Chapter 6
Drak
Bare shoulders stood out among the ash-brown shelves that surrounded my future wife. I knew I’d find her at the library. She was always here, studying the sagas.
Eight days had passed since she agreed to marry me, leaving one more for the rest of the people of Skaldir to travel here. Surely an empty village would ignite Silver’s rage if the wedding hadn’t already lured her into Mara’s Keep.
It was almost the perfect plan except for only one downside. I didn’t want our marriage to be fake.
The pool of her jade skirt rippled out around her folded legs on the shaggy rug. History of all kinds encircled her as runes carved into stone slabs, loosely bound books, and rolled scrolls.
Pieces of our past lay hidden in them, and she was as drawn to the stories as I was to her.
Lux didn’t lift her head even with the sound of my footsteps echoing against stone.
The journal she studied kept her absolutely enraptured, and the bronze candelabra hanging over her like a high floating crown made her the vision of a fiercely intelligent queen.
Wax caught in the shimmering cups at the base of each milky candle, and the glow of pale yellow flickered across the shades of autumn in Lux’s hair and clothes.
Green and brown fabric, hints of red from her braid.
Wild hairs escaped the thick rope of hair and curled inward as if everything pointed back to her.
For me, everything did.
And I still didn’t know why I needed her so damn badly.
Not just to touch her. I needed her to look at me like she did when she led me to the throne.
Lust swam in her gaze, but it was her want for me and the fleeting glimpses I caught of her thoughts about how she longed for me because she saw something in me she hadn’t experienced in anyone else that consumed me.
Fuck if I didn’t want to know what the Hel she saw.
“Lux,” I spoke into the still air. The only sound was the soft turning of the pages. “You need rest before the ceremony if we’re going to pull this off. No doubt the fucking army will storm down our doors with Silver in the lead the second you sit on that throne.”
At dawn, servants and subjects would prepare for our wedding while Lux and I prepared for war.
“I need to understand Silver, and I keep thinking the sagas will help me," she said, her voice tightening with frustration or desperation. I wasn’t sure which.
I crouched beside her, my elbows propped on my knees. “What is it you’re looking for?” I searched her face as if I’d find the answers she needed there. Grazing her bottom lip with her teeth, I stared at her mouth. Tomorrow, I’d get to taste those perfect pink lips again.
Though I knew she craved me since the moment she showed up at my doorstep four weeks ago, she held back for some stupid loyalty to the vampire who trained her to become the huntress.
The Exile was the bane of my existence after he’d trained her, fucking trained her, like she was a damn dog he used to hunt game.
She was the one with the claws, and he was directing her how to use them against our kind in some pathetic attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of the gods.
Vampires are irredeemable.
Finally, Lux looked up from the stained pages of the old book. “If I understand the stories of the first witch, maybe I’ll know my sister better, and then I’ll truly be ready to face her. She and the first witch could be the same.”
“You think Myrah was reborn through Silver?” I asked.
As we understood it, the first witch tried to reincarnate through Lux and Silver’s mother’s womb, but since she was pregnant with twins, the witch’s powers split.
Her natural magic—glimpses from the gods—flowed into Lux, while Silver received the witch’s learned power when she’d touched a Valkyrie and gained the ability to alter and control life and death; or undeath.
Now, they shared similar magic after Lux accepted the gods’ trials.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Pointing to the scrawled text, her finger traced the ink. “This is a copy of the original story, rewritten only ninety-six years ago by a recorder named Brynhild. This is the writer's interpretation of the ancient runes.”
I followed her finger, my gaze flicking over the words.
Never had I taken the time to read through every rewritten version of the old sagas.
The first witch’s story had so many iterations, I hadn’t cared to know them all except for what I could learn about Yggdrasil and becoming a god.
But there was very little of that information in her story.
Myrah’s rebirth in the realm of Odin’s children requires her warrior’s foot upon the soil.
“Do you think this means the warrior she loved has tried to return to this realm?” she asked.
Before waiting for an answer, she read the next line aloud.
“For that to happen, he’d have to fulfill his promise and leave Valhalla.
What warrior would ever leave Odin’s table?
” She looked up at me. “According to another record written by Yrsa, Myrah called her lover Rune.”
Rune. The name echoed in my mind.
Something suddenly flooded my senses and overwhelmed me with the same feeling that attacked me when I’d heard Lux say this word outside of my workshop. Another episode of surreality or whatever the fuck this was.
My lungs tightened, as if Rune’s name, invoked by Lux, had somehow sucked the air from my chest. Though I didn’t need to breathe as a vampire, I suddenly couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t think straight. A crushing weight closed in around my temples, and the sensation of choking, strangling desperation overpowered me.
Something inexplicable was happening to my body as the flicker of an old story burst into my memory. A story that seemed to take over me as I lost all sense of this room, of Lux, and of reality.
“Fuck,” I breathed as a sharp pain smashed into the soft space between my shoulder and my heart.
Pressure and blinding agony bolted up from the spot, like an axe that had embedded itself into my chest before someone yanked it back again.
My legs shook, weak even under the weight of my casual crouch.
“Drak?” Lux’s voice faded away as if stretching across a vast field.
“Rune.” Another voice breathed into my ear. “Come back to me.”
I forced my body to move, but the effort was akin to moving through sand and stone. My legs were heavy and almost useless, working only enough to drag me forward. Toward something, someone, a voice.
I didn’t know.
“Come back,” Lux said.
All at once, the pain lifted. The weight evaporated and the chill of the castle settled over me. I was no longer crouching on the rug beside her, but standing with one hand splayed against the door frame, slumped and breathless as I faced the hallway.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You just got up and walked away.”
Clutching my chest, I straightened my spine before turning to face her, refusing to reveal this strange weakness. She didn’t want to be bound to a monster, but from what I knew of Lux, she would hate to be bound to a weak man more.
I had to get this crazy dream under control before she questioned my strength. And since I was bound for godhood, I needed to be ready for this kind of intense pain and the power it would take for my body to adapt to Odin’s abilities.
“Come look at this,” she said. Thank Hel she was mostly oblivious to whatever the fuck just happened to me. “Myrah was willing to sacrifice anything to get what she wanted. Does that sound like Silver to you?”
Frowning, I turned and shook my head. “No. Silver won’t sacrifice herself.”
“Well, of course not, then she can’t sit on the throne.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, Silver wouldn’t sacrifice herself for someone else. The sagas all say Myrah sacrificed the immortality she siphoned from the vampires she created to get to Valhalla. To be with the man she loved.”
“But she never made it to Valhalla,” she said, her brow scrunched.
The wrinkle at the bridge of her nose was enchanting.
Despite her ability to catch glimpses of the future as a seer, she still sought knowledge and wisdom instead of relying on the gods.
Her curiosity was bewitching, and I feared the tightness in my chest would flare into pain again, but this wasn’t like the phantom blade.
“Myrah never made it to Valhalla,” I repeated.
“But she sure as Hel tried.” If she’s been successful, she wouldn’t have attempted rebirth through Anastasia’s womb—Silver and Lux’s mother.
Maybe Lux’s assessment was correct. Maybe Silver’s ability to compel vampires from the beginning meant she was Myrah.
No, I knew Silver. I grew up with her. She loved nothing but herself and the throne.
From the moment she saw it as a child, she wanted to be on top.
I never blamed her, since I wanted the same thing, though her reason was for revenge against the people of Vylheim who failed her; mine was revenge against the gods.
I wasn’t so different from the enemy.
Still, none of this meant Silver was the first witch. “Myrah did everything for her lover,” I said. “Silver only does what she wants for herself. They can’t be, as you say, one and the same.”
Lux chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Perhaps you’re right. My mother always said Silver was her own. She couldn’t control her, even then. She said that if Silver had been a seer like me and her, she would have seen chaos, and only from Loki’s eyes.”
Lux winced, that same sign that the fucking gods were in her head again. Loki must have heard his name and come running.
I flexed my hands into fists, wishing I could just reach through her eye socket and rip the bastards out. They hurt her, warped her mind, turned her against herself, and she still followed them.
“Maybe that’s the truth,” I said.