Chapter 41
Lux
As a god, I felt different. Not because my ailments had vanished; I still suffered from a weakness of the heart. The distinction was in the flashes I saw before they occurred.
Standing before my sister’s betrayal, I seethed, but I also saw myself bolting forward, my hand wrapping around her throat and choking her.
I saw her fighting back until the light in her eyes faded, not because I had impossible strength—I wasn’t Odin—but because I had a tenuous grip on the fate of humans.
And Silver was only human.
So what if she was a queen? She was a mere human queen, and I wanted to fucking kill her.
But all I did was blink. I’d never actually moved at all.
My fists loosened, and I let the wrath melt away because time marched forward, and when I saw another glimpse of the minutes to come, I didn’t need to murder my sister.
Killing her would solve nothing now that the Blood Council was back in power.
“Sister, Drakkar’s fate is at sea,” she said, as if I should have simply known that.
Like I was stupid for not realizing it. Her words made no sense, and the fragments of the future crowded my mind, impossible to piece together.
“Did you hear me? The first fragment, his fate. You’ll see when you read the journal. ”
I gaped at her as I echoed her words. “Drak’s fate is at sea.
..” Of course it was, because nearly succumbing to Drukna’s waters was the point he became a vampire.
His fate had been to drown beneath the surface until she changed it and shattered his soul.
My ribs grew tight with the dread building in my body.
“How am I to find a fragment of light across the entire sea?”
“If I thought you could find a piece of his soul, you didn’t think I’d actually tell you, did you?”
My pulse stammered, even though I expected every betrayal from her. My sister was cruel—truly cruel—but also a genius in her own way. Either divinely inspired or because the reasoning was logical, I realized she was right. Drak’s fate was at sea, which made finding him essentially impossible.
But not entirely impossible.
Silver rose and loomed over me. “Let The Age of Exploration begin.”
Before I could open my mouth again, two vampires seized me. The room filled with cries as more vampires grabbed other women in the same fashion. Witches taken into custody by Silver’s army with fragments of visions, and seers who might guide the way during the exploration.
The curve of Silver’s smirk tilted me sideways, turning my world upside down once again. Delicate chains made of silver and gold clinked against one another at her wrist. She was well and truly in control of all vampires and all humans.
Raising her arm, she presented her palm to me, where a winged-shaped seed sat at the center. A promise for Yggdrasil to return. Or was it an omen?
“This seed will take root when you’re out at sea,” she said.
“Visions will come to the other witches again. Odin is gone, thanks to you, which means you’ll no longer have the strength to fight my army.
But the visions from Freya and the others will come back.
Even they cannot deny witches. There are many beings; they do not have control over what they do with simple humans.
Elves, dwarves…” she rambled until I cut her off.
“But the gods will destroy you for burning Yggdrasil.”
“And yet they could not destroy me when they had access to Midgard.”
I frowned. “Why would you want to give them access to us again? You can’t trust them.”
She bent forward, bringing her lips to my ear.
“You see, sister, when our mother taught us to worship the gods, you listened. But when she taught us to work with them, I listened. They are not my enemies. They are my tools, no different from a sharpened scythe to till the fields.” I shivered.
But Silver had kept her promise, and for that, she was more trustworthy than them. Than me, even.
“Do you remember I’m a god now too?” I said. “I can kill you—”
“Not when I’m surrounded by an army, you can’t. Glimpses of the future and the ability to breathe life into a soul? Those won’t help you now, Lux.”
“People kill people just fine. You’re only human.”
“And you’re only a commoner plotting to assassinate a queen.
If you want me to spare your life, you will embark.
Gods can still bleed. We learned that at Yggdrasil, didn’t we?
” Gritting my teeth, I held back my tongue.
Fighting with her now yielded nothing useful, and she had already told me everything she knew.
When I didn’t bite back, she continued. “If you die now, you will ensure Drakkar is lost forever. Nobody else is going to go through all the trouble of putting a forsaken king’s soul back together.
And wasn’t he nothing but a farmer before that? ”
I refused to take her bait, but it took everything in me not to correct her and call him a warrior, a husband. My husband. And fuck her for looking down on farmers. Without those who grew the food, entire kingdoms would shrivel.
Since I hadn’t satisfied her need to argue, she glowered. “Let’s not keep our ships waiting on the witches any longer.” Rising, she cast one last, long look at me. “Say hello to our mother for me.”
Firsthand account of weaving the spirit of one who died as Draugr.
Brynhild. Seer and Skald.
The light of a spirit is as bright as the star in Sunna’s chariot.
Freya has revealed the three fragments of human essence in the order with which they must be woven to create the whole of the soul.
Fate.
Mind.
Memory.
And with the spirit sewn together, the ashes of the soul’s living space resume the shape of the human’s body. The final fragment, though not a fragment at all, but nearly a whole, if not for the hole of the missing spirit.
Each fragment requires the creation of a new rune to be revealed. The rune carved into the blood of he who receives the light. The rune directed by the individual soul.
The individual soul’s fate.
The individual soul’s mind.
The individual soul’s memory.
At the location of the fragment’s purpose, the light can be found.
Working backward in time, the fragments are ordered.
The fate of the Draugr upon making. The mind of the Draugr upon their most significant moment as a flesh and blood human.
The memory of the Draugr’s human self most treasured.
Working forward, each reveal becomes significantly trickier, demanding more time and more effort.
Upon revealing, the fragment materializes into a shard of light at each location, like a crystal sharp enough to pierce through the chest of the body.
But even with the restored soul bound as a shard and buried into the chest, absorbed and reformed, the body, though appearing whole and healthy, does not respond. The body needs the breath of life.
Unless the Gods risk coming to Midgard and beckoning Ragnarok to breathe into the body, ashes, the Draugr will remain. In the hope of all Gods and witches and humans, forgotten. Though none of us, Gods and witches and human will ever forget who we have lost.
For the loss of a soul, a spirit, is far greater than death.
Ashes they remain.