Reine des Anglais

Is. That. Clear.

ᛁᛊᚨᛒᛖᚢ

Isabeau was lying on the large cot that had been loaded with furs for her and Canute as she waited for her husband to return to their tent. She wasn't going to dare to go against his order to stay put inside the tent- she had seen the fury, the seriousness, the danger in his eyes.

She knew that going against his direct order now would risk her life and general safety. She needed him to calm down before she spoke to him again.

She held her hand up and looked at her wedding ring, spinning it around slowly with her thumb as she thought about everything they had been through in their two years of marriage.

While it hadn't been their choice to marry, choosing each other since that had fully been a decision they had committed to.

Even now, she didn't regret being his wife. Her daughters were everything that made her marriage worth it, even if the Canute she was married to now was no longer her Canute in the way she so desperately wanted him to be.

She let out a heavy sigh and rested her hand on the side of the bed that her husband and King slept on.

Canute... my love... Please don't become lost to me. Please. She closed her eyes to stop herself from crying. Her mind travelled back to what she was truly attempting not to think of... her brother.

"Geoffrey..." she whispered softly to herself as she thought of him. "I need you... and I've lost you." She tucked her face against her pillow and let out a sob, her shoulders shaking. It was a grief that was too much for her to take in all at once. She gripped the blanket in front of her tightly as she sobbed heavily.

Her brother was lost to her forever, and she could feel Canute slipping from her grasp, with it any hope of regaining any of her lost joy.

She couldn't think about Geoffrey at the moment. She would drown if she did.

She had to focus on what she could to keep herself afloat.

When had this truly begun- Canute slipping away from her?

She wiped at her eyes and sat up as she thought through their past.

Thorfinn... when he sentenced Thorfinn to slavery... or maybe it was when he had to kill Askeladd and sentence Thorfinn in the same day. Thorfinn was someone he had come to see as a friend and equal, and that loss had affected him deeply... It affected me deeply, as well. I had come to see Thorfinn as a brother in the little over a year I had known him myself.

Canute had changed that day, it was so subtle after the drastic change he had undergone a month prior- but that small, subtle change had spiralled into something horrific. Into a man she no longer knew.

Isabeau looked at her wedding ring again, thinking back to their wedding ceremony. When the priest had told him to place her original wedding ring, a small poorly made metal thing that Sweyn had hid out of one of his spare trunks, on her hand he had had to be ordered by his father to 'put the damn thing on her finger.' He had done it quickly to avoid touching her.

That night she had tried to reach for his hand, thinking perhaps if she simply initiated he would accept her- but she had been wrong. He had gasped and scrambled away from her in a panic, immediately hiding under his blanket and refusing to face her.

They had come a long way since then.

Perhaps... too far.

The door of the tent opened and Canute stepped in, his face still set and stone like.

"Isabeau." He said her name sharply. "I need you to bandage my arm. It was sprained by Thorgil's attack."

"Of course, my love." Isabeau stood up and walked over to her trunk, pulling out the binding bandages for setting a sprain. "We should sit beside the fire for better lighting." She said as she took a seat on the cushion next to the still burning fire pit.