"I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens and I find that I've been knocking from the inside."
Astrid, marked from birth as the devil's own, bears the weight of a curse whispered through cold convent...
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Synopsis
"I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens and I find that I've been knocking from the inside."
Astrid, marked from birth as the devil's own, bears the weight of a curse whispered through cold convent walls. Torn from her mother's arms, she endures the cruel rites of exorcism at the hands of fervent nuns, their prayers laced with fear and fire, and the years that follow see her shaped by the merciless hands of Danish warriors too, her innocence tempered into steel.
Throughout it all, her heart clings to a single, fragile hope: a brother lost to the same cruel world, a fragment of her past and the beacon that guides her through the storm of her existence. Her quest to find him is relentless, her resolve unyielding, as she braves the perils of a land divided by war and faith.
Yet fate has never been kind to her, and when at last their paths converge, it is on the battlefield where her brother stands before her not as kin, but as foe, for he too, has been sculpted by the unforgiving hand of destiny.
Ruthless, godless, a heathen whose hubris rivals even that of Achilles, Astrid has become something to be feared, for what else is she to do when all the gods have forsaken her? What else is there to do but become your own diety when there is no one else to turn to?
Sihtric Kjartansson, bastard son of Kjartan the Cruel and his Saxon slave girl, and one of Uhtred of Bebbanburg's most loyal lieutenants. He will do anything to protect his comrades but is finding it difficult to trust the newest addition to their group, the feral girl who claims to be the kin of their youngest member. Something about her doesn't seem quite right and Sihtric would rather be damned than accept her into their company...or his heart.
Freya Ulfsdottir, the youngest child of Ulf the Peaceful, one of the ruling jarls of Denmark, is sent to be raised at the court of Alfred the Great by her maternal uncle, a man who claims to have her best interests at heart. Over the years, she has learned to adapt to the loneliness that is her constant companion, and her uncle's constant manipulation. She is expected to make an advantageous match, to choose status over the desires of her heart, but all she has ever wanted was kindness; kindness she finds in the form of King Alfred's bastard son.
Osferth does not remember much from his childhood. He remembers a mother, the lines of her face blurred by time, and he remembers a sister, with gentle hands that felt like they would never stop holding him. Still, nothing lasts forever and memory is a punishment, but religion remains his only constant. Osferth becomes first a monk, and then a warrior, but he never stops believing, not until he begins to fall for the Danish princess being fostered at his royal father's court. A bastard and a princess; a catholic and a heathen; they are destined to fail, but Osferth never stops holding on because if he cannot have her, what else is left?
