Page 21

21

TRASH

I gasp like I’ve come back from the brink of death as Baldur’s powerful light floods me. I’m grateful for him as I shudder in relief now, letting him hold me for a long moment.

Because just from that one powerful kiss, Baldur reminded me of who I am and why I’m here. He reminded me that every one of my drakes came into this relationship with their eyes wide open, knowing what might be in store for them.

Completely.

As I have the searing clarity that we will get through this, or die trying, Bjorn steps to my back. He wraps his big arms around me and my world floods with strength, because Bjorn has always been that for me, with his towering righteousness and stalwart rage.

Stepping to my side, Strom takes my hand. He threads our fingers together, and as I glance at him, the powerful vibrance of his emerald-brimstone eyes gives me renewed purpose. Because Strom’s my best friend. Out of all my drakes, I know he’ll stand with me through anything.

No matter how much shit keeps hitting the fan.

“We all would.” Strom reads my mind easily through our bond, since I’m no longer trying to block my emotions from my drakes, thanks to Baldur’s all-illuminating light. “No matter what hell we need to go through, Rikyava, we’re here beside you. To free Mikkel, to fuck up the False Council… even to stop the Black Dragon itself. We’re here for you.”

“Always.” Bjorn is gentle but fierce as he rumbles by my cheek now. “We’ll go through hell and back, drakaina, for you. Because no hell is worse than not being with you. You know that.”

“I do and I don’t.” I give a wry smile now as I glance at Bjorn. “I know you’ll go through hell with me… but what if we don’t come back, any of us?”

“It’s a chance we’ll take.” Baldur stares deep into my eyes. “One in a million, if the odds come to that. But feeling you here in our arms… is a one in a million sensation. It’s a feeling I’d take to my grave—and die happy to have battled alongside your ferocious spirit, to the end.”

I gaze up at Baldur’s utterly honest blue eyes now, and everything I’ve been missing roars back inside me a hundredfold. A bright clarity fills me; and it’s not just Baldur’s magic filling me now.

It’s my own bright drakaina and even my darker drake, surging up together into the scorching fierceness of my Bloodwalker dragon. As those two energies come together inside me now, united and ready to fuck some shit up, I feel a sudden wash of scales blossom out all over my chest and forearms in a fierce half-shift.

These scales aren’t black like my Bone Magic, nor are they crimson like my Blood Magic. They’re crimson, white, and gold—just like Aesa—as I watch them ripple out over my bare hands now.

As Aesa’s Truthstone thrums upon my chest, I feel her resonance fill me. Though most of her spirit has been drained from me now, I feel her understanding of what I am fill me, to my bones.

For you are the strongest Bloodwalker drakaina since my own scales roared across this land. Aesa’s sudden thought pushes through the strange inky darkness that still surrounds me in the Void.

I know it’s her, though, rather than some other voice, as her Truthstone flares hard on my chest, filling me with her light. But it’s mine, and it’s Baldur’s, too, even Bjorn’s and Strom’s, as I feel that strong goodness fill me now.

Only Mikkel lies separate from us, as I feel a sudden scream rip through me, and a shudder from him as he’s pierced anew by his guards. It’s a dark, torturous dream Mikkel has revived in me, filled with danger, horror, and deceit.

But even as I gasp, breaking one hand from Baldur to grip my chest, Baldur whispers his lips over mine. The return of my heroism from not just him, but myself, at Mikkel’s torture, is like a star blazing through my system. Purpose makes me laser-focused now, shuddering with my need to shift into my full Bloodwalker drakaina.

And cast down all villains from the skies.

“Mikkel’s awake again. He doesn’t have a lot of time. We need to move,” I say now as everything inside me rushes with renewed energy, a star-bright fire hammering through my veins.

As Bjorn growls and Strom nods, Baldur holds my gaze, ready. We turn, breaking from our group as we move back to the dark passage.

Once again, Baldur steps in front of Bjorn, entering the passage first with his elegant briskness. Bjorn growls but he won’t pick a fight when we’re on a mission, as Strom comes to me, watching me with a deep concern as we walk.

I glance at him and let him feel everything I’m feeling right now—the good, bad, and the ugly. As he gives me a wry smile, fully understanding, he reaches out, taking my hand.

I let him, and it fills me up with Strom’s deep, incredible light, the amazing goodness of his powerful Bone Magic, despite it’s temptation to go dark, as we walk side-by-side for a moment.

We come to a split in the underground passage now, and I nod for him to take point. He gives me a long look, making sure I’m okay, before he squeezes my hand, then trots up to Baldur and surges ahead.

Strom leads us now, in this place where hidden curses may still do us harm. Nothing hounds us, however, except the vast feeling of unrestful dead as we wind through the burial mounds of deceased Bloodwalkers and their mates.

As we twist through countless passages, we don’t see any dragon bones—but I feel them, buried in the dirt inside the mounds’ walls, and deep beneath our feet.

A vengeful sensation makes me bristle, as all of those not-quite-abandoned bones seethe with hatred for the ancient Danish Jarls who imprisoned them here. The Danish Jarls were cruel over the eons; they tortured, then killed their strongest adversaries and trapped them here to suffer on, even after death.

Unlike the Blood Dragon bones at Unhaemmerten , however, these souls truly suffer, trapped here in the mortal world. Because these Bloodwalkers and their mates are locked inside their bones, thanks to their screaming hatred for their ancient Jarls, plus their desire for vengeance.

It’s a terrible sensation, roaring with Bone Magic darkness and almost no light, as I know these ancient dead will suffer endlessly, until someone razes this place with fire.

Incinerating their bones until there’s nothing left for them to remain tethered to.

But the original thirteen souls donated to create the Black Dragon can’t ever be set free unless we vanquish it. Thanks to Baldur’s fierce clarity inside me and my memories returned, now that the False Knight’s Council no longer holds me in their grip, I remember what I need to, to continue our hunt.

But that, plus Mikkel’s renewed torture, leaves me in a furious state now, snarling at the shadows all around as my blood-bright drakaina inside me surges, locked in unity with my Bone Magic drake.

Both of them flood me with energy so hot, I feel like my blood’s going to boil right out of my veins. Bjorn stays with me, helping me keep my cool with his strong touch as we maneuver through the passages, and Strom pushes ahead .

True to Strom’s guess, all of Alfhild’s curse-work to hide her lair was cleared out after her death. We meet no resistance and no guards protecting her inner sanctum. There are only a few more stone doors that Baldur doesn’t even pause to smash through with his magic.

And then we’re there.

I gaze around in surprise now, as I lift my eyebrows at the haunting, vaulted space we’ve arrived in. Because it’s a place I know from visiting it as a tourist in the human world; an underground water cistern in Copenhagen, the now-unused Cisternerne are Gothic in nature, an arresting place to visit.

The hall of underground cisterns is extensive here in the Twilight Realm, however, far more ancient than in the human world. Water still fills most of them, though one vast vault is high and dry, filled with a treasure-trove of ancient artifacts.

Plus an enormous silk and ebony bed that I know at once is Alfhild’s.

“Huh. The Cisternerne. I always wondered why a sound of dripping water filled this place.” Strom muses now as we move over a vaulted stone bridge that leads to the dry cistern filled with oddities and opulence.

“You couldn’t see the Cisternerne when you were here with Alfhild?” Bjorn glances at Strom, scowling as we learn yet one more thing about the odious thief who once held Strom under her sway. The bitch we killed for what she’d done to my Second Drake—good riddance.

Even though we didn’t cast the strike that killed her.

“No.” Strom shakes his head as we stand in Alfhild’s inner sanctum now, surrounded by her things. “She always had some kind of curse-veil around her living space; I couldn’t see what was behind it. I only felt a sensation of an ancient, underground space, and the few whispers I could feel and hear late at night after she was asleep.”

“Cagey, even with her most trusted,” Bjorn says as I leave his protection and move forward now, investigating the space. My Bloodwalker power has an affinity for magical locks, wards, and curses, though not as strong as Strom’s; raising my power more, I scan the area .

Though I see nothing on any of the walls, columns, floors, or accoutrement here, the area safe.

“There’s nothing here.” Strom confirms my search as he heaves a relieved sigh. He lifts the lid of an old 1800s steamer trunk beside the bed, glancing within. “Just Alfhild’s regular junk of daily living—or nightly.”

“Clothes, jewelry, toiletries.” Baldur emerges from a smaller space that I can see has been equipped with an old porcelain toilet and copper bathtub, plumbed from the Cisternerne’s waters. “Plus a bunch of fascinating arcane odds and ends, but nothing of significant power.”

But as Strom makes to head over the bridge to find Alfhild’s underground ways leading to the palace, and Bjorn turns to go with him, something about this space makes me hesitate.

“Rikyava?” Bjorn is back by my side in an instant. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.” For a moment, I think it’s just me jumping at shadows as I stare around the vaulted stone cisterns. Both my dragons are growling deep inside me now, though, as if something terrible lives here. Something far beyond the angry bones in the mounds and the lingering presence of Alfhild Fey.

Something dangerous—that my inner dragons want to kill.

Moving around, I take another turn around the space. It’s then that I notice little piles of black ash here and there; some are small and make tiny dust mounds on the tables, while some are larger and take up significant areas of the floor.

As I note them, Strom comes over, bending down and whispering his fingers over the ash. As his power eases out, vicious crimson and olislick-black cursing surge to life in those piles. It strikes at Strom with a nasty bite.

And I inhale—knowing where we’ve seen curses like that before.

“Our enemy Bone Mage drakaina, Litha! She was here!” I hiss as Strom rises, backing away from the pile he nearly touched.

“She must have come here after she killed Alfhild.” Bjorn scowls now as he gazes around, seeing how many little piles are in the space. Maybe twenty in all, each of us avoids touching them now that we know how seriously cursed the fuck up they are. It’s a blessing none of us wandered into a pile previously, as Baldur sets his jaw hard now and whips his power into a bright Bloodwind.

Sweeping all those little piles up and whirling them into one big heap upon the bed.

“There.” Baldur heaves a deep breath, his cosmic-bright magic lowering so it only maintains a light glow in the space to see by.

“What a piece of work to leave booby-traps like this for us,” Bjorn growls now as he moves over to the bed, setting his hands on his hips and scowling at the ashes.

“I don’t think they were booby-traps.” I frown, gazing around as I think it through. “I think our enemy drakaina Litha came here to cover her trail, in case we ever found this place. She charred very specific items to ash… probably so we wouldn’t discover important information about her.”

Strom’s focused now, as he whispers his hands and power over the walls of Alfhild’s lair, looking for her hidden ways that access Amalienborg Palace.

“There’s something here,” he says from where he’s moving his hands over a portrait on the wall. As he takes it down, I see not a doorway, but a magically encrypted safe behind it, similar to what we use at the Red Letter Hotel Paris.

I move over to inspect it. “Breath encryption; pretty standard. I can crack it. Do you think it’s important?”

“Maybe. My magic’s flagging it as something we should look at,” Strom says now as a faraway look takes his eyes, then he nods at me. “There are no curses on it; it’s clean. Show us what you got, drakaina.”

“Sure.” I haven’t been Head of Security for twenty years at the Paris Hotel for nothing; as I step up to the safe now and crack my knuckles, raising my magic, I feel both my inner dragons rush forward, eager to break this lock .

Normally, they would need to meld together into the vast, true power of my Bloodwalker magic; right now, they’ve remained melded the entire time we’ve been inside the mounds, united in purpose in a way I’ve never been able to sustain before.

But it’s not something I can think about now, as their blood-dark power sweeps me. Bloodwind rises around me now, not crimson or black, but a beautiful amalgamation of red, white, and gold as it rushes all around me.

I flick my fingers and those lovely droplets, full of Aesa’s own colors, whirl forward into the encrypted lock. As I close my eyes, I feel the dance of the magical protection on this piece, and the locking sigils they form deep inside the steel. The character of the dragon-breath that affects it matters; as I swirl my magic into the lock now, I enter a light trance.

Similar to the trances that contact my Ancestors, it’s a space of feeling and listening I enter now, rather than cognition. As I finally feel the very center of the lock where Alfhild’s breath decrypts it, I open my mouth. One slow puff of my breath is all it takes.

As the encryption flares gold, red, and white—open to me now, rather than Alfhild Fey.

“We’re in.” As the complex lock chunks open deep within the safe, I reach out. Hauling it open, I keep my magic raised, in case there are any nasty surprises. There are no curses on any of this, though. I gaze into the shadows as Baldur comes to us now, offering a light from his power, and I heave a relieved breath to see nothing within.

The safe is empty, except for a small black velvet bag on one shelf.

“Think it’s something we should look at?” I ask Strom, as he fixes upon the velvet bag now, staring at it and slowly raising his power like it’s some kind of adversary.

“Alfhild didn’t keep her sellable items here.” As if in a trance of his memories now, Strom reaches inside the safe. “Most of her valuable stuff disappeared into one of the countless storage facilities she used for trafficking stolen goods as she searched for buyers. Stuff she kept here in her boudoir were just oddities she fancied… not things of significant value she could get big money for.”

“So what is it? And why is it flagging your power?” Bjorn joins us at the open safe, his magic bristling for threats. But as Strom reaches inside, taking up the small bag, he receives no surprises. Slowly, he opens the bag.

And goes pale at what he sees within.

“Strom?” I can’t feel his mind right now; I can’t feel his emotions or thoughts at all. He’s so carefully blocking them from our bond at this moment.

I do see the confused mix of horror and awareness that takes his face as he empties the velvet bag into his palm, however. As he holds a stunning set of a silver bracelet, earrings, and a pendant necklace in his hand now, dripping with beautiful moonstones, I’m shocked to realize they are a specific set of jewelry he gifted to Alfhild Fey long ago.

When he was trapped in his love for her by her power.

And she treated him like trash.