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“I can’t die from this. I’m fine,” I said, though everything within me screamed to flee and run back to Drak so that we could be together for once in a lifetime. But I didn’t move, not forward or backward, and I didn’t project into Drak’s future. I focused my foresight on Silver.

One last time, just in case she’d run from the throne and I could see her present or into her future.

I expected to see the throne room, maybe even Drak approaching and fighting her for it, but I only saw prisoners from West Anglor as she addressed them. The vision cut short.

The fingers on my arms squeezed. “Lux,” Stasia said. “They’re looking for you.”

“We stick to the plan,” I continued as we surged forward. I could almost touch the blackthorn walls of the temple now. We had to speed up this fight; I needed to get in there unnoticed and get my mother out. I prayed she wasn’t already on the altar, but the foresight I projected into her said that she wasn’t. Moments into the future, she sat plastered next to that same damn guard Silver had assigned her across Drukna, clad in a Reindeer’s mask, watching as vampires dragged several captives forth and instructed them to surround the altar.

My boots crunched bone, and I doubled back with my pulse in my throat. Ashes from fallen vampires scattered over our feet and caught on the side seam of my trousers. The body at my feet lay with her head pointed in the wrong direction, her spine twisted beyond belief, and blood spilling out of her head where her ear had been ripped—no, bitten—off. Her vacant gaze tilted skyward, but even if she could see, the crowd would obscure the stars.

I tried to swallow, but my throat seized, and I couldn’t stop staring at her. I knew those grey eyes, her full lips, and that raven black hair that was splayed out and blood-soaked behind her.

The Raven. She’d defected, and I hadn’t recognized her until now. I didn’t have the chance to thank her for trusting us, and for siding with our army. How had she come to this decision? After resisting Finan’s authority back on the longship? I almost didn’t believe it after the ferocity with which she seemed to hate me, but the mole above her lip made her impossible to ignore, identifying her as the same woman on the longship.

I tugged out of Stasia’s grip and knelt beside the Raven.

“Thank you,” I whispered as I thumbed her eyelids and gently pulled them down, and that was when it hit me. This executioner didn’t come here for me; she didn’t even really know me. She did this for a better life, for her partner, The Goat, if he defected too, or for the hope that the Grimward would dissolve and she’d be free. For whatever future she wanted.

I straightened, sweeping my gaze over the hundreds of villagers who were willing to risk their lives. None of this was for me, but for the same dream Drak and I shared: a home without the daily horrors of living beneath vampires—and the queen of the undead.

Maybe Raven wanted to marry Goat, maybe she wanted children with him, or maybe she just wanted to feel the vampires whose reign trapped her in a life of killing wither to ash between her fingers.

I touched my finger to my lips and closed my eyes for a single second, and then I stepped over her body. Hopefully, she got what she came here for.

Stasia shrieked, and the high-pitch plucked at the shield of emotions I’d gathered around me. I snapped my eyes to her as a spray of blood speckled her pure blond hair. The last vampire who hadn’t been staked or fled inside shredded the exposed face of a former executioner with her fangs. She snapped his neck back and dragged her fangs along the vein curving on his throat.

The cry rippling from his throat sent my heart into my stomach.

A shower of scarlet hit all of us within fifteen feet of this brutality.

We’d officially arrived at the front of the temple, and the last vampire didn’t back up to the door. She didn’t balk; instead, she threw herself at us with bloodlust tinting her eyes and fury driving her through human weakness.

My gut twisted as she bolted at the executioners closing in around her. She held nothing back as she matched their every attempted blow with a block. A strange admiration left my chest tight and my eyes stinging as the executioners gave themselves to the cause. After decades of serving the Blood Council, they’d found freedom with us. Now, freedom in death. Half of the Grimward who found Finan and defected placed themselves at the front of our siege, knowing this battle would be their last.

With sheer strength, the vampire snapped two fingers off the woman closest to her, and the woman’s stake fell at the temple’s doorstep. The vampire threw herself on the man stepping forward to avenge the maimed woman, and he fell easily, with the vampire straddling him, her jaws wide and fangs poised to strike his face.

I resisted the temptation to snap my eyes shut and shield myself from the sight of her fang puncturing his eyeball. Her teeth sank into his face and silenced him so much faster than I expected, but with the vampire’s back to me now, she was exposed.

I fingered the stake, adjusting my grip as I shoved forward and tweaked my wrist at an angle my muscles instinctively knew by now. The Raven’s unseeing eyes flashed into my mind as I slammed the stake between the vampire’s ribs. The hole in her chest stretched and spread, yawning open rapidly as soon as I pulled my weapon out. Though she withered quickly, the man beneath her was already dead.

The remaining executioners had already hacked through the temple doors, and screams echoed from within, but it wasn’t the vampires whose fear penetrated the humid air. I followed the flow of the crowd, tunneling through the door. Breath halted at the back of my tongue as I absorbed the restored temple.

The Hall of the Gods was rebuilt to its former glory, from a lifetime long ago when I visited and attended sacrifices for Odin here. Memories coursed through me from ancient to near-present, when I’d fled here to hide from Drak and find my mother the first time.

She’d been sick then, too, only temporarily restored by Drak like the human version of this building. I winced at the memory of my naivety when I believed he was feeding from her, not drawing the disease from her veins.

Unlike the temple in Old Skaldir, no statues lined the walls. Massive stained-glass windows stretched into violent arches with their peaks twenty-five feet above my head. The cold stone floor was anything but plain grey. Stones of varying shades of blue, green, red, white, and black mottled the floor, cobbled-together and yet entirely smooth in a work of art done on the backs of slaves. Namely, every subject in Vylheim.

Lengths of dark wood from a blackthorn tree hung from the ceiling with sharp tips like icy, black stalactites. Matching spires thrust up from the floor, three poised in front of every window like steel bars in a prison cell, blocking escape in case of shattered glass. They resembled massive stakes.

A phantom, frigid finger traced my spine. This was no temple; it was a reminder from Silver to her vampires that even when she wasn’t here; she held total control, and I knew exactly why she did it. I didn’t need foresight to see that she intended to invite the gods to Midgard with these sacrifices, and if any vampire dared beg for his soul back by offering his body to a god, she would destroy them.

God or not, she would end them.

Just as she planned to kill our mother.

Villagers crowded the temple, filling in around me, and the battle exploded. Chaos was my savior.