Hi! So I have a short chapter for you today. I'm sorry about that! It's been a crazy couple of weeks for me (I've had a lot of university work) so it was a struggle to find time to write and edit. I still feel like this is a bit rusty but oh well! But I hope you are all doing well. Thank you again for all of the reviews, follows, and favorites. It is so great to know that people are enjoying it. Thank you again! I only own Dagny.

Ivar hated water. He was afraid of it, in truth, though he would never admit that. Worse than the dark water beneath his paltry raft was Dagny standing on the shore of the pond, helping Hvitserk pull him in. He'd asked her to come, true, but part of him had wanted her to find an excuse not to be there. That was what a jealous person would do.

The raft hit the shoreline roughly and Dagny reached for him before thinking better of it. A thick braid tumbled over her shoulder, dark against the blue of her dress. It was a nice dress, maybe one of the nicest she owned, and she'd worn it to check his sprained wrist. It didn't even hurt. He was poor at making excuses.

Ivar reached for Hvitserk instead and Dagny stepped back. Not minutes later, Ubbe was there, picking Ivar up and carrying him into the cabin. Though Margrethe wouldn't be there for some time, Ubbe still made Ivar sit on the bed and positioned him as if Dagny was the one to impress.

She stood back, talking to Hvitserk quietly, the wooden floor creaking beneath their feet. He looked at her as if he'd eat her, given the chance. Sigurd poked his head between them and said something that made Dagny blush. Ivar felt his hand ball into a fist. Finally, Ubbe turned and gestured to Dagny. They exchanged a look, which was odd to Ivar.

"He should be mostly healed so it won't take me long," Dagny said. "You can go ahead and fetch Margrethe." Hvitserk nodded once, jealousy wrought clear across his features. Ivar smirked.

"Your wrist is fine," Dagny said, when the door to the meager cabin closed. Ivar supposed this would be a fine place to Dagny, larger than anything she'd ever known. "I looked at it yesterday."

"I know," he replied, voice low. He looked at the floor and then Dagny was on her knees before him. He gave her his wrist anyway. "If you know I am fine, then why bother?"

"If you are fine, why call a healer?" she retorted. He rolled his eyes. Ivar had wanted her to answer that she liked touching him because it was obvious that she did. She was always resting her hand on his legs and his shoulders.

"You are foolish," he said. She shrugged, as she never seemed affected by much of anything that he said.

"I am indeed." Her deft fingers untied his brace and slid it off. "Are you in pain?" she asked, running her hand along his forearm and down over his wrist.

"I am always in pain." She paused and just looked at him. Dagny had dark eyes, clever eyes that always appeared to be deciphering the situation. She brought his hand closer, so that his knuckles were brushing the skin of her chest, and he let her.

"You're nervous." He was. His heart was pounding and he felt vaguely sick and Dagny was no help at all with her black hair and her pale lips and her skin like moonlight.

"I am not," he declared.

"You look pale and your eyes are wide and I can feel your hand shaking." He pulled away from her, his skin now strangely cold.

"Well, you are jealous."

"I am not."

"You are flushed and stiff and you are pretending to be irritated with me when we both know that you enjoy doting." Dagny bit her lower lip and just shook her head. She was jealous. She could deny it if she wished but he knew she must be. Sigurd had laughed when Ivar insinuated that Dagny might care for him, as if Dagny were some princess on a pedestal or either a girl who had gone mad. It had infuriated him, the way so much of what Sigurd said usually did, but he was sure of this. There was no reason to be angry when he knew it to be true. "Do you know much about Margrethe?" he finally asked.

"Not as much as your brothers, I'm sure," she responded, through her teeth. He laughed and a smile tugged at her lips. Dagny smiled often and Ivar lied to himself and said he hated it. But this smile he did not hate. "She's nice."

"She's nice? That is all you have to say?" Truly, that would be a comfort if Ivar didn't feel like Dagny was saying it simply for that reason. He knew what Margrethe's reaction had likely been; the same as everyone else's. Perhaps, it had been worse.

"Well, I do not know how well she kisses or anything that might be of interest to you."

He sighed and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "Frankly, nothing about her is of any interest to me."

"Truly? Nothing?" Ivar turned back toward Dagny, who wore a thinly veiled expression of disbelief. Every one of the slaves must be in some form of competition with Margrethe and they must be losing.

"Nothing," he answered. Her eyes brightened. "But you interest me." Dagny froze, her lithe hand perilously close to resting on his legs. He wanted to tell her to leave, get away from him, but worse was that he also wanted her to touch him.

"Surely not," she muttered. Ivar wanted to scoff at her perfectly placed modesty but it seemed genuine.

"Would you be nervous?" he asked. "Were you in my place, would you be nervous?"

"Yes." Dagny cocked her head to the side, like the question had the most obvious answer. Ivar doubted that Ubbe or Hvitserk or even Sigurd had ever been anxious about women. He deplored the fact that he was. "But I think you have nothing to worry about. Margrethe knows what to do and you are very clever. You'll learn quickly." He looked to her and knew by her reaction that fear was plain on his face. It was the worst feeling, the most useless emotion he had. And for something as ridiculous as pleasing a woman. "I know it is difficult, Ivar, because I would be the same, but you should try to be calm."

"It is impossible." Ivar was a storm barely contained in a human body and he would never be calm. "Help me get ready."

"Of course," she replied. Dagny's was a face of sharp angles and lines. Her cheeks and jaw could likely hone blades. Her eyes were just as acute. But all the while she managed to be soft. It was there in the set of her mouth and her small nose and the color on her cheeks.

She untied his other brace and he let his fingers graze her wrist. She cut the leather binding his legs. She leaned into him and undid his vest and the tie of his tunic and as with everything, she did it magnificently slowly. Ivar had been in pain all of his life but this was something excruciating that he wasn't accustomed to.

"Margrethe will do the rest," Dagny muttered, her voice an uncharacteristic rasp. She cut her eyes at him and he knew he'd been staring at her, that he'd been watching every move she made.

"I don't want her to," he replied. Ivar put his hand to her cheek and threaded his fingers into her hair. It came partially free of its braid. Dagny only held his gaze with her spell-like eyes and didn't shudder or pull away or give any hint of anxiety.

"Neither do I." She gave him a grin that barely disguised desire. It seemed to devour him from the inside out.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked because she was staring at him and he was sure her answer was one he wanted to hear. Her eyes dropped to his mouth and his hand tightened in her hair.

"You would laugh," she muttered. A stupid pain in his chest made it hard to breathe.

"No," he replied. "I would not." Ivar leaned forward, so close that if Dagny tilted her head upwards, they would be kissing. She lifted her eyes to his and to her credit, she did not shake. It was more than he could say for himself. "Are you jealous, Dagny?" he murmured.

She tipped her chin up and whispered into his mouth, "Yes."

Dagny was away from him and standing before he could crush her lips with his own or drag his teeth down her pale, white throat. The door creaked open and his brothers rushed in, Margrethe behind them, wearing a plain homespun dress. Ivar looked to Dagny, hair hopelessly out of her braid and chest heaving. She could disguise nothing. She nodded at him, which didn't inspire the confidence he was sure she intended.

Ivar didn't notice how Sigurd and Ubbe exchanged a look or the way Hvitserk's eyes narrowed. Or perhaps, he did and he just didn't care. Let them think what they wanted, let them suspect. They hadn't believed him anyway. But they couldn't tease him anymore. They couldn't laugh. Dagny, with her tousled hair and pink cheeks, had proven him right.

Dagny grabbed Margrethe's wrist on her way out. They exchanged words he couldn't hear. The two of them appeared like night and day, sun and moon. Margrethe's golden radiance against Dagny's silver darkness. Yet Dagny was the one he knew to be kind and undemanding. Margrethe was unknown, aside from assumed ambition. There was nothing in this for Dagny but perhaps, there was something for Margrethe.

When Dagny left, Margrethe rubbed at her wrist and stared after her, as if she found the girl mad. He clenched his jaw. What had Dagny said? Had she begged fairness in his favor? Had she said she felt sorry for him? But he still felt the ghost of her lips and he didn't have it in him to despise her for anything.

Sigurd tugged at the neck of Ivar's tunic, as if he might reveal something hidden. "What have you been doing, brother?" he asked, sly as a snake.

"Sigurd," Ubbe warned. Sigurd rolled his eyes but backed off. Ivar knew how it looked, with Dagny's hair and his laces undone. He didn't want to correct them. Margrethe, across the room, had her thin arms crossed. She looked like a doe who'd spotted the hunter and frozen.

All at once, he turned to his brothers. Sigurd, with his malicious smirk. Ubbe, with his nervous yet confident smile. Hvitserk, whose face was a mask no doubt hiding jealousy. None of them offered him anything. Ubbe clapped him on the neck and as quickly as they had come, the brothers were gone. All of Ivar's smarmy arrogance left him in the face of being alone with this girl.

But the door to the cabin closed and that was what he was. Alone.