[They had parted, those years ago, with tears on both their faces, her arms wrapped around the shaking shoulders of her son as the wagon bounced away over the uneven ground. She hadn't looked back, knowing that every moment spent with him was another moment she would want to change her mind about leaving. But she had taken more than her pride could handle - she was not a woman that could share her husband with another, especially not with the way things had happened - in secret and behind her back. So to look upon him again, to see the way that even four long years had not aged him a day, it was like an axe trying to cave in her chest and bury its point deep behind her ribs.
She reminded herself that she was a married woman - married to a man that was not the one striding across the grass toward her. She reminded herself that she had left Ragnar with good reason. She reminded herself that love was not always enough when fate had other ideas for her. Her love hadn't been enough to save Gyda from the plague, to keep the child growing inside her, to keep her husband at her side. Love wasn't enough to keep her son from disappearing. She was a different woman than she had once been, and she hardened herself against the smile that wanted to emerge at Ragnar's clumsy dismout from his horse. A spark flared somewhere beneath her lungs, one she had only ever felt with the frustrating man before her. Never in all the years with her current husband.
She was certain to steady herself while he was still across the small grove from her. No traitorous memories of their marriage, their bed, the way they had matched each other so easily and in so many ways. He was no longer her husband, and she had only come this far to help fight off the invasion of his lands. But she was left with no fighters other than herself. And he didn't look like a man whose home was being stolen from him, not with that easy smile on his face. She frowned sharply and didn't rise from her seat.] Ragnar.