Page 14

He was seething. I could feel it. His anger was flowing through me somehow, and I wasn’t sure it had anything to do with my half-sentry nature. Brandon appeared to literally carry his emotions on his sleeve, and I was picking up on them.

We sat on the stony edge outside the cave’s gaping mouth, big and black behind us. Ahead, dirty green and brown canopies blanketed the mountain’s ridge, more grottos opening up below. The faint light from above poured over everything, drawing shadows and jagged silhouettes across the land—this fake world that seemed every bit as real as our home.

Neither of us said anything for a while. Brandon needed to cool down. It didn’t seem fair to ask him for complete loyalty at this point, as HQ still had Hammer, and especially since I’d seen what the shadow hounds were like. They resembled the true death of one’s soul, at least in my mind. Something I wouldn’t have wished on the worst of our enemies. So, I decided to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, going forward.

“They don’t believe me,” Brandon muttered after a long and heavy silence. “About Hrista. Their precious, immaculate Hrista.”

“Regine doesn’t. Myst seemed more inclined to accept the possibility,” I replied.

“Myst has been around here long enough to maybe start putting two and two together,” Brandon sighed. “How do you tell someone that the person they’ve looked up to for eons is, in fact, crooked and mean and petty and vengeful?”

I looked at him, temporarily mesmerized by his noble outline. “How did you learn about Hrista being behind HQ?”

“With Torrhen and Haldor out of the way, I was able to sneak into the areas that are normally off limits for me. A bit of eavesdropping here, a bit of tracking there… and the truth was quick to reveal itself. You’ve caused enough chaos to rattle HQ, that much is clear.”

“How well do you know Hrista?”

“Berserkers and Valkyries don’t really mix. We’re supposed to be distant and balanced. Whenever we get close, some kind of trouble crops up,” he said with a bitter shrug. There was history between their kinds, but he didn’t seem to have the patience to explain it all right now. I left that for later, finally relaxing as his anger began to subside. Brandon hated being called a liar. I had a feeling he valued the truth more than he’d let on, otherwise Regine’s denial wouldn’t have affected him this way. “Hrista was faultless. Pristine. White and bright and without sin. Giver of joy and love and emotions normally reserved for the living. It was literally her ability. It still is, in fact. She can soften one’s soul.”

“Ability?”

“You must’ve noticed a pattern among us and the Valkyrie,” he replied, giving me a brief glance. “In terms of individual skills, I mean.”

I nodded once. “Haldor controls the shadow hounds. Which is what you’ll become if they destroy your spirit animal, the Aesir called Hammer. Am I getting this right?”

“You are, yes,” he chuckled, though there was little humor in the pale blue fires of his eyes. “Fun fact. We Berserkers and Valkyries consider the shadow hounds to be Haldor’s Aesir. Among ourselves, anyway. They’re obviously not, but we choose to think of them as such because we don’t want to be reminded of the fate that awaits a Berserker or a Valkyrie if their Aesir is destroyed. But, anyway, back to special abilities, yes, like you said, Haldor controls the shadow hounds. And Torrhen has the third eye.”

“That he sees everything with. I got that, too. And what’s your ability, exactly?”

Brandon pressed his lips into a small and playful smile. “I never showed you my ability. It’s better if I don’t show it to you yet. I like surprising you.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of his statement. There was a playful undertone, but that didn’t lessen my curiosity. No, it only made me want to know more about Brandon the Berserker, about Hammer, and about his special ability. The persistence of my stare made him throw his head back with laughter. I was glad that he was unwinding, at least. Brandon’s anger had affected me more than I’d thought.

“The Valkyries have special skills, too, though I’ll let Myst and Regine tell you what theirs are. It’s not my business,” he continued.

“What about Hrista?” I asked. “What’s her ability? The joy-bringing? Is that really a thing?”

“Hm… no. I would consider it a talent, or perhaps a side effect of her powerful spirit, at most,” Brandon replied. “Hrista’s ability is much worse and far more dangerous. She reads souls, Astra.” Whenever he called me by my name, my skin tingled and the blood rushed through my veins. There was a certain seriousness in his address, demanding my full and unlimited attention. “She reads souls, and everything she finds inside a person, well… Hrista is very good at using our own nature against us. We’re all just open books for her to read and play with.”

I was a half-sentry. There wasn’t much I could do, other than reading someone’s spiritual aura, albeit shoddily. I could identify a state of mind or a general sensation. I could also detect the presence of a living soul inside a body. That was my best, actually. But what Hrista could do struck me as truly dangerous. Being able to see that deeply into someone’s soul… the idea scared me. I sure didn’t want her ever doing it to me. There’s no telling what she might find if she dug deep enough—even things I’d forgotten about. Thoughts I’d thrown away ages ago.

“Knowledge is power, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” Brandon said. “Like I said back in the cave, Hrista is behind this. The longer I’ve stayed with you and your people, the more convinced I am that I have a better shot at getting Hammer back with your help than with my brothers.”

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll destroy Hammer right now?” I asked. “Why haven’t they done it so far? You’ve screwed the Berserkers over more than once by interfering on our behalf.”

Brandon smiled. “That’s the one thing Hrista never truly understood about Berserkers. No matter how mean or how dark or how vicious we are… we appreciate and revere the spirit. Destroying someone’s Aesir is not done lightly.”

“I can appreciate and understand that, but then… why does Haldor have so many destroyed Berserkers?”

“It’s his talent. They’re drawn to him. It’s kind of hard to explain, really. Aesirs are lost or destroyed in many ways. There are occasional skirmishes between the Berserkers and the Valkyries. There are souls that are simply too powerful and dangerous, and some of my brothers underestimate them, thus losing their Aesirs in the melee… point is, the shadow hound is what remains of a Berserker when his Aesir is vanquished, and they all flock to Haldor, whether they like it or not.”

The thought of seeing Brandon turn into one of those entities scared the daylights out of me. I couldn’t even consider such an outcome. Not anymore. “We can try and get Hammer back, if you’ll let us help you,” I said. “You’ve done a lot of good things for us to make up for the bad. I’d like to reciprocate.”

He stilled, his blue gaze fixed on me. For a moment, I feared he might look deep into my soul like Hrista. I felt powerless and speechless, mesmerized by the dancing flames in his irises, the azure shifting into a soft white, and then back into an intense sapphire glow. “I’ve done you more wrong than right, if you think about it. I’ve been sneaking around your Shade, stealing DNA, kidnapping your friends, syphoning military secrets and passing them on to HQ.”

“You also guided us to safety more than once. You saved my mom twice, even if it didn’t seem like it at first. And you helped us get Isabelle and the others out, too,” I said, raising my chin. “I think we have a balance here.”

I was actually surprised to hear myself talking like this, but my reasoning made sense. We needed people who could help us, regardless of their powers and origins. This was a new and frightening world, and we would fare better with allies than with one more Berserker on our enemy list. Besides, Brandon was clearly trying to be a friend. Why push him away?

He leaned closer, the space between us shrinking with an alarming speed, and I held my breath as he smiled. “You could help me get Hammer, sure. But first, I need to get those two Valkyries on our side. As you said, Myst is easier to convince. She never truly worshipped Hrista the way Regine has. The irony doesn’t elude me, of course, considering that Myst is ‘younger’ than Regine in Purgatory. I suppose age isn’t just a number.”

“I didn’t know you even tracked time in Purgatory,” I murmured, unable to break eye contact.

“We don’t. But we do have relative notions about who came first or before or after ourselves. It’s experience we appreciate,” he replied. “For us, the present and the past are combined, lived at once. The future is never really there because it always becomes the present. It’s a little hard to explain to a creature who only perceives time in a linear fashion.”

Clearing my throat, I inched back, unable to take the tension building between us. I wasn’t sure what it was about Brandon that shook me up with such intensity, but I didn’t want him to see how he was affecting me. “How do you plan on convincing both Myst and Regine that Hrista is behind all this?” I asked, trying to steer his attention away from my face. My cheeks felt hot, and I was having a hard time concentrating.

“I’ll show them where Hrista has taken up residence,” Brandon replied. It almost irked me that he hadn’t done this sooner, but I did understand why he’d had his reservations about us. Our efforts to rescue Isabelle and the others must’ve convinced him that we were reliable—that maybe we could help him get Hammer back, too. There was no telling when the Berserkers might in fact step on their own souls and destroy the Aesir to pay Brandon back for his betrayal. They were dragging their asses for now, despite their displays of aggression. “We need to reach Hrista, anyway. She’s the one who controls access to and from Purgatory into this world, and I absolutely have to figure out how she’s doing it. If Order hears about this entire plot and her operation, Hrista will be done and dusted in the blink of an eye.”

“Do you know what her plans are? Why she’s doing any of this?”

He shook his head. “No. And neither do my brothers. That’s the scary part. They’re in this without understanding the final payoff. Unlike them, however, I chose not to surrender. I will do whatever I can to keep you and Pink Lady safe. Hrista will stop at nothing to hurt you and kill you, especially now that you’re here.”

“Why are you helping us, Brandon? Why not just fall in line with the others? Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you, especially at the risk of becoming a shadow hound,” I replied.

He brought a hand up, ever so slowly, and tucked a lock of pink hair behind my ear. The mere touch of his finger made my skin sizzle, sending electrical currents through my whole body. My breathing stopped. Everything and everyone disappeared, and only Brandon and I remained, if only for one short second.

“First of all, it’ll piss off Hrista,” he finally said. “There’s nothing I want more than to see that bitch fall flat on her face. Second, I seem to have developed a soft spot for pink-haired Daughters. It’s not something I have any control over, I’m afraid.”

A sweet ache cut through my chest, my stomach tightening while my frantically beating heart made its way up my throat. What could I possibly say to Brandon now? Where were my words, anyway?

There wasn’t anything coherent floating around in my head. The only thing I could offer was a warm smile, hoping it might tell him more than my missing words would have. The faint brush of his fingers against my earlobe persisted with a delicate tingle, and a quickening pulse drummed in the back of my head.

This Berserker was different from the others. Yes, he was dark and extremely dangerous. I knew little about him. But I owed him a lot, and I wanted to peel away the layers of darkness he’d surrounded himself with until I got to the truth. The truth that made him who he was.