Even through tears and grief, she looked striking in Brakk’s eyes.
Her green eyes were bright, her skin pale in the dim light, and the raw emotion on her face made her seem even more alive to Brakk, whose lips slowly curled into a grin.
His eyes moved over her body without restraint, lingering where they shouldn’t as he smacked his lips, as though he had just found something valuable.
"Ain’t she a beauty?"
"I’m sure she’ll fetch a high price."
He muttered, as his eyes lingered shamelessly across her chest for a moment longer before shifting toward Lyra.
"So will the daughter," he added with a chuckle.
"Those green eyes are exquisite."
The two men laughed quietly.
Lyra pressed herself tighter against her mother while shaking uncontrollably, her small hands clutching the blood-soaked fabric of Alira’s clothes as the child struggled to understand the nightmare unfolding around them.
"What about the newborn?" Brakk asked while nodding toward the child clutched tightly in Alira’s arms.
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
Kell inquired, as Alira pulled Riven closer to her chest.
*SNATCH*
Brakk stepped forward anyway.
His thick fingers ripping the infant from her grasp before she could react, as he lifted the child carelessly and turned him over, before glancing down.
"A boy."
Brakk said, as his grin widened.
"Well then... time to die young one."
He concluded, as he was about to kill Riven, when suddenly, it was Kell who stopped him.
"No, Brakk."
Kell’s voice cut through the hut sharply as his hand caught the larger warrior’s arm before the axe could fall.
Brakk frowned.
"But the chief said spare no male survivors."
Brakk argued, as Kell shook his head slowly.
"The prostitutes always kill themselves when they have nothing left to live for."
He nodded toward Alira.
"We sell the younger girl to the spider. He pays the most for girls this age."
"While the older woman goes to Hagrid."
His eyes gleamed with cold calculation.
"I’m pretty sure Hagrid will pay us more if we deliver the woman with a child she must protect...."
Kell suggested, as Brakk scratched his beard in confusion.
"Why?"
He asked, as Kell smiled faintly.
"Because a mother with a child to protect becomes obedient... Like a dog.... Doing everything that she can to please the customers."
Brakk considered the idea for a moment.
Then shrugged.
"Fair enough."
Brakk muttered before tossing the child back toward Alira, who caught Riven desperately while pulling him tight against her chest as if someone might tear him away again.
However, instead of taking Riven, the two men seized Alira and Lyra by their hair instead and dragged them out of the hut as if they were nothing more than livestock.
Outside, their village was burning.
Torches moved between the huts like wandering stars while thick smoke rose slowly into the frozen night, carrying with it the scent of ash, blood, and dying fires.
Men shouted.
Women cried.
Children screamed.
And unfortunately, Riven witnessed it all.
He remembered being dragged across the snow in his mother’s arms while Alira struggled desperately against the grip in her hair, her breath ragged with grief as she twisted repeatedly to look back toward the hut that had once been her home.
But the village was already gone.
The warriors of the raiding tribe moved through the settlement like scavengers, kicking open doors, dragging captives into the open, and looting whatever little food remained inside the starving village.
A crude wooden wagon stood near the center of the clearing, with iron bars having been hammered across its sides.
Inside it were already several women from the tribe.
Some cried quietly.
Others stared blankly ahead.
One or two struggled weakly against the ropes binding their wrists, as Brakk shoved Alira forward without ceremony.
"Get in there sugar, I’d hate to swell up that pretty face, but I will hit you if you make a mess!"
He warned, as Alira stumbled inside the cage while clutching Riven against her chest.
"In you go as well.... Chop Chop!"
Kell said a moment later, as Lyra was thrown in as well, after which the gate was slammed shut.
*Click*
Outside, the warriors laughed while finishing their grim work, while behind them, the Blue Frost Tribe burned.
What had once been a stubborn little settlement of hunters and families had been reduced to smoke in a single night.
*Screech*
*Tumble*
A few minutes later, the wagons began to move.
Iron wheels creaked against the frozen ground while the captives sat silently inside the cage, their grief swallowed by the roaring celebration of the raiders marching beside them.
No one bothered to look inside.
To them, the child clutched quietly against Alira’s chest was nothing more than a helpless infant, a harmless nobody far too young to understand what had happened and certainly too young to remember any of it.
After all, he was only seven months old.
But as the burning village slowly faded into the distance behind the wagon, Riven Veyr watched the flames through the iron bars of the cage and committed them to memory without knowing that he had just become the last living son of the Blue Frost Tribe...
A survivor cursed to carry the destruction of his entire people within him for the rest of his life.