(no subject)

[goldtoes]

They came quietly, not like thieves in the night but presented in different ways - traders, refugees from a nearby village that had been beset by a rockslide, relatives. They came in broad daylight, in smiles and generosity, in gifts of grain and mead.

Åse, the traitor, was the first.

It was never about swiftness, anyway, it was about fear, about a message - the one staked out in the kitchen poisoned only one glass, and within twelve hours Åse was dead, in the bed she shared with her wife - Revna, Kyr's mother, Halvard, his father, and Svanur. The bedding was soaked down to the mattress in blood - it ran from her mouth, her nose, her eyes. There was nothing to do but to watch. To stroke Åse's hair as she became delirious, tired, confused, to watch her gurgle and drown in her own crimson, to clean her face afterward to offer her at least some kind of dignity in her hell.

-

"Take the child! Go! Now!"

There was no time to repurpose ships. They handed babies head over head, children, too, but no alpha would go without their omega - they boarded in couples, glancing over shoulders and into the sky; shouting from behind the wall, the sound of fire and the blanket of black smoke.

Halvard hurried Svanur down the hall, brisk, and nearly shoved him into the corridor that ran the length of the granary, opened into the edge of the sea where the people had gathered. Kyrnar was thirteen and protesting, reaching for his father, slung over Svanur's shoulder in one arm, and as he extended delicate hands, Halvard pressed his staff into his palm.

"Go. I trust you."

Svanur nodded once, turned, and fled.

The captain went down with the ship. The royals went down with the city.

-

Revna waited for him, reached for him and took her husband's jaw in both hands, pressing their foreheads together.

"Is he -"

"Gone. Yes."

She nodded, once, curt; the flames were encroaching on them now. The palace doors had fallen, and they came upon the throne room, with torch and sword and arrow; she reached for his hand, grasping it in her own, and both heads turned to the door, rattling in its hinges. The wood began to splinter. She squeezed his hand tighter.

Straightening her shoulders, lifting her chin, and squaring her jaw, the warrior Hadvar had fallen so deeply for in the first place had never gone anywhere, not even after all this time.

"Let them come."