said slowly, worry sitting in her chest.
"He needs a wife to sit beside him on his throne. If you marry him, our family will be safe there."
Asta froze in shock.
"What? You married me off?" She spluttered in disgust.
"Asta, it is for the best—"
"How could you? I have never even met this man!" She threw her arms in the air and looked at Erik, "and how could you know about this and not tell me?"
"Asta, I—" Erik started but Asta pushed past him, slamming the cabin door behind her as she left them in silence.

She ran, faster than she'd ever run on any battlefield until she came to the waterfall that was her one place of solace. She dropped down into the dirt, the sound of the waterfall falling down the rocks being the only thing she could hear. And she finally took in what her father had just said. Married. She was to be married, to a man she had never even met. To a man she didn't even love. And she thought of the man she really did love. Hvitserk. If she had stayed with him, this wouldn't be happening. But she had chosen her family and this is how they'd repaid her. How could she ever love another man while Hvitserk still roamed her mind?

Then, in time with the waterfall flying down, her tears came. She cried. Harder than she'd cried as Hvitserk jumped ship, harder than she'd cried when her father was carried off of the Paris ships on a stretcher. Everything she'd held bottled up inside since that moment in England came flooding out, faster than the waterfall itself was moving.

She got up, tears still rolling down her face and plunged into the water. It was freezing, but she needed to feel something. And she floated there for hours in the foamy water, hours and hours until her tears dried up and her pain made it clear that it was there to stay.