@eleven-seas | continued from here (x):
The boy felt a chill despite the torches on the walls; he’d only heard someone say what he’d declared once before when he’d been scared. He didn’t move closer, but couldn’t run while the priest lived.
Wessex looked between them - one good man and one bad. Father Godwine’s face was strained despite the audible huffs of air, and looking to him urgently. The priest was upset, and in pain, and the child pressed down on his helpless anger. Wessex looked to the attacker, assuring himself that he wasn’t “doing” anything by talking, in holding himself like an atheling.
“What do you want,” he asked, unable to keep his voice from wobbling nonetheless.
A pause while he recomposed. “…Are you lonely?”
At the child’s second question, Ragnar’s wicked grin subsided, before his expression morphed into a brief lapse of confusion, and then a mixture of incredulity, anger, and disgust. Incredulity that the boy would ask such a strange question, anger that he’d even have the gall to, and disgust that Ragnar would let it disturb his composure. The viking scoffed, his expression hardening to something less emotive.
‘Do I look like I sailed all the way here for the purpose of “company”, you dim-witted veslingr?’ Ragnar growled, insulting the boy in his native Norse tongue. ‘Tell me where this church’s wealth is hidden, and I will make sure that your priest dies quickly.’
