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"NO!"
Leandro's father, Andreaos, sighed deeply, eyes flickering from his angered son over to his three giggling daughters. Each one, with the exact same knowing glint in their identical eyes. Their looks still struck him like a blade, almost like the Gods had taken his wife and replaced her with three. Soft, auburn curls, tanned skin, and deep brown eyes. The sight made his heart ache, even though over a decade had passed.
Andreaos looked pleadingly at his young daughters, and his second-born child took pity on him.
"She is a sweet girl, Leandro," Caia says softly, in Zeneize, their native language.
The girls were barely a summer before they lost their mother to a winter fever. Andreaos, despite the objections of his in-laws, had packed everything and moved his young daughters and only son to a village to start anew. Leandro had carried the bulk of their clothing and items on his back and his youngest sister in his arms while Andreaos held the elder two girls, trying to find every way out of Italy as per his late wife's pleas.
Near a fortnight later, they sailed on the sea before trekking through lands for much longer until they set in their new home, gathering odd looks and hushed words from their neighbours. Those strayed once Andreaos lent his services as a physician and saved many of the Vikings' lives after battles.
Andreaos watched as his eldest child's anger tampered slightly as he turned to his sisters. They had always been his saving grace when it came to his son's stubborn resolve. Andreaos knew the resolve well. It was one his own older brother possessed and drove his parents close to insanity. But unlike his daughters, Andreaos was never the voice of reason, but rather a partaker to his parent's dread. It seemed this was the result of all his mother's prayers.
"I am quite aware she is a sweet girl." Leandro scoffed, turning back to his father. He similarly held the same distinct auburn hair and tanned skin but gray-blue eyes and a face almost the replica of his father. "But she is a girl. I will not marry a-a girl, a child. She is close to my sister's age. You would have me wed and bed a girl a decade my younger?"
"Leandro," Andreaos said warningly, his forehead creasing and the dull ache recurring whenever his son's ire was piqued. His daughters, namely the youngest, Andrea, giggled at the candid words. Leandro spared her a glance and a soft smile, reserved only for his favourite sister.
Leandro turned back to his father, the soft smile slipping into the hardened expression of the man who'd seen battle, slew enemies with an unwavering determination, then come out victorious. It was after one of those battles that Mikael, son of Bjor, lying on the cot in their home with a salve for his wounds, had decidedly offered up his daughter for Leandro to take to wife. Andreaos had stalled at the offer, not unused to them given his son was the most desired unwed man within the village from the days he'd become a man with his skilled swordsmanship and chivalry, but the way his wife, Carmela, would have disapproved, not because of the sweet girl but Leandro's lack of choice.
