The ship cuts through dark water, oars biting waves in perfect rhythm. I stand at the rail, watching Ravnfjord disappear into smoke and distance.
My homeland. My family. Everything I've known—swallowed by his treachery.
I feel his eyes on me. Always watching, measuring. The weight of his gaze presses against my shoulders, my spine. I refuse to turn. Refuse to show him how much I'm shaking—from rage or cold or the devastating realization that I gave myself to a man who orchestrated everything.
"Jarl." One of his warriors approaches. "What should we do with the prize once we—"
The crack of leather on flesh cuts him off.
I spin, watching Erik lower a whip with terrifying calm. The warrior crumples to his knees, red blooming across his back.
"She is not a prize," Erik's voice is quiet, deadly. "She is under my protection. The next man who forgets that will wish he'd only earned a whipping."
His eyes sweep the deck. Every warrior drops their gaze.
"Get him below," Erik commands. "Have the healer see to him."
Two men drag their companion away.
I stare at Erik, struggling to reconcile the swift discipline with everything else. The manipulation. The lies.
He meets my eyes, and something in his expression makes my breath catch.
Something almost like plea.
I turn away, gripping the rail.
The day drags on. Each mile takes me further from everything I know.
But my body remembers his hands. I hate him for it.
Night falls cold and merciless. Wind bites through my torn wedding dress—white silk that was supposed to symbolize new beginnings. Now it's just another cage.
I hear footsteps behind me. Know without looking who approaches.
"You need to eat." Erik's voice is carefully neutral. Almost gentle.
I don't turn. "I need nothing from you."
"Astrid—"
"Don't." The word cracks like a whip. "Don't say my name like that. Like it means something."
Silence. Then: "They need to understand that you're not a prize. You're under my protection. And that means feeding you properly."
He moves into view, holding a wooden bowl. Steam rises, and my stomach clenches. I haven't eaten since dawn.
"Please," Erik says quietly. "Eat."
The gentleness messes with my head. I grab the bowl and hurl it overboard.
"There. I've eaten it. Satisfied?"
His jaw tightens, but he only nods. Then he removes his fur cloak and drapes it across my shoulders.
I shrug it off immediately, letting it fall to the deck. "Don't pretend to care about my welfare now."
"I'm not pretending."
"Everything about you is pretense!" My voice rises despite my attempts to stay controlled. "Every touch, every word, every moment—calculated. Strategic. Part of your grand plan to claim the prophesied seer."
He picks up the cloak, studies it like it holds answers. "Keep it. The night will get colder."
"I'd rather freeze."
"You say that now." He drapes it over a barrel within reach. "But hypothermia is less romantic than you think."
The dry humor catches me off guard.
"Besides," he continues, moving toward the helm, "Seasick already? And here I thought Ragnar's daughter had a stronger stomach."
The casual provocation ignites something in my chest. "My stomach is fine. It's your company that nauseates me."
His grin flashes—genuine, almost boyish. "There she is. I was beginning to think you'd lost your fire."
"You'd prefer me broken and compliant?"
"I'd prefer you real." He pauses, hand on the helm. "Even when that reality includes hating me."
The words land strangely. I don't know what game he's playing.
He returns to the helm, and I'm left alone with my rage and the traitorous way my body responds to him.
Hours pass. The temperature drops. My dress is useless against the wind, and I'm shaking—from cold and nerves and hunger. My skin goes pale.
I eye the fur cloak. Tell myself I can endure.
But when the shaking becomes violent, I finally grab it. The fur is still warm, and gods help me, it smells like him—leather and steel and that wild northern scent that haunted my dreams.
I wrap it tight and hate myself for the relief.
The warmth seeps in slowly. My shaking eases. But with the cold's retreat comes exhaustion—bone-deep and overwhelming. The day crashes over me: Bjorn's hands on my throat, the kidnapping, the revelation that Erik is the Bloodwolf.
That the man who held me is also the monster everyone fears.
My vision blurs. The deck tilts wrong, and it's not the ship's movement—it's something else, something familiar and terrible.
My gift awakens like lightning splitting stone.
The vision slams into me with crushing force:
Blood. So much blood. Erik standing over a body—golden hair matted with red, blue eyes staring at nothing. Bjorn. Dead. Erik's hands dripping crimson, his face contorted with rage so pure it's almost beautiful. Almost terrible.
Then it shifts—fractures into something else:
Erik kneeling before me in a great hall I don't recognize. Warriors surrounding us, weapons drawn. His own blade pressed to his throat, offered up like sacrifice. His mouth moving around words I can't hear, eyes desperate with something that looks like love and loss and—
The vision releases me violently. I gasp, stumbling against the rail, the world spinning back into focus.
Strong hands catch my arms before I fall.
"Astrid." Erik's voice cuts through my disorientation. "What did you see?"
I look up at him, still half-lost in prophecy, seeing both the man before me and the blood-soaked warrior from my vision. The gentle touch and the violence. The tenderness and the rage.
"What did you see?" His urgency frightens me more than the vision itself. His hands tighten on my arms—not cruel, but firm. Grounding. "Tell me."
I search his face in the moonlight, looking for answers to questions I don't know how to ask. His storm-gray eyes hold mine, and in them I see fear. Actual fear.
The Bloodwolf is afraid of what I've seen.
"Death," I whisper finally. "I saw death."
His throat works. "Whose?"
But I can't answer. Can't tell him about Bjorn's body or the blade at his own throat or the desperation in his future eyes. Can't give him prophecy when I don't understand it myself.
"I don't know," I lie, pulling away from his grip. "The visions are never clear."
He studies me like he's reading truth beneath the lie, and I wonder if he can see through me the way I'm starting to see through him—past the reputation to whatever's underneath.
"You should rest," he says finally, voice rough. "We have another day's journey."
"Rest?" My laugh is bitter. "On a ship full of men who just watched their jarl whip someone for calling me a prize? While sailing toward a land where I'm a captive?"
"You're not a captive."
"Then turn the ship around."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with everything unsaid.
"That's what I thought," I say softly.
He reaches toward me, then stops himself. His hand falls back to his side, and something in the gesture looks almost like defeat.
"The cloak suits you," he says instead. "Keep it. Please."
Then he walks away, back to the helm, leaving me wrapped in his fur and his scent and the terrible knowledge that my visions are trying to tell me something I'm not ready to understand.
I pull the cloak tighter and watch the stars wheel overhead, wondering which future I saw—the one that's coming, or the one I have the power to change.
And wondering which terrifies me more.