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Everything hurt. Her lungs were burning, her muscles were leaden, but still Maude pushed through.

The long sleeves on her black shirt had long since been ripped, the tattered fabric flapping behind her as she sprinted through the city toward the eastern gates of the Palace of Wind and Embers.

Her mother’s shawl was almost in ribbons as it barely kept the hood over her bright red hair.

She was glad she had changed into leggings in anticipation of the desert heat that now bore down on her, but sweat was still running in rivulets down her spine and plastering her hair to the side of her face.

What she found odd was that the further she got into the city, the quieter it got.

A crowd had gathered in front of the palace if what she had heard from a passing child was to be believed.

Maude tried and failed to push Herrick from her mind.

He had traveled for days to find her and help her, not knowing that she would lead him to his death.

She had tried to fight him off when he would not leave her side, had tried to spew hateful things.

Maude had seen the hurt and betrayal in his eyes and been glad for it if it meant he would not follow her.

And then, as he always did, Herrick surprised her by helping her escape the soldiers.

He was buying her time to get to the palace and end her father on her own.

Her hateful words and betrayal had not dissuaded him from helping her.

Not for the first time, Maude thought she could never deserve a man like him .

Herrick was good and kind, and she was… not.

He would understand one day when she was in the shadows again. She could not return to him or their friends just as surely as she could not return to the palace as Maude, the Heir Apparent.

Maude couldn’t think about Herrick anymore as she feared she would turn around and go back to him if she did. She turned her thoughts to all the reasons she had to destroy her father, the faces and stories of each person burning into the front of her mind.

She thought of her sister, Brynna, who she had abandoned to her father’s grasp and the punishments she knew he could inflict. She thought of her mother and how she walked away from her entire life to marry a man she could never love, all in the name of protecting Ahland.

She thought of the pit fighters of Logi who scraped together some kind of living for their families in the grossly unbalanced world they lived in that was governed only by power.

She thought of the children she stole food for over the last ten years, knowing that they, too, ended up in the fighting pits because of hierarchical bullshit.

But mostly, she thought of Sigurd, the vitki that taught control to those in Logi who needed a place of solace and caring in a harsh world.

A man who had felt he never did enough for his family when her father’s soldiers came to drag them away.

A man who had been her only friend in a lonely existence when she needed one, even if she hadn’t known it yet.

I do what I can now because when it mattered, I didn’t do enough.

She would do what she could to ensure their survival. In a world that her father would rule, the bright lights of this country would burn out under his smothering control.

Maude ran through the now-empty streets with a fire in her soul that burned brighter than her anger ever had. Only the sound of her breathing and her boots hitting the bricked pavement beneath her feet rang out around her as she approached the empty gates to the palace, just as Revna promised.

Maude did not slow her pace as she sprinted toward the open gates, spying the entrance to the servants’ corridors that would lead her to her father’s war room.

Herrick’s breath came out in quick pants, the hot air of the desert drying out his lungs faster than he would have liked.

To his right was Gunnar, looking pale and sickly, fighting off a soldier with tremendous effort.

To his left, Liv was finishing off two soldiers who had surprised them as Hakon took care of the last of the new soldiers who came to help their compatriots.

“We need to go after Maude,” Gunnar huffed, bending over as he held himself up on his knees.

“We will,” Herrick agreed. “But you need to stay here.”

“Fuck off,” Gunnar waved a hand. “I’ll catch my breath, and we’ll be on our way.”

Herrick was about to argue when he spied the slice on Gunnar’s bald scalp. Fresh blood was oozing out from under the bandage faster than he liked.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned to face Liv. Sweat glistened on her ebony skin, the sun radiating off the beads like diamonds. Her gray eyes looked radiant, like the sun, for a moment before they dimmed and appeared normal once more.

“Go,” she panted. “Find Maude and help her, regardless of what she says. We’ll catch up. ”

Herrick nodded reluctantly before sprinting down the stairs to where Hakon was. He paused before his older brother, his future King, unsure of what he wanted to say. Hakon’s blue eyes were bright with the bloodshed from battle, his grief finally having an outlet that wasn't whiskey.

They stood awkwardly in front of each other before Herrick spoke, “Til Valhalla, brother.”

Herrick extended a hand. Hakon eyed it before grasping Herrick’s forearm and pulling him in close.

“I will see you shortly, not in Valhalla,” Hakon said. “That’s an order, General.”

Herrick chuckled and patted his brother on the back, releasing him. Before he could say another word, Herrick turned and sprinted for the palace gates in the same direction Maude had taken off toward.

He followed the unusually strong scent of burning cedar that belonged to Maude through the deserted streets of Logi’s noble district; the subtle jasmine that usually lingered under the smoke was almost undetectable.

Odd , he thought.

The further into the empty city he got, the heavier his fatemark felt on his chest. The Norns were pushing him in the right direction, but the burning on his chest was not a good sign. He needed to find Maude.

Maude silently crept through the empty halls of the servants’ corridors in her first home. The interior red walls were a comforting sight that she had not expected, as she was so used to the horrid obsidian stone her father had ordered to cover the original walls of the palace.

Depending on her memory, Maude navigated the secret halls until she knew she was close to the war room.

She had checked her father’s quarters and had found it empty, as she expected.

In the late hour, she had taken the chance by going there first in hopes that he had retired for the night, but she knew him better than that.

She knew that he would be up until the late hours of the night, scheming and plotting his takeover of Ahland.

The rage that had driven her through the Dead Waste and the desert surrounding Logi was reignited as she closed in on the war room in which she knew her father was stewing.

As a child, she had sulked through these halls after her brutal lessons with her father.

The palace staff had become her friends, the secret halls her place of comfort.

It was fitting now that she was using these halls on the last mission of meaning in her life.

Maude turned the corner, listening intently for any signs of life outside the secret wall entrance to the war room.

Silence.

Maude eyed the stone wall in front of her.

The rune inguz was carved into the top corner— the rune for reward and awareness.

That something other stirred around her once more.

Her fatemark pulsed on her chest with a bright silver light that lit up the dark tunnels Maude was currently hiding in.

It was as if it was happy she was standing there.

Maude put one hand on the wall to push it open but hesitated.

It was not lost on her that she might not get to see Herrick again in this life, as much as she avoided the idea.

She pictured his golden brown eyes, his long curls falling forward as he smirked at her, his dimple on display.

She could count the freckles that bridged over his nose from his cheekbones, could feel his cool skin under her fingertips.

She thought of how he looked so peaceful when he was asleep, his strong arms wrapped tightly around her as if she might disappear when the moon rose .

The illusion shattered behind her closed eyes as she remembered the look of betrayal on his face as she left him on that wall.

Maude breathed in raggedly, whispering to the gods above her and the Norns who weaved their threads of fate around them.

“Spare him, please. Take my love for him, my life over his. Just spare him on this day.”

The air shifted around her, and goosebumps erupted over her skin. Maude smiled then as warmth settled on her chest, right over her fatemark. It pulsed once and then cooled again.

“Thank you,” she whispered to the gods as she pressed on the wall in front of her, opening the hidden door to the war room.

The room was exactly how she remembered it.

The long table in the center depicted Ahland’s topography, the velvet throne encrusted with rubies at the head where her father sat, and the large open windows that looked over Logi.

Maude hesitantly stepped into the room, the memories of her past overwhelming her, snuffing out the anger that had driven her for the last ten years.

It wasn’t exactly nostalgia that made her lower her axe and short sword for a moment, but rather a mourning for who she was and could have been if her father hadn't been a vicious ruler. Just as Maude settled in front of the large windows, a disarming and honeyed voice came from behind her.

“Hello, dóttir. ”