Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Sylvara had magic but wasn’t a mage or sorcerer. Her magic was intrinsic to her nature as a valkyrie. Even though she hadn’t been born mortal, she’d been selected by those who wielded fate’s hands regardless.
And speaking of fate… She closed her eyes and focused. Hmm. Who knew? Rofl was right. She felt the presence of Skuld—Daughter of Tomorrow. The Wyrd sister bore the weight of the future upon her shoulders.
But why would Skuld stop them from trying to find the last Bloode Stone? None of Sylvara’s aunts had cautioned her against this mission for Loki. In fact, they’d encouraged her to help the family. No good could ever come from the Fates owing anyone a favor, and especially not a trickster.
That tickled a memory. Questions about her familial debt. But she couldn’t remember now.
“How do we get out?” Rolf asked, painting runes in the air that had no effect on anything in the room. “Nice magic. I’m iced out.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
His blond hair.
Why did she keep seeing him with a dark mane?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, sounding intrigued. “Not that I’m against having sex with you right here, right now, but I think we should probably get the Bloode Stone before we hit it again.”
“Stop talking.” She turned around and studied the long, gorgeously crafted tapestry on the wall, centered on a handsome couple clearly in love.
At the far left of the long wall-hanging, a small skirmish took place between men bearing swords, axes, and knives, blooding each other on snow-covered grasses.
Continuing on, an incredibly detailed, handsome couple stood arm in arm, smiling at each other while the raging battle took place in the snow away from them.
The dark-haired warrior with the woman was tall and brawny yet held in one hand a bouquet of white flowers dusted in red.
The woman, whose features looked a bit like her aunts’, smiled up at him, her affection plain to see.
In her eyes, stars shone, depicting either her immortality or an exquisite beauty, Sylvara couldn’t tell.
In the next scene, a large eagle flew down to the woman. Yet the woman’s gaze fixed on the back of her warrior, who raced to join the fight.
Past that scene, lightning flashed through dark, angry clouds.
The haglaz rune appeared surrounded by shadow.
That meant nothing good. Two large birds flew up into the sky, away from the battle while the warrior dangled, clearly dead yet worthy of eternal combat, in the arms of the valkyrie who bore him to Valhalla.
Sylvara looked closer. The valkyrie carrying him resembled Hlokk, wearing prominent black warpaint that covered the scar across the bridge of her nose.
The tapestry had details woven with precision in a piece that looked to be hundreds, if not a thousand or more, years old. It looked like so many others she’d seen of her sisters ferrying fallen warriors to their purpose in the afterlife. The Norns had them all over the castle.
Odd that she’d never seen this wall-hanging before.
She felt Rolf at her back, way too close as usual.
“Oh, I like this.” He reached out to touch the embroidery. “I wonder where this battle took place. The area feels familiar to me.”
“I don’t know.” She frowned. “I’ve seen all the tapestries at home. I don’t know this one.”
“Maybe the Norns hired new housekeeping to put up something new.”
“Housekeeping. Funny.” But she didn’t think so. “Why are we here?”
“And where exactly is here? You can’t call for help from your mouthy valkyrie sisters?”
“I’ll try.” Yet when she let out a scream, the noise bounced around the room and did no damage to the walls, furniture, or Rolf. “Huh. You’re still alive. This place really is warded against magic.”
“So happy to be right,” he deadpanned. Then he groaned and rubbed his stomach. “I could use something to eat. I’m hungry again.”
He smiled at her.
“No.”
He pouted.
“No.”
He sighed.
Before she punched him in the face, a door appeared.
“Finally.” Sylvara stalked to it and yanked it open, wanting words with her family.
Rolf pushed her through, and instead of the hallway she expected, they stepped into a sunlit field near a bubbling brook.
A sunlit field.
She spun to see him standing with her, a scowl on his pretty face. “How are you not burning or turning to ash?”
“Magic,” he muttered, not seeming to feel the horror he should. Vampires were so weird.
He took his time stepping back under the canopy of a leafy tree and braced his back against it, crossing his arms over his chest. The stone room, the castle, and the sense of the Norns was nowhere to be found.
He rubbed his stomach and stared at her neck. “Now what?”
She glanced around and heard nothing but the brook, birds chirping, and the wind whistling through the leaves of faery oaks and aspens. The clear sky was too blue for them to be in the mortal world. Yet the lack of intense magic told her she wasn’t in Asgard either.
“We’re still in fae lands, is my guess.”
“Are you sure?”
“Is my guess,” she enunciated. “Where else would we be?”
“Where indeed?”
“And stop looking at my neck.”
“Spoilsport.”
Hafandi watched, delighted with the valkyrie and her ensorcelled vampire. “You did an outstanding job on the spell, Awen.”
Loki’s volva took a bow and straightened. She winked at Hafandi then vanished. Paid in full.
Hafandi had spent a lifetime organizing life to go in the right direction, as it was meant to go. She glanced through a window at her sisters, who sat panicked over the tangled threads of the weave she’d mussed as a distraction.
So intent on correcting the path of destiny, they had no idea what was coming.
She closed the door on Sylvara Valfreyja and Rolf of the Night Bloode and walked to a different door in her castle of infinite becoming. The only place she had ever belonged. A home of sorts, so far out of sync with the rest of the world that even the gods had forgotten it existed.
But not Hafandi. And not her new best friend. She opened a new door into the mundane realm, into a small town east of the city where that bitch, Hecate, had gathered a small, impressive force to counter a possible future growing closer.
The Darkness that Comes.
Such a cumbersome title for the funny little friend Hafandi had named Erland. Foreigner. Erland knew what it meant to be feared. To not belong. In Erland, Hafandi had finally found a friend who accepted her for all that she could be.
Unfortunately, Erland needed a bit of help to cross over. He—Erland had chosen a male form to adhere to the mortal essence of destruction and war—made a half decent mortal. She liked Erland assuming a human shape. A fitting end to mankind from one of its own.
“Come to me, dearest friend. It’s time we stopped being pen pals and met in person.” She smiled and stepped through the door into a dead-end alley behind a bookstore. There, she drew a line in the air, through which a small rift appeared.
A tear in the mundane plane, just large enough for hell to slide through.
And through that, for Erland to take his first step into the reality coming for so many.