Page 26

They were looking for someone. Was it me? Silver would want to know if Drukna claimed me or if the West Anglans captured me, and if I’d found the near-impossible shard of Drak’s soul.

I marched forward, like a beaten slave following the man in a wolf’s mask. In Axel’s cloak and with my face tanned from time at sea, I prayed the vampires wouldn’t recognize me.

Looking back, I caught Axel’s eye from where he marched a few paces behind us. A gentle, quick nod from him softened me, and when a Grimward moved out of the way, I saw my mother’s slight body in Axel’s arms.

After glancing back again and again, I slowed my pace in order to keep Axel and my mother within reach. His long legs had caught up with us, so close in my wake that the heat of my mother’s fever radiated against the back of my arms. My sleeves were still damp and clinging to my skin, but the wind would dry it soon, leaving me coated in sand and salt.

I gritted my teeth and wrenched my attention away from my mother and to the path ahead. Follow Finan. Just follow Finan, stay out of the vampire’s and executioner’s sights, and then we could get her to a healer.

I couldn’t believe this worked. The chaos helped, but it was Finan who kept us inconspicuous, like a little group of nameless captives.

We made it within reach of the treeline, past the vampires, and away from the Grimward. We made it only steps away from our freedom—an unblocked forest path to Mara’s Keep where we could sneak in without being bound or thrown at Silver’s feet, when a hand grasped my elbow. They wrenched me around, their grip unrelenting.

A cloaked figure greeted me.

Lux

“Lux,” my captor breathed as she yanked me into the shadow of the trees. Her fangs flashed when she spoke, and I waited for the worst—for a bite or the vampire’s claws to dig into the soft flesh of my arm. No longer the huntress, I could not fight her. Odin’s foresight would give me only a glimpse of my suffering minutes before it happened.

I saw her reach for her hood before her hand even moved. Before her hood was off, I saw the seconds ahead when it was no longer shadowing her face, and what I saw had me too frozen to move.

Those familiar eyes made my stomach dip, and when she finally did remove her hood, I took in every inch of Ragna’s face. Hard lines, created by hours in the sun, shaped her firm face. Her half-shaven head had never changed, one side braided and draped over her shoulder. Even though she was a vampire, it felt so damn good to see someone from Skaldir.

When the moment of shock receded like a wave pulling back from the shore of my mind, I threw my arms around her, pressing her cold, heartless body to mine.

“Ragna,” I said, tears choking my throat. “You scared the fuck out of me.”

“You’ve always been a little bitch,” Ragna said with a laugh as she released me. “I’ll never understand why the gods chose you as their huntress,” she joked, though we both understood exactly why they chose me. “I guess it helped that you knew a little something about mind control.”

I laughed now. “Mind control? That was just how I calmed myself, because of my frayed nerves.” I recalled how bad my thoughts and anxiety had become before I used the technique to observe and name everything in my environment. A skill that helped me ever since, and until Drak’s words and warmth aided in calming me.

“That and your broken heart.” She poked at the center of my chest. “They figured you’d already found a way to survive constant pain, so you could handle a little more, and damn, you handled it. Look at you. Living to tell the tale of Drukna, huh?”

“We all did,” I said, hearing Finan’s footsteps crunch closer. I spun. “I know her! She’s a friend.”

“Friends with the Blood Council?” he snarled. Fitting sound to match those jagged clay canines on his mask. Stasia frowned behind him. “Aren’t you aware they’re the ones who force executioners to kill? Why am I breaking my back to save you only for you to embrace a fucking vampire?”

I stiffened and shot Finan a glare that could have sliced his head off if it’d been any sharper. Beside him, Axel’s soft expression darkened, if only for a second, as his eyes flickered between the vampire and Grimward. Two monsters, in their own right; three if you included me, and as a god, I was considerably the worst.

Ragna laughed. “She knows far more than you, Wolf.”

Finan opened his mouth, but Axel cut him off.

“That’s enough,” Axel said, his brow furrowed and eyes fixed on Finan. “You will not talk in that tone in front of Queen Lux.”

Finan did not balk before Axel, the man who once trained executioners, and was arguably the best swordsman alive, because Finan’s entire personality as an executioner was this same brutality. He’d lived it and breathed it for far longer than I’d been a queen, intimidated by nothing, not even Axel. Finan’s kill count was the highest I’d ever heard of. I didn’t want to contemplate the violence and cruelty required to achieve that.

Finan seethed and said, “So she knows all about how we have to cut off witches' heads and then drag their bodies away, sealing the blood flow with vampire saliva so your sick kind can drink from the headless neck?”

I almost retched. I would have been happier not knowing that particular detail. Did Silver still keep to this policy? It was likely, considering how Hel-bent she was on feeding her vampire followers. Everything was about appeasing them so they’d serve her, like a strange and tenuous balance that was disturbingly parasitic. She could control them, but she also fell prey to the power their violence could offer her.

“Enough, Finan,” Axel said. To aid Axel, Stasia came up beside Finan and wrapped her fingers around his arm, but he ignored her touch. I still couldn’t see what she liked about this Wolf. Kind, curious, and funny Stasia…with a predator? No, they didn’t match. Except his clenched jaw actually softened as she gave his arm a little squeeze.

“And your point in sharing this is?” Ragna prompted. Knowing her, she intended to antagonize Finan further.

“So you’re aware that I’m skilled at removing a head from its shoulders,” he snapped as he raked his gaze over her. “And you look like a young vampire to me which means you’re weak and hungry and no match for me.” He nearly smiled, his lips tilting, a glimpse of a scar near them stretching with the movement.

“I’m terrified,” she said, her voice as dead as her hollow heart, but with Ragna, it was more sarcasm than her state of being. Rarely did anything bother her as long as her husband and children were fed and safe.