Chapter 14
Lux
Unlike my feelings for Drak, which were real, this was a performance. Performing for my sister’s sake was crucial to protect the prisoners, so I deliberately failed the exchange and became her hostage, a choice that proved far trickier than I had anticipated.
Silver could see through me as easily as honey cloth, but her hunger for victory and control blinded her just enough to miss what she should have recognized.
She hadn’t won this fight.
This was no different from when I gave vampires the illusion of victory and then struck back to seize control. Fighting was much like weaving a tapestry or spinning a story full of surprises and unexpected twists.
“Yes, yes, yes! Kill whoever is in your way. Then go out there and fight, huntress.” Odin’s voice carved through me with every step we took through the castle.
“Use this advantage.” Freya spoke now. Whenever they warred for space within my head, the agony bolting through my temples heightened. “The vampires believe you’re powerless.”
Loki laughed gleefully. “I love a good trick.”
I have to take Silver captive—
“You are our weapon. Trained for vampires only.” Odin did not care for my plans. “Do whatever you must to get to them while their eyes are still blind. I allowed you this opportunity to deceive their leader. Fail to use it, and you’ll learn a lesson the hard way.”
The pain grew worse and worse until my vision frayed, and I thought I’d collapse. The Gods’ words were final, and the only way to quiet them and block this torture was to do what they said.
So I let her lead me through the castle doors, straight to the prisoners she had dragged here and thrown into the dirt before Mara’s Keep, because I couldn’t live with myself if I sacrificed Stasia or whoever Silver was using as leverage. If nothing else, I had to at least try to save them.
They deserved a chance at survival, and Drak couldn’t guarantee saving them. Not with Kayn there.
Moonlight flooded the stone floor as I pushed through the door on Silver’s command. Crossing the threshold, I squinted in the dim flicker of candles. After weeks inside the castle, a rush of freshness hit me, and I gulped it in.
Icy air crystallized in my lungs, and my breath caught when I saw them.
Despite assigning a hundred of Drak’s men to protect the castle, Silver’s vampires easily overpowered both his human guards and the few loyal vampires who remained.
Weapons once dragged out from beneath Mara’s Keep now clattered to the dirt as the undead, faster and stronger, took the men down. One-by-one.
My gut knotted, and I couldn’t breathe. Among the fighting, a familiar pale blonde braid and angular face caught my eye.
“Ragna,” I muttered. Hot breath curled in the frigid air in front of me.
Tears seared behind my eyes as my gaze panned to the five people kneeling in the dirt beside her.
Her husband, Rolf, and her children, even little Alva—the girl I’d made a promise to.
I’d sworn to keep her mother alive back when Ragna was first taken by King Drakkar.
Now, she was forced to her knees in the dirt alongside her mother with Kayn under a command to execute them all. Fear clawed at my heart, stalling my blood and sending shivers through my limbs.
Silver’s fingernails sank into the flesh at the back of my neck, and she forced me out into the moonlight. Her palm pressed against the nodules of my spine until suddenly she released me with one quick shove.
I stumbled over the steps and fell to the dirt only inches away from the castle’s door.
The impact ripped air from my chest, and ragged coughing overcame me.
The heels of my palms throbbed from hitting the stiff ground.
Dirt clung to the scrapes across my skin, and tiny drops of blood glistened along the thin cuts.
I jerked my attention back up to the family only a few steps away.
In the chaos, Ragna had seized a nearby sword and cut her bindings, then followed suit with her husband.
Rolf freed his sons and sent them off running, but before he could turn to grab Ragna and Alva, a human from Silver’s army crushed the hilt of his sword against Rolf’s head.
Ragna hadn’t seen yet, too concentrated on trying to sever Alva’s bindings before anyone took notice of the entire family’s escape.
It was too late.
Crimson glinted in the eyes of a vampire as he cut down one of Drak’s guards and left the body behind, bolting in a blur toward Ragna’s family. The vampire woman crouched over them, fangs glistening, and snatched Alva’s braid, hauling the girl upright.
Before I could even gasp or move a muscle, one of Drak’s men crashed into the vampire.
The force of his body knocked her to the ground, but it was only a momentary respite because she shot back at him, a blur of fangs and clawed fingernails.
She tore him off his feet before plunging her teeth into his throat.
Alva cowered away from them, falling back to her knees and folding into a ball. In the next few moments, the vampire would drain him and turn on Alva again.
Silver’s edged voice sliced through me. “Bow before me, sister.” I turned to find her standing at the threshold, as if she were already claiming Mara’s Keep as her own. Staring down her nose at me, she smiled. “Unless you want little Alva to die.” Her smile deformed into a fake pout.
Sickness flared at the back of my tongue, crawling up my throat as a dark and distorted thought formed. I should have killed her. If I had fangs, I would have sunk them into her without hesitation. But she had been no older than Alva when they took her.
I couldn’t destroy my sister, but I wouldn’t bow to her either. I wouldn’t declare her queen.
Sucking in an icy breath, I shoved off the dirt and shot to my feet. Before Silver could grab me, I ran for the vampire bent over Alva. I was chosen for this.
The Gods wanted this, and it felt so damn good to finally make them proud.
“Forget the girl. Kill the monsters. Everyone of them.” Their voices twisted in my mind, delight threading through every word with each step I took toward the vampires.
When it came to the undead, I felt stronger than ever. These skills—the visions, the compulsion, the strength—had been crafted and gifted to me to turn them to ash, and I used that thought to drive me. To crush the twinge in my chest and the exhaustion tugging at my bones.
With one foot forced in front of the other, I grabbed the stake from my thigh and advanced.
The vampire gripped Alva’s tiny arm and wrenched her to her feet again, unaware that I was charging toward her.
Summoning all my strength, I ran and drove the stake up, aiming it straight for her side.
My weapon struck her, nearly knocking the breath out of me as I buried it into her clothes, her skin, and between her ribs.
Reeling from shock and pain, she let go, and Alva fell to the dirt, letting out a cry that tore at my heart.
“Run, Alva,” I begged, daring to look at her while I shoved the stake deeper into her attacker’s heart. “Get up and run. Find your brothers.”
Alva scrambled to her feet, casting only a single glance back at me before disappearing into the fight. I refused to blink until I glimpsed Rolf’s features through the chaos.
Alva had found her father.
Before I could savor this relief, the vampire woman clawed at my arm, digging her fingers into my elbow as the black blood within me began to spread.
Tension snapped, and my breath finally released as I centered on the fight.
Time and motion suddenly whirled around me twice as fast. She lunged at me, but it was useless.
Every piece of her flesh touched by blood flaked into ash and caught in the icy gusts of wind rippling through the mesh of bodies.
Her body withered away, and she was only the first of my victims.
I drew the Y Tree from my pocket and smashed it against the face of an approaching vampire. Her flesh singed, and she backed up enough for me to rip the stake out of the first vampire and angle it toward the second. I drove it through her ribcage, then turned to another one of the many undead.
One after another, I did as the Gods bid, as Kayn trained me. As Drak taught me.
“Slay every vampire.”
“You are the blade we wield.”
“Our chosen.”
With each vampire that turned to ash at my feet, I craved more. I almost wanted to hear the Gods talking now, louder—more!
Do you see that you’ve chosen well?
I blinked. Where the fuck had that thought come from? I didn’t crave killing. This was simply a duty; that was all. So why did I love watching when their black blood crumbled their bodies?
Because the Gods wanted this and in this moment, I wanted to please them, to make them proud that I was finally fulfilling the destiny they chose for me.
I shook my head and gutted another vampire.
This was only to keep Vylheim safe from those who’d chosen violence, and it was working; we were winning based on the number of vampires who pulled back.
The fight dwindled as the remaining vampires fell back to heal, hauling off the humans who still drew breath, though I suspected it wasn’t out of mercy.
I longed to chase them down and rescue the captured humans, but the vampires’ relentless assault allowed no pause. When I finally caught a breath, a single terrible sound froze my blood.
Frozen air carried the cries of the fallen, but Ragna’s scream was distinct and tainted with colorful language. It snapped me out of the dreamlike state of the battle, cracking the slow passage of time even as another vampire charged me.
“The Gods will curse your fucking eyes to fall out if you touch one hair on my head,” Ragna said between choking breaths.