Chapter 11
Chapter 11
ASHA SILVERSPUN
T he echo of my scream fades, and a cold silence settles around me, broken only by the icy breeze.
Erik rests in my arms, his head cradled to my chest, his left hand dragging in the snow beside him as I try to hold him close.
The light is gone from his eyes.
The breath has left his chest.
No longer will he tell me that I am limitless.
No longer can he tell me that he loves me.
A new scream builds within me, a powerless scream filled with rage. “ Erik! ”
I have nowhere to put my grief.
Nowhere to place my fury.
All I have is this cry that tears across the snow-filled clearing in which I kneel.
The clearing extends for a hundred paces in each direction between a forest of trees on my left, a cabin on my right, and a small forge directly in front of me. The cabin is sheltered beside a massive rock face that extends to the top of a mountain.
Erik brought us here. This place was once his childhood home. Only hours ago, he told me all his stories. He finally spoke about how we first met and everything he lost to keep me alive: his family, his home, and even his identity.
He told me I was his destiny.
Now, a new cry surges through me, a wail of pain that’s filled with all the darkness in my heart, but instead, the air brightens at the sound.
I’m suddenly aware that my left forearm has brushed the hammer Erik forged for me, and now a burning sapphire light bursts into life around me.
The hammer rests in the snow, its block-shaped head sunk into the icy powder. Its black handle is barely touching me, and yet its power is undeniable.
My power is undeniable.
Erik gave his life for this hammer. He poured all of his life-sustaining deep light into the metal so I could finally access my true magic. He emptied himself into the task, draining his own life with every moment of the forging.
He made me a war hammer unlike any Blacksmith hammer before it, and he asked me to take it, claim it, and accept it.
But I don’t want it.
I don’t need it.
I need him .
I need his ferocity, and his quick mind, and his determination. I need his belief in me and his perseverance. I need his constancy. I need his ability to see all of the moves and countermoves, the threads of possibility, and the plotting and scheming of others.
I need his need . I need his fire. I need his heart.
For years, he was the Vandawolf, a beast created in an act of pure malice, whose wolfish mind was in constant turmoil.
Not long enough was he Erik, the man he’d been born to be. The man who loved me but didn’t show me until I healed his body with my power, merging the wolf’s mind with his once and for all.
I gave him back his freedom to choose his own path.
A path that led to his death.
My shoulders slump, and my tears drip on his quiet face, droplets sliding across his cheeks as if they were his own.
A murmur sounds behind me, the quietest growl. “Bright Heart. It is done. You must come away now.”
My arms only tighten around Erik’s body before I twist slightly to see the golden fire dragon whose large body takes up much of the space in the clearing behind me.
He is the dragon king. Graviter Rex. He vowed to end all Blacksmiths after his son, Lysander Rex, was murdered. But I made peace with Graviter. I convinced him that I am not his enemy, a feat that was only accomplished after Erik convinced the great dragon to listen to me and hear me out.
My voice is a rasp, my vocal cords raw from my screams. “The metal Erik used to make this hammer… You gave it to him, didn’t you?”
My voice carries no accusation. Only sadness. I understand that the dragon must walk his own path—the path that is best for other dragons. But without that metal, there would have been no hammer and no chance for Erik to die.
The handle is formed from half of one of the onyx spears Erik and I brought with us. Those spears are unbreakable, but Erik must have found a way to snap one of them in half.
The hammer’s head is a double-sided block, evenly balanced and carved with runes. I recognize them only because these same runes are etched into various parts of the nearby cabin. They have meanings that Erik described to me when he told me his story only hours ago.
“I gave him the gold for the hammer’s head,” Graviter admits softly. “It’s dragon’s gold. I hoarded it for centuries to give it living properties and make it receptive to forming a bond with another being of pure light. I had intended to give it to my son. For that reason, it contains only love and hope.”
His voice becomes raw as he speaks of his son. He, too, has known terrible loss and deep grief.
But the conviction in his voice doesn’t waver as he continues. “The metal for your hammer was freely and willingly given, as it needed to be. It was the right metal for your hammer. The right metal for you to access your true power.”
“‘The right metal,’” I whisper; a hollow sound.
I understand the dragon’s intentions.
For years, I had no choice but to use the hammer of Malak Ironmeld, the only other left-handed Blacksmith in my people’s history.
His hammer and the medallions that went with it—strips of black metal that could be transformed into weapons—were filled with hatred. Every time I picked them up, I fought the malice within them, fighting to maintain my own thoughts and heart and not lose myself to the intoxicating power of his tools.
I feel none of that malice in the hammer that rests at my side.
All I feel within it is…
Love. Hope.
Everything Erik wanted for me.
I squeeze my eyes closed, unable to still the flow of tears. I have no choice but to let them fall.
Erik and I once stood across from each other on the balcony outside the tower he kept me in. Blood-red raindrops fell between us, marking the invisible barrier that existed between us at that time.
Even then, he was part of my life. Even with that invisible and seemingly unbreachable boundary between us.
“The right metal?” I repeat, opening my eyes and twisting further toward the dragon. “Nothing is right now that Erik is gone.”
How can I function when it feels like I’ve lost a part of myself?
My arm shifts away from the hammer, and the clearing goes dark again.
The contrast is startling.
The moon is shining at its fullest, moonbeams filling the clearing, and yet it’s the weakest light compared to the brightness of my magic.
Even so, the sudden dullness of the air brings other things into view.
A small orb of light floats close to Graviter’s shoulder, becoming clearly visible again now that my magic has faded.
When the orb first arrived at this clearing, Graviter explained that it was a magical being called a Celestial Star . It’s a living creature, but it doesn’t speak. Instead, it seems to communicate through movement.
It danced at Graviter’s side, flitting here and there, trailing light wherever it went. There was a happiness, a joyfulness, about it.
Now, its light has dimmed, and its movements are subdued.
Can it feel my sadness?
Does it know my grief?
Graviter lowers his head even further toward me, a slow and careful movement as if he would nudge the tip of his nose to my side. “You will be whole again, Asha. I have seen it.”
When Graviter Rex first came upon us on the snowy mountain east of here, and after we fought him and survived, he ate a leaf from a monstrous tree that I healed with my power.
It was baffling to watch him pop that bright-blue leaf into his mouth and chew. But then he exhaled burning-blue flames, and his words struck me with foreboding.
He said that the magic in the leaf—my magic—had shown him all my memories. But more than that, it had shown him all that will be. My future and beyond.
He said that there will be a war in which dragons, humans, Blacksmiths, and fae will stand across a battlefield from one another and be tested. A war that will only be the beginning of other wars.
But he also said that without a beginning, there can’t be an end.
Now, the mighty dragon edges so close to me that the heat of his fiery breath warms my cold cheeks.
His earnest eyes are huge in my vision. “You must take the hammer and use it?—”
“I don’t want it.”
Graviter’s expression hardens, a frightening sight, given how close his mouth is to me. “You must move away from Erik?—”
“Do not tell me to let him go.” I bare my teeth at Graviter, as if I were the beast that Erik once was. “Don’t tell me to give him to the ground.”
Graviter doesn’t flinch or retreat, no matter how fiercely I return his stare. Why would he? He is the strongest of all dragons, and I am refusing the power that would give me the physical strength to challenge him.
I am refusing to pick up the hammer.
Surprisingly, his voice softens. “I will not tell you to let him go, Asha Silverspun. But for now, you must move away from him so that his soul can be claimed as is the custom of his people.”
My eyes widen as I realize what Graviter means. “A Valkyrie will come.”
Erik explained to me that he was born into a clan of humans known as Einherjar . Members of the clan spend their whole lives building and cultivating their deep light—a spark of magic that exists in all humans, but few know how to harness it, let alone how to increase it.
An Einherjar’s greatest ambition is to burn out their deep light in battle, giving themselves incredible strength and speed. By burning out their light, they trigger their own death, but that is not what matters. What matters is that they achieve a glorious death in battle.
The Einherjar believe that if they die this way, a Valkyrie will come for their soul and deliver them to the Hall of Warriors.
I twist away from Graviter Rex, my focus now drawn to my left.
Not ten paces away from me, there is a stone statue.
It is the statue of a man, frozen mid-battle. His left leg is forward, his sword raised and poised to strike. In the moonlight, I can see every detail of the statue’s face and the resemblance of its features to Erik.
The man within this statue was once Erik’s father. Malak Ironmeld turned him to stone in a fight that happened because of me.
Erik’s father is a powerful figure, although slightly narrower in the shoulders than Erik. The blade of the sword he’s holding catches the moonlight and reflects it. Despite the years the weapon has been exposed to the elements, the blade shines a bright steel-blue.
Erik described to me his deep sadness when his father’s soul was not claimed by the Valkyries. Erik’s theory was that his father’s soul couldn’t be claimed because it was trapped in stone.
My eyes slowly widen.
And then my shoulders slump.
I, too, have the power to turn living things to stone. Although… I’m nearly certain I can’t do it with a hammer alone. Each time I did it, I used a medallion—a strip of specially forged metal—that was wrapped around my left hand and gave me access to my power.
But I could never do that to Erik. Not to selfishly preserve his body.
I tell myself to unfold my arms from around him.
I tell myself that I can lay him down in the snow because this is what he would want.
And yet…
I can’t .
I can’t release him.
Opening my arms means acknowledging that he’s gone. It means taking my body heat away from him and allowing him to grow cold.
I look up again to Graviter, my eyes welling with tears. “I don’t know how to do this.”
His expression remains calm and soft, his breathing slow. “You must find a way. And quickly. Because the Valkyrie can’t be far away now, and she will fight you for him, Asha.”
Graviter’s warning isn’t lost on me. I’ve never met a Valkyrie. Just as I had never met a fae before I had to fight a group of them in the mountains. All I know is that the Valkyries have silver wings. But it isn’t hard to imagine that any creature whose purpose is to ferry the souls of warriors into the afterlife must be terrifyingly fierce.
Graviter confirms as much as he continues speaking. “Whichever Valkyrie they send for him, she will have no mercy for your grief. The Valkyries are a race of women who deal in death and can deliver it within a heartbeat.”
Despite my logic, my fear vanishes, and a reckless need rises within me. “Let her fight me. I won’t let him go any other way.”
Please let her fight me.
Please let her force me to open my arms.
Because I can’t…
I try to breathe, try to drag freezing air into my chest, try to convince myself that there isn’t a part of me that has died with him.
The only way I can give Erik to the ground is if someone physically forces me to do it, and it seems Graviter Rex isn’t prepared to swipe his paw at me, or he would have done it already.
His brow furrows at my rash response, but at the same time, his skin flushes pale, somehow less golden, and now I’m not sure what to make of his expression.
Is he… afraid?
“Do not think you can win against a Valkyrie,” he says. “They are invulnerable to all magic. All magic , Asha. Not even Blacksmith magic can hurt them. Not even with your hammer could you defeat her. And make no mistake: They will send their fiercest warrior to claim a man like Erik the Vandawolf.”
My heart thuds in my chest, but it’s slow and heavy.
Perhaps I should be horribly afraid, but there is no fear in this world that can overcome my sadness.
Graviter persists, and now I have no doubt about the depth of the fear in his voice. “She will kill you, Asha Silverspun.”
“Then let her!” I snap back at him.
He recoils sharply at my shout. I give him a vicious smile.
“It will be a glorious death,” I say. “Will it not? The kind that might allow them to ferry me to the Hall of Warriors with him.”
It’s an irrational statement—I’m not an Einherjar—but I don’t care.
“No, Bright Heart.” Graviter edges forward again. “This is not how you’re meant to die.”
The moment he speaks, he swallows visibly and withdraws a little, as if he regrets his words.
I stiffen as the full extent of his meaning sinks in. The implication that I’m going to die. Just not in this way. “How I’m meant to die?”
He pales even further but doesn’t respond.
A feeling of dread swirls at the base of my stomach, but even my growing sense of foreboding isn’t enough to still my tongue or stifle the bitter taste in my mouth.
“How difficult it must be for you now, Dragon King,” I say. “To have seen it all. To carry the burden of what you should or shouldn’t speak aloud.”
“Bright Heart?—”
“If this is not how I’m meant to die,” I challenge him, raising my eyes to his, “then I have nothing to fear.”
Even as I speak, I sense a far-off energy in the air. A rush of wind across my cheeks icier than the breeze that whispers across the snow-filled landscape.
The faint beat of wings reaches my ears, and I’m drawn to the sky behind the dragon. To keep my eye on it, I’m forced to twist even farther away from my hammer, hunching over Erik’s body to keep him close.
At the movement, a sharp pain pricks my chest, making me gasp.
I risk taking my eyes off the sky for a heartbeat.
Before he died, Erik extended his claws and one of his hands is now wedged dangerously between us. The tip of one of his claws has pierced through the fur cloak I’m wearing and presses against my ribs.
His claws can pierce even a dragon’s hide.
He told me to cut off his claws and use them, but I could never do such a thing.
I adjust the position of his hand, ensuring it won’t hurt either him or me.
Within the space of those seconds, the air behind me has become fraught with an energy I’ve never felt before.
It is both alive and deadly.
A powerful, rushing wind billows my silver hair about my head, and the sound of wings intensifies to the point where I can’t hear anything else.
I fight to keep my head raised and to open my eyes, preparing for the arrival of the woman who will take Erik from me once and for all.
I focus on the sky behind the dragon, only for the breath to stop in my chest.
There is not one woman raging through the air toward us…
There are three.