Hey y'all! Sorry for the lack of update. I wanted this to be a super long chapter but I also wanted to put something up before I go to the beach for a week so that's how this happened. I figured something is better than nothing! And guess what? The night is finally over, lol. I hope you're all doing great. Thank you so much for all of your kind words and favorites and follows. It means so much to me! Thanks again and as usual, I only own Dagny.
Ivar had come to the conclusion that dancing was a ridiculous way for anyone to spend their time. It was all pretense and protocol, form and figure, unnecessary touching combined with exhaustion. He figured all of this because, for some reason he pretended not to know, he had been watching Dagny dance all evening.
And even though it was a pointless activity with no real benefit to Ivar's knowledge, he was still envious of those who could do it.
Dagny was now dancing with Ubbe, a comfortable familiarity between them that Ivar didn't think had been there for her with either Hvitserk or Sigurd. She had not once spun away, that white gown flaring out around her feet, her hands in the air. Ivar was not even completely sure that she understood the dance. But he couldn't know. He had never paid attention to dancing before this night.
Even at this distance, he could see that Ubbe and Dagny were talking animatedly. Their hands were joined and their dance became just swaying so that they could more easily speak to each other. This, strangely, did not bother Ivar at all. Sigurd had seemed to slide a knife between his ribs and leave it there. Hvitserk was a numbness that came from knowing nothing can be changed. But Ubbe was Ivar's truest brother and he wondered, if in a way, Ubbe was Dagny's truest ally.
When they finally broke apart, after what seemed like years had passed, Ubbe clasped Dagny's forearm. It was a strange gesture for a prince to make to a slave, full of respect and understanding.
Moments later, Dagny slid into the seat beside Ivar. It was an exercise of self-control not to turn, not to be inexplicably enraged. Most of the night, she had been kissing Hvitserk. Perhaps an hour ago, Ivar had stopped tallying their amount. And now she sat down beside him, blood cracked across her face and smiling wide, like she thought he might be glad to see her.
Perhaps, he was glad to see her, even if he was sure that Dagny was poison made flesh.
"What are you doing here, Dagny?" he asked. She apparently did not take offense at his cold tone because she made no move to leave.
"Frankly," she replied, "I don't know." She squinted for a moment and tilted her head to the side, pondering her answer. "Actually, that is not true. I do know."
Ivar wryly smiled. "How much have you had to drink?"
She sighed, starting to drum her fingers against the table top. "Not enough."
"Are my brothers such awful dancers?" Ivar thought it would make her laugh but Dagny's smile quickly faltered and her fingers kept pounding against the table. It was anxiety, fear, perhaps even dread. "You are nervous about something."
She nodded, making herself link her hands together. "I am." She gestured across the hall to Hvitserk, who was grinning and laughing with Sigurd. Ivar conceded that there was something to Hvitserk that most people liked, something he didn't possess. He was handsome, pale and long-haired and sturdy, a warrior from a saga. A trickster tempered by kindness. Ivar didn't care whether he was liked. That did not matter, he told himself. It did not matter at all. But when he saw Hvitserk, not noble like Ubbe or sensitive like Sigurd or brutal like himself, he wondered what it would be like. Likability was Hvitserk's defining trait. He was never starting arguments nor was he finishing them. He was quiet, like Dagny. And even when he did something wrong, no one ever turned against him. Ivar, though mean and callous and selfish beyond measure, could see why Dagny cared for Hvitserk. He wished he couldn't.
"Why?" Ivar bit out. "Don't you want him?" Blood bubbled beneath his skin, roiling and hot like the sea before a storm. Tell me you don't, it seemed to say. And below that, a smaller but more selfish voice whispered, Please.
She turned, a völva of the stories, a Valkyrie, a maiden of death. "I do." Dagny was at least honest, even if she had been drinking ceremonial wine. "But I am so nervous that I think I will be sick."
Ivar wanted to tell her it was the drink making her head swim but she wore the same expression he had only days ago; a sort of wide-eyed childish look. If it were anyone else, he would have laughed. "You want me to tell you it is nothing."
"No, I want you to tell me what it is like." This felt like a trick, as if Margrethe had revealed to her all details of that evening and Dagny wanted to rend a confession from him. But Dagny, though clever, was never malicious.
"It will be different for you than it was for me. Hvitserk looks like a wolf that has missed many meals. He has coveted you for a long time." He paused. "You'll enjoy it."
"Margrethe is a fool," she murmured, voice so low that Ivar wondered if she had even spoken. Her fingers began drumming against the table again.
"On that, we can agree," he said and Dagny smiled at him.
"I have known this was coming for years and I have been prepared for it. But now the time is here, I don't think I can do it." She rested her head in her hands, a strangely informal movement, and it scared him because it belied trust. She hadn't come to talk to him to find out the truth of what happened with Margrethe or even because he could offer her advice, she'd come because she liked him. "I'm afraid I don't have the nerve."
Ivar sighed. "You are drunk, Dagny." She looked over at him, chin still resting in her hands, and her expression made him want to laugh. It was as if she had never heard the word. "Hvitserk won't do anything this night because of that. He likes you too much."
Part of him wanted to scare her and say Hvitserk would take what he wanted no matter her protestations but it wouldn't be true. Hvitserk could be a rake but he had bided his time, waiting for Dagny. Why do that if she was not special to him? And Dagny was spellbound by him. Ivar found that he couldn't lie to her.
She let out a breath and her shoulders slumped. "You're relieved?" Ivar asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in a smirk.
"I shouldn't be but I am." Dagny rubbed her eyes.
Ivar, sensing that neither one of them cared to talk about Hvitserk any longer, asked a question he was sure he knew the answer to. "What did Sigurd want with you?"
Dagny wryly smiled and gave him a look. "What do you think? He warned me away from you."
Ivar shrugged. "I thought, perhaps, he wanted to play music for you." Dagny's face lit up and she laughed. It was the most ridiculous and yet most lovely sound he'd ever heard. Something that might cause longships to run aground. And all for a joke that Ivar didn't find particularly funny.
"What?" he said when he noticed she was still staring at him. Her hazel eyes turned dreamy and a dull ache seemed to pound through his chest. "Are you considering taking his advice?"
"I like it when you smile," she replied. He hadn't even realized he was smiling. "And I will never take his advice."
Ivar simply looked at her, that ache becoming something he dreaded would turn into a never-ending throb. He wanted to know why she was that foolish, why she appeared to care for him at all, why she ignored everything else other people said. A large part of Ivar feared that it was all a front and Dagny was yet another scared girl, afraid of what he might do if she rejected him. But another part of him knew that no one would court someone they were scared of this efficiently. Dagny seemed fearful of nothing at all.
But what did it matter? He could do nothing for her anyway.
"What are you thinking about?" Dagny questioned. She was, yet again, propping her chin on her hand, staring at him. Ivar could see a flash of red along her collarbone inside her dress. His nails dug into his palms hard enough to almost draw blood. He was sick of drowning, of burning alive, of seemingly suffocating beneath Dagny's dexterous hands and waist-length black hair and warm gaze.
"I wish I could dance," he confessed before he could think better of it. Dagny raised her eyebrows.
"Why?" she asked, as if he'd said he wished he were a seer. Still, her whole expression changed into some mix of sympathy and caring.
"Because it is normal." Because I want to dance with you.
Dagny smiled. "But you aren't normal."
"Yes, I am," he replied petulantly.
"No, you're not. You're different." Her tone said that wasn't a bad thing to be but Ivar knew it was. His whole life he understood that it was bad to be as he was. "If you were normal, you wouldn't be who you are."
"And who I am is something to be envied?" Dagny shrugged and pushed hair out of her face.
"I think so." Ivar leaned close to her, close enough to kiss her, and even though he knew nothing may come of it, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to bruise her lips beneath his own, to touch her pale skin, to thread his fingers through her hair. "You are a son of Ragnar," she declared, as if that was all there was to it.
"Ah," Ivar said, "it is not me or my brothers who you are so fond of. It is our father." Ivar expected her to blush and be embarrassed but Dagny only grinned.
"In his day, of course." She said it jokingly but Ivar thought it was rather clear that Dagny did adore Ragnar, perhaps more so than his own sons did. This wasn't truly strange to Ivar, not when many things he had heard painted Ragnar as fair and charming. His father was the sort of magnetic hero people enjoyed hearing about.
"I'll take you to meet him and he can tell you the stories himself." Ivar wasn't sure why he said it, just that it seemed like the thing to do, and by Dagny's reaction, it certainly was.
Dagny was suddenly sober, her eyes the color of some forest that caused men to wander off the path and vanish. "You would do that?" It occurred to Ivar that Dagny had rarely ever been given anything resembling a gift. Once, Ubbe had given her a fine cloak, warm and the color of a fawn, when he had seen that her other was falling to pieces. It hadn't been a castoff or already old. It was elegant and warm and big enough for her to grow into because Ubbe had taken her height into account. Ubbe said he feared she might start crying when he gave it to her. Ivar had the oddest sensation that the same thing was about to happen now.
"Yes," he said. "Ragnar always wants to meet beautiful women who are half in love with him." At that, Dagny did blush and it was satisfying to him in the worst way. "I am his favorite son, after all."
It was a lie, of course. Ragnar had come to Ivar only after his other, able-bodied sons had turned him down. He knew that Ragnar had left him to the forest as a baby to die and that Aslaug was the only reason he was alive today. Despite that, Ragnar sometimes seemed taken with him.
"That does not surprise me," Dagny said. "I adore your brothers, Ivar. They can all be kind and gentle and understanding. Even Sigurd, though he may hide it. But you are Ragnar's true heir."
"You make this declaration without even knowing my father," Ivar stated but his chest tightened anyway.
"I know the stories. I know them all by heart. And Ragnar's cleverness, ruthlessness, has its heir in you."
Ivar wanted to respond but he seemed to choke. Wasn't this what he was always telling himself? Wasn't this the truth?
Ivar was so deep in thought, so deep in conversation with Dagny, that he did not notice Hvitserk come around the table. Dagny didn't either. She was close enough to Ivar for him to take her in his arms. She didn't appear to notice anything else in the hall but Ivar.
Hvitserk had an arm around her waist in the next instant, his face buried in the crook of her neck. And though Ivar could see that Dagny fought the emotion every step of the way, she enjoyed it. She smiled and leaned into him and when he went to kiss her, Ivar saw her fingers twitch with longing to touch him. It wasn't the effect of ceremonial wine or the sacrifice or knowing that Hvitserk could go to sea tomorrow and never return. It was unabashed want, reckless desire. Dagny may have tried to hide it, to bury it beneath other thoughts, but it was plain to anyone watching her.
Ivar found himself thinking that if she were free, Hvitserk could marry her. They could have a ceremony in the forest and have flowers in their hair and have their wrists wrapped with ribbon and stand beneath a bower of greenery. It would be light and pleasant and everything Dagny probably wanted.
But Dagny peeked at him, over Hvitserk's shoulder, and all images of loveliness faded away in favor of stormy seas and forest undergrowth. Ivar couldn't marry. He couldn't have children. He couldn't be anything close to a regular man. But he still thought about a free Dagny pushing Hvitserk away and reaching for him instead, sitting with him, training with him, sharing a bed with him, even if nothing would ever come of it.
"Come join Ubbe and I," Hvitserk said to Dagny. Ivar heard the huskiness to his voice, how oddly out of breath he sounded.
Dagny grinned at him, her mouth still perilously close to Hvitserk's. "Sure. I'll be there in a moment."
And then Hvitserk was kissing her again, in a way that Ivar would call hungry. Dagny apparently could no longer weigh down her arms because she put her hands to Hvitserk's face and held him there far longer than necessary. It made Ivar vaguely sick. Hvitserk pulled away and was gone without sparing a glance towards Ivar.
Dagny sighed, though it wasn't the languorous, heartsick kind Ivar expected. "He apparently does not care about what anyone else thinks," she said, as if kissing her in front of Ivar was a point of regular frustration with Hvitserk.
"No," Ivar agreed. But he knew it was a competition and that Hvitserk was winning. "Go on, go dance with them."
The words sounded meaner than he intended but Dagny did not care. Her fingers caught his chin when he turned to look away from her and Ivar thought about boats rocking back and forth, men losing their balance, falling overboard.
"I'll dance with you," she murmured, "anytime you wish."
Ivar knitted his brows in confusion. "What?"
"You said you wanted to dance." Dagny's fingers fell away from him for what felt like a long time before she took both of his hands in hers. "I am not very good at it but I'll show you."
"Dagny…" he started, his throat tight.
"You don't need your legs," she declared, as if she was the one who had created the dance and therefore, could decide exactly how it was done. "It is all in the hands."
A beat passed before he nodded. Dagny grinned, a smile that belonged on a fox, and she pulled away. Ivar had the thought that she should probably drink more often.