Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Rolf slammed the mug down again, this time right in front of me. I jumped, my heart trying to escape my throat, and Rolf leaned in, blocking my view of Erik. His eyes were bloodshot and mad.
“I noticed the way you keep batting your eyes at Erik here,” he snarled, his breath more rank than the beer. I gulped, and my fingers gripped the edge of the bench to steady myself. “You think I haven’t noticed? You think I haven’t noticed all this time?”
I fought for words to say, but none came. I smiled awkwardly. “Rolf, please. You’re being silly. I-”
“I am not being silly!” he roared. It was loud enough that everyone in the room stopped eating and looked over at him. I felt my cheeks grow hot with their scrutiny. “Everyone can see you’re in love with the spineless bastard!”
“Rolf,” Erik reasoned, putting his hand up. “Let’s talk-”
“Talk?” Rolf laughed. The sound sent chills down my back. “What is the point in talking when the woman who is supposed to belong to me keeps looking at you like she belongs to you?”
“Cherine is all yours,” Erik said quickly, avoiding his eyes. I pretended not to be hurt by that, even though I knew Erik was saying it to protect both of us.
“You are damn right she is mine,” Rolf bellowed. He turned his vicious expression back to me, and I shrank in my seat. “Do you think you’d want Erik if he looked like me? If he had a nice long scar to make him less pretty?”
Before I could respond, Rolf quickly drew his dagger out of its sheath and slashed the blade down Erik’s face, slicing his flesh open from forehead to chin. Erik screamed, immediately covering his eye as the gash spilled blood through his fingers.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been screaming as well until a hard whack to my face made me shut up and fall backward out of my chair. I hit the ground and saw blinking black dots and darkness closing in.
“Oh no, you don’t get to sleep through this,” Rolf’s sinister voice came through, and I found myself being yanked up by my hair. I screamed from the pain, and Rolf delivered another blow, this time, his palm smashing into my left cheekbone.
Everything was black, a swirling blur of nausea and agony. I could hear the chatter of the Vikings, but I couldn’t hear Erik. My poor Erik. And I was now being dragged by Rolf across the dining room floor, away from him.
Suddenly, Rolf let go, and I fell to the floor in a heap. There was the sound of a table being flipped over, a scuffle, seething grunts. I tried to sit up and see past the pressure behind my eyes.
Erik had tackled Rolf and was wrestling him to the ground. He was doing a good job, too, despite the fresh blood that poured from the gash in his face. Both men were fit and muscular, built to be fine machines and brutal killers. But as hard as Erik slammed Rolf’s head into the stone floor and punched him with swift uppercuts to the face, there was no denying who’d win. Erik wasn’t Erik the Axe anymore, but Rolf was Rolf the Walker. Rolf the Best. Rolf the Barbarian.
After Erik strained to keep him down, his taught muscles bulging from the effort, Rolf head-butted him, and Erik flew backward into the bench.
“You never could beat me,” Rolf sneered, spitting a bleeding tooth from between his puffy lips. “Even when you were at your best.”
Rolf’s lopsided smile was melancholy, and that was all the warning Erik needed. He tried to get to his feet, but Rolf was faster. He grabbed his dagger off the table and speared Erik through the shoulder, pinning him to the wooden bench behind.
I felt all hope deflate, sinking softly in my stomach. Erik looked up at me, choking for words as the silver handle stuck out from his shoulder. Half his face was covered in blood; I couldn’t tell if he even had his eye anymore. The other half was crumbling in fright, and I knew it wasn’t for him. It wasn’t that he might die.
He was crumbling for me, for he knew what was going to happen next.
I held onto his gaze for as long as I could until I was ripped to my feet again.
“You’re coming over here,” Rolf said, his fingers digging into the tender flesh under my arm. He dragged me to the opposite end of the hall, where many of the Vikings were standing, some of them excited by the violence.
I looked for the face I needed to see: Knut, or maybe even Arvid. Someone who would help Erik and come to my aid. But there was no one like that. These were men who followed Rolf’s every command, even if they didn’t agree with them, and I was nothing to them. Even if I had become a duchess, a feat I was sure I wouldn’t accomplish because I knew I wouldn’t live to see tomorrow, Rolf would have held all the power. I would have had nothing.