#ivaredit

She sat upright before she had fully decided to move. The room remained still around her. For several moments she simply sat there, hands twisted tightly together in her lap, pulse unsteady.

Abbess Gerhild’s voice returned unbidden.

Guard your soul, Magdalena.

Brother Amandus’ quiet disappointment followed.

It is the way of the Lord, Lena.

Her stomach tightened. She knew what this was. Disobedience. Deception. Improper attachment.

Sin. 

And yet, she rose. Her fingers trembled as she adjusted her veil, fastening it more carefully than necessary. Twice she fumbled the knot. The third time she forced herself to stop shaking long enough to secure it properly.

At the doorway she paused. The corridor beyond lay dark and empty. Her hand rested briefly against the wood.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

Whether to God, or herself, she did not know.

Then she stepped into the hall.

.-.-.

Every step felt heavier than the last.

The convent seemed altered at night. Shadows stretched strangely along the stone corridors, and candlelight burned low in iron brackets, throwing uncertain shapes against the walls. 

Magdalena kept her head lowered as she crossed towards the infirmary, clutching her basket of medical supplies tighter against her chest than necessary. Clean linen rested atop folded cloths, jars of salve wrapped carefully beneath, a small flask of tincture catching faint candlelight whenever she moved.

Practical things. Innocent things. They should have made her feel less guilty.

Instead, the weight of the basket only sharpened the lie waiting in her throat.

Her heart beat too loudly. She knew this was wrong.

Abbess Gerhild’s warning still lingered like judgment at her back.

Guard your soul, Magdalena.

Yet still she walked.

At the infirmary entrance, two soldiers stood guard outside the chamber.

One looked up immediately.

“You again?”

Suspicion sharpened the words.

Magdalena clasped the basket more tightly, willing her hands not to tremble. Slowly, carefully, she shifted it just enough for the folded linens and medicine jars to show.

“Brother Amandus sent me.”

The lie came easier than it should have. The ease of it sickened her.

The older soldier frowned.

“At this hour?”

She swallowed.

“The raider’s wound,” she said softly, lowering her gaze. “The infection has worsened.” Her fingers tightened around the basket handle. “Brother Amandus fears fever spreading into the blood before transport.”

Not entirely untrue. Somehow that made it worse.

The younger guard cursed beneath his breath.

“Waste of time,” he muttered. “The pagan bastard won’t even eat.”

The older soldier glanced briefly toward the supplies in her arms, weighing inconvenience against orders.

“He needs to be breathing when he gets to Utrecht,” he muttered at last.

Then he stepped aside.

“Five minutes.”

Magdalena lowered her head.

“Thank you.”

The gratitude tasted bitter. By the time she reached the door, guilt sat so heavily inside her she thought she might be sick.

Another line crossed. And yet so easily.

She pushed the door open. The chamber beyond was dim. Then she saw the raven. It perched upon the open windowframe, dark feathers rippling faintly in the night air. Motionless. Watching her with its beady eyes. 

Magdalena stopped as a chill moved through her.

An omen, death dressed in feathers.

The raven did not startle. Did not fly. Only turned its dark head slightly. Towards him.

Ivar sat against the wall beneath the window. Or rather, had been forced there.

The breath left her lungs as something hot and helpless twisted painfully through her chest.  The chains had been shortened cruelly. His arms were pulled high enough to keep his shoulders strained, iron fixed so tightly there was scarcely room to shift. No room to rest properly. No comfort. No dignity.

The wound in his arm looked angry again, red specks spreading faintly around linen left unchanged too long.

Without speaking, she knelt beside him. Slowly, she lowered the basket next to her. 

The movement brought her close enough to notice the small things she hated herself for noticing: exhaustion shadowing beneath his eyes, the unevenness of his breathing whenever he shifted against the pull of chains, the faint roughness of stubble where days had passed without care. Bruises darkened one side of his face. His lip had split further from being struck more than once. He looked thinner and paler. But when he lifted his head, those sharp blue eyes found her instantly.

Awake. Present. Still him, beaten but unbroken. 

“Either I am closer to death than I thought,” he said quietly, gaze fixed on her, “or you decided rules no longer suited you.” 

“You should not joke.”

The words came too quietly and too fragile.

His gaze moved over her face and stayed there.

“You came.” 

There was no underlying mockery. 

“You will be sent to Utrecht in the morning.”

The words hurt to say. His expression did not change. Only a slight tilt of his head followed with a huff. Magdalena reached for the basket quickly. She busied herself with the familiar motions before grief could catch hold. Water. Clean cloth. Honey mixed with crushed garlic. Fresh linen folded carefully around inflamed flesh. The work gave her hands purpose. It was easier to tend the wound than to think of where he would be tomorrow.

“So,” he said lightly, “death finally grows impatient.”

She hated that he could say it with such ease. Hated that he sat there bleeding and bruised and still sounded steadier than she felt.

“You should not speak of it so.”

“And how should I speak of my inevitable ending then?”

A faint curve touched his split mouth.

“With fear? Dread?” His brow lifted faintly. “Terror?” The curve sharpened just enough to resemble something closer to mockery.

“I am Viking.” The word carried quiet pride, stubborn and immovable. “We do not greet death by wringing our hands and begging heaven for mercy.”

His gaze flicked briefly toward the small cross resting near her throat.

“That is more a Christian habit, is it not?”

He shifted slightly, pain flashing briefly across his face before settling once more beneath practiced indifference.

“If your God wishes to have me, he may fight Odin for me.” Then, drier: “Though I suspect your priests would object.”

She bit her lip. Silence stretched. Then she quietly whispered: “I shall pray for your soul.”

He huffed softly, and there it returned, the mockery. 

“Do not waste prayers on me, Sancta Maria.” His gaze held hers a moment too long. “You may need them yourself.”

Something tightened painfully in her throat.

He went oddly still, closing his eyes for a moment before staring back up to her. He lifted his chin slightly: “Take this.”

She looked down at the necklace resting beneath his collarbone.

“Keep it near your heart,” he said. A faint bitterness touched his expression. “Who knows.” He shifted as far as the chains allowed, metal scraping softly against stone. “Perhaps Odin takes pity on disobedient little nuns.”

The corner of his mouth moved faintly.

Despite herself, warmth rose into Magdalena’s face. To reach the fastening she had no choice but to lean in close.

Close enough for the cold room to recede around them. The sharper scents met her first: iron from dried blood, damp stone, old sweat clinging stubbornly to skin after too many days in chains. The harshness of neglect.

Yet beneath it lingered something else.

Him.

Warm skin cooled by the draft creeping through the chamber, the faint salt of him, something difficult to name but unmistakably familiar now in a way that startled her. Cleaner once, perhaps. Sharper. Untamed in a manner the convent had never managed to strip away, even chained to a wall and beaten half-senseless.

Her pulse stumbled as her knuckles brushed the warmth of his throat by accident.

His breath shifted. Not sharply. Just enough that she noticed.

Magdalena swallowed. The fastening sat awkwardly at the back of his neck, half-hidden beneath tangled hair. Her fingers fumbled once before she was able to let the necklace slip into her palm, the metal still faintly warm from where it had rested against his skin. For a moment she simply held it there, fingers curling around the weight of it, as though uncertain what exactly she had been entrusted with.

She could feel the warmth of him despite the cold that clung to the room, the rise and fall of his breathing, shallower now, yet steadier than her own.

Then, quietly, she drew a breath and braced herself to lean back.

The movement never quite finished. Because he moved too. Not much, only as far as the chains allowed him. Iron pulled taut with a low sound against stone as he leaned forward, slow enough that she could have pulled away at once. 

She should step back. She should remember herself.

Instead, she looked at him. 

A mistake. His face was too near. Close enough to see the pale scar near his cheekbone. The bruise darkening beneath one eye. The exhaustion he carried so carefully. His gaze held hers; steady, unreadable, impossibly blue even in the dimness.

For one dangerous, impossible moment, Magdalena forgot the chains. Forgot the convent. Forgot the prayers she had whispered against thoughts exactly like this.

There was only the unbearable awareness of how near he was. The warmth of his breath. The quiet gravity of his attention. And the terrible, trembling thought that he might- 

-No.

Magdalena stepped back too quickly. The motion startled even herself. Her shoulder brushed the cold stone as the distance suddenly widened between them. Her heart beat hard enough to hurt, wild against her ribs beneath her habit.

She lowered her gaze immediately.

“Forgive me,” she whispered before she even knew to whom the words were meant for. To God. To herself. Perhaps to him. Because what frightened her most was not the suddenness of his movement. Not how close he had come.

But the dreadful, aching realization that some frightened part of her had not wanted to move away at all.

For once, Ivar did not mock her. His gaze flicked briefly to her mouth. Gone almost before she could be certain she had imagined it.

The chains rattled between them.

She tucked the necklace carefully beneath her veil, letting it settle against her chest, dangerously near the small wooden cross she had worn for so many years. The irony of it pressed upon her almost as sharply as the metal itself. Pagan silver rested now beside Christian wood, close enough to touch whenever she moved, as though her heart had become incapable of choosing between faith and feeling.

Outside, one of the soldiers shifted impatiently. She heard the faint scrape of leather against stone, followed by the muffled sound of a voice lowered in irritation beyond the door.

Too long. She had stayed too long already.

Her throat tightened painfully. She had not said half of what she wished to say. Yet standing here now, with the cold chamber pressing around them and the knowledge of morning hanging between them like judgment, Magdalena no longer knew what words remained possible.

“I d-don’t…”

The words faltered uselessly. Goodbye lodged somewhere behind her ribs, too heavy to survive being spoken aloud.

Across from her, Ivar watched quietly. Perhaps he saw too clearly what she could not bring herself to say. Because for once, mercifully, he spared her.

“Go,” he said instead, the familiar edge of mockery softened. “Before your holy sisters decide I’ve corrupted you entirely.”

The attempt at humor landed crookedly now, worn thin around the edges. It should have made leaving easier.

Instead, it hurt.

Magdalena nodded too quickly, though her feet refused to move at first. Leaving suddenly felt unbearable in a way she had not prepared herself for. To walk away felt too final. Too much like surrendering him to something neither prayer nor pleading could undo.

Still, she turned. But at the door, she stopped. Some quiet, desperate part of her refused to leave him like this.

His gaze found hers immediately. As though he had known she would look back.

For one dangerous moment, Magdalena thought that perhaps he might ask her to stay. Or say something that would make leaving easier.

He did neither.

Instead, his mouth shifted faintly despite the split lip.

“Try not to get yourself killed, Sancta Maria.”

His voice had softened enough to make her chest ache. Something tightened painfully beneath her ribs. Suddenly, fiercely, she wanted to cross the room again. To kneel beside him. To touch his face despite the bruises. To say something, anything, that might matter if this truly was the last time.

But outside the soldiers shifted again, one muttering something impatient beneath his breath.

Time had run out. So Magdalena nodded once. Then she left.

The tears did not come immediately. Not while she forced herself to walk down the corridor, nor while candlelight stretched long and wavering across cold stone. Only when the door of the infirmary disappeared fully behind her did something inside finally begin to splinter.

The necklace shifted softly beneath her veil when she breathed. Still faintly warm from where it had rested against his skin.

Her hand rose instinctively, trembling fingers pressing hard against the hidden weight near her heart. And with terrible certainty Magdalena knew: she had just walked away from the last time she would ever see him alive.

.-.-.

A/N: Ok I hope this emotionally wrecked you all. I will accept death threats in my inbox. 

Xoxoxo Nukyster

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