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I loosened my grip and let his soul swell to twice its original size. My heart seemed to grow with it as it bulged up into my tight throat, and with the second shard in place, I shot to my feet.

One last time, I looked at the shore where Ingrid lay between scattered bodies and receding sand. “I’m sorry,” I breathed, unsure if I said it to Ingrid or Drak.

Only the wind responded, so I fixed my sights on Drukna, and those damn curls at the back of the boat. Blond and like a beacon of hope in the dark waters, Stasia scanned the shore, her arm waving as she spotted me.

Finan had better let me on that ship.

Drak

Like the shadows of a forest or the depths of Drukna Sea, darkness surrounded me. All-encompassing and aggravating as this existence taunted me, reminding me that I had no way to contact the voice that called for me.

Her voice.

Myrah.

Fuck, I hated not doing anything. That was my first thought after remembering my wife. I hated being stuck here. Wherever here was. Valhalla? I didn’t hear the clash of swords or the laughter of drunken men and women. I couldn’t smell the mouth-watering mixture of roasted pig and wheaty citrus of fresh ale. I smelled nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing.

My existence was grey, like the stone walls of Mara’s Keep—the last place I’d called home, though it’d never felt like one until I found Myrah again and brought her back there.

Except now she went by Lux. My Lux.

My wife.

I died in her arms, but she didn’t forget me. The skald, obsessed with history and sagas as much as I was obsessed with her, wouldn’t let me stay dead, and of course she wouldn’t because we promised to always be together.

Gods, how I wanted to claw my way to her…to crawl through the grey, but I had no hands with which to pull myself, no body to move, and damn if this wasn’t the worst moment of my existence, because even if I could find her, she wouldn’t hear me or feel me. Not being able to move toward her might break me.

Her voice cut through my self-pity.

“What’s not right about this?” Lux asked.

When she spoke to me, I leaned into it with my entire consciousness reaching for her voice like an animal’s instinct to find water—its source of life and survival. But that was all I could do. Nothing more, nothing less, just listen and wait.

“What am I missing?”

Her question pulsed around me, not heard, but absorbed, like a piece of her was within my soul.

The truth. My thoughts reached for her again. You’re missing the truth.

And when she confessed that she’d loved me since we were children, I swore my soul shattered all over again, because I couldn’t tell her I’d loved her since she’d created a saga for my father after his passing. We were only eleven when a raid claimed his life. When the Anglan king rode into battle against Old Skaldir and trampled my father’s skull under the cavalry’s hooves. She was only a kid when she sat before the fire and told our entire village a version of his life woven with the gods and fates and glory, to keep his memory alive.

I couldn’t pull her into me and tell her I’d always known about her love for me. A girl doesn’t create an entire saga to remember the father of a little village boy unless she cares deeply for him.

There was no me. Not without her.

Waiting for her to find me was definitely the hardest thing I’d ever done, but at the very least, I could reach out to her, and if I could understand her words and thoughts, maybe she could hear mine.

Hear me, Lux. Our souls are one.

“I’m sorry,” she said. I didn’t know how, but I understood Lux’s sorrow. I felt it and heard her. Our souls were connected. Across time and space, we’d found each other again in this life. That had to mean our souls were connected and our minds could reach one another—at least when she kept my soul close. When it was in her hands, I heard her thoughts wracked with grief and knew why. My mother had passed away.

I never expected my mother to survive Silver’s reign, because Ingrid was too powerful, and Silver never liked witches, even as a little girl. Now, Ingrid was free of the torment in her mind and the confusion and fear it brought her daily. Now she was in Folkvangr or Valhalla.

It’s okay, Skald, it was her time.

Lux’s grief immediately softened, and I knew, my soul recognizing hers; she understood me.

Lux