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Have I been using this Light my entire life? I think back, remembering all the times I was overwhelmed by emotion. Every time, I reached deep into that well inside, grasping for some hidden reserve I never understood. I told myself it was strength or courage, whatever I needed in the moment to face whatever stood in my path. Without fail, I reached for it. And without fail, I faced what came. I won battles I shouldn't have won, faced bullies who simply decided to walk away. I survived my father when I should have died.
Was that this power all along? Is that what got me through every hard day? Every impossible situation?
I think so. And if that was only a fraction of it…if what I did to that Forsaken at the bar or what happened with Abigail is only a fraction of what I can do, what are the true limits to the well within me?
I'm almost afraid to find out.
"So Valkyrie don't reach power until they're fully grown? They grow up normal?"
Dax hesitates.
"The Valkyrie weren't a race, Rissa. Once, they were human or Fae or giant or dwarf. They were called to serve because they felt a connection to the dead," Reaper says from the front seat, alerting me to the fact that he and Malachi are listening to our conversation. "They were the special few who could cradle the souls of the dead in the palms of their hands."
"Oh." I process this, trying to shift it into place in my mind. There's so much about this world I don't understand, so much about it that's completely at odds with the stories my mom told me. And yet so much of what she told me never felt quite right to me, either. There's a sense of rightness to this piece.
"Um, did the Valkyrie ever see things that no one else saw? Or hear things no one else heard?" I ask, my voice soft.
"Perhaps," Malachi says gently. "The Valkyrie never spoke much about their experiences with the souls of the dead. To them, their stewardship over the dead was sacred, something shared only between Valkyrie. Butja, I imagine they did hear them crying out. I imagine they may have even seen them passing over."
Dax continues running his hands through my hair, not speaking. None of them ask me if I see or hear things that aren't there. Either they don't want to know, or they respect the Valkyrie too much even now to ask. But for the first time in my life, I consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe, like the ancestor who placed her infant in a basket and hid her on earth, the things I've seen and heard my whole life have been the souls of the dead crying out to me, trying to capture my attention.
I've spent so much of my life afraid of them. Instead, I should have been weeping for them. Because there was nowhere for them to go. For three hundred years, there has been no afterlife waiting. There's just been that void in between…that infernal place where souls once went to wait, but now go to die. The place where the Forsaken stalk them through the dark, picking them off one by one.
Is my mom's soul still floating free out there?
"How do I ferry souls across?" I ask.
"You don't," Dax says, a note of finality in his voice.
"But I'm a Valkyrie, Dax. Isn't that my job? To help ferry them across the Veil to the afterlife?"
"Nei." He clenches his jaw, glancing away from me.
Malachi and Reaper say nothing.
I stare at Dax, trying to sort out why he's suddenly so closed off and rigid, and then realization dawns. "You're afraid to let me try," I guess. "You think I can't do it."
"Nei, lyseste ljós," he growls. "I think you will do exactly what you set out to do. You'll figure out precisely how to get across the Veil with as many souls as you can carry. And as soon as you do, you'll walk right into whatever trap the Forsaken set for you. Your Light will fall into their hands, and there will be nothing we can do to stop it." He glowers at me, a specter in the dark. "I forbid it."
"You can't forbid me from doing anything, Dax. If I'm a Valkyrie, this is what I'm supposed to do. It's what I was put here to do!"
"Nei," he growls. "You were put here to save souls, not to risk your own on a fool's errand."
"Then I guess it's a good thing that it's not up to—"
Static crackles through the truck from the walkie talkie situated in the console. Half a second later, one of the warrior's shouts into it. "Forsaken! There are Forsaken in the valley!"
"Faen!" Dax roars.
Malachi slams on the brakes. The truck fishtails wildly, refusing to stop. For a long moment, I think we're going to go over the side of the mountain. But at the last second, Malachi manages to whip the wheel. We slide off the road onto a gravel path.
Shouts come through the walkie talkie, instructions and orders shouted too rapidly for me to understand all of them. I don't even understand half of them. They're a mix of English andthe Nordic languages Dax and the Fae speak as easily as they breathe.
Howls rip through the night, one after another after another. They seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, echoing off the mountainside. The chilling sound freezes the blood in my veins. Wolves. Dozens of them from the sounds of it.
"Varulv," Reaper says. "They brought thevarulv."
"Ja," Dax says. "They're all over the mountainside."
