Chapter 8
At noon the following day, I fake debilitating period cramps. No earlier since I have to go into the forge to check on my mold and cast my silver-and-gold dagger.
It turns out beautifully. Especially once I ornament the pommel with a fiery opal. I’m so proud of my handiwork that I stop by Astrid and Koppar’s house on my way home, desperate to show it off to my smith master.
But I can’t. Silver weapons can only be wrought and carried with an Alpha’s consent, which I’m short on, so I settle on sipping nettle tea with the happy, if exhausted, parents and nuzzling their sleepy infants.
Not for the first time, I find myself wishing that Mor could’ve had a pup of her own.
I know she considers me her flesh and blood, but all I am is a beloved stand-in.
I belong to someone else. To another people altogether.
Like always, when I think of the valkyries, my pulse froths with an equal measure of dread and excitement.
If only Mor could accompany me. As she buttons her cloak that evening, I consider asking her. Would she come, or would she scowl and forbid me from setting a toe outside the valley?
I ease her into the subject. “Mor, I’m ready to meet my ancestors.”
Her fingers stumble off her cloak’s fastening. “What?”
I turn onto my side on the cot, keeping the warm waterskin flush with my belly. “Would you consider taking me to them?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
I frown at her uncompromising stance. “Why not?”
“Because!”
“Because what?”
She tosses a hand up in the air. “Because the Isriken Wilds are no place for two lone females!”
“We could sail there?”
“Since the Southern War broke out, dragons have torched every one of our drakkars to ensure we couldn’t band with the Ljosam?ris.”
I’d heard the war had stifled trade, but not of the crisped ships.
“Why do you want to meet people who”—her voice quivers so harshly that she stops speaking to rake in a breath—“never came looking for you?”
“Perhaps they too feared the Isriken Wilds.”
“Empresses can open portals! If anyone had cared about retrieving a missing infant, they would’ve come years ago, and they didn’t!”
A hot pulse rises to my face, spurred not by her serrated tone but by the reminder that I meant nothing to no one before Nordin found me.
Mor comes to sit on my bed, her palm coasting through my hair. “Where is this coming from?”
I shrug, keeping my gaze on the wall.
“Darling, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I simply meant to remind you that you are everything to me. Please look at me. Please.”
I do.
“Don’t be angry with me.” Her bleak rasp splinters my anger. “Not over this.”
“I’m not angry with you. Only annoyed that I don’t understand why I was abandoned.” I expel a frustrated breath. “Do you think they sent me into the Wilds in the hopes of killing me? I mean, what were the chances that a lone child would survive?”
“I wish I could give you the answers you seek.” She glides her fingers down my locks. “But I don’t have them. All I know is that the valkyries don’t deserve you.”
“Deserve me?” I snort. “I’m magicless, Mor. Utterly worthless.”
Her fingers jerk against a snarled tress, tugging at my roots. “You aren’t worthless!”
I smile. “I meant to the valkyries.” When she doesn’t smile back, the curve of my mouth flattens. “Why are you so distraught?”
“Because I hate talking about them. I hate thinking that you ever belonged to anyone else.”
“Oh, Mor…” I sit up to hug her, hating how unsettled this conversation has made her.
“You don’t need them. You have us.”
Her dread is so consequent that it gnaws on my resolve to seek out my past. Which weakens further when the side of my head dampens with her tears.
“No hitching a ride on a drakkar or a dragon,” I say, infusing my tone with lightness. “Noted.”
“I’m sorry.” She inhales deeply, scrubbing the moisture off her cheeks.
“For what?”
“For not encouraging a reunion. For raising my voice.” Her throat bobs with a swallow. “Perhaps once the war ends…” She doesn’t add “we could pay them a visit,” yet I hear the offer loud and clear.
With unadulterated excitement, I ask, “When will that be?”
“Whenever the valkyries succeed at driving the vampyrs off the continent.”
“Are they close to succeeding?”
“They are.”
“Are we talking months? Years? Decades?”
“Not decades.” She nods to my abdomen before giving her tear-studded skin another wipe. “You seem to be feeling better.”
I shove the waterskin against my stomach once more and flop back down. “You just distracted me from the pain.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her head tilting.
Before she can ask if cramps are the only thing to blame, I yawn. “I’m knackered. Too much forging.”
If she has any inkling that I’m lying, she doesn’t let on, only leans over to stamp my brow with a kiss. “I love you, Zaskja.”
“I love you too, Mor,” I say, at the same time as a howl penetrates our walls.
One that makes her pull back and say, “Nika did come.”
War be damned…I’m heading south.