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When she finally released her, his mother said, "Now go; Liv and Gunnar are waiting for you at the end of these tunnels to take you aboard the King of Shadows' ship. We need to speak with our children."

Bryn nodded as she moved to help Dahlia to her feet. Before they disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel, the Elven turned and said to his parents, "May the gods favor you in battle, Your Majesties."

She was gone before they could respond .

Instead, they turned to Herrick and Hakon. Father pulled him in, crushing him to his chest like he was a young boy again. When he released him, he was enveloped by his mother while Hakon was pulled into their father's embrace.

When Mother stepped back, her gold eyes were lined with silver. A deep and unsettling sense of dread filled Herrick as his parents stood with their backs to the door that led back to the fighting.

"You were both right," she said thickly as she grabbed his and Hakon's hand.

"You were both right about us and how we've treated you.

Along the way, I had forgotten you were more than just our Heirs.

We only wanted to shape you for your roles, but we see now that what we did instead was create a cage.

What I did was smother you both until you became who I wanted you to be and not who you are. "

Herrick could feel his chest caving in at where he knew this conversation was going.

"I was wrong," she whispered as a tear tracked down her flushed cheek.

Herrick swiped it away with his fingers as he felt his soul shrink back into the youngling he had been before.

"You both have the chance to do so much for this kingdom, for Ahland.

That's why you need to run now and not look back.

Go find Maude, bring her back to herself, and end this war for once and for all. "

His eyes widened— how did she know?

"Bryn told me before we came to get you," Mother explained, a half smile in place. Such deep sorrow radiated from her words that it paralyzed Herrick. "She needs you right now, so go get her."

He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat as his brother said with a shaky voice, "We'll wait for you."

Despite all the hardship they had faced as a family, Herrick and his brother knew they had been so deeply loved by their parents. The painful blows of their goodbye were already starting to carve wounds into them that would never heal.

Father pulled them all into his arms, and Herrick couldn't help but feel like a youngling again as tears leaked from the corner of his eye. Beside him, Hakon shuddered once as he seemingly swallowed a sob .

"We understand our fate now, my loves," Mother whispered. "It was always to bring you into this world so that you can make it a better place. That is a parent's job, isn't it? To guide their children to be the best that they can be, to leave this world a better place than they found it?"

His mother gripped either side of his face as her eyes swept over his features. Golden irises traced over every line and curve, her thumb sweeping over his cheek as she searched for whatever it was she was looking for. A sense of finality seemed to settle over her as she smiled softly.

"Leave this place. Fight another day, and know you were right."

"You are our greatest accomplishments," Father said quietly, his resilient strength that they had both inherited shining as he tried to mask his sorrow at their goodbye. "So go now and do what we could not."

"Until we meet again in Odin's hall," Mother breathed before she and Father ushered them backward into the tunnel.

Herrick shot forward to stop them from going back into the fight, but his father lifted his arm in a sweeping motion.

A wall of dirt covered the opening, locking them in with nowhere to go but out the other side of this escape route to freedom.

Hakon pounded on the dirt wall, just like Herrick did, but silence greeted them from the other side.

Their parents had gone back to the fighting, leaving their legacy and the fate of their kingdom in their son's hands.

Alva's chest cracked open another inch as she took another step closer to the battlefield.

She was not afraid to die— she had lived, after all.

Her sons had not had enough time. And even as she tried to forget that she would never see them with families of their own and never get to hold them again, she knew she had done the right thing.

With Njal at her side, she was ready to meet her ending if it meant their children would get to go on fighting.

They could do what she and Njal had failed to do all these years: lead their people to a life without restrictions and without threats from rival kingdoms.

As they reached the edge of the battle, their guards still fighting off the Flame Soldiers who had advanced further into their city, Alva looked at her husband and memorized his face. She watched as he withdrew his axe and saw how his royal blue eyes focused on the enemy.

She reached out her hand and slipped it into his, drawing his attention to her where his gaze softened.

"I'll see you in the afterlife, my love," she whispered. "My friend."

"In this life and all the next," Njal said softly as he pressed his lips against her sweat-coated forehead. "Together."

"Together."

Blinding sunlight greeted Herrick as he followed Hakon and Bryn, who had slung their arms around Dahlia's waist so they could support her weight as she cradled her shoulder.

The dark tunnels that had been carved underneath the city and then through the mountain the palace sat on had been dimly lit by torches every few yards.

Though Herrick had known of their existence, he had never walked through them before.

The walls had quickly gone from the packed dirt that smelled of earth and minerals to the sulfuric scent that clung to the walkways that led to the dungeons.

The same shining veins of black that Herrick had always known to be part of the dungeons were present in these tunnels.

He had run his fingers over one of the strands of onyx, trying to discern if he was familiar with the ore, but the only thing it reminded him of were the twin daggers and twin axes that Dahlia and Aeric carried.

The soft waves of the ocean crashing on sand seemed wrong compared to the sounds of the dying that had been flooding his hearing.

Even after his parents had pulled them from the fight, the sounds of battle still clanged and crashed in his ears until they'd pushed him and his brother into the tunnel and sealed them in.

He may have understood why they did it, but Herrick was infuriated. They were sending themselves into a fight they would not walk away from, expecting them to follow their orders and leave them behind. Hakon spoke true— they would wait for them.

A small longboat had been brought ashore, and as they got closer to the vessel, Herrick could see that Liv and Gunnar were waiting for them.

They were antsy; Liv paced in front of the water while Gunnar flung his axe into the sand just to pull it back into his hands with his vines.

He rushed forward to help Hakon with Dahlia as Liv sprinted toward Bryn, wrapping the battle worn woman in her arms for a moment before hastily letting go.

Bryn surged forward into Liv's embrace, however, as her shoulders began to shake.

Liv's gray eyes scanned the rest of their group as she held a shaking Brynna, and when they came up empty for who she had been looking for, her mouth dropped open.

"Maude?" she asked Herrick, weariness in her tone.

"Hela took her," he replied numbly. "Before the fight. She's in the wind."

"Fuck," was all Liv said as she ushered Bryn into the longboat.

Gunnar and Hakon lay Dahlia down on one of the benches before settling down next to her. Bryn finally pulled herself from Liv, straightening her spine and drying her tears with a gust of wind as she swallowed her sorrow.

But Herrick couldn't join them yet. He kept his back to the water and faced the tunnel. They would have to make it out; they wouldn't just sacrifice themselves. Would they?

As the sun started to dip behind the high rocks that shielded the beach from enemy eyes, Herrick began to believe that his parents were not coming and that they never had any intention of following.

He had just let them step in for them in the fighting and had allowed them to finish the fight he had started .

He thought of all the ire-driven words he'd spewed at them the last time they really talked as remorse filled him. He could never take it back now, never tell them he was sorry.

Gunnar came up to him, his hand landing on his shoulder as he tried to pull him back. "We can't linger any longer. By now, the palace will have been taken by Helvig's soldiers and they'll be securing the city."

He knew all of this but still couldn't bring himself to move. So much had been lost in the last few hours; he couldn't stand to lose his parents, too.

"Aeric's ships are full of Veter's citizens and soldiers," Gunnar went on. "We've been ferrying them to the ships since we arrived. They need to be brought to safety, or this was all for naught. Or Alva and Njal's sacrifice will have been for nothing ."

His friend knew precisely what to say to break through his walls. The words tore open his chest and left him bleeding. Of course Gunnar was right, but he couldn't move from the land he had gained and lost so much on.

"He has won nothing but an empty city and empty land. Our people— our true kingdom— survives his cruelty, but only if we leave now."

Herrick nodded, his friend's pleas finally wearing him down.

Closing his eyes, he turned away from the tunnel he knew his parents would not appear in and climbed into the longboat.

He didn't open his eyes until he could feel they had cleared the shore.

His heart tugged in his chest back toward the sands, prompting him to turn around.

That tug on his core was the same as when he'd been searching for Maude in the Palace of Wind and Embers.

He scanned the beach, the growing darkness shrouding the sands in shadows, but Herrick could feel someone watching him.

His fatemark burned on his chest, pulsing with every inch he was pulled from Ahland's coast. The sun broke through the clouds as he scanned the shore.

Just as he was about to give up, he saw the faint shimmer of a golden thread that started at his chest and extended out to the shore.

At first, he couldn't see where the thread ended as it had been swallowed by shadows, but —

There. An outline moved out of the darkness of the tunnel.

His heart stopped beating in his chest as he saw a flash of moss green behind pitch black.

Only a second, long enough to have possibly been a hallucination.

But his fatemark burned with confirmation at who stood on that beach as that golden thread pulsed between them. She was there, and then she was gone.

The burning on his chest stopped as the sun disappeared behind the clouds again, but the tug in his gut didn't stop pulling him back to shore.

Maude was still fighting inside of Hela's control, enough to have brought herself there before the goddess of the underworld ripped her away again.

Herrick knew then what he had to do. When they reached the longship where Aeric waited for them, he went to speak with his eldr's father first, a plan already forming as his mind whirred through the probability of his success.

"Your Majesty," Herrick said sharply, his mind so preoccupied with his next steps that he did not shield his tone. "Hela has taken your daughter and I intend to stay behind and find her."

Aeric allowed one shocked moment to overwhelm him as he took in the seriousness of Herrick's tone. He nodded once.

"I would expect nothing else from you, General. How do you intend to bring my daughter back?"

Herrick launched into his plan, the parts he had already been able to come up with, and as he spoke, the King of Shadows nodded periodically. If he was surprised at what he said about the thread of gold he'd seen on the beach, the Shadow King did not show it.

"It seems you have a journey ahead of you, Herrick," the King finally said. "I will do as you have asked and bring your people to Ljosa with Hakon and the rest to regroup."

The longship had started to sail away with the help of some of the Elven pushing the wind into the sails to pick up speed.

Herrick made his way to the railing and waited until they curved around the long stretch of land separated from the mainland by one of the rivers that protected Veter.

The shore behind Tafeld was rocky, but Herrick had been swimming in these waters for as long as he could remember.

He would make it up to the tree line once he swam to the shore in no time and would start his search for Maude.

His fatemark and that iridescent thread that bound them together would lead him to her; he was sure of it.

Though he had been reluctant to name the sensation, he suspected that Maude was aware of the threads that tied them together.

The tug of their hjartparan bond back to the mainland was all he had to go off right now, but he would find Maude and free her from the goddess Hela before sending the miserable entity back to the underworld.

"Bring her back, Herrick. May the gods guide you to victory and watch over you," Aeric said quietly as they watched the land pass them.

With her father's blessing, Herrick climbed the railing of the ship with nothing but his battle axe, dagger, and his wits and dove into the water before swimming back to land in search of his eldr .