Chapter Ten
There is something fascinating in the way voting is conducted among valkyrians.
To cast a vote, they must draw their own blood and let it fall into one of their sacred pools.
The water either remains clear or turns red, revealing the will of the voter.
Though valkyrians cannot harm themselves—protective runes etched across their skin prevent such wounds—these enchantments make an exception for the ritual of voting, allowing just enough blood to be drawn.
The practice was created to guard against corruption, to ensure no manipulation could take root among their ranks. For even if a valkyrian is coerced or threatened, their blood remains honest. It cannot be swayed. It will reveal only the truth of their heart, the choice they truly desire.
Tabitha Wysteria
‘Higher,’ Freya instructed, her hands clasped neatly behind her back as she paced in a slow circle around the young woman once known as Wren.
Now, the figure before her stood taller, steadier, a bow raised with precision, blue eyes narrowed in concentration as they locked onto the target ahead. ‘Breathe. In and out. Focus.’
Ylva obeyed, drawing in a slow breath before releasing the arrow. It soared across the sun-dappled garden, slicing through the stillness before embedding itself with a soft thud into the trunk of an ancient tree.
‘Not bad,’ Freya murmured, though her spine prickled with an unwanted sensation. She cast a glance over her shoulder and, unsurprisingly, found Alma watching them from a polite but deliberate distance.
‘Is something wrong?’ Ylva asked, her gaze following Freya’s to the silent observer.
‘No.’
‘Then why does she keep staring?’ Ylva frowned, tension flickering across her brow. ‘Am I doing something wrong?’
‘You’re not,’ Freya said through gritted teeth. ‘Alma simply enjoys fussing over new warriors, ensuring they’re adjusting properly during their first few weeks.’
Ylva accepted this with a thoughtful nod and returned to her stance, her focus shifting back to the task at hand. Freya, however, gave Alma one last, lingering look, a glacial glare that needed no words, before resuming the lesson.
Even in rebirth, valkyrians awakened with the knowledge of combat etched into their runes. An inheritance of war and discipline, no matter who they had been before. But muscle still needed time to remember what their runes already knew. Practice remained essential.
Another arrow flew, striking the target dead-centre. Ylva didn’t so much as blink. No smile, no ounce of satisfaction. She stood in poised silence, waiting, always waiting, for Freya’s next command.
It was the silence that unsettled Freya most. Wren had never known how to hold her tongue, not even in the midst of chaos. She had filled the world with words, laughter, endless thoughts and questions. But this woman before her was a ghost in comparison.
It’s not her, she’s gone, Freya reminded herself for what felt like the hundredth time.
‘Let’s move on to the swords,’ she said, turning to retrieve one of the practice blades she had laid upon the grass.
Around them, the gardens echoed with the low music of water cascading nearby, punctuated by the sounds of exertion, the clash of steel, the rhythm of boots, the rough breaths of training valkyrians.
Ylva placed her bow on the ground with care and reached for a sword. Her armour, sleek and elegant in white, silver, and gold, clung to her with effortless grace. Valkyrian armour was designed for agility: light, leaving much of the body bare, yet expertly shielding the vital points.
‘I heard you’re the one who brought me here,’ Ylva said softly as she adjusted her grip on the blade.
‘Who told you that?’ Freya asked without looking up.
Ylva gave a small shrug. ‘Does it matter?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Did we know each other?’
‘You know I can’t answer that,’ Freya replied, her tone clipped. ‘And they warned you against asking.’
Ylva nodded once, an acknowledgement, nothing more, and without further pause, lunged.
Their swords collided in a rush of motion, steel against steel.
Freya blocked the strike, then delivered a swift kick to Ylva’s stomach, sending her staggering back but only for a breath.
Ylva recovered quickly, darting forward once more with newfound vitality, moving like wind through reed, her long white braid trailing behind her in a blur of light.
Their runes shimmered under the sunlight, glowing faintly as they danced across the grass. Freya’s boot caught Ylva’s shoulder, but the younger woman twisted with expert precision, seized Freya’s ankle mid-movement, and threw her.
Freya hit the ground hard. Not injured, but surprised. Before she could rise, the cool kiss of a blade met her throat.
She looked up into those piercing blue eyes. So familiar, yet no longer the same, and felt her heart clench. How easily the world shifted. How swiftly the people within it became strangers.
Ylva extended her hand, and Freya, after the briefest hesitation, allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
She left her sword lying in the grass among the other weapons and settled down cross-legged beneath the soft shade, reaching for the fruit she had brought.
Without a word, she handed an apple to Ylva, who accepted it with a small nod of thanks.
Together, they sat in companionable silence, their gazes drifting to a cluster of valkyrians training beneath the sweeping canopy of a weeping willow. The warriors moved in perfect unison, blades slicing through the air in disciplined arcs, a fluid choreography of war.
‘Ylva,’ Freya said at last, tasting the name for the first time aloud, letting it linger on her tongue. There was something strange in saying it, like touching silk where there had once been steel. She chuckled, softly.
‘What’s so amusing?’ Ylva asked, a frown knitting her brow as she took a bite of the apple.
‘Your name.’
‘And what’s so funny about it?’
Freya bit into her own apple, her smile stretching with quiet mischief.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Alma at the far end of the garden, walking in step with a cluster of Council valkyrians.
And yet, even amidst conversation, those golden eyes never left Freya. Ever watchful and ever knowing.
‘It’s not funny,’ Freya said, wiping juice from her lip. ‘Just... fitting.’
Ylva tilted her head, curious. ‘What does it mean?’
Freya turned fully to face her, studying the pale warrior beside her, this reborn soul with fragments of another life buried beneath her skin. For a fleeting moment, Freya saw her, truly saw her, as she had once been. Wren Wynter, full of fire and laughter and impossible light.
‘It means female wolf,’ Freya whispered.
…
‘Freya, this is a closed meeting,’ Alma said, her voice echoing through the stillness of the temple as Freya strode inside with deliberate ease.
The valkyrian temple was a structure of understated beauty, modest in scale and simple in design.
Its stone walls, softened by creeping vines, bore ancient runes carved beside the entrance, sigils of protection, etched by hand and time.
Like all valkyrian architecture, the temple had no roof, open to the sky above, so that light and air might always bear witness to the truth spoken within.
The interior mirrored the outside, austere and unadorned. At its centre sat a shallow circular pool filled with milky-white water, its surface calm as glass. Around it, stone seats rose like a silent amphitheatre, each reserved for a member of the Council.
Freya paid Alma’s protest no heed. With her usual feline grace, she sauntered inside and claimed one of the vacant seats, her blue eyes sweeping across the councillors with calculated poise.
It always amused her, this theatre of reverence, mortals bowing their heads in prayer, murmuring words of worship to gods they believed far removed.
And yet here she sat, a goddess in flesh, unacknowledged, unthanked.
It was, of course, her own doing. Only a handful of valkyrians knew the truth.
Alma among them. And more often than not these days, Freya found herself questioning the wisdom of that decision.
‘I come with a petition,’ she said plainly, stretching her legs with the casual elegance of a lounging cat.
Her eyes drifted to the water at her feet, that strange white pool into which councillors would slice open their palms and let their blood fall to cast a vote.
A peculiar, arcane ritual. But then again, who was she to judge?
Alma, resplendent in her flowing white robes, stood tall before the assembled Council. Her golden eyes, always sharp, narrowed with silent appraisal.
‘Very well then,’ she said. ‘Speak.’
Freya leaned back into her seat, exuding the languid confidence of a creature entirely at ease in its own skin. ‘War is upon us.’
‘War is always upon us,’ Alma replied, unflinching.
‘For the past century, it hasn’t been.’ Freya flicked her tongue along the edge of her teeth, a gesture more of irritation than amusement. ‘The witches have seized control of the kingdom forged in flame and dragons. The valkyrians cannot keep turning a blind eye.’
‘If we intervene, we may incite another Great War.’
Freya snorted, a sound full of scorn. ‘If we don’t, there will be nothing left to save. It won’t be a war. It will be a massacre.’
Alma turned to face her more directly, her posture unyielding.
‘It is not indifference that stays our hand, Freya. But caution. You know well what the last Great War cost us. Six kingdoms destroyed a seventh while we tried to stop it. We cannot act out of impulse. Not again. Before we ride to battle, we must assess every angle. There is still a chance the witches may be contained.’
‘They cannot,’ Freya said flatly, tilting her head with calculated deliberation.
‘Because we are not only facing witches.’ At that, a low murmur rippled through the Council chamber.
Freya could feel Alma’s displeasure rise like heat from stone, but she pressed on, undeterred. ‘There are gods involved.’
The fury in Alma’s golden eyes was like a sunrise burning through storm clouds.
Freya would be chastised later, she knew.
A stern rebuke behind closed doors, no doubt.
But she didn’t care. The time for quiet deliberation was long past. The world was tearing at its seams, and the valkyrians could not sit idle, polishing their honour while chaos devoured everything else.
‘The gods—’
‘Were kept from us by Tabitha Wysteria’s curse,’ Freya interrupted smoothly. ‘But Mal Blackburn broke that spell, and now they are free. Free to walk among us, to meddle, to scheme. And many already do.’
Freya couldn’t help the mischievous curve of her lips as the Council erupted into discord, voices raised in alarm and speculation.
She caught Alma’s gaze across the room. Sharp, questioning, and not a little weary.
Alma was no stranger to Freya’s provocations and likely suspected the goddess was, as ever, scheming.
And indeed, Freya was.
Her cause, to her mind, was noble, justified. She wanted the gods banished, stripped of their power and exiled from mortal affairs. But more than that, she wanted her children restored, her husband dead, and the gates of the Underworld crowned with his severed, rotting head.
‘Do you have proof?’ Alma asked, once she’d restored order to the room.
Freya remained silent, lips poised but unmoving. Alma exhaled with visible frustration, about to turn her attention back to the Council and divert their thoughts before they wandered too far, but Freya moved first.
She rose with fluid grace and stepped towards the pool at the centre of the chamber. Her fingers found the dagger at her hip, the blade whispering free of its sheath like a promise.
‘I propose we vote,’ she said, her voice ringing with deliberate clarity, ignoring the flare of anger in Alma’s golden stare. ‘I say it is time we stop sitting idle while the world burns. I say we ride, now, and bring an end to the witches’ reign.’
Without waiting for approval, she sliced the heel of her palm, just enough to draw blood, and let a single drop fall into the milky white water.
One by one, in solemn silence, the councillors followed. Each rose, approached the pool, and offered their own cut, their own drop of red.
Freya stepped aside, satisfaction curling in her chest like smoke from a slow-burning fire. She watched Alma, whose composure had hardened into steel, finally stand and offer her blood last of all.
When the final droplet met the pool, crimson bloomed into white and the waters began to churn, a slow, swirling dance of blood and prophecy.
Freya leaned forward, anticipation thrumming through her like a storm held just beneath the skin.
If the water turned red, it would mean war.
The Council would ride, and the valkyrians would march beneath the banners of righteous fury.
But if the pool paled once more to white…
Then Freya wasn’t sure what she would do.
She could ready her horse and ride into the flames alone perhaps, but little more. The runes etched into her flesh bound her, ancient markings that thrummed with command. A valkyrian could not defy the Council. She could not break the rules she had been born or rather, reborn, to obey.
There were, of course, ways to escape such bindings.
She could cast herself into death and seek a new body to inhabit.
But it was a gamble, and a costly one. Mortal vessels were fragile things, never truly meant to house gods.
Some withered the moment divinity entered them, while others lingered briefly, rotting, warping, corrupted by the weight of power too vast to contain.
And even that path was barred; her runes forbade self-harm.
No valkyrian could fall by their own hand. They were forged for service.
And serve they would, until the battlefield welcomed them into Niflheim.
The waters stirred.
‘Well,’ Freya said at last, as the colour began to change. ‘That settles it.’
She turned without waiting for reply, the white fabric of her robes trailing behind her like smoke on wind. Behind her, golden eyes watched, and the waters, no longer red, had chosen silence over war.