Chapter 43
Lux
Memories haunted my sleep, and my waking hours churned with sickness. The dull dread of the infinite blue and the ocean’s monotonous sway pressed down on us, eased only when Stasia asked to hear stories of Rune, or when my mother whispered for me to tell her more about the gods’ betrayal.
Though her understanding came slowly after a lifetime of worshipping Odin and Freya, she believed me. Just as when I was a child, she was one of the few people who truly listened. As much as it went against her instincts and beliefs, she trusted me and let her knowledge of the gods grow.
Unfortunately, hours had passed since any of these minor distractions because Finan had finally spoken to Stasia for the first time, and she had stayed by his side ever since.
My mother was busy too, sleeping whenever she could.
Only to be shaken awake by the boar-clad executioner who screamed at her for visions of what the kingdom across the sea looked like.
Or how far we were from our shores. Or how many more sunrises we’d see before the ships hit land.
At least I could sit beside her, even if sitting too long was begrudged. Executioners often encouraged us to stand and move about the ship to keep our legs from growing useless because they expected us to conquer and fight once we hit land.
Another hour passed before my mother woke, refreshed enough to look at the journal.
She quietly studied the brief passage of Brynhild’s account, her eyes flitting over the lines quickly as she read and reread every word.
After I had told her everything, down to the fake marriage and the former life, she had become almost as transfixed by the idea of restoring Drak’s soul as I was.
“I’m a seer, Lux,” she’d said when I’d expected her not to believe me. “I had dreams of your past life and Silver’s future. But I was never lucky enough to see your future, and I thought these images of your past life were simply confusing dreams, not visions. Now I know the truth.”
Now I know the truth.
How many times had that same thought brushed the edges of my consciousness since I finally emerged from the haze of the gods’ control?
How often had my muscles tightened with furious frustration at my past self, the blind witch who thought she was a seer but whom nearly everyone around her and the very gods she worshiped had tricked?
And yet my mother simply accepted it. That was what a true seer was: not merely trusting the gods but understanding that their visions could aid her when used carefully.
She hummed, yanking me out of my thoughts. Looking up from the pages, she frowned. “I think I understand.”
My pulse stopped and beat twice as fast once it started again. The effect left me dizzy and my already-upside down stomach queasier. “Which part?”
“What you need to do to find the fragment.” With a sigh, she looked out over the water. “Sacrifice. Blood. Just like at the altar.”
The last time I’d cut myself open and bled for answers, it was while entrusting that the gods would help me.
I didn’t know if I could do it again. For this, the outcome was entirely different, still brought on by blood and sacrifice but not in pursuit of an answer from Odin or Freya.
This was magic, spiritual, yes, but from within.
My mother’s glazed eyes met mine. A sad smile creased her face as she took my wrist in her hand and gently opened my fist. Tracing the lines of my palm, she murmured.
“You are to create an original rune meant just for the fate of his soul. Then you will carve it into your skin and bleed over the location of his fate.”
“The sea?” I shook my head. “It can’t be that simple, right?” Brynhild herself recorded the difficulty, saying that revealing each shard became harder and harder. Perhaps his fate was as simple as bleeding into the water.
“You won’t know unless you try. The tricky part is knowing what words to combine into a single, new rune that will reveal his spirit.”
His spirit. Drak’s soul. What had been his fate upon his making as a Draugr?
Silver’s interpretation was that his fate lay at sea.
No, it wasn’t an interpretation. She’d made him, created him, and shattered his very soul to shape him into the undead monster he became.
She knew where that first fragment went, which meant the first rune was Laguz.
Water. The shape of this rune was a simple upward line and a straight arm reaching down to the right.
Water and what else?
Another word was required to form a new shape into a full rune. What else was Drak’s purpose when he sacrificed his soul?
A single word formed in my mind. Vengeance. He’d become a vampire for revenge. I stared down at the journal in my mother’s lap, fixating on the line about the runes. The answer seemed so simple. Combine the shape of an arrow representing vengeance with the rune for water.
Etching it into my arm would have to wait until night, when most of the executioners slept. Privacy on a longship was virtually impossible, even if the deafening wind and waves granted secluded conversations.
So I waited, biding my time with the sharp Y Tree in my pocket, where it always remained. I ran my thumb against the cold silver as my courage built.
Once the moon rose and darkness stretched across the water, I pulled it from inside my skirt and scooted to the edge.
Grateful for the shallow sides of the longship, I reached out over the calm water and pressed the bottom tip of the Y-shaped object against the soft flesh of my palm.
I swallowed a grunt as the metal bit into my skin.
Blood beaded at the surface, and I seethed at the sting of the cut, but I kept dragging the sharp edge to carve a new rune, one that combined water and vengeance, Drak’s fate, and the goal he had at the time of its making.
Blood pooled at the center of my palm until I curled my fingers inward and squeezed. It spilled out around my tight fist, as if I were trying to hold on to it.
Red dripped into the water, glinting in the moonlight, and I craned my neck to watch it sink into the darkness below. It spread across the surface, then vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. As minutes passed, my chest tightened, and my heart sank. The sea remained the same. Nothing happened.
I didn’t know what I had expected. I was no longer a witch who could mingle with magic. Drawing a slow breath, I watched the moonlight dance across the water as the ships bobbed at the ocean’s will, the same way the gods had controlled me. I was no longer a huntress either.
And I never got the chance to be Drak’s wife, not in this life.
I was nothing. That thought filled me as I let myself become mesmerized by the gentle waves guiding our ship onward. I didn’t know who I was anymore, except ruined.
Drak had called me a survivor because I saw the value in my life. No matter how low I had fallen, I fought to keep going. Even ruined, I had to fight, and I could use the fire inside me to push forward.
The anger simmered, as if the rage itself could keep me warm. My mind and heart reached for it. My hand still hovered over the water, blood dripping into the black sea, but my soul was reaching for the fire within.
The wrath of a ruined woman.
Though it burned to tighten my grip on the rune, I clenched my fist as if I were holding the fire itself.
Blood poured freely, hot and sharp, as I let the anger fill me, feeling the same fury Drak must have felt when he swore revenge on everyone who had wronged him.
I closed my eyes and allowed his rage to mingle with mine, letting it course through me raw and unstoppable, and quietly, I swore the same.
Everyone who had hurt Drak would feel my wrath, from the other vampires to the gods themselves. No matter the sacrifices it demanded, I would endure. I had sacrificed plenty before and still lived.
I’d always been a survivor, a simple girl with a broken heart who defied the odds. I would find Drak, and together we would seize our lives, our fates, and the throne of Vylheim. We would take it from Silver and free his mother, my mother, and everyone who had suffered under the Blood Council.
I’d survive for them. For him.
Peeling my eyes open, I no longer saw only black water. Something shimmered beneath the surface, clearly not a reflection of the moon because it grew brighter as it rose from the depths. A shocking white, the light bobbed above the waterline.
A breath hitched in my throat, and I shot to my feet. Reaching into the water as if reaching for the wrath within me, I grabbed at the light. My fingers closed around a solid, icy object barely larger than the silver pendant in my other hand.
Pulling it out of the water, I opened my fist to reveal a long, narrow, and triangular crystal bearing light so bright it forced my eyes to narrow.
“The fragment,” I whispered. It worked. It had fucking worked. The glistening, pure crystal was streaked with my blood, but it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on. A piece of Drak’s soul in my own hands.
Clutching it close to my heart, a sob rose in my throat.
In the dead of night and lost among the waves, I made a vow to my husband, and at the moment the crystal shifted from frigid to warm, I knew that this piece of him had heard me.
“Into every lifetime.”
Thank you for reading.