Chapter 23
Drak
We’d won, for now. But the victory was marred by Lux’s denial.
Even if Silver fled and had to backtrack to find more vessels for her vampires, it still didn’t bring the satisfying sense of success I’d hoped for. Not when I’d failed with her.
Lux lay beside me, breathing raggedly through a fitful sleep. I never closed my eyes; instead, rolling the painful truth through my mind.
With Odin constantly interrupting her memories, telling her they weren’t true, I saw no way to convince her we had been in love in a past life. That she was the witch who created vampires, and that I had left Valhalla for her. Each time she started to remember, they fucking ruined it.
I had loved Lux long before these past few weeks, but saying it while Odin kept taking her away from me only made the pain worse.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the tent’s hide, stretched tight against the stone to block out the heavy air. The rest of the fog and particles had been bound to the alchemical stone. Thanks to witches, I could stare up at the mottled hide with clear vision and breathe free of the mask.
Lux’s lungs expanded and shrank with each breath.
After our crawl across the ruins, destroying every vampire in our path, she’d sleep for hours.
But lying awake, with everything I knew and the way she’d denied it, did nothing to help me rest. I was here, in the ruins where I’d first lost her.
Surely, there had to be something here I could show her to prove who we truly were.
Once she believed it, we would make this marriage real. Our past would be enough to bind her to me, to erase the gods from her mind and have her sit beside me on Vylheim’s throne. We’d continue the life we once shared, and maybe, just maybe, I could fill the damn hole she’d left in me.
If she wanted to finish this quest to kill vampires first, fine. I could wait for the woman I loved. I’d done it before.
Shoving off the fur blankets, I climbed to my feet, fitted the mask over my face, and took one last look at Lux’s peaceful expression before slipping outside.
The clouds were as heavy as always, pressing down on me with the weight of thousands of lost lives.
The ashes of our ancestors. And the ashes of my own body, but not Lux’s—or Myrah’s.
Thanks to her undead creation, she continued on, passing to the afterlife long later in a death documented by the sagas.
Moving through the ruins, my memories flooded back, one at a time, though always in fragments.
I surveyed what looked like a temple with half of a steeply pitched roof that remained.
It was the only building not made of stone, but timber that’d withstood the test of time.
Carved into the front of the roof was a boar’s head.
Now, the skull had split open and was crumbling.
I walked through the vast structure as if it were one long hallway.
At the end stood a crumbled altar where we had once offered sacrifices.
There would have been a massive table at the center, long and made of the same wood as the temple itself, meant to hold feasts in the mirror image of how warriors dined in Valhalla.
Along the sides of the structure stood carved figures, nearly as tall as me.
The wooden gods seemed to watch me, despite many having lost their heads.
Hundreds of years ago, they witnessed Lux walking this same path with the wedding runes painted across her face.
I stopped in front of the altar where we’d said our vows—real vows. The memory was as clear as the air in the tent I had left Lux behind in. I saw her across from me, tears slipping down her face.
To mimic the past, I stepped into my place as if I were Rune on my wedding day. I reached out to the distant memory of my bride, wiping at tears I couldn’t feel. The echo of her voice clung to the corners of my mind.
“What if it doesn’t work?” she asked. “What if our vows aren’t enough to change Freya’s vision?”
I opened my mouth, as if I could comfort her now and tell her we’d find each other again. She just had to remember me.
Instead, Rune responded. “That will only be determined by the Valkyries. You don’t know what afterlife I’ll end up in.”
Fuck, I wanted to punch that bastard. He knew nothing. We’d be separated, no matter what, and it didn’t matter that in death, I let go of my weapon so the Valkyries would pass me by. They still chose me for Valhalla and ripped me away from her.
When Myrah’s tears did not stop, Rune finally said something useful. “If we can’t change our fate before we fall, we’ll change it after.”
Her face flashed with that same furrowed brow Lux always had.
Myrah didn’t look exactly like Lux because subtle differences made Myrah gaunter in the cheeks and with more wiry muscle.
She wore her hair, which was lighter and more fiery, in several braids twisted across the top of her head and joined at the base of her neck.
Even if their faces weren’t identical, their expressions were the same. This was the woman I knew.
What Rune was about to say was all too familiar, so I formed the words in my mouth as my former self spoke.
“I’ll follow you back to Midgard by rebirth if I have to.”
Midgard. This realm we used to call the center of the gods’ focus. Now it was simply Vylheim, a place that we understood in modern days was not the entirety of this realm. There were kingdoms and more of Odin’s people beyond Vylheim.
“Follow me?” she said.
“I’ll follow you. Into every life.”
The memory wavered as my fingers tried to catch the tear slipping off her jaw.
In an instant, it was gone, and nothing in this temple remained to prove that the moment had ever existed.
Unless this place could spark Lux’s memory, I didn’t see how any of this would change her.
Odin wouldn’t allow her these memories because any distraction risked a divergence from her task.
Unmake the vampires.
Destroy them all, including me. Fuck, I had to get to that damn tree.
Leaving the altar behind, I stormed out of the broken temple.
Every step through the ruins brought painful memories of the life we’d once had, before the Battle of Sundered Sky.
Before West Anglor invaded, seeking revenge against our leaders to strip us of power and end the threat we posed to their wealth and churches across the sea.
This was where we’d lived and loved and fucked. Fields we’d tilled side by side. She may have been a witch, and I a warrior, but first, we were farmers. Simple people stupidly worshiping gods who didn’t care if they tore us apart.
And for what? Their own amusement?
I blinked up at the dark sky, staring through the mesh in my mask. Freya’s face was still intact as she stood over the ancient battlefield. Red rivers carved lines through her cheeks, the blood having faded to black in the cracks.
Frowning, I spat out the thought that circled my mind. “What the fuck was the purpose?” Of course, she said nothing. It was just a fucking statue and the real Freya would never—could never—reach me in this form.
I shook my head and stomped across the battlefield with dust curling at my heels. Even if Lux would not believe it, I’d try anyway. Discouragement never stopped me before. Not when my mother begged me not to become a vampire, and not when Silver herself warned me against it.
Becoming a vampire led Lux to me. Without the throne, I never would have found her, and I never would have had the power to stop her execution.
So fuck every discouragement.
I pushed through the opening in the tent and pulled it tight again. Stripping off my mask, I turned to see Lux awake and sitting up. Her black eyes were both bright and clear as she looked up at me.
“What is it?” she asked, worry wrinkling her brow. I dropped to my knees on the fur beside her. Searching her fierce eyes, I held her in my gaze, wholly absorbing her curiosity and concern. “Has Silver returned with more—”
“No,” I said, my voice rough. “Listen to me, Lux. You won’t want to believe this, but I.
Never. Lie to you. Never. I never have, and I’m not starting now.
” Her lower lip pulled inward as she absorbed my desperation.
I probably sounded pathetic, like a beggar, but I didn’t care as long as it kept her attention.
Taking her hand, I continued as if I were about to speak the vows we had said at the altar in that ancient temple.
“I know now. What I was seeing in the library when you read to me from that record. In your voice. I had read from some of those books before, but it was your voice that sparked it all. You changed it for me.”
She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“I followed you.”
That stopped her. Lux’s hand went to her chest the way it always did when her weak heart danced around. The gods were likely to blame for that, too. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. The rest of what I said earlier was that I’d follow you into every life. This life.”
She shook her head again, blinking rapidly. “Drak, I—”
“I felt the memories, Lux. Twice in the library, and then after our wedding. And here. They’re clear as a breathing stone here. You are my wife.”
“Drak.”
“You are. Or…” I mirrored her movement, shaking my head. “You were once. Years ago.”
“That’s insane.”
I seethed, my free hand clenching into a fist. “What’s insane is the gods in your head.
” Her lips parted as she recoiled, pulling her hand from mine.
She was slipping away from me, right out of my grasp.
“I don’t know how to say the truth any plainer.
You are Myrah, the first witch, and I am Rune, the warrior she asked to follow her.
You asked me to follow you, and I did. I’m here.
I left Valhalla for you and I’d do it again. ”
Her fingers touched her temples gingerly.
Agony was obvious in the pulsing vein above her brow and the red streaks in her strained eyes.
The damned gods grew more persistent. “You’re not a god, Drak.
There’s no way you’ve left Valhalla, because you’ve never been.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
” With a wince, she gasped and rubbed her forehead.
“You would remember if it weren’t for Odin. Lux, Myrah—”
“Stop!” she shrieked. “It’s too loud. You have to stop.”
My fingernails dug into my palms until I grabbed her hands again. She had to listen. She had to hear me, damn it! “I won’t stop until we’re actually together again.”
With a grunt, she shoved away from me and ripped the silver tree pendant from her pocket. This was a warning. If I came any closer, if I tried to touch her—my own wife—she’d burn me. The silver couldn’t kill me, but it’d hurt like an axe dipped in flame.
“You will stop,” she gritted. “You can’t control me with something you conjured up as memories. It’s not true.”
“I don’t lie.”
“I’m sure you believe it,” she said. “You’ll believe anything that will convince me to do what you want. The gods warned me of this. They told me vampires would do anything, anything at all, to strip me of my identity.”
“This isn’t who you are.”
“I am the huntress, Drak. Accept it.”
The quiver in her voice revealed that even she didn’t believe what she was saying.
She was once Silver, and now the huntress, but none of those roles truly defined her because no one had ever allowed her a life where she could be herself, free from hiding.
A life free of the gods where she could choose whatever the Hel she wanted to choose.
But I supposed right now, she was choosing the gods. Even if they were forcing her by twisting her mind, I had to honor her choice until I could drag Odin out of her mind. When I fucking destroyed him. The ghost of a smile twitched on my lips.
“Fine,” I said. “But I won’t give up. I swore to follow you.”
She eyed me. Maybe she recognized the promise, maybe she didn’t, but this was the same interest she’d had when I said it the first time. Something about that particular phrase piqued her interest.
Finally, the harsh lines of her mouth softened before her lips parted.
That phrase was definitely my clue to calming her and reaching past the gods.
“This obsession you have with calling me your wife…” she drew another breath, and I waited at the edge.
“It’s more than just taking my powers, isn’t it?
” A sliver of recognition cleared the red lines in her eyes. Somewhere in there she knew the truth.
Instead of answering her question, I went deeper because I didn’t need to confirm what she already knew.
“Being the huntress is a defense against Silver’s army.
It’s admirable.” She lifted her chin slightly.
“But it’s not all that you are. It’s a part of you.
Everything you choose to be is you. I just want you to remember the part of you that…
” Fuck. My voice choked even though the air in here was clear. “That was mine.”
“Drak—”
“No, I mean, the part of you that loved me.”
Her brows knitted together in a weak attempt to hold back the tears welling in her eyes.
Wetness pooled at the base of her eyelids, then spilled over, as if clearing the fog from her gaze.
Of course, that was all in my mind. These were just tears that finally slipped over her eyelids and down her cheeks.
I reached out, finally able to touch her and actually brush them away.
Pink bloomed across the bridge of her nose and the peaks of her cheekbones. “Drak, maybe in another life—”
“That’s the point, though; this is another life.”
She shook her head, then leaned into my hand, resting her jaw against it as her eyes fluttered shut. “Like our marriage. We can pretend this is another life, for now.”
“I don’t want to pretend, Lux.” I cupped the curve of her jaw, feeling her soft, warm skin against my palms. Holding her here, I forced her to meet my gaze, our eyes lost in one another. “In this life, and the last, I love you.”
Her chest pressed tightly against the fabric with every gulping breath, and a flush of crimson deepened across her cheeks, making her more radiant than ever. Both sharp and sexy at the same time, the perfect queen to challenge and hone a lost king. I loved her so fucking much.
He doesn’t lie, so when he says he loves me…
“It’s the truth,” I finished her thought. Thoughts I could only hear when Lux was…wet for me.
Desire flooded my veins, and before I could catch another one of her thoughts, her mouth crashed against mine.