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Blight on our family

False man

Woman of witchcraft

Hater of honor

Devourer and hoarder

Pleasure-seeker

Destroyer. May she die

With more dignity than she lived.

And they broke my body, swords skinning and blood turning earth red. But the woman who betrayed me knew our pact was beyond life, beyond the mortal death she had made for me. And when they carried me through the brick-broken doorway, put me in the grave, placed iron on my heart and drove sewing needles into my soles, she knew I would become her haunting.

My being unbound

I swallowed the monster ouroboros and

became draugr queen:

First of her kind,

Hateful and wild,

Wringing and overwrought,

Sharp of claw and gnashing teeth.

I would never forget the grind of my hate.

TWENTY-SIXLacie

Marcella bites off her last word of Icelandic, her eyes straying to mine.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “That she did that to you. That they all did that to you.”

She straightens, looking every fiber a queen, even battered and dirty. “I won’t let them take me away from the things I love anymore. I am not to be cowed. And if I am shifting into something new, I will fight it. I have finally found a soft home for my heart, one they won’t tear away from me. Not again. They’ve taken and taken and taken, and I finally have a chance to have something only for myself. Something that isn’t a thing or a possession. You’re not Dyrhólaey or land or thrall. I am terrified to lose you, Lacie. You’re good and gentle and beneath that you are a full flame. I want to make you burn.”

My heart batters the walls of my chest, breath burning the back of my throat. After living hundreds of years, suffering through the monotony of endless life, no—the viciousness of her endless life, she wants … me? “Marcella, I—”

“We will do whatever we can. Find anything we must.” Her eyes darken. “Whatever they’re trying to hide must hold their weaknesses. Why else hide it under lock and key, spin lies about its whereabouts?”

I pick up the key again and stare at it, Marcella’s words mixing with those of the diary entry:

The lord and protector of the realm set a party to root out the beasts.

A heady weight fills my skull. I know now what I need to do, my resolve hardening inside of me. Marcella isn’t selfish. She’s just broken and trying to exact justice any way she knows how.

But she has me, now. And I’m not going to let her fall apart.

“Marcella. Forget those terrible creatures and whatever they’re hiding and just listen to me,” I whisper. “When my parents found out I was seeing a woman, they didn’t even let me pack my bags. I know how it feels to truly believe that you’re a horrifying, disgusting monster. But you’re no more monster than I am. I never thought I would belong to anyone: deformed, traumatized, scared. Not even God loved me anymore.”

Her eyes find mine, hard and shining.

“But you have me. I’m yours.”