The ground still steamed with blood when the smoke lifted over Eoforwic. Crows blackened the trees, feasting freely as the last of King Aelle’s men were cut down. The ravens, too, had followed the sons of Ragnar from across the sea, as if Odin himself had lent them wings.

Beneath the serpent pit where Aelle’s torn body had been laid bare to the sky, the Lothbrok brothers stood in brutal quiet, the stink of gore clinging to their leathers and hair. Victory was thick in the air. They had blood-eagled the king while he still howled and now the earth itself seemed to shudder beneath the tread of Ragnar’s vengeance.

“She watches,” Hvitserk muttered, nodding toward the ridge above.

There, half-shrouded by her handmaidens and the sallow veil of mourning, stood the youngest daughter of the late King Aelle. Pale as morning frost and untouched by the slaughter, the girl bore no armour, only a tattered white shift and the defiance of saints in her eyes.

Ubbe spat. “She prayed while her father died. She prayed louder than his screams.”

“She’s beloved by the priests,” said Sigurd. “They call her holy.”

“She was to take her vows,” Hvitserk added, mocking. “Wife to Christ, they say.”

Ivar shifted in his chariot, the iron braces groaning with his weight. His pale lips quirked, not quite a smile.

“Then let us crucify her like her husband,” he said dryly, scratching the haft of his axe. “Poetic, no? The nun nailed to a cross of our own making. We could use ship masts. Let the wind catch her hymns.”

Hvitserk chuckled lowly, but Ubbe shook his head. “Too easy,” he said. “She’d become a martyr. A tale told in candlelight. Saints make better stories dead than living.”

Ivar’s gaze slithered up to her again. The girl did not flinch.

“What then?” Sigurd asked, half-bored, half-curious. “Cut out her tongue? Burn her feet? Feed her to the dogs?”

“No,” Ivar said slowly, voice curling like smoke. “No. If she is so eager to wed her god… let us give her a different husband.”

His brothers turned.

Ivar’s eyes glittered, cruel and cold and amused. “She shall marry me.”

A hush followed, broken only by the caw of a crow overhead.

“She’ll scream,” Sigurd said eventually. “She’ll throw herself on a blade first.”

“Let her,” Ivar answered, shifting his weight. “But not before the priests see her cloaked in furs and silver, not before all Northumbria sees her kneel beside me like the prize she is.”

“She’ll curse you,” Ubbe said. “Spit in your face at the altar.”

Ivar grinned. “Let her try. I have tamed worse creatures.”

And so it was done.

By dusk, the girl was taken from the sanctuary of her chapel, her veil torn from her head and replaced with a golden circlet. She did not cry, not even when the bishop who raised her refused to bless the union and was cast down the chapel steps for it.

Ivar watched her closely—her stillness, her silence. Her pale throat unmarked by crucifix or bruise. Her hands remained folded even as the wedding feast erupted into wild cheer.

She was not beautiful in the way of the shieldmaidens he had known—no wild braids or painted eyes—but there was something terrible in her calm, a quiet fury he recognized as kin to his own.

“Do you kneel because you must,” he murmured to her as the crowd shouted and drank, “or because you think it holy?”

She met his gaze, unblinking. “I kneel for no man.”

His smile returned, slow and sharp. “You will.”