Page 23 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 23

Ravinica

IT WAS NOSTALGIC TO look upon the Gray Wraith bobbing in the choppy waters against the dock. I had come a long way since riding the mythical longship here, out of the fog of Selby Village and into the fog of the Isle.

Back then, I had been awestruck by its splendor. Even more awed by my strapping older brother stepping off its gangplank as he approached our village to announce who would be the next initiate admitted to Vikingrune Academy.

It all started with him, with Eirik, I thought vaguely, my arms crossed as I stared from the edge of the shore. He read the wrong name, Damon’s, and I was forced to take drastic actions to make it on this ship—if not for my own jealous spite, then for Ma and her eager desire to see the people who had wronged our family dead.

So much had changed since then. I didn’t look upon that time with any sort of fond remembrance. Looking at my brother Eirik was more likely to make my anger flare than make my stomach flutter with wonder. I had come crashing back to reality soon enough, once I was thrust into the action of Vikingrune Academy.

If it weren’t for the five guys standing next to me now, I wouldn’t have made it this far. Astrid or Dahlia, Sigmund or Ingvus, or any of the myriad students who saw a bog-blood half- breed like me as less than them, would have surely ended me by now.

Instead, I had made a name for myself. Not because of my mates, but with their help, I had solidified my place at Vikingrune Academy.

It was odd, the sensation I felt on the shore, staring out at the sea. For the first time, I wanted to stay more than I wanted to leave. I dreaded going back home, to face my mother and wicked stepfather. To see the faces of people who had shunned me in the past, and expect the same looks of disgust.

For the longest time, I felt I didn’t belong at Vikingrune Academy, because practically everyone told me so. Now, after two terms and more than a year attending, everything had shifted. I felt more at home at the academy than I did in my own homeland.

At least this time I would go in with a new outlook. I wasn’t less than these people—my villagers. I was worthy, I was strong, and I had made something of myself. Even if they didn’t know it, they would sure as fuck understand it once they saw me marching confidently through the village.

I dared some weasely-ass kid to throw a rock at my head now. See what’ll happen, you little shits.

The six of us waited for another few minutes, glancing back at the rocky outcropping of the embankment behind us.

Grim checked an imaginary watch on his wrist and frowned. “Have we been had?”

Sven said, “I still say we just hop on and zoom out of here.” With a shrug when everyone snickered, he added, “What? Beats waiting around. If Rav’s mother is sick, we shouldn’t be wasting time.”

While I agreed, I gave him a crooked smile and shook my head. “We’ve waited more than a week since I got the letter. I’m sure a few more minutes won’t hurt.”

“Besides,” Arne chipped in, “could you imagine the rash of shit we’d be in if we left without him?”

“Left without whom?”

We spun around at the deep, brooding voice.

Gothi Sigmund stood with his arms crossed, not ten feet from us. Somehow he’d snuck up on us, which alarmed me. His huge right-hand man, Thane Canute, glared at our group at his side.

And standing behind the two Hersirs were two people I had hoped not to see: Eirik and Damon. My stomach dropped when their scowls reached my face.

Sigmund did not apologize for being late. Of course. “Had to wrangle up these stragglers,” he said as a way of introduction, and then marched past us toward the Gray Wraith .

“Brothers,” I said at Eirik and Damon as they followed their Gothi like lapdogs. “Joining us, are you?”

“Thought you could keep something so important from us, did you?” Damon sneered. His face twisted, eyes narrowing. “I’ll remember that, sister. She’s our mother too.”

Great, I thought, rolling my eyes at my mates once Damon’s back was to us. Another perceived slight to hold against me so he can claim his vengeance one day. When will this asshole give up?

Eirik tried his best at giving me a smile, but it came off as timid and unsure. “Memories, eh? Kind of nice to be heading back on the ol’ Gray , isn’t it, sis?”

I flared my nostrils and nodded at him—not to him, but at him. “It is, E. Quite ironic.”

My heart was beating faster than it should have. The Wraith would be packed full of people now, and I didn’t really trust four of them. With Sigmund, Canute, and Eirik and Damon, we wouldn’t have much room to move around on the sleek ship.

Granted, we still had them outnumbered. Is that how I’m looking at things now? With E and Damon as actual enemies? They had arrived with Gothi Sigmund, after all. Who knew what kind of shit they had discussed before heading here?

I had hoped to discuss things in hushed voices with my mates en route to Selby, just to make sure we were all on the same page. Now I didn’t think we’d be able to, because there would always be a lingering ear nearby.

As we boarded the Gray Wraith , Eirik put his hand out to help me over the rail. I didn’t take it, opting to use my own frail womanly hands to haul myself over the ledge.

“Why didn’t you tell us about the letter, Rav?” he asked once I was aboard, with his hand still dumbly stretched out. He looked at his palm and flattened it against his tough leather armor. “We would have listened.”

“Maybe I didn’t want you listening, E. You’ve only been my ally again for, oh, I don’t know, three days now?”

“Damon is not your enemy,” he assured me.

I snorted and walked off toward my mates at the starboard side of the ship. Sigmund and Canute stayed near the curved prow, while Damon and Eirik stayed portside.

The lines were drawn in the sand.

I had always wondered how the captains of these ships got the damned things moving, because I assumed there had to be something magical afoot.

Sure enough, my question was answered when Gothi Sigmund Shaped a few runes and brought a thick bank of gray fog rolling up around us, seemingly out of nowhere.

One minute, we were bobbing in the black, icy water with the hull gently rocking against the dock. The next minute, the ship seemed to settle . Almost as if we were suddenly riding the cloud of fog itself, rather than the water.

“Take your positions at the oars, cadets,” Sigmund called out, not bothering to look over his shoulder. “We’ll drop the sail once we get beyond the wards.”

We took our spots on the rowing benches, two to a bench. I sat beside Grim. Sven and Arne took the spot behind me, while Corym and Magnus took the bench in front of me. On the other side of the ship, Eirik and Damon sat and pulled at their oars, while Canute took a single bench by himself.

We started rowing. The longship creaked and dragged across the cloudy water with Sigmund at the helm. He wagged his hands, making odd shapes and gestures, directing the prow to angle us toward the mass of gloomy clouds ahead that never seemed to fully go away. It seemed like he was guiding the ship telepathically, but I knew that was crazy.

There was no thunder and lightning, at least, which gave me hope the chieftain and his lieutenant knew what they were doing.

Things seemed . . . smaller now. When I had taken this ship the other direction, the entire grand world of the Isle filled me with dreams and a surreal sensation that I had made it. Now, the Gray Wraith looked like every other longship I’d ever been on—dull, wooden, narrow, with heaving and grunting men pulling at the oars in unison.

It was clockwork for us, falling into a rhythm like we were practiced sailors. Part of growing up in the Viking vein meant learning how to sail a ship at an early age. We used the same wood as our ancestors; had shipbuilders in every village who knew the ancient techniques.

I was filled with pride as we rowed, grunting and smiling at my mates all around me. Within a few minutes, my dreary outlook changed. As the icy wind began to slant across my face and wake me out of my funk, I took a deep lungful of air and exhaled slowly.

We were on the open sea. There was a sense of freedom in that which only a few people ever got to experience. It was somewhat like the feeling I’d gotten when I flapped my dragon wings for the first time and took to the sky. The great unknown waited for us—a vast ocean in all directions, or a vast blue sky in respect to my wings.

Over my shoulder, the coast of the Isle dwindled. From here, it looked minuscule, certainly not like the last bastion of defense against species from different worlds. With every minute that passed it shrank further and further away, until we were surrounded by only flat ocean and high winds. Even the meager icebergs and crags sank away before long, out of our vision.

Grim and Canute took the gray sail down less than an hour later, after Sigmund announced we had slipped past the wards.

The wards in this sense were spells of great power, enchantments that never truly dissolved, meant to keep outsiders away. Vikingrune Academy was not a known entity to most of the world—only other supernatural, magic folk. At least that was the theory.

I’d read in Thorvi Kardeen’s history classes—gods protect her—that no one really knew where the wards originated from. They were different than, say, the wards put into place on the Isle that kept us locked away from extraplanar portals.

Those could fall, and they had, as evidenced by the Dokkalfar and jotnar knocking at our front door. But the barrier, the magic wall around the Isle we also called “The Ward,” was put into place by mages of a lost era.

We were no longer in the jurisdiction—the bubble—of the Isle, hidden from the prying eyes of planes, ships, satellites, or governments that looked blindly down into this specific point of the Atlantic Ocean.

We were among the magicless people of Earth. Trapped somewhere between modernity and a medieval age they would never understand. A simpler, unknowable world where you were just as likely to see a knight with a sword and shield as you were to find a pointy-eared elf waltzing through the forest.

I recalled that the trek from Selby Village on the edge of Iceland over to the Isle hadn’t taken long last time. At some point, we had drastically picked up speed, or possibly magically transported through our own portal to get to the rocky shore of the island.

Either that, or I had no idea where the fuck we were. It all looked the same to me: a vast expanse of dark blue, white remnants shimmering off the surface from the morning sun’s light.

As the sun rose and afternoon fell upon us, I felt my face getting burnt. Other fair people in our crew—all of us, really—started to shield their eyes and foreheads. Sven wrapped his shirt over his head like a turban, keener on getting his enviable chest tanned than his face sunburned.

With the strong gusts dragging us along the ocean, we didn’t need to row any longer. It gave each of us a lot of time to think, and I started to reminisce over everything I had gone through, leading up to the present.

A strange thought occurred to me as I looked to the prow of the ship, where Gothi Sigmund stood like a gargoyle, staring out at the sea. He hadn’t turned around once since we’d set off.

I started to wonder what he had been scheming with Salos Torfen, and what it meant that the chieftain was leaving Sven’s father in Vikingrune while we left. What did it mean for Sigmund to take this time off to essentially “vacation” when our enemies were so close? Was he not needed at the academy?

Just what does he want with my mother, anyway? What could possibly be so important that he’d need to see her before she becomes any sicker?

That’s when my heart froze. A dreadful realization dawned on me, kicking me square in the gut.

No.

The word repeated in my head over and over, like a mantra.One of my mates noticed my abrupt stiffness on my bench as I stared at Sigmund Calladan, and he asked if I was okay, but I was so deeply lost that I didn’t even know who had spoken.

My eyes widened, unblinking.

No.

The thought rioting through my mind could have easily been explained away. All the documents and tomes I’d read in my initiate year had said the same thing. Surely Sigmund would have been written in there, where I looked. He couldn’t have escaped my scrutinizing eye.

. . . Right?

He has all the levers and buttons at his disposal, though, being Gothi of the academy . . . to make things disappear.

I shook my head, eyes burning when I finally looked away and squinted out at the sea. I tried to call it idiotic, while also feeling foolish for not seeing it until now. For not planning for it, because it had never crossed my mind.

Because the thought that kept swimming through me was: What if it’s him? What if it’s him?

What if Sigmund Calladan is my father?