Chapter 20
Lux
Iran my hand over the ridges of the black mask. After half a day of sleep, I wrapped myself in the leather and thickly woven linen meant to protect my skin in the wasteland.
“It’s time,” Drak said, interrupting my thoughts. “Put it on.”
I snapped my gaze from the mask to the vampire king, who filled the study doorway with his broad shoulders.
My heart skipped. The clay had already molded the mask tightly to his features, fixing it to his face.
Thin strips of leather, sliced in columns at his mouth, had thin, gauzy fabric webbed through each strip.
Only his icy eyes pierced through the combination of clay and leather.
“We’re really leaving?” I asked.
He nodded. “Someone spotted Silver’s army moving across the border. It’s now or never.”
I sucked in a breath and pressed the mask to my face. “We need to catch up.”
“We will. Two travelers compared to fifty or so vampires will be much faster.”
“She’s not taking her entire army?” I asked as I followed him from the study and through the winding stone.
I wouldn’t miss Mara’s Keep, but I’d miss the quiet we’d enjoyed here and the library. Sitting on that rug, surrounded by the books of our history and sagas recorded by our ancestors, was akin to the one throne of Vylheim for Drak.
Maybe for Silver, too.
I didn’t understand the obsession with that hideous bronze chair.
Of course, I knew the hunger for power was the real draw, but even that never attracted me.
I wanted a place for the witches, a safe world to live in, and enough to eat, not to tell others how to live their lives.
There was already too much of that control in my past.
“Of course not, she thinks she doesn’t need everyone,” he said.
The low timbre of his voice echoed through the stretch of hallway.
“If she burns Yggdrasil, your powers burn too. You won’t even be able to fight one vampire, much less fifty, but thankfully, she’s taking most of them. The strongest of them.”
Forcing out a huff, I picked up the pace. “We should have left sooner. Why did we let them get ahead?”
“Because we’re not insane enough to risk being struck down by Thor’s storm.”
I let out a little growl. Last night, while we should have been enduring the storm, we were wrapped in each other’s arms, lost in a foolish fantasy about our romantic future.
Even if the impossible were true, and Drak and I were in this realm to find each other, we were bound to fall apart again. Once my sister destroyed our chance at resisting her army, we’d be ripped away from one another—me chosen for Folkvangr or Hel. Definitely not Valhalla after failing the gods.
And Drak would turn to ash when she compelled him and staked him with a branch from Yggdrasil.
“You don’t regret it,” he said, shooting a smirk over his shoulder at me.
“What?”
“Last night.”
Pursing my lips, I looked away so I didn’t give him the satisfaction of being right, even if I succumbed to him whenever he kissed me.
And when he promised to protect me by wearing Sten’s ring around his neck.
And when he kept me warm both last night and in the tents during my first trip to Mara. Every one of those moments was etched into the rhythm of my pulse.
Drak took care of me, bandaging my wounds, giving me plenty of rest—no, demanding that I rest. He was the only one who saw my blue fingers and took them in the warmth of his hands.
So no, I didn’t regret last night.
Gnawing at my lip, I kept quiet and let Drak’s pride squirm a little. Even if he could read my thoughts when I ached for him, that didn’t mean he could see through me like a ghost haunting these halls. We turned a corner, marching with purpose while my mind explored this.
What a strange thing it was to want to be known as myself, and nothing more than myself.
Not the huntress or a witch, or the name I went by almost my entire life.
I wasn’t Silver, but I didn’t know if I was truly Lux either.
Whoever Lux was supposed to be, I never got the chance to find out before everyone else told me exactly who to be.
How could I long to be known and yet recoil at the thought of being perceived?
Drak’s stride quickened. I almost had to jog to keep up, but I didn’t complain. Moving fast was exactly what I’d insisted on. Besides, it had been so long since I ran, and running had once been woven into the fabric of my life.
I hurried ahead and matched Drak’s pace. He tilted his head and gave me a careful look, a small smile flickering beneath the mask.
Finally, an oval door of black, nearly rotten wood came into view at the end of the hall. This wasn’t a dead end or a new turn into a seemingly endless corridor, but our exit. Wood scraped against the stone frame as he shoved it open, and the hinges seemed to whine at us for leaving them behind.
I stepped up to the threshold, drawing the deepest breath I could. Hiding in Mara’s Keep was over. This was a new beginning, like the calm after a storm, when we would have to leave our shelter and confront the mess the wind and rain had left behind.
We were cleaning up Silver’s mess, the vampires’ mess, and Myrah’s for creating the undead in the first place. I winced, never having blamed an ancestor so easily before.
Yes, they fought and bled and tainted the wasteland with their battles, but my mother had raised me to respect their fervor and bravery. Their imperfect humanity pushed them to the edge, but they’d fought in the name of the Gods, so it couldn’t be entirely wrong.
But Myrah…Myrah abandoned the Gods and sentenced our realm to suffer the plague of the undead. A twitch forced my left eye to flutter at the same time my mouth involuntarily pulled down at one side.
“Now you see.” Odin’s voice scraped through my head like the rough wooden panels too large for the doorway’s cutout in the stone.
“Lux.” Drak’s call feathered through my thoughts.
He reached for me, beckoning me outside. I slid my fingers into his hand and let him lead me into the moonlight. The thin crescent offered only a faint glow, casting a dim blue light across the hill behind the castle.
Axel and Sif greeted us, carrying heavy packs filled with the provisions we needed to survive: dried meat, fresh water, and hide tents we could close tightly enough to block the thick particles drifting in the fog.
“Thank you, Axel,” Drak said as he took the pack and lifted it to his shoulders where a sword already hung across his back.
Axel didn’t exactly smile, but his expression was always warm. A pleasant contrast to the cool white streaks in his peppered hair. “You can trust that both Mara and your mother will be in good hands.”
“Right.” Drak frowned, his voice sarcastic.
“King Drakkar, you’ve selected me and Sif to step in for you in the interim for a reason.”
Nodding, Drak gave him a grim smile. “As much as I trust you, you know I hate leaving my throne. There’s just something about it...” He shook his head, cutting himself off. “I could swear it gives its own power.”
Axel coughed and cleared phlegm from his throat. The knot in his neck bobbed. “I thought you should know of this news as well.”
Drak pinned him with a stare. “Yes?”
“Observers have spotted Ylva and Darius conspiring closely with Silver.”
Drak cursed, clawing his hands through his hair.
“I should have known.” He shot me a loaded glance I couldn’t read.
I remembered Ylva and Darius from the old Blood Council—they hadn’t trusted Silver either, but these were desperate times.
Ripping his eyes from the ground, his gaze landed on me again, almost as if he had heard my confusion.
“They’ve always had a strange power over Silver.
That’s how we get to know her better. Through them.
They’re almost like…parents to her.” A strange, hollow laugh escaped him.
“If parents simultaneously hated, respected, and were terrified of their own child.”
I frowned. This solidified my desire not to kill my sister. My mistake had torn her away from her real parents, and she’d had no one to look up to. No one other than two bloodthirsty, power-hungry vampires.
Axel coughed politely, his face revealing no emotion. “There’s more.”
“I already know plenty about Ylva and Darius,” Drak said, waving his hand dismissively. “I have no doubt they’re leeching Silver’s power and quietly manipulating her now that they have no other way to control her.”
Axel shook his head. “Not about them. The other vampire has escaped from Silver’s captivity.” We exchanged a look before Axel explained. “Fishers at Einnland’s shore spotted The Exile heading toward the old Hall of the Gods—”
Kayn.
“Do we know how he escaped Silver?” Drak asked.
“Unclear,” Axel said. “The only information we have is that he is, indeed, free of her this time. He did not appear to be under any compulsion, and she and her army were miles away when he was spotted there.
“Was anyone else with him?” I asked, interrupting the interim ruler of Vylheim. “Two women, perhaps? Young and blonde, and the other older and possibly sickly looking?”
When he shook his head, my heart sank. My nerves stretched thin, and old thoughts threatened the wall I had built in my mind to keep the Gods at bay. It rarely kept them out, but it helped temper the intrusive thoughts that needled me whenever my nerves became threadbare.
Now, they filtered back in.
How many times have I failed my mother? And now Stasia too. I hadn’t allowed myself to think of them often. I couldn’t, not when worry for them stripped me of all rational thought and my entire being became nothing but a raw, exposed nerve.
If you can’t do this, you’re worthless.
Stupid.
A husk of a human.
No! I didn’t need to waste time tearing myself apart.