Chapter 36
Lux
It felt strange to see Drak weak and to be the one leading the way to Yggdrasil. He was the ever-powerful vampire king, and I was only a simple witch from Skaldir. Or so I wanted to be: a woman with a quiet life and a simple marriage instead of a fake one.
Could we ever have that, or had this life changed us too much?
“It’s not yours to have,” Freya spoke while Loki laughed, amused by my pain.
I winced and snuck a glance at Drak, who pressed his fingers against the mask to hold it closer to his face and block the sun.
The hard line of his mouth told me he was both determined and hurting.
My blood barely kept him going, but he was back on his feet, and that was victory enough for now.
Nothing had stopped him from charging into battle to secure our home in Vylheim. Nothing had stopped him from finding a way to leave Valhalla and return to Midgard. And nothing was stopping him now.
The catalyst was always the same—me.
A shiver trickled down the nape of my neck and spread over my arms. Perhaps Drak hadn’t changed from Rune at all…when he was with me.
My gaze raked over the thick muscles of his upper arms, honed from hours of training with a sword in the armory beneath Mara’s Keep.
Training he maintained because deep within him, he’d always known he was once a warrior for Vylheim, not a soft king.
But it wasn’t until he found me that he remembered all of it and stepped into the truth as a man not Hel-bent on only vengeance, but vengeance for the sake of us.
The way he’d grasped at control, desperate to grab onto everyone and everything in his life, was an echo of how helpless he felt losing me.
No, Drak hadn’t changed.
It was me. I had one goal in mind: to save my mother and the other witches. Then the gods infiltrated me and I focused on killing vampires. But now I wanted all of it and none of it at the same time.
My mother’s survival and the lives of innocent witches would always take precedence, but dedicating my life, sacrificing my mind and peace to kill for the gods was an outlet for me.
But who was I? Did it matter? Witch or not, huntress or not, I was really only a girl who loved history and my husband.
Too many questions clouded my mind as we climbed the last stretch of the mountain to Yggdrasil. With Drak beside me, a strange peace settled over me. It wasn’t me against the executioners, the vampires, or the gods.
It was us against our fate.
And I would not lose.
Warriors who find meaning in dying in battle always emerge victorious. We’d found each other once, and we’d find each other again. If Silver’s army cut us down, or the gods twisted my mind beyond recognition, we’d start over.
This was the only thought that kept my feet moving, and my screaming muscles from giving out.
The gods’ domain strengthened me, sloughing away the exhaustion and skipped heartbeats from my illness, yet the climb to the center of the nine realms still took its toll.
I could not imagine the pain Drak endured with the blistered simmering inside and out of him.
Sucking breath in through my teeth, I drew energy from the crystal-clear air. Forging ahead, I crested the peak of the mountain.
At first, Odin’s silence unsettled me, pressing against my chest. Now it felt different; relief and curiosity brimming in the recesses of my mind, twisting together in ways I didn’t understand.
I had thought he would push harder, especially with me so close here in the gods’ domain. But he gave up on me…
Yggdrasil loomed into view, and my breath caught in my chest. Relief and happiness coursed through my veins at the sight of the gods’ domains, and thoughts of glory, honor, and sacrifice surged, courtesy of Odin.
Part of me wanted to sprint toward its magnificent glory, while another wanted to fall back to the vampire at my heels.
War raged within me. This was the tree giving the gods access to my mind. Yggdrasil made it possible for their power and influence to infiltrate Midgard, sending Valkyries to rip loved ones apart. This was the source of all our pain, and yet the answer to ending it.
Fire burned at the center of my chest, slipping through my veins like venom. The sagas told of a massive serpent coiling at the base of Yggdrasil, of various animals gnawing at the roots and the branches that touched Asgard and the other realms, but I saw nothing so menacing.
My heart flipped upside down, and slowly sank deeper to the base of my ribcage.
Yggdrasil grew larger before us with every step, looming over us in both power and physical enormity.
It was impossibly tall, reaching into the heavens beyond my sight.
The thick trunk stretched farther than my mind could make sense of it.
If I could guess the time it would take to walk around it, it would span a lifetime.
Drak shuffled up beside me, the sun finally blocked as we stood in Yggdrasil’s shadow. Even so, the power of the gods pulsed around us, and Drak fell to his knees. He still cupped the mask to his face, doubling forward with one hand braced on the mossy ground.
I crouched at his side and whispered. “We’re here.” Now there was only one thing left for him to do before he would be free of this pain and suffering.
“We don’t have much time before Silver gets here,” he said. He slipped his hand into mine, letting the mask finally peel off his face and fall to the ground. Without it, he already looked freer. “I’ll need help to the tree.”
“Of course,” I said, even as Freya and Loki’s shrieks echoed at the back of my skull.
The heel of Drak’s hand pressed against my palm.
Helping him to his feet proved difficult, but we got him upright and limping toward the tree.
We dodged the thick roots that broke through the surface of the ground.
The closer we drew, the darker the shadows became.
Some branches reached into the heavens, while others hung low, draping around us like the icy embrace of ash.
We had entered the true center of the nine realms, encircled by Yggdrasil’s branches and roots.
From within the tree’s embrace, low branches stretched out, thick enough for Drak to climb.
There, he could hang with a rope around his throat and absorb the same wisdom that Odin had gained centuries ago.
I squinted, trying to make sense of the shapes in the dim shadows. Trying to spot a place for him to hang.
Drak froze beside me, the muscles of his arm suddenly rigid.
“Drak?” I glanced at him, but his gaze fixed on something I couldn’t yet see through the shadows.
“Fuck,” he breathed, and nerves flayed open within me at the disturbance lacing his voice.
Blinking, I made out a man dangling above us. After another moment, I could see the curve of his short hair and the cut of his bare jawline. My heart jolted.
“Kayn,” I said, acknowledging the vampire hanging over us. His arms were stretched above his head, tied at the wrists to the thick branch above him. A gasp died in my throat as I took in his vacant eyes, open and staring at nothing. “He’s dead.”
When Kayn blinked, a strange film suddenly covered his eyes.
“Not dead,” Drak confirmed.
Kayn’s black gaze slid toward us with an unrecognizable glint in them.
When he blinked again, the glint vanished, and his attention focused on me, suddenly as sharp as it was clear.
“I do what you will not,” he said. Those were the same words spoken by the Valkyrie.
A trickle of unease swam through my veins.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Thank you for showing me the truth, Lux.” His voice was monotone as he avoided my question. “I thought I loved you, but you never listened to me. You never deserved me.”
A vein in Drak’s neck bulged as he stepped forward. “Deserved you? Don’t you mean she never let you control her? So now you’re throwing an eternal tantrum like an immortal child? Now answer the fucking question, Exile. What are you doing?”
“This is my final act.” Kayn almost smiled. “For my soul.”
Drak released a curse. “Explain yourself. Are you becoming a god?”
Kayn frowned. “I’m becoming a vessel. For my soul,” he repeated, almost as if in a trance. “For the gods.”
“Cut him down,” Drak said as he shoved off me. He waved his arms, weakly pointing at the tether around Kayn’s wrists. “Cut him down, Lux.”
I glanced between them, my heart fluttering and my mind racing with whatever Drak apparently understood that I did not. “What does that mean?”
Drak shook his head, mouth twisting into a grimace. “I don’t know, but I have a guess.” He ripped a small silver dagger from the pack on his back and thrust it toward me. “Cut him down now! You have more strength than me.”
I scrambled to take it and reach for the lowest branch. Climbing to Kayn would be easy enough, but before I hefted myself into the tree, a low, vibrating laugh stopped me.
The laugh curled out of Kayn, taunting as it echoed against the trunk and filled the air around me like the gods’ power, almost tangible as it was invisible.
“You took too long, Lux. You missed your chance at hunting vampires. Odin can’t wait any longer with Silver coming.
He has to do this before the tree burns. ”
Waves of horror washed over me as I stared at him, absorbing the words like icy water into my skin.
“Lux! Cut. Him. Down.” Drak spoke slowly and clearly, yanking my attention from the haunting look of the man hanging before us, and back to the task at hand.
With my heart hammering, I tucked the dagger into my pocket and climbed onto the branch. I reached for the next branch—the same one holding Kayn’s body. Carefully, I crawled out to where his hands were tethered.
His laugh came again, twisting through me and stealing my breath with its sickening edge.
I fumbled for the dagger. The hilt of the blade caught on the fabric at the edge of my pocket, and a curse escaped me.
I yanked it out and angled it over the rough tether holding his wrists.
Bringing it down with as much effort as I could, it broke the cord, and his hand shot out, grabbing my wrist before the weight of his body tugged him to the ground.
I cried out, losing purchase on the branch, and the rest happened so fast. Kayn tore me down with him, my hip slamming against the ground, my ankle smashing against the hard bump of a root.
The impact shot a vibration through the bones in my lower leg, but the worst of it all was the wind that was knocked from my lungs.
It was then that I realized night had finally come. Sunna’s rays no longer filtered through the branches in scant, bright cones. The gods allowed the sun to set and the moon to take precedence in the sky, even though vampires were marching here.
But why pull back on their torment now?
Kayn straightened beside Drak, landing easily with a strange, newfound strength despite being a vampire in the gods’ domain. I glared up at him, struggling to catch my breath beneath his shadow.
“You’re too late,” Kayn said. But the voice didn’t sound like Kayn’s, and though it wasn’t his, I recognized the heavy tone that had haunted my mind for months.
Horror chilled my stomach as I stared at Kayn’s twisted face. This no longer looked like the vampire who had trained me, or the man I had once thought cared for me…
The filmy texture over his eyes thickened, and his blond hair faded away to a dull grey that matched the sky.
Wrinkles formed, folding the smooth skin around his mouth and eyes, and aging the body that had once been a vampire.
In a matter of seconds, his bare jaw filled in with wiry hair and a thick beard full of scraggly grey hair hung down the front of his chest.
“Odin,” I murmured.
Even before the change in his appearance, I recognized the Allfather by his voice alone.
My chest tightened with understanding. This was why I no longer heard Odin in my head. This was how I’d been able to recall more memories of Myrah’s life when he went quiet. Not because I’d successfully kept the madness at bay, but because he was occupied elsewhere.
From the moment Kayn climbed Yggdrasil, Odin’s attention must have shifted away from me. This was what Kayn meant when he called himself a vessel. He hung from the tree not for wisdom, but as a sacrifice.
In the end, had the gods granted him another soul?
I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Wings fluttered above me.
Two ravens, black as night, swooped down from the highest branches.
They settled on either side of Odin’s head, tilting in unison as they tittered, one eye on me each.
Odin mirrored them, his single eye fixed on me, now inhabiting Kayn’s body.
“I do what you will not,” he repeated, his voice heavy but no longer painful now that it came from outside my head.
Breath stagnated in my throat, growing warm. The sudden coming of night made perfect sense now. Odin took the place of a vampire’s body, and he certainly wasn’t going to make himself suffer.
Having him here was far worse than hearing his voice in my head; I knew even without words that he would strike me down along with the vampires. I’d already sworn to destroy him if Drak didn’t.
Kayn—or Odin—had been right; we were too late.
Odin was going to kill both of us.