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prologue

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PROLOGUE
blood rite

*warnings for murder, abuse, child marriage, and a brief mention of spousal rape*


980 A.D.


The night before she was wed the first time in the Christian traditions, Dagmar almost killed her father.

To squander all her petty dreams of wielding a sword like her brother (and to, though she wouldn't find this out until much later, rid his house of all the magic he could), he sold her to the first suitor that sought her hand; a boy named Ecgbert, the eldest son of one of the few Saxon families that made the trek to the New World with them, who had been nearly four years her elder and known for bouts of cruelty. Dagmar, terrified of the wifely duties that would have been expected of her in a marriage to a violent man who did not believe in her gods and of abandoning her siblings with a father that could only love her because of her resemblance to a sister that was forever lost, protested the match.

"I'll be good," She told him, kneeling by his feet while he sharpened one of his blades, "I will do my weaving with mother, and look after Niklaus, and never complain about Finn getting to play with swords ever again."

But all of her begging was for nought.

Mikael just held her chin with a calloused hand. "You will wed the Christian and rule over his house, and your sons will be great warriors and blacksmiths and priests. They will bring forth a new age."

Then he kissed her on the temple, marking her for death. And, as she, with the bitter taste of his betrayal sitting on her tongue, watched all her worth be boiled down to the exchange of a pouch of silver coin and the shake of a hand, she swore that, if she could not save herself from being wed, she could at least save her mother's other children from him.

So, she hatched a plan.

For the entire year

For the entire year leading up to the wedding, the thirteen and then fourteen-year-old tested methods with which to end his life. She snuck off to ask their lycanthrope neighbors about the local flora, and tested his limits with the mead that the neighbors made, and hid to burn offerings to her dying gods in hopes that they'd give her the strength to do it nearly every day until the day came.

She got him drunk at dinner that night, silently refilling his cup every time he drained it until he was a slurring and stumbling mess.

Then, once everyone went to bed, Dagmar crept up to him as he snored and pulled a dagger from her sleeve.

The blade glittered under the light of the moon as she lifted it over her head. She knew how to do it-- she was the child of a warrior and a witch, and she'd seen more rituals than any of her siblings, even her mother's precious Finn-- but, before she could do it, the flutter of a bird's wings startled her.

A crow sat, perched delicately, in the window.

It titled its head and peered at her with black eyes as the knife clattered to the floor, its call sounding like a laugh as she, with a chest that rose and fell with rapid breaths, fumbled to grab the hilt of it. There, on her knees beside her father once again, she met the bird's eye again.

Distantly, over the sound of her heartbeat, she could hear it. The rhythmic beating of a drum.

Chanting, perhaps, that she could not understand.

Was it a sign from the gods?

Were they mocking her for trying?

Were they trying to give her a sign?

Before she could decipher the meaning, the bird looked away from her, and all was quiet.

When Dagmar followed its gaze, she saw that one of her siblings had stumbled upon her.

Niklaus was only little. He wouldn't have remembered what she had done, likely wouldn't have remembered their father, either.

But she couldn't do it with him watching, and, assuming the lesson that the gods were trying to teach her, carried the toddler off to bed with her.

Mikael made it through the night, and Dagmar got married, anyway, and was moved into Egbert's longhouse by the end of the week.

He, another year later, died in her father's place.

Egbert should have known it was coming.

From the very moment he laid his hands on her, called her a heathen bitch as she bled on the floor, he should have been sleeping with one eye open-- and he never should have invited her brother into their home when he had no one there to protect him.

But he didn't, and he did, and his hubris landed him here, wrapped in cheap linens as her father dug him a grave in the thicket.

"Dagmar," Mikael's voice, spat through clenched teeth, carried over the wind and through the dark, "hand me your tunic, girl."

Dagmar didn't hear him.

Her eyes, the left almost swollen shut, were set on the body laid by her feet, and her mind on the way Egbert looked at her when she slit his throat. She could still feel the spatter of blood as it dried on her face and, when she blinked, she was still watching him writhe on the floor of the home they shared, and Finn was still coaxing the knife from her hand.

Her face throbbed harder with each passing reminder.

"Dagmar!"

Finn murmured something in defense of his sister. That, unlike their father's voice, got drowned out by the howl of the breeze.

"Oh, by the gods, child!" He abandoned his digging and, in just three strides, stood over her.

Lifting a hand above his head, Mikeal backhanded his daughter across the face.

Every synapse within her body fires at once as her body was rocked to the side by the force and Dagmar, who had received her fair share of beatings that night, gasped like a woman drowned. It rattled in her chest and tore at her throat on its way out, and both Finn and one of the horses flinched in her periphery.

Mikael caught her before she could fall. His nails left flaming indents in her skin as he held her arms in a too-strong grip and started to shake her.

"Stop standing there like a child!" He said, and the fifteen-year-old looked up at him with all the bravery she could muster. "You are not a girl anymore. You gave away that right when you did what you did tonight. Do you understand me?"

Dagmar nodded. Her tongue darted out to swipe over her bottom lip and winced, tears pricking her eyes, at the taste on her tongue.

She was bleeding again.

"Take off your tunic, girl. You are covered in his blood."

"But father..." She protested weakly.

It was so cold that it bit at her skin. And she had no desire to bare herself in front of Hvitserk, her father's ward that had been drinking with him when Finn went to fetch him.

But Mikael went to raise a hand to her again, so she started to undo her dress with shaking hands.

Hvitserk returned to digging to allow her to keep her modesty.

The fabric fell from her trembling body, and she stepped out of it, arms covering what they could. Finn, also averting his gaze, held the wolf pelt that had been previously draped over his shoulders out to her as their father snatched her blooded clothing from the ground beside them.

"Take it."

Finn's face screwed up as she looked at him dumbly.

"Take it." He urged again and then, when she did not move, he took it upon himself to wrap her in the fur anyway.

"You will return home," For a moment, Dagmar was still too disoriented to understand that Mikael was speaking to her, and to know where her home was, "and, at daybreak, we will tell everyone that the wolves came for him."

"Father, no! They didn't do anything!"

Mikael was as surprised to hear her voice as she was.

"Father, no?" He echoed. "Would you rather I tell them it was you both? Leave you for the Christians to pick your bones?"

Dagmar's words (and her breath) caught in her throat.

"You have jeopardized yourself and this family enough for one night. You will do what I say."

Dagmar had never hated her father more than she had in that moment.

It was his fault that this happened, she thought. If he hadn't sold her to a violent boy in a land that didn't follow their laws if he didn't want her to resort to this.

Then, she thought about how much she wanted to hurt him. She thought of how much she had suffered, and all that she'd do to him to ensure that he suffered just as much.

A trickle of blood from her nose jostled her from her thoughts, and Mikael's face darkened.

"Are you trying to hex me, girl?"

His hand was around her throat in seconds.

"Father, stop!"

Finn's cry went ignored.

"I should have killed you when I had the chance," He said, bringing her face to his as she tried to swallow past the pressure of his thumb, not knowing that she was thinking the same thing, "should have told your mother to quit with that magic before it turned your soul black."

Dagmar made a strangled noise and Finn drew a blade of his own, then, to hold it to their father's skin.

Mikael, a renowned warrior, was unfazed. "Do you really think you're capable of killing me, boy?"

"For her, yes."

Finn's voice shook but Mikael made no comment. Hvitserk had stopped digging, too, to watch the commotion, and he knew that he was outnumbered.

Dagmar coughed when he released her.

"You will go to where your mother sleeps," Mikael repeated his order in a voice that was as cold as the air, "you will lie about what happened here tonight, and you will marry again as soon as the boy's family thinks you've grieved enough.."

The twins must have made the same expression, then, because their father's lip curled over his teeth again.

"Finn is to be wed within the year. No daughter of mine will live a widow's life."

Before Dagmar could think to utter any further protest, Mikael turned to his quiet ward.

"Hvitserk, take her back, will you? I have to speak to my son."

Hvitserk nodded and stuck his shovel back into the dirt. Dagmar looked at Finn, who stared back with an indiscernible emotion in his eyes and the silent permission for her to leave him, before resigning herself to her fate. She didn't resist the seventeen-year-old as he lifted her onto one of their horses, nor when he climbed on behind her and slid his arms around her waist to grab the reins.

"When you return, we'll discuss a bride price." He told his ward.

The burn of tears pricked her eyes, again, but she didn't give any of them the privilege of seeing her about to cry. She looked forward and focused on the darkness of the forest, and the way the horse's ribcage expanded with each breath; that meant that she didn't see Hvitserk's silent response, but she just had no energy to care anymore, and he was merciful enough to kick the horse into a trot before anything else could be discussed like she wasn't there.

Hvisterk was also merciful enough to not speak to her. Not a single word, even as he helped her off the horse in front of her parents' longhouse, until he was back on his horse.

"You are bleeding." Hvitserk's voice was hoarse and warm. He seemed to be making a point of looking her in the eye. "Between your legs."

Dagmar, embarrassed and exhausted to her very core, looked away.

"Did he force himself onto you, the Christian?"

The horse's tail swished as her frustration grew.

"Yes."

"I will not." He promised. She did not think that she had ever heard him speak so much. "I will not have you until you want me."

Dagmar grit her teeth. (Why was he making promises now? Why was he trying to absolve himself of guilt if there was none to have? He had no father. They had grown up beside one another. Mikael was forcing both of their hands.)

"And what if I never want you?"

His lips twitched. If she hadn't known any better, she'd have thought he was smiling.

"Then I will be the first celibate viking."

The spark of amusement inside of her stayed just that. He bid her goodnight after that and lifted the reins again, but she grabbed them before he could kick his horse into action.

"Protect my brother from him," She croaked, "please?"

Hvitserk took the order well and nodded. Dagmar watched him disappear back into the night, her stomach rolling with the thought of having to share a man's bed again.

He could be the kindest, gentlest, most good man in all the world, but he would still be a man.

(Perhaps, she thought, however petulantly, that legend would laud her for making a celibate man out of a skilled warrior. She wondered if being known for that and that alone would suffice.)

Everyone else was asleep when she limped through the door. Even the new baby, a fussy boy with hair as dark as coal.

For a while, Dagmar stared into the glowing ashes in the hearth, entranced by the images that fluttered across her mind.

When she found that she did not like what she was seeing, though, she shook the visions from her mind and grabbed one of the water buckets on the other side of the room.

She scrubbed the filth-- the blood, sweat, and tears-- from her body in a basin filled with the cold river water and a sliver of lye soap that cracked in half before she could get to her back, wincing all the while. She supposed, as she pulled one of her mother's nightgowns over her aching body, that, when she snuck out in the morning before anyone could wake to replace the water, she could pick some ginseng; a bribe for her mother, an apology for her abrupt return.

But, just as soon as she decided to be unseen in the night, Dagmar felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

"Dagmar?" Elijah was rubbing his eye with one hand when she whipped around and saw him. "Is that you?"

"...Yes."

In the low light, from a few feet away, she could see her little brother squint. "What happened to your face?"

Swallowing, Dagmar flashed a watery smile and crossed the distance between them. "Nothing has happened to me, sweet boy." She crouched, slightly, before him, but did nothing to push the hair from her face. "It's just a trick of the light."

If Elijah doubted her, she couldn't tell.

"Come. Off to sleep with you."

Not leaving him any room to speak, Dagmar took his hand and led him back to the back end of the house where the children slept. Niklaus was fast asleep, thumb in his mouth, and the baby stirred slightly in his basket as they passed, but she made sure to be quiet as she climbed into bed beside the ten-year-old and, wrapping her arms around him, settled under the furs that blanketed them.

"Have you come home?" Elijah asked, still whispering. She watched his eyes flutter so she didn't have to think about Finn's empty bed.

"For a time," She said, "but not for long."

"Oh..."

Dagmar squeezed him a little. "Do not fret. You can come to visit this time. I swear it."

Elijah did not say anything.

"Can you tell me a story?" He asked a few minutes later. "The one about the snake?"

"The World Serpent, Jörmungandr." Dagmar corrected him quietly in their mother tongue.

Elijah nodded and yawned so hard that his little body trembled with it, sleepily (and incorrectly) repeating the words back to her.

Dagmar frowned at that but quietly began to tell him the tale.

"The great sea is held in place by Jörmungandr, the serpent whose giant body encircles it, and who keeps his tail in his mouth to complete the circle and stop the waves from breaking loose." She whispered, running her fingers through his hair. "But one day, the god Thor, son of Earth, was fishing in the sea for the serpent, using a bull's head for bait. Jörmungandr reared up and the waves pummeled the shore as he twisted and writhed in fury."

The tears that she had restrained all the night thus far began to fall, dripping steadily off the curve of her nose.

She sniffed. "They were well matched, serpent and god, in that furious fight. The seas boiled around them, but then the hook became dislodged, and the serpent slithered free and sank again, so quickly, beneath the waves. And soon, the sea was calm once more... as if nothing had disturbed it."

Dagmar wasn't sure at what point during her story that he had fallen asleep, but she was grateful for it.

Quietly, so as not to wake anyone, she silently wept until she slept, too.

And when she dreamt, she dreamt of crows in cold forests and the rush of spilled blood underneath her fingers.

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GRACE'S VIKING FUNERAL:

word count - 2912

history time with wp user punisher: viking women, reportedly, had many more rights than depicted here. for the sake of not having to explain why two of them have biblical names and why they speak with english accents, I had it that they came over with christian saxons (aka the pre-British British people that the vikings interacted with at this time.) saxon women did not have any rights and, historically, adding their religion to viking culture also stripped viking women of their rights, which is what I'm implying to have had here. also, the baby is kol, obv, but the vikings didn't name their children for a bit after the birth bc of a high infant mortality rate.

I tried really hard not to use as much modern language when writing this but a girl can only do so much.

little elijah??? little klaus sucking his thumb??? finn and dagmar's relationship??? god. this story will kill me.

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you

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