37. Let It Burn
Let It Burn
Anara
Anara spat ash from her mouth, convinced it had been water only moments ago.
Her sense of hearing returned next, bringing with it the crackle of flames and the screams of hundreds.
Forcing her eyes open, she lifted her body off the soot-covered ground.
Her vision, though clouded in smoke, caught the details of the pillared porches and the spires rising over the city. Her city.
But she knew, as she always did when the Norn stepped into her dreams, that this was not real. Knowing this had to be part of the Norn’s test did not ease the dread that pumped from Anara’s heart into her veins.
“Not many can recognize our visions so quickly,” came the voice of the Norn.
Skuld strode through the cloud of smoke, her eyes glowing like the fires that raged throughout the city of Brannsiden. Anara could’ve sworn she heard the eruption of the nearby volcanoes. She had to give it to the Norn; their illusions were thorough.
“What’s my test?” she asked, coughing against the smoke her lungs refused to believe wasn’t real.
“So quick to leave your home?” Skuld asked. “Don’t you want to know what happened that night?”
Anara blanched, her mind burrowing through the past. The draugr had come in the middle of the night without warning, burning the city and slaughtering her people. Her mother’s and father’s screams rent the air, feeding the flames at Anara’s feet. She hadn’t thought of this night in years.
“Stop it!” she shouted at the Norn.
Skuld looked on mercilessly. “How can you decide whether or not to redeem your people if you don’t know the depth of their depravity?”
With a flick of her hand, the smoke around them cleared.
They stood in a courtyard. Several Rubinians knelt around an enormous bonfire, their heads bowed in the same direction.
Anara stared in horror, recognizing so many.
These were the aristocrats, those with lesser galdr ; she’d known them her whole life.
In the midst of the kneeling Rubinians, a woman dressed in a long black gown held a knife made of diamonds in one hand.
Shiko peered down at those who prostrated themselves before her, speaking in an ancient language—one that Anara had always hated to study as a child.
Shiko raised the dagger and sliced through the skin of her opposing arm.
Blood oozed into a goblet that a man held beneath her.
Grinning through the pain, Shiko threw back her head, laughing at the sky. Her tall diamond crown never wavered from her head, even as she tilted her ear as if to listen to someone beside her, though no one was there. Shiko raised the goblet, her voice thundering over the flames.
“For too long, you have not received the consideration you deserved. Your galdr has been diminished by a weak ruler who hides like a coward behind his walls. Join me, and I offer you strength like none you’ve ever had before.
Join me, and taste what real galdr tastes like.
Join me, and you will have not only your own galdr but the power of my bloodline as well. The gods have sworn it!”
Nearly tripping over one another, the Rubinians raced toward her, accepting the blood that she drew on their foreheads in a scribbled and sharp rune that Anara did not recognize. Unable to help herself, Anara pleaded with the man nearest to her. “Don’t do this. It isn’t what you think!”
She reached for him, but her hands fell through the man who took no more notice of her than if she were truly a ghost. In the back of the crowd, Anara spotted a heartbreakingly familiar face.
Zoya . Her cousin’s deep black hair was cut short around her face, displaying the scars that ran around her neck as a result of a recent tournament.
Zoya was only thirteen, and yet she’d taken down an opponent twice her age, looking toward Anara for approval.
How had Anara never seen the jealousy in her eyes?
“Please, Zoya,” Anara cried, forgetting it was a vision, as her cousin stepped forward to receive her rune. “Please, don’t do this! Don’t make me kill you!”
Anara’s words fell like dust carried away in the wind.
Just as the last of the initiates received their runes, the first who had received them collapsed to the floor.
Anara stepped back, gagging on the revulsion that clogged her throat.
Then all of those who’d accepted the rune convulsed on the ground, arching their backs as their bodies stretched beyond their limit, as bones broke and teeth rattled to the ground.
Their bodies were darkening, elongating; whiplike tails lashed out from their backs, horns sprouted from their heads, and the color fled from their eyes.
Anara covered her mouth in horror watching as Zoya rose.
Every inch of her cousin was gone, replaced by the monster that stood, obedient to Shiko’s every command.
“Go, my servants. Bring me those with galdr so they might join us, and kill those who restrained you from your full potential for so many years!”
Anara ground her teeth as the draugrs ’ screeches rent the air.
“Now we follow them,” Skuld commanded, her body shifting into that of a large gray owl.
Of her own accord or compelled by the vision, Anara obeyed.
Her wings took her to the sky, and she found herself grateful that ravens couldn’t cry.
Flames leapt from the rooftops, made worse by the draft of the draugrs ’ wings They swooped over their own city, killing with abandon and spreading destruction wherever they went.
Even with the ocean nearby, there would be no stopping the inferno. Rubin would collapse into ash and dust.
As it should , Anara’s thoughts were bitter as she strained against the thickness in the air. Her people had chosen darkness; they’d chosen destruction. Yet, her heart still panged uncomfortably at the sight of her beloved home crumbling to the ground.
Driven by Skuld’s presence, Anara flew toward the spires of her palace, darting in through the broken windows and landing on wolf’s paws.
She could smell the dead flesh of her enemies.
That’s what her people had become. Draugrs .
Though their bodies lived on, their souls were dead.
Anara had seen the truth in Zoya’s eyes.
There would be no choice but to hunt them tonight. To hunt Zoya.
In the foyer of the palace, Anara skidded to a halt, her claws scratching against the mosaic tiled floor. Her father and mother were surrounded on all sides by draugrs that leapt and slashed with abandon. Anara crouched low, preparing to launch into the fight.
Her father’s shout stopped her. “Anara, no!”
“Run, Anara!” her mother called out, turning to her daughter and revealing the mortal wound that bled from her chest. Already, she was stumbling, her blood running through the mosaic grout lines.
Anara wouldn’t leave them, couldn’t desert them, but her world took on a twisted and hazy filter as her mother’s body vanished into the ground.
Another draugr stood over her father’s broken body, howling in triumph and bloodlust. Anara whimpered, her tail tucked between her legs.
She stepped back, then flailed when her back paw found nothing but air.
The palace behind her had crumbled, leaving nothing but a black pit that had swallowed the rest of Rubin.
All that remained of her people were the draugrs that licked their lips around their laughter as they advanced toward her.
There was no escape from their sharp talons and barbed tails—none besides the bottomless pit behind her.
Did she dare jump? Would it be more painless? But where was her pride? Where was her fight? Anara crouched forward. She was the Princess of Rubin, the strongest kingdom of the nation. She could not let dishonor be her final act.
Will you kill them all? a voice asked from the back of Anara’s mind.
If I must , Anara thought.
What of the innocents ?
Perhaps there were innocents still left, out there in the city hiding from the desolation of their kingdom, but Anara’s vision was overwhelmed by the monsters that cried out for her blood, having already soaked in the blood of her parents.
The smallest of the draugrs pushed forward, its body shifting back into that of Zoya.
“You would kill me?” she asked, her eyes round and innocent.
You chose this! You’re already dead , Anara cried in her mind, knowing that Zoya could not understand. They’d once been able to communicate when both in their wolf forms. They never would again.
At Anara’s silence, Zoya growled, “You’ll fight for every other kingdom! Why won’t you fight for us?”
Anara’s ears twitched back, laying flat against her head as she kneaded her claws into the tile that cracked under the pressure. Didn’t they understand? She had fought for them. She’d already lost. There was only one choice left.
“What will you choose, Princess?” Like an image rippling across an unsettled lake, Skuld’s form manifested before Anara, shaking the runes in her hands. “Have you given up on your people, or will you fight to redeem their souls?”
Anara remembered. She was not in Rubin watching the draugrs attack or arriving too late to save her parents.
She was not about to murder Zoya again. Rubin had fallen decades ago, as had her family.
She’d escaped. She’d founded the Vienám, given so many others the chance she hadn’t been able to give her people.
She’d found Larissa and Darien. They’d answered the call of the Norn to learn more of the prophecy to defeat Shiko.
Stupid , she chided herself. How had she been drawn into the false vision?
She let go of the galdr that encased her body, allowing the fur to vanish and her limbs to return to normal.
She stood before Skuld and tilted her chin up to look into the eyes of the goddess that towered over her.
The woman’s eyes glowed even as her face remained as impassive as ever.
Anara clenched her hands to stop their shaking.
Even knowing that the draugrs weren’t real didn’t stop her adrenaline from spiking at their every screech and scream.
“Can my people actually be saved?” she asked.
“That depends on you.”
Was this her test? Her loyalty to her people? But where had their loyalty been to her? To her parents? Anara battled the anger and betrayal that lived just beneath her skin. “If it’s possible, I will save them.”
Skuld rattled the stones again, but this time she let them fall from her grasp and roll across the cracked tiles until they stopped at Anara’s feet. The Kenaz rune symbolizing ancient knowledge and fire stared up at her.
Anara shook her head. “What does it mean?”
“Let it burn.” Skuld reached out with her abnormally long fingers to touch Anara’s neck.
At the slightest brush, Anara’s throat constricted.
She jerked back, clasping cold hands against the warm skin of her neck that grew hotter until Anara dropped her hands altogether.
Blisters formed on her palms. Anara gagged, desperate to dislodge whatever was building in her throat, but there was nothing she could do.
Her eyes welled with tears as she fell to her hands and knees, unable to breathe.
Skuld vanished. As if released from a trance, the draugrs charged. Of its own accord, Anara’s mouth opened. Fire spewed out, coating the draugrs , even the smallest, whose eyes met Anara’s in fear. Instantly incinerated, they collapsed to piles of ash at Anara’s feet.
But the flames were not done. They poured from Anara’s mouth without invitation or control. They licked the remaining palace walls and danced along the tile floors, spilling out into whatever remained of Rubin. The heat was unbearable. The air was too thick to breathe.
Just as the flames consumed Anara, blinding her with their light, she heard all three of the Norn’s voices meld into one. “ Queen of monsters, dead without worth, brings baptism of fire and rebirth. ”