Chapter 21
Drak
After just a day’s travel, I already hated not being able to see the creases of concern on Lux’s face. The mask gave only fleeting glimpses through the mesh, and that wasn’t enough, especially as I watched her struggle.
Something had unsettled her the moment we crossed into the wasteland, evident in the irritation behind every word she spoke. What I wouldn’t give to hear her thoughts right now. But even if I could, I needed to focus on listening for Silver’s approaching army.
With each step, red dust rose into the air, settling on our boots and clothes. Lux’s ragged breathing grated on my nerves because I couldn’t help her. All I could do was keep walking and guide her toward Yggdrasil, to the east where the bloody sun rose.
The clouds were the only good thing about this damn place. The dust and fog blocked the sun, letting me move freely in daylight. Through the haze, the deep red sun hung high, not lighting the wasteland but dangling like a massive, dirt-streaked apple in a wild tree.
Lux slipped over the hard-packed earth, her ankle twisting in a crack.
I caught her elbow just before she fell, preventing the snap of her bones, but she remained breathless.
The air here only made it worse. Adding to her struggle, her entire focus was on tracking Silver’s army, a task guided by nothing more than Freya’s vague visions.
She wriggled free of my grip and pushed on.
“Let’s rest again,” I said.
“No.”
“Lux, come on.” When I reached for her arm, she shoved me off and almost lost her balance. I couldn’t blame her for the rising frustration. Nobody moved through the wasteland unscathed, not even the gods’ chosen witch.
“We can’t stop again already.”
“Your body will force you to.”
She craned her neck and pinned me with a haughty stare. “What if I want to collapse?” Her voice was edgy, irritation rising to the surface with exhaustion. “That’s how I receive visions, and maybe we need a vision to show us a faster way.”
“There is no faster way.”
She continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “Freya can only reach me when I’m between consciousnesses. So if I collapse, it could actually help us.”
“That’s fucked up.”
She shrugged, her arms falling limp with the weight of Vylheim. “That’s how it works.”
“The gods are lying to you then.”
Whipping around, she poked me in the center of my chest with her finger. “The gods don’t lie. We’re the liars.”
When she turned and kept forcing one foot in front of the other, I placed a hand on her back, urging her up the slanted ground. The dust and hard ground made it difficult to gain purchase at the angle, and though she slipped with every few steps, I wasn’t about to let her fall.
“I don’t lie,” I said.
She scoffed. “What about our marriage?”
“Fine, I don’t lie to you, but the gods clearly do.”
“How can you talk so poorly of them when they gave me the ability to protect everyone, including myself?”
“I’d argue that hunting them is less about protection and more because Odin hates that he can’t reach the undead. In no realm does it make sense that you have to destroy yourself for answers when the gods are already speaking directly inside your mind.”
She fell silent.
Hiking through the fog of blood and war and remnants of our ancestors felt like a hundred years had passed—for both of us.
I couldn’t see the nuances in Lux’s expressions to determine how much she was suffering, but of course I didn’t need to.
The shaking of her hands, the blue fingers, the tightness in every breath she drew was enough to know she was at the edge of collapse, and she would not let me do anything about it.
Fuck if I didn’t despise watching Lux push herself to the breaking point.
“We’re headed to Yggdrasil,” I said. “That’s enough for now. We’ll make it there faster than Silver.”
“We don’t know that for sure, and cutting down as much of her army before we get there ensures the tree’s safety. So if you’ll let me focus, I’m going to spark a vision and find out where they are.”
Her foot slid backwards, so I increased the pressure at the small of her back. After a few deep huffs, she steadied herself and took another step. The crimson cut through the earth grew darker and wider now.
“How do you know Freya will even show you what you need?” I asked.
“Because I’m requesting it. When I asked the gods how to help my mother, they sent me to you.”
As much as I wanted to relish the thought that she considered me helpful, I had to speak the truth. “And? Your mother is Silver’s captive.”
“But they gave me access to the sagas. They supplied me with information that had been withheld from witches and the people of Vylheim for hundreds of years.”
“I gave you that.”
As I kept pace with her, her gaze flicked toward me from beneath the mask. A shiver ran over my skin whenever she looked at me, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling. Like she knew me.
“Greedy, jealous king you are,” she said. Despite her irritation, I could’ve sworn I heard a playful note in her voice.
“Can’t a husband take credit for giving his wife a library full of the answers she wanted?” I teased her, and though she said nothing, the smirk beneath the mesh gave her away. Not even the shadow of the mask could hide it—or the connection I felt.
I grinned, knowing I’d won. This little game was my way of pushing back against whatever the gods had done to leave her so frustrated.
The edge of her foot bent sideways when another dry crack in the ground crumbled beneath her boot.
Dirt eroded away, and her bent leg sank deeper into the hollow.
It was no different from the dozen other times the ground had given way beneath us, but the twist of her ankle seemed to drain the last of her energy.
A sudden gasp yanked me from my thoughts. Lux’s breath hitched again as her knees buckled, and her body slowly sank to the earth. Tiny rivulets of red stained the dirt beneath her, frozen in time from the deadliest battle in our history.
“Lux.” I caught her before the heels of her palms hit the ground.
Worry iced over my dead veins. When she didn’t respond, I gently eased her onto her hands and knees.
The black in her eyes tilted back until nothing but white and slivers of red were visible.
“Lux.” I gently shook her shoulders, calling her back to me, only to remember that this loss of consciousness was exactly what she wanted.
But I. Fucking. Hated. This. What if she didn’t wake up again?
Her eyes lolled, her body going limp. Fuck! Breaths grew shallower, each one more strained than the last. Every ounce of me fought the urge to grab her and force my healing on her. If I had my way, I’d bite her, turn her—anything to stop her suffering.
Instead, I tilted her onto her back and pulled her into my lap.
Her breathing quickened, strained and desperate.
Could she survive a collapse in the wasteland?
What if the poisoned air made it impossible to wake up?
I didn’t claim to understand her illness, but I saw what it did to her.
Her lips parted as she gulped sickly air, and her eyelids finally folded over the white, sealing shut.
My fangs descended, ready to sink into her and stop her from slipping away from me, but I resisted. For what felt like an eternity, I sat hunched over her, her body across my legs, letting her suffer.
Finally, her eyelashes fluttered. “Drak?”
Relief eased the tension in my jaw, where my teeth had been grinding. “You fucking scared me,” I said.
“Do you—” she sucked in a quivering breath and spoke without opening her eyes. “Do you know where the statue of Freya is?”
Heavy pressure suddenly sank into my shoulder, and I grunted at a strange, all-consuming agony that followed. Lux kept speaking, but her voice became muffled and faded, and I drifted into a sort of unconsciousness of my own.
Lux’s voice broke through. “That’s where I saw Silver. In the vision.”
A memory enveloped me, and though I felt the pain of a phantom axe in my chest again, I didn’t faint. I was fully awake, and remembering another moment from another time.
Another life, maybe.
A massive stone shaped like a woman flashed before me. The goddess of fertility stood, molded in grey and stained with wetness. Tears, thick and red, slid down her rough surface, like the blood I’d fed on, dripping onto Mara’s Keep floor.
Except I didn’t see Freya as clearly as everything else in the memory.
She was a distant image of cold lifelessness in the middle of a field of bodies, a battlefield.
She stood at the helm of the battle, the goddess of war, weeping not for the lost lives but for something else.
At one point, I knew what made her cry, but I hadn’t cared for the gods and their woes in a long time.
Crumbled stone structures surrounded the statue with bloodied warriors scattered among ruins I recognized. Ruins that I’d seen surrounding Lux as she crawled toward me.
I knew this place; this was Skaldir—the first Skaldir. Battle decimated the original home whose name had been stolen by Lux’s village hundreds of years after. When I blinked, the memory and the pain dissipated, coming and going so fast it seemed Lux hadn’t even noticed.
“I… don’t,” I said. If only seeing the statue in my memory could lead me to it.
Lux licked her lips, creating a sheen that caught the sun’s dim red glow. “It’s okay. We can follow the stains.”
My eyes flicked to the red lines in the dirt. “The blood?”
Nodding, she blew out a slow breath and peeled her eyes open. “The statue wept blood and stands at the site of the Battle of Sundered Sky. If we follow where the stains grow darker until the ground is all red, we’ll find it.”
A strange little laugh bubbled on her lips.
“What?” I asked.
“That’s the same thing Freya told me to find you. Follow the blood. Except yours was because you’re a monster and a messy eater.”