Page 6

I relived hours of a centuries-old battle in the sweep of one breath as the current battle surged around me, somehow still tasting his real name on my tongue as the present day fell heavy on my shoulders.

This was his most treasured memory because I told him I loved him.

Iblinked away the memory and gritted my teeth at the sight of the present-day battle. Blood sprayed as often and as heavy as Drukna’s mist.

Stay safe.

First, I had to stay safe, and then I could restore the next shard.

I followed Axel’s advice and bolted along the waterline for the cover of trees, thanking the sky and stars that the crystal still glowed warmer, guiding me. I believed this change in temperature was Drak reaching out to me, telling me where to go, how to find the pieces of him. So I followed with my whole heart.

I didn’t have to stand in the exact spot where Drak’s most important moment had happened, and deciding on the word I needed to use to create a new rune and reveal the shard was easy enough. This was about love. My chest squeezed painfully. We didn’t have enough time together in the first life, and definitely not in this life, but I knew love ever since Rune and I became friends.

I stumbled forward, dragging my boots from the foamy wet line of the shore to dry sand. Clashing steel didn’t ring as loudly in my ears as I distanced myself from the ships far enough to stay out of the fight, but not so far that I couldn’t make it back to Stasia and Finan, and Axel before our fleet left. Back to Vylheim. Home, if I had one. I prayed I’d return in time before the ships were too far for me to swim to.

Vylheim was the closest I knew of home because it was the place I’d met Drak, and where I learned to weave tapestries and to fight. Vylheim held the history of my people, the stories of our gods, and the sagas that told of our existence.

That was as close to home as I would get.

I’d only leave here once I had another piece of his soul.

Breath stripped away from my lungs, burning deep in my chest with every additional step. Running freed me and imprisoned me in ways I couldn’t explain. My body could never keep up, but I relished the feel of a challenge.

Another pair of pounding footsteps joined mine. I twisted, daring a glance over my shoulder as a string of curses slipped out of me. Staying safe was going to be a Hel of a lot harder with an armed man at my heels. He carried a weapon that clearly did not belong to him, not with the runes carved into the ax’s wooden handle.

Thick sand made it difficult to run, and yet the clean-shaven Anglan with wild eyes closed the distance between us.

“Get away from them!” He half-snarled, half-begged. His breathless voice was a mix of fear and bravado and I didn’t know to whom he referred. I was running from the battle.

Reaching out, his fingers brushed my elbow. I yelped and yanked away from him. With my eyes fixed on the trees, I promised myself a moment of rest once I made it into the shadows. I could at least push him off ‌me and hide in the brush.

Movement shifted between the trees. Small bodies, hidden behind trees, darted from crouching in the darkness. The closer I came, the clearer the situation became. Women and children using the trees as cover fled from me.

My lungs were on fire, but Axel had made me promise that I would make it out of this. My pursuer presumably wanted me away from the women and children, so I dodged to the right, bolting toward the water. Back beyond the battle, longships bobbed at the shore in my wake, and I could see a woman with bright blond curls pulled out of the water and lifted into one of the ships. Likely by Finan.

Though I’d changed course, the man did not stop this chase. Instead, he gained on me, raising the ax to swing once he got close enough. The blade whooshed down and caught at the hem of my aproned tunic. Fabric tugged and ripped as I lunged away from him, but his attack was enough to throw me off balance as I flung myself from his reach. My foot lost purchase, and I fell with a squelching thud into thick, wet sand.

Seeing the angle with which he’d swing the ax again moments before he brought it down, I rolled onto my back the opposite way.

The man stood over me, heaving as he gripped the base of the ax. Now that I faced him with moonlight washing over him, I saw he was only a teenager. He shared those strange ears like the others, and something like a growth protruded against the shirt on his back. It appeared as if someone had cut the shell open at the top and sewed it into the shape of a sword’s tip.

Curiosity and confusion muted my fear as I considered what this bodily mutilation must have meant for their culture. My heart pricked. We’d raided an entire community with traditions and customs, rituals and families, love and a unique faith. This person ready to gut me was merely a young man defending his family, just as Rune and I had the first time we came here. Though he wasn’t exactly large or threatening, I didn’t doubt that wrestling the weapon away from him would be another failure of mine, but I had to make him drop it.

He hefted the too-large ax over his head, his skinny arms shaking with the effort. In exactly one breath from now, he would hack at me, so I had to react now.

A wave unfurled over the shore, kissing my head and shoulders, and reminding me that the ships were close enough to make a run for it. But then I’d be leaving Drak behind, and the piece of Rune that wanted nothing more than to hear me confess that I’d loved him.

I drew a sharp breath and pulled my leg back to kick him. The moment he readied to swing at me, I slammed the heel of my boot against the solid cap of his knee. Bone snapped, and when he lost hold of the ax, I dodged.

Another wave spilled over us as I scrambled to my feet and he fell to his knees. The wave drew back, quickly claiming ownership of the ax. Hurting him felt wrong. He was only trying to protect his people.

So I sucked in a long breath and jogged up the shore again. My wet clothes clung to me. Shivering, I glanced back at the ships before stepping into the cover of trees. I couldn’t get any colder, but in the shadows, I convulsed more violently.

Snapping twigs and shuffling feet signaled that not everybody had abandoned their hiding places the first time I ran for the trees.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I whispered into the night. A small body with those same tipped ears darted out from behind a tree and disappeared deeper into the darkness. I didn’t blame them for running. Behind me, the men and women I’d arrived with were gutting their friends and throwing their family, bound or held at knifepoint, into our ships, and I’d just smashed the knee of the boy trying to steer me away from them.

The shard hummed in my fist with a warm and bright, ethereal comfort.