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Astrid was struggling to digest the fact that Esther Mikaelson stood before her, alive and breathing.
Composed and poised, Esther managed to a muster up a smile which didn't reach her eyes.
It was insincere, a smile that Astrid may have once considered warm and maternal a thousand years ago- merely left her feeling cold.
Resulting in Astrid gaining a chill that seeped into the knocks and crannies of her bones, leaving her with a frigid feeling rooted deep within.
The whole situation was truly bewildering to Astrid, she couldn't comprehend how Esther could forgive Niklaus so easily.
Perhaps it was slightly hypocritical of her to comment on the matter, given her track record of condoning her husband's actions, but the situations had been entirely different.
Astrid would be the first to admit she'd put up with far too much of her husband's mistreatment, the daggering, the deceit, the hypocrisy, but she had told herself that this was the last time. Yet as much as she wanted to believe it, she couldn't be entirely sure.
Something about Nik pulled her back in like a magnet, perhaps it was the link to her past, a link to her sweet sons, but he couldn't lure her back in, not again.
But Esther? She was a different story, Nik had murdered her with anger pulsing through his veins, ripping her heart from her chest, his gaze never leaving hers. He'd covered up her death, blaming her husband for the crime before running from his past.
Perhaps Nik had thought if he ran fast enough and didn't look back, it would never have caught up with him. Yet it had.
How Esther could still look Nik in the eyes, profess her love for the son she barely recognised, was beyond Astrid's knowledge.
If she thought hard, Astrid could recall how Esther had acted in the weeks leading to her death.
She'd almost seemed to regret preforming the curse, she'd wept for the trail of body her innocent children carelessly left behind them, the villagers she'd once considered friends.
Though she buried the displeasure in fear of her husband's reaction, Astrid suspected she'd been shocked by what she'd done, how she'd displeased the balance of nature, going against everything she had originally stood for.
So why was Esther so accepting of their vampirism now? Surely she was aware of the millions of bodies the family had left behind them with little care?
Witches had never been the most forgiving creatures, Astrid imagined that in whatever afterlife Esther had experienced before coming back, she wouldn't have been treated kindly.
Pale eyes roaming her figure, darting from the blonde hair that was starkly different from the chocolate locks she'd possessed in the eighth century, Esther pursed her lips.
