Chapter 31
Lux
Pieces of the past slipped through the wall I built every time Drak said that name. Myrah.
Every fragment of the past stirred questions I couldn’t ignore. With Drak’s memories as a guide, I could finally assemble the picture that had long haunted my thoughts.
Like images of our hands intertwined flashing through my skull, or of us before the altar at the ruins.
Of us marching into battle together, side by side beneath a shield wall.
The images were a source of encouragement, driving me forward, knowing that I could make a life like this a reality for someone else in Vylheim.
Perhaps Stasia would enjoy this freedom and simplicity with Finan someday.
Instead of training with an axe and shield, Stasia would be a cook in a safe village with Finan, liberated from vampire control and no longer forced to be an executioner.
In an instant, the memories were swept aside by the sight of branches reaching up into the sky.
Like spiked fingers, the ash tree reached for Asgard above.
Even miles from Yggdrasil, we could glimpse the core of the nine realms, stretching out beneath its colossal branches.
Blinking, I almost didn’t believe that this was truly Yggdrasil.
An odd feeling, both hot and cold, coursed through me; my blood’s flow unusually slow even as my heart raced.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the sight of the branches penetrated beyond my eyelids. Even in my own mind, I wasn’t alone.
The presence of the Gods thickened around and inside me. A curious sense of liveliness and buoyancy washed over me, even as my muscles protested and my jaw tightened inexplicably. “That’s really Yggdrasil…”
“We haven’t made it yet,” Drak said. The rasp in his voice echoed the dust-laden air at the heart of the wasteland.
I blinked hard and ripped my gaze from Yggdrasil.
Despite my throbbing feet and burning thighs, Drak’s misery was far greater, apparent in his split, pale lips and the black blood marring the cuts on his dry flesh.
His icy blue eye faded to a dull grey that matched the sickly color of the sky, except for the sun’s faint orange glow.
When he spoke again, arid anguish laced his words. “We have to keep moving.”
He weakened with each step, and I slowly drifted closer to him. I had no power to ease his suffering, but I could at least try to catch him when he tripped. That much I owed him.
Despite my longing to reach Yggdrasil, I hated what the Gods’ power did to him. Hel, what had become of me?
This was Drak, my fake husband, the monster who had held me hostage in Mara’s Keep and threatened both my life and my sister’s. Of course, his reasons were obvious now. The Gods despised him, and their venom occasionally pierced the walls of my mind, but I did not feel the same hate.
Not only did I not hate Drak, I couldn’t bear to consider how my heart might break when we went our separate ways. If Silver and the vampires were defeated, and Drak ascended to Godhood, Mara’s Keep would be his domain. Vylheim would capture his gaze, and the throne would own his heart.
My neck arched, eyes rising to the sky. The clouds hung dull and grey, yet the sun glowed a stubborn orange, endless and eternal, a presence as inexorable as the Gods.
Whenever the sagas spoke of the end of the world as we knew it, I grieved, not for myself and my kin, but for Odin and Freya, Thor and all the Gods I worshiped in secret.
Every day. Every story surrounded them, and everything my mother taught me turned me to honoring and respecting the Allfather and the others in Asgard.
My gut knotted. Where had that grief gone now? Drak spoke of summoning one of the Gods and killing them, and I’d simply pushed this goal of his out of my mind. Until now.
Now that we had climbed the hill to Yggdrasil, its craggy branches clawing at the sky, I couldn’t ignore the sensation rising in me.
Bile pushed up my throat, bitter and stinging at the back of my mouth.
My tongue dried and expanded heavily behind my teeth as the truth swelled within me. It’d become impossible to suppress.
Drak was going to kill Odin.
He never had to say it aloud for me to understand.
Odin despised Drak, and his voice rang loudest in my mind.
This was who Drak planned to leverage as a stepping stone on his path to becoming a God, and as much as he had claimed it was for the power to lead Vylheim to safety and prosperity, I knew it was personal.
The Gods had destroyed his mother and now…me.
Hel, did I really believe Odin was willing to destroy his creations? My heart skipped and breath was suddenly sucked from my lungs. Did I dare to consider that the Gods were hurting me?
No.
This can’t be their fault. It is we humans who are the hardest to reach. That was what my mother would say: that their power was simply too much for my fragile mind to handle. Right?
I couldn’t voice this question aloud. Drak would dismiss it at once, claiming Odin was a cruel God and that all of them were selfish. He would respond only with his warped perspective, and I couldn’t help but wonder had my mother’s views been just as warped?
The madness clawing at the back of my eyes came from the Gods. Thor’s storms raged in Vylheim like a punishment to the very people who were daring to emerge from their secret worship. It didn’t make sense.
Sickness sloshed in the pit of my gut. I reached for the leather pouch carrying my water reserve and wet my thick tongue. Swallowing, I buried these traitorous thoughts and glanced at Drak.
I gnawed at the inside of my bottom lip as I watched fatigue and desperation pull at his flat mouth and his hands clench into fists at his sides.
I recognized that look: the desperate suppression of pain.
How many times had I ignored the sharp twinges of my erratic heartbeat only to be forced flat on my back for days?
When my father demanded I push through, wasn’t it the same as Freya granting visions only after I finally broke?
My head jerked against my will, as if the Gods had seized my skull to shove my thoughts aside. These were among the truths Drak had been offering me. He was the only one willing to speak them, the only one who noticed my frozen fingers and recognized my need for rest. The only one who truly saw me…
“Drak,” I blurted.
He came to a stop, and the tension at the corners of his eyes finally eased.
A brief rest would benefit us both. I flinched as his cracked lips parted, and my heart sank at the pain etched across his face.
Still, it was not my place to hold him back from pursuing his own goals, no matter how much I ached to shield him.
“What is it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing with a concern he always reserved just for me.
Oh, Hel. I think I trusted him. I think…I loved him. This was the vampire king, and the man I once considered an enemy for the way his council treated witches. How could this be?
Impossible.
Impossible.
Gods aren’t selfish, girl, you are.
Were these thoughts mine at all, or did they come from Odin? Perhaps my father’s and mother’s voices, each so distinct yet equally powerful, had merged into one. Whoever they belonged to, I could feel the same sharp, twisted weight behind them.
Calling me selfish was a lie, and it stung after all I had sacrificed to become their huntress. I had obeyed their visions and carried out their commands. I had denied Drak. Every glance at him since our sham marriage denied the truth stirring within me, and I had done it all for the Gods.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t marry a monster—after all; I had once been one—but Odin would never allow me to be with a vampire. For him, and for all of Asgard, I denied Drak. And that definitely wasn’t a selfish choice. Perhaps Myrah had done a terrible thing, but I was no longer her.
I drew a breath that sliced sharp through my throat and locked my eyes on Drak.
“When you said it was fucked up for the Gods to force us to sacrifice and suffer for their aid…” my voice trailed off.
I watched him, noticing tendrils of steam rising from the few places the sun touched his skin.
The mask had openings in various places, and flesh was visible on his neck where his tunic and the mask didn’t quite meet.
The Gods told me they would make him suffer, the same way they had made me suffer. The same way they were making the people of Vylheim suffer from howling winds and lightning that destroyed the last of the winter-stricken crops.
“Lux?” he prodded.
My tongue swelled in my mouth, as though Odin himself were blocking me from admitting the truth. I opened my mouth, but my veins froze, and the wall in my mind split apart, shattered by an invisible strike like Thor’s lightning.
“He is a monster, and we’re protecting you from him.” Freya’s voice held a strange sob.
My heart stuttered, and the tightness beneath my breast sent dizziness swirling through my head.
Black spots flickered at the edges of my vision.
I gasped for air, willing my blood to flow again, but invisible claws gripped my heart, squeezing with relentless force until I shut my eyes.
Then my pulse surged, racing in sharp, uneven beats, each one trying to reclaim the time my heart had stolen from me.
Pulling the mask off, I let it fall to my side, still grasped lightly in my fingers.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I whispered. Drak’s brow pinched, and the slight tilt of his head endeared me to him.
I’m sorry I didn’t remember.
I’m sorry I didn’t listen.
I’m sorry I called you a monster when all you’ve done is tell me the truth..
“You never lied,” I said absentmindedly, as if my voice was a tangible bubble that could float away and pop under the intensity of Sunna’s rays. “I’ve been so grateful for that. I–I love that you’re always honest. I…”