Chapter 12 #2
Why didn’t the sight of Kayn feel the same? He wanted to honor Odin and Freya, and he knew the words of the saga. I should have loved everything about him.
“Lux.” He stepped up to me and cupped my arms. As he held me, his gaze searched mine, a faint furrow forming between his eyebrows.
“You escaped Silver,” I said. Before I could look to see if my mother or Stasia was with him, his grip on me tightened.
Sadness swam in his eyes, and when he opened his mouth, I thought he’d say my mother and Stasia had died. “How could you?” he whispered.
I recoiled. “What?”
He cursed under his breath. “You gave up your powers.”
“Kayn—”
Shaking his head, he shook me too. It was slight, not forceful, but enough to cause me to clamp my jaw. “Humans have no chance against the vampires now. You haven’t seen Silver’s army.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Neither do you.” A vein bulged at his temple. Red lines snaked across the whites of his eyes, and his mouth held a grim smile.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“You’re about to see just how bad it is, Lux.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t escape, I’m here with Silver. She compelled me to track you down.”
A ripple of fear, victory, and then raw nerves shifted through me. This was the plan. We had lured Silver here, and she walked straight into our trap, convinced I was powerless.
“Where are my mother and Stasia?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t even matter now—”
“Yes, it does!”
“You’ll all be dead soon.” His voice cracked, and he wouldn’t look at me now.
“Kayn,” I dropped my voice as quiet as it could go. “It’s a ruse.” His brow furrowed until something resembling understanding dawned in his eyes. “It’s okay—”
“Stop,” he whispered as he moved to the side and revealed my sister behind him.
Silver’s arms were folded across her chest, and a smirk played at her scarred lips. Tiny holes, from when Drak had sewn her mouth shut, pierced all around her mouth. She was a mirror of me in so many ways.
This hairstyle was new, though. She’d shaved one side and braided the rest, pulling it to the opposite side of her head in a heavy bun behind her ear.
“Hello,” she said, her voice sharp as broken glass.
It only heightened the unsettling tilt of her head and the way she stared at me through narrowed eyes.
She dropped her arms and stepped into the room, hips swaying and feet arched to near tiptoe.
The way she walked reminded me of when we were mere children, darting from side-to-side as we mimicked drunken adults at our father’s celebratory feasts.
Before Skaldir had nearly starved, and before she’d laid siege to it.
While she circled my library, hawk-eyed and predatory, I slipped my hand into my cloak pocket and closed my fingers around the cold metal of my pendant. She wasn’t a vampire, but it was sharp enough to fight her off until I could pin her down and drag her to the dungeon.
I winced.
“Do you remember,” she began, “when we were just girls and Father said I would marry a Vyl, likely from Torsholt or Stormdal, while you would always live with our mother?” With a little laugh, she stopped in front of me and finally met my gaze.
“I should have known that bastard was wrong. You got married, and I’m the one living with our mother. ”
I gritted my teeth. “Where is she? Please tell me she’s okay—”
“You’re pathetic,” she said coolly. “You always were. That’s why Father let me sit in the Vyl’s chair and not you.”
“He forbade it only because he was afraid that standing before the crowd would reveal what I truly was.”
She laughed. “If that comforts you, you can continue to spin that story for yourself. It’s not a lie like most of the words you’ve spoken in your life.
” I squeezed my eyes shut as the harsh truth of her words hung between us.
“But you know it’s not the whole truth. Father prepared me to be a leader.
He taught me the tough choices you have to make when you want to maintain that role. ”
“Silver, listen to me—”
“Shut up, witch.” The way she spat the word, as if it was poison in her mouth, was as sudden and startling as a slap to the cheek. My lips parted, and I only stared at her. “I will be the leader he raised me to be.”
He didn’t even raise you. But of course I couldn’t say that because it was my fault they took her. Cruel kings raised her, the dungeons beneath Mara’s Keep raised her, and damp, bitter hatred raised her.
But maybe the answers to understanding her weren’t in the sagas or her powers. Maybe they were in whatever she remembered from home. From Skaldir.
I dared to speak again. “Do you have any love left for your home?”
“The one throne of Vylheim is my home, Lux. And since you sat on it, claiming this destiny before I could—” her smile spread wider, but it was hollow, haunting even. “You’re dead to me.” Metal glinted from her fist, but she did not raise her arm.
“You can’t take Mara like you did Skaldir,” I said.
“Oh, I know. Don’t you remember? I grew up in Mara. I don’t need my army to destroy the people here. All I need is for the people of Vylheim to witness you relinquishing the throne to me. They’re people of tradition.”
That depended on how far back you went. Now that it wasn’t only vampires ruling Vylheim, Gods and witches and the old beliefs were slowly filtering back into the language of the people, but they’d been stripped of our history for so long.
Undead monsters seeking their next human meal implemented half of the traditions, and the sagas hid the other half.
But she wasn’t wrong. People clung to these traditions because they were all they knew after our records were ripped away.
“And what would you do as queen?” I asked.
Her scarred lips stretched. “The same thing our father did as Vyl.” My brow furrowed. “I will do whatever it takes not to let my loyal subjects starve.” Her voice fell to a hush.
“Don’t you think the vampires were already trying not to starve? That was the entire point of the bloodshed law.”
“And I’ll continue it,” she said. “Only better. I’ll expand. And where we can’t expand, I’ll have their food source breed more for them.”
My stomach knotted at the sick world she described, her twisted views reducing humans to cattle bred to feed the bloodlust of godless monsters. All so she could stay on the throne. All so she could be like our father—no, more powerful than him.
“And the last thing you'll see will be me on your throne before Kayn cuts off your head. I suppose if his soul wasn’t completely lost before, it will be after that.” A single, haunting laugh escaped her.
Kayn wanted nothing more than to reclaim the soul he had before Myrah turned him into a vampire, and Silver clearly knew it and used it to torment him.
Pity pinched at the center of my chest. Despite how far his desperation for a soul had pushed him in the past, he didn’t deserve to be tortured like this.
Everything he did now, he did for the honor of the gods, hoping that one day they might grant him a new soul, though I did not know if that was even possible.
He froze as I snapped my attention to him, but I wasn’t the one rooting him with compulsion.
Silver’s ability to compel vampires had grown so strong she barely needed to look at him to control him.
Like a child plays with a doll. Grief punched through me when a flicker of something familiar flashed in my sister’s eyes.
Her eyes held the same playful glint from when we played dolls as children.
Then, in a blink, it was gone, replaced by pure, murderous intent.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “I know you weren’t always like this.
Do you remember anything from our childhood?
We shared a bed and cuddled every night to keep warm.
” A well of emotion cut me off, but Silver only blinked at me blankly.
“Please, we loved each other once. You wouldn’t kill your sister. ”
Finally, a muscle in her stone-cold face moved.
“No, Lux, you wouldn’t kill your sister.
Like our father, I’ll do whatever it takes to claim my place.
” Too many emotions warred within me, grief and fear the most obvious, but I suppressed them as I started to pull the pendant from my pocket.
Silver only sighed, as if annoyed by the mild inconvenience of having to murder her twin.
“I should have known you’d give up everything for Drak,” she said.
“I just didn’t think it would be this fast.”
Every part of me went rigid. “What do you mean?”
She laughed. “You do know he doesn’t have his soul anymore, right? The pieces of it are strewn across this realm. He’s not like the men in the sagas anymore. Not like Rune in Myrah’s story.”
“Rune?” I repeated the word as if it took my breath away.
“Not since I made him a vampire,” Silver continued.
“Fuck.” A deep voice drew our attention to the door. Drak filled the doorway, his broad shoulders pressing against the narrow frame. His face, tight and pale, carried the same weight. His gaze pinned Silver for a tense moment before his eyes slid to me. “You said that name again…”
What the Hel was he talking about? Why wasn’t he moving to help me? A million questions buzzed in my tired brain. Silver must have been doing this to him. Holding him back with a compulsion that spread to more than one vampire.
Despite holding power over him, she focused her attention on me. It’s time to bow before the new queen.”
I didn’t even look at my sister. My eyes stayed on Drak as he clutched his chest, sagging forward, breathless, his hands clawing at the space between shoulder blade and heart.
“Stop compelling him!” I begged.
Silver’s laugh was shrill, cutting through my ears like blades clashing with blades. “I’m not. Whatever is happening here is simply making my life easier. Now I don’t have to compel Kayn to fight him while I haul you to your beheading.” She lifted her chin to Kayn. “Bring her to me.”
“Kayn, listen to me,” I said. “Fight Silver’s control.” But he was already lost to my sister’s compulsion, and another groan snapped my attention back to my husband. “Drak, please! You’re having another episode. Come back to me.”
What the Hel was making him so dizzy and faint like this? The last time had been at our wedding, and the dazed look in his eyes told me this was no different.
I’d wanted to blame Silver, but this wasn’t her fault.
As Drak sank to his knees, palming his eyes and muttering incoherently, Kayn seized me, rough hands wrenching my arms behind my back. Now was the time to bend him to my will and turn him against my sister. Together, we could drag her to the dungeons and deal with whatever illness plagued Drak.
But I couldn’t stop looking at the king on his knees. I couldn’t think clearly enough to speak my compulsion over Kayn before he shoved me past Drak and threw me into Silver’s rough grasp.
She nodded at Kayn. “Now go to the prisoners. If I’m not out there with my sister in twenty minutes, kill them.” A smile contorted her face. “Show her the blood of her loved ones.”
My skin iced over. No, no, no. How could she kill our mother? And Stasia…
“Kayn, don’t do this. Please.” But it was no use. Silver’s strength in compulsion far outweighed mine. He didn’t so much as glance at me before he disappeared into the hall.
Drak’s groan ripped my attention back to him. I should have been focusing on capturing Silver and taking control of the situation, but the agony on his face struck me as if it were my own.
“Drak,” I cried, as his eyes rolled back to reveal only white, and I shoved Silver off of me, dropping to my knees beside him.
He was the distraction I’d feared.