Iâve finished reading the new chapter, and I have some questions. What does Fiadh actually want from Askeladd? What is she trying to achieve? Why is she sleeping with him? If it all started as a way to free Thorfinn, then how do her relations with Askeladd help with that? After all, he isnât really making Thorfinn stay â Thorfinn stays of his own will to avenge his father. So shouldnât she be talking to Thorfinn and trying to convince him to give up his revenge and return back home to Iceland? Fiadh barely interacts with Thorfinn, so how exactly is she planning to free him? Will she kidnap him and take him to Iceland, or kill Askeladd herself so that Thorfinn has no reason to stay with the Vikings?
I have this feeling that these games with Askeladd could go on for years. They could keep sleeping together, trying to outsmart each other, thinking through every word and controlling their reactions. What would have to happen for them to grow emotionally closer? Sex could easily remain just meaningless sex that they both enjoy, but that alone wonât truly bring them closer.
Of course, the eventual romance and eventual fluff tags look promising, but it feels like weâll have to wait another ten years for that to come true. For now, itâs like theyâve both built high walls, peek out from behind them and throw rotten tomatoes at each other.
What would need to happen for them to realize each otherâs importance in their lives? Would one of them have to end up in serious danger? I honestly donât know. So what was the point of Fiadh starting this whole game with Askeladd? It feels like it might lead nowhere in the end, and the two of them will remain enemies â or just strangers. And she says that she is going to leave before the next winterâŚ
Sorry for such a comment, but Iâm going through a difficult period in my life right now, an awful thing happened in my family. I donât feel well, so these are the kinds of thoughts and questions Iâm having.
I really love this story and always look forward to reading new chapters. I hope youâll keep writing it, wonât lose interest, and wonât abandon the work. And sorry for possible mistakes, because I wrote the whole thing in my language and used an online-translator to write it in English.
Good luck to you, and thank you very much for this story â¤ď¸
What Fiadh wants from Askeladd is complicated. On the surface, she knows she cannot convince Thorfinn on her own. She is an outsider, technically and otherwise, and if she wants any real chance of reaching him, she needs help. The best person to give it is the very man who helped create the whole mess in the first place: Askeladd.
The problem is that Askeladd has no reason to help her. If anything, he has every reason not to. He knows exactly how useful Thorfinn is, and he is not eager to lose such a valuable weapon. So Fiadh tries to create an incentive where none exists by appealing to his baser interests. If she can make him like her, even a little, she might be able to persuade him to help.
But beneath all of that is something far less simple. Fiadh is not just trying to reach Thorfinn. She is also trying to escape certain people in her own life, people whose influence runs deep and wide. More than anything, she is looking for a way out.
Also Fiadh speaks to Thorfinn every night while she cooks for him, using those quiet moments to try to reach him little by little. Earlier in the chapter, I also established that she only has until next winter before she must leave, giving her a limited window to change his course. But i can't say more without giving the plot away.
As for the emotional aspect of their relationship, we first have to understand Askeladd himself.
Askeladd is not someone who falls in love easily. If anything, he would resist it with everything he has. Love, for a man like him, is dangerous precisely because it creates vulnerability, and vulnerability is something he has spent his life learning to despise, conceal, and exploit in others. He would be especially unlikely to love someone soft or innocent, because that kind of person would call to mind the same helpless tenderness tied to his mother and the fate she suffered. To love someone like that would not feel romantic to him at all. It would feel like weakness. Like a threat. Like the beginning of a loss he has already lived through once.
If Askeladd were ever to fall in love, it would more likely be with someone who could meet his sharpness without being consumed by it. Someone intelligent enough to recognize manipulation when they see it, strong enough not to crumble beneath cruelty, and layered enough to possess both softness and steel. Not someone fragile whom he would feel compelled to protect from the world at every turn, but someone capable of surviving it and, more dangerously, making him want to handle them with care anyway.
And even then, it would take time. A great deal of time. It would have to be a slow burn, because a man like Askeladd would not surrender to love all at once. He would resist it, test it, mistrust it, and likely wound it before he ever named it for what it was. For someone like him, love would not arrive gently. It would be built piece by piece.
Also, Iâm sorry to hear youâre going through a hard time. I hope things get better soon. đ đ
