This jealousy will be the death of me. I can deal with the aftermath once they’re safe. Now, however, I need to focus on freeing them.
There is no strategy because I’m outnumbered. The only advantage I have is the element of surprise. So with that as my mindset, I sneak through the terrain and hope the moon stays in hiding, providing the sheath of shadow long enough to slaughter as many of these arseholes as I can.
The closer to camp I get, the angrier I become because I hear the obscenities the Saxons spew.
“Yer nothin’ special. All this fuss for the precious queen. Her cunt doesn’t sparkle.”
“Nor does it hypnotize.”
I inhale deeply, focusing on anything but disemboweling these arseholes and using their entrails to hang them from a tree.
One of them slaps Emeline, causing blood to instantly pour from her lip.
“See, Conrad? She bleeds just like us all. There is nothing special about thee.”
They high-five one another, hollering in utter glee.
“Please,” Emeline whimpers, her eyes wide.
“Please what, my Queen?” mocks a man as he curtseys.
Emeline mumbles incoherently under her breath.
The man steps closer and closer. And when within reach, Emeline spits in his face. His cheeks are covered in her bloodied spittle.
“Please shut up or just kill me now, as I would rather that fate than listen to your folly a second longer.”
Ulf’s riotous laughter reflects mine.
The men soon realize her docile and coy behavior is just a ploy to remind them that, even shackled and imprisoned, she will never cower in fear.
The man advances, sword raised, but a man in uniform steps from a tent, shaking his head. “Enough, Benjamin. She does this to bait you. She is no good to us dead.”
“Aethelbald has you trained like his well-behaved little lap dogs. What do you think he will provide once you’ve done his dirty work? Your heads on spikes, that is what.”
Aethelbald.
So it is confirmed, then.
When I think of his legacy, I realize that this day was bound to come. Poetic justice, some may say.
Things have just become even dire, knowing who my sons are.
“You will also suffer the same fate, Ulf the Bloody,” Emeline spits, turning toward him. “You just had to follow your barbaric instincts, did you not? For it is because of your impulsiveness that we find ourselves at the mercy of these rabid dogs!”
I smirk, elated to hear her spew such venom toward Ulf. But that soon turns.
“You know you will miss my head as it is attached to the hair you so longingly pulled as I lapped at the ripeness of your?—”
“You disgust me!” Emeline says, not at all humored.
“You wound me,” Ulf mocks.
“Too bad it is not fatal.”
Regardless of her words, it’s evident that Emeline’s feelings for Ulf still run strong. The urge to fuck her into submission for the world to know she is mine and mine alone overwhelms me, for I am forever Viking at heart.
“Aethelbald will restore what you destroyed,” says the man in uniform. He is someone of standing. “He is the rightful heir. Not you. You’re nothing but a woman. Good for nothing other than spreading your legs and rearing our sons.”
