Kingdom Come

I. The Dane Slayer's Daughter

This is me praying that

This was the very first page

Not where the storyline ends

My thoughts will echo your name until I see you again

Jaehaera's mother, Lady Gisela had just finished braiding her hair before sending her off to train with her best friend Bjorn. "Jaehaera, you will behave yourself, I can not have your father coming to me with news of your unruly behavior," Gisela kissed her forehead, though, and smiled at her.

"Hild will be there, and you will listen to her as well, or I will have you sent straight back here. Understood?"

Jaehaera nodded her head, though the two of them knew it would be hard. "Yes, mother, understood."

Gisela cupped her daughter's cheeks, "good, go one then." With that, Jaehaera left her mother and walked down the stairs of their home, down to their hall to find Bjorn sitting on the stairs, waiting for her. Her Bjorn. She had never seen a man more beautiful; not in her life. He had blonde hair pulled back into braids and a bun. For a boy of sixteen, he already had muscles that her father built for him. He stood tall, even when sitting. He stood about a foot and an inch taller than her. Jaehaera was five feet and five inches tall the last time her mother and father checked. Her mother always thought she was too tall for a fourteen-year-old girl, but she thought differently. She liked being this tall already.

Jaehaera smiled as she walked up quietly behind Bjorn, knowing which steps creaked, and which didn't. She avoided the ones that did and made her footsteps lighter than the flap of a butterfly's wings. When she got behind him, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him before tackling him onto the floor of her father's hall, pinning him while he smiled up at her when he saw her face above hers. "Yield to me," she told him, a Danish accent as thick as her father's.

Bjorn just smirked up at her, before taking her by surprise and flipping them over so that he was on top now. "No," he told her. "Though maybe next time you'll have me." Bjorn got up off of her and stretched out his hand for her. She just smirked and pushed it away before getting up on her own. "Come, your father is waiting for us."

Together the two teens walked out of the hall and out into the village to find her father. He looked down at her while they walked, "what do you know of this 'king'? Guthrum or whoever?" Jaehaera smirked, "I think he's a turd," she replied. Bjorn scoffed before laughing with a shake of his head.

"You are going to get yourself killed with a mouth like that, Jae," He reminded her as they walked. The two of them followed the sounds of shouting, and clanking of steel into the meadow. Jaehaera saw the blond nun first. Hild. Jaehaera loved Hild like a second mother, though sometimes she could live without her constant need to teach her of her God. The nun stood with Beocca, a bald and old priest whom her father had known all his life. Jaehaera liked him all the same, kind of like a grandfather you only saw now and then, but still appreciated when you saw him. She felt the same about him teaching her his faith as she did with Hild. Another soldier stood with them, Halig, all of them knew her father long before she did.

"What is happening?" She asked no one in particular. She leaned against the gate along with Hild. Bjorn followed suit. "Why is father fighting?"

"He's showing off," Hild replied with a smile down at her. "For your mother."

"If he loves her, why not just tell her?" Jaehaera asked. "Would it not be simpler?" the three adults and Bjorn laughed at her. She understood things of battle and war, but anything else she didn't understand. Bjorn shook his head at her. He understood perfectly well why a man like her father, like his as well, would show off for a woman he fancied. He often did so for Jaehaera, though she never seemed to notice. He knew that now, but it would not deter him from trying. They met when they were just children, younger than they are now. His father's brother, though not by blood, had been Uhtred. Uhtred then took responsibility for the boy and began to raise him like his own son. His father sent him to Uhtred to learn from him about both saxon and dane, thinking smartly that he would need it in the future. Bjorn Ragnarson. They were each other's only friends in a place full of Saxons. He would love her till his last breath left his lungs.