CHAPTER 2
ASTRID’S POV
The words hit me like a physical blow. My father’s voice echoed in the healing house, and I felt my whole world crumble around me in that single moment.
He was offering me to this monster. This blood-soaked Viking King who had just burned half our village and killed our people. He wanted to give me away like I was nothing more than a sack of grain or a prized cow.
I shook my head so hard it made me dizzy. No. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be some terrible nightmare that I would wake up from any moment. My father couldn’t really be doing this to me.
He loved me. He had always protected me. He used to tell me stories about brave princesses who saved themselves, not ones who got traded away like property.
But the nightmare kept going. The Viking King stood there looking at me like I was something he might buy at market.
His cold blue eyes moved over me slowly, taking in every detail. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to disappear into the floor, to become invisible, to be anywhere but here in this moment.
I expected him to laugh. I expected him to look at my father with disgust and tell him that I wasn’t worth the trouble.
Everyone knew how feared and powerful Ragnar Thornegrim was. The stories about him were told in whispers around our fires at night.
They said he was as tall as a tree and as cruel as winter. They said he had never shown mercy to anyone. They said he took what he wanted and destroyed everything else.
Surely a man like that wouldn’t want a simple village healer as his bride. Surely he would see that I was nothing special, just a girl who knew how to mix herbs and tend wounds. I held my breath, waiting for his rejection, praying for it.
But then something terrible happened. He looked at me again, and this time something changed in his expression. His mouth curved up at one corner in a smile that made my blood turn to ice. It wasn’t a kind smile or even a cruel one. It was something worse. It was the smile of a wolf who had just spotted easy prey.
“I accept,” he said, and those two words shattered my heart into a thousand pieces.
The room started spinning around me. This couldn’t be real. This absolutely could not be happening to me. I was supposed to spend my life helping people, healing the sick, maybe someday marrying a kind man from our village who would love me for who I was. I wasn’t supposed to be given away to a monster who probably had blood permanently stained under his fingernails.
I didn’t remember deciding to run. My body just moved on its own, like it knew I had to get away from that terrible smile and those cold eyes. I pushed past my father, past the frightened children and elderly people still huddled in the corner, past everything that had just gone so horribly wrong.
My feet carried me through the village, past the burning houses and the bodies lying in the dirt. I couldn’t look at any of it. I couldn’t think about what had just happened or what was going to happen to me. I just ran until I reached our house, until I could slam my bedroom door behind me and pretend that none of this was real.
The door shut with a loud bang, and I immediately threw the wooden bar across it. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely manage it.
Then I collapsed against the door, sliding down until I was sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest.
This was my room. My safe place. The walls were covered with dried herbs hanging in bundles, filling the air with the familiar scents of lavender and chamomile.
My bed was in the corner with the quilt my mother had made before she died. My books were stacked neatly on the wooden shelf my father had built for me. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as it had always been.
But everything was different now. Because I wouldn’t be staying here much longer. Because I was going to be dragged away from everything I loved and forced to marry a man who terrified me.
I buried my face in my hands and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
How could my father do this to me? How could he look that monster in the eye and offer me up like a sacrifice? I thought he loved me. I thought I meant something to him.
Heavy footsteps approached my door, and I knew it was him. I could hear him breathing on the other side of the wood, probably trying to figure out what to say to make this better.
But there was nothing he could say. Nothing that would make this right.
“Astrid,” his voice was soft, pleading. “Please, daughter. Open the door. Let me explain.”
I pressed my back harder against the door and didn’t say anything. Maybe if I stayed quiet long enough, he would go away. Maybe if I didn’t acknowledge what had happened, it would somehow undo itself.
“I know you’re angry,” he continued. “I know this isn’t what you wanted. But please, you have to understand. I had no choice. If I hadn’t made this bargain, he would have killed everyone. The children, the elderly ones you were protecting, all of our neighbors. Everyone would be dead.”
His words made me even angrier. “So you sold me instead!” I shouted through the door. “You gave me away to save everyone else! What about what I want? What about my life?”
“It’s not like that, Astrid. You don’t understand the situation we’re in.”
“I understand perfectly!” Tears were streaming down my face now, hot and angry. “You don’t care about me at all! You’re just like everyone else who thinks women are things to be traded away when it’s convenient!”
I heard him sigh heavily. “That’s not true, and you know it. I love you more than my own life. But sometimes we have to make impossible choices. Sometimes there’s no good answer, only the one that saves the most people.”
“Easy words when you’re not the one being handed over to a monster,” I spat. “Easy to talk about sacrifice when someone else is doing the sacrificing.”
We sat there in silence for a long time, him on one side of the door and me on the other. I could hear him breathing, could almost feel him trying to think of the right words to say. But there were no right words. There was nothing that could make this better.
“He’s not going to hurt you,” my father said finally. “I made sure of that. It’s a marriage alliance, a political arrangement. You’ll be treated with respect.”
I almost laughed, but it came out more like a sob. “Respect? From the man who just burned our village and killed our people? You really think he’s going to treat me with respect?”
That’s when I heard new footsteps approaching. These were different from my father’s. Heavier. More deliberate. They made the floorboards creak under the weight, and something about the sound made my skin crawl.
The footsteps stopped right outside my door.
Then a voice spoke, and it wasn’t my father’s gentle tone anymore.
This voice was deep and commanding, with an accent I’d never heard before. It was the kind of voice that expected to be obeyed without question.
“Open the door now!”
