Chapter 9
Lux
The second time I walked down the aisle toward the vampire king, my face painted with wedding runes and my body draped in an emerald gown that hugged my hips, my nerves were quiet.
But the Gods were not.
Not only did another storm thrash outside the castle, but the roar of the Gods echoed inside my head too.
When the walls I put up in my mind cracked, I heard Freya begging me to gut Drak.
Loki giggled maniacally. Odin’s voice commanded me to rip the stake from my thigh and bury it in my betrothed’s chest.
You told me to get the vampires here by whatever means necessary. Even with the vial of pig’s blood in my pocket—proof that I wasn’t giving myself to a vampire and abandoning the Gods—Odin still clamored for my attention.
Loki laughed as Odin’s voice grated against my skull. “That was before you dreamed of fucking him.” At this, Loki’s amusement became shrill and painful.
It was just a dream.
“It was what you wanted. This isn’t worth it.”
Too late. I was here, drifting down the aisle toward my future fake husband while hundreds of witnesses watched. Everyone in the court and the wedding guests from Mara and Skaldir focused on me, but I only looked at Drak.
His icy eyes were as sharp as ever, piercing me with a consuming stare.
One of them devoid of color since a witch had stabbed him in that eye.
No doubt the witch’s attack scarred a vampire's eye in such a unique way, leaving his gaze two-toned.
White in one and the color of spring fjords in the other.
Drak pulled a chain from beneath his tunic. At the end dangled a bronze ring with a blood-red ruby. Raising it slightly, he made sure I saw it before letting it fall against his sternum.
Sten’s ring. Why was he even wearing the ring of the vampire he’d killed, all in the name of some warped mission to avenge me?
Sten had tried to kill me, but I hadn’t needed Drak’s help to survive.
When it came to Sten’s disgusting comments—lies—about having his way with me, Drak cut off his head and kept the ring.
My eyes narrowed, and my lips parted. He nodded as if I understood whatever message he was trying to send.
And then for some reason, I did.
The ring was a reminder that he’d once promised to protect me. But was this protection from my sister and the vampires, or from the Gods?
He clasped his hands in front of him, never taking his eyes off me. Our shared gaze was like an invisible string, pulling me toward him despite the whispers in my head.
No one else existed as I took him in. His hair mirrored the twist of my braid, but he styled his on top of his head and then tied it into a knot at the back.
The angled cut of his beard was as clean as he could get.
Drak matched the warriors in the sagas rather than the vampires around him.
He opted for a white tunic that fit the muscles of his chest, showing the black ink of jagged tattoos around his collar.
This moment only contained us—the king my family once bargained me away to, and the huntress designed to kill him.
“It is your duty to destroy him.”
Odin’s demands rang louder than the others, slicing through our moment like an axe. Why didn’t the Gods understand that I could die if I ran headfirst at the vampires compelled by my sister? She knew my every weakness.
My slippered feet padded soundlessly across the stone, onward with my plan.
“Kill him.”
“Kill.”
Freya’s voice intermingled with Odin’s, and I couldn’t discern if Loki spoke too. Their words were a jumbled jolt of pain through my temples. I blinked, trying to focus on Drak around the hammering throb behind my eyes.
My hand flexed, almost reaching for the stake at my thigh without my consent. The connection between my brain and my fingers meant my hands were the hands of the Gods in this realm.
Of course they were. From the moment I was born with the power to receive their visions, I had been their vessel.
But I couldn’t kill Drak. Even when I had the chance, I simply couldn’t. My reasoning was that he was the only person who had ever told me the truth. Was that enough to let a monster live?
“Turn away.” Freya begged.
“Don’t do this, huntress.” Odin’s voice was more oppressive.
A gleeful laugh preceded Loki’s slithering tone. “Stick your tongue in his mouth while you stick the stake through his heart!”
These messages pulsed, sucking me from reality one second, then plunging me back into this world the next. The whiplash left me breathless, as if the Gods were forcing my head beneath the surface of icy water each time they spoke.
When I stepped within reach, Drak offered me his hand, palm turned up. I slipped my fingers into his hold and allowed him to guide me to stand in front of the one throne of Vylheim. Before these witnesses, and in front of the bronze throne, we faced each other as king and queen. Husband and wife.
My heart was finally quiet, and beating steadily, even as the voices of the divine raged in my head. I pulled my hand back, gingerly touching my temple, attempting to build the wall in my mind that blocked them out. Just for now.
Concern creased Drak’s brow. He leaned closer, ignoring the council member who stepped up to face the throne and call for us to kneel toward Mara. Drak’s scent of freshly fallen snow and the wood of a spruce tree set me at ease.
“Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded, but he grunted, a low rumble of doubt that made it clear he wasn’t buying it. “Don’t lie, Skald.”
My heart skipped once as I blew out a slow breath. “I will be okay.”
Drak’s breath brushed over my ear. “We can make this real.” I swallowed hard. “You’ll never hear the Gods again.”
I tilted my chin up, searching his eyes as a whisper slipped from my lips. “And let innocent people get drained by vampires?”
“Let me take care of it.”
“You’re not a God.”
“Yet,” he smirked, arrogant in his plan that’d only work if Odin didn’t make me kill Drak first. “All you have to do is prick your finger.”
I gritted my teeth. He’d better stick to the fucking plan. If he hadn’t brought a vial of pig’s blood, this entire idea would have been a trick.
But of course, Drak never lied to me. Knowing this, I breathed a little easier.
When we turned, hand-in-hand, and knelt before the people of Mara—the only time a king and queen would kneel to their subjects—he slipped a tiny glass vial from his pocket and buried it in his fist.
The chosen witness, the eldest council member, presented the wax seal where “L” was imprinted over “D”. The red circle fit in the palm of our hands.
When the witness turned, I slipped the vial from my pocket. Drak’s throat rippled with a stilted swallow as his gaze flicked from the vial to my face. His mouth was a flat line, and his eyes dropped to the stone beneath us.
“He is my king,” I repeated the vows the witness spoke over our heads.
Drak’s gaze slid to me again, pinning me as he said his half of the vow. “She is my queen.” While the witness invoked the people of Mara to honor the vows, Drak added a whispered vow, a devilish curve on his lips. “My wife.”
He tipped the vial of blood into the seal and nodded toward my fist, where my vial lay hidden. I hesitated, glancing as the drop of blood spread through the ridges of the seal.
Drak brought his lips to my ear. “I’ll never lie to you.”
My heart skipped. This was what kept drawing me to him. It had to be. I was addicted to his constant truthfulness. That he’d always known I wasn’t Silver—the woman I claimed to be—and yet he accepted me while ignoring the fucked-up lies I had to tell.
I met his gaze, holding it for a moment as I took all of him in.
Drak was many things: a vampire and a king, but I’d always seen the fighter in him.
To me, he was just like the men in the sagas because of his wild determination.
This truth became obvious when I learned the Gods had twisted his mother’s mind, and he sought to avenge her, fighting like the warriors of old once did.
Men and women who set out to defend their families.
Even if the result ended in a corrupted earth, their courage was admirable.
Finally, I tilted the vial so that the pig’s blood smeared across my finger before it spilled into the seal.
It was done.
The witness’s voice boomed above us, almost in time with another thunderous roar beyond the castle walls. “King Drakkar and Queen Lux, rise and embrace before your subjects.”
Drak helped me to my feet with his palm lifting at my elbow and his other hand holding mine. Releasing my hand, he cupped the back of my neck.
His touch ignited my skin, sending a shiver down my spine. Though we weren’t officially bound, the desire pooling in his feral eyes reached my core. I licked my lips, marking them with a heat and wetness like that which was building between my thighs.
“Kill him.” Odin breathed.
Drak’s face flickered. All desire vanished as rage replaced it. Of course, he’d heard Odin’s voice in my mind. Whenever I ached for him, he caught glimpses of my thoughts.
But the mix of anger and worry wiped away as he brought my hand to his lips.
Silence blanketed the throne room. The hundreds of people witnessing our wedding barely breathed because they expected their king to wrap his arms around his queen and seal this marriage with a kiss.
The quiet materialized into something heavy the longer Drak abstained from finalizing this fake marriage. They were going to know it wasn’t real, and if they didn’t believe it, neither would Silver.
“Destroy him.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for as long as it was appropriate, willing Odin to give me this moment with Drak—with my husband. The erratic thumping of my heartbeat slowed. Before Odin could reach into my mind again, I opened my eyes and focused on Drak’s lips. Kiss me.
Drak pulled me into him, his mouth close enough to brush his lips over mine as he whispered. “What if I wanted it to be real?”
It wasn’t a question I was meant to answer because when my lips parted, his mouth covered mine.
His kiss was desperate and slow, cleaving my heart in two.
I returned the kiss greedily as I sucked his bottom lip between my teeth.
When he pulled back, I gnawed my lip, feeling hollow and colder in his absence.
Instead of the joy of a husband who’d just kissed his wife, he looked like a defeated king.
As if he’d just lost his throne and surrendered it to the enemy, he clenched his jaw and blinked away the glazed look in his eyes.
Empty disappointment wiped his face blank, except for the grim smile he pasted on for the people of Mara.
I slipped my hand into his and intertwined our fingers. This feels familiar. His words echoed in my memory. A strange ache bloomed in my chest that I couldn’t identify. It wasn’t longing, or simple sadness at the sight of defeat twisting his face.
This grief was raw and guttural, a pain I hadn’t known since the executioners took my mother.
He lifted his chin to the aisle stretched out before us. “You first,” he whispered. “I’ll follow you.”
That struck me square in the chest, as if he—the king who craved control—was relinquishing it, even for a second, to have me step out first. We stepped forward, hand-in-hand, husband and wife, and I let him guide me to the table of quail eggs, oiled bread, and dark wines.
I didn’t take my eyes off the goblet while he filled it with deep red wine.
The liquid rippled with another tremor from the Gods’s storm, threatening to spill and stain the stone between our feet.
I avoided Drak even when he lifted the goblet to loop our arms and drink from the cups. The grief intensified, knotting my insides every time I looked at him.
Where had this feeling come from? What the Hel was I even grieving? We’d succeeded. Everybody believed this was a legitimate marriage.
But what if I wanted it to be real, too? If I did, then I was exactly the stupid, selfish girl my father had always said I was.
The ground shuddered beneath us again, and I knew this was the Gods agreeing.