Page 44 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 44

Ravinica

MY RAGE DULLED TO A thin thread of disquiet and remorse once Dahlia left me in her magical cage. I knew she must have been quite the runeshaper to hold me inside here for so long. She had been gone for half an hour now, yet the enchantment remained.

My remorse stemmed from regret. I was a fool for coming here, detaching myself from my mates. Day had dragged into night, and my men were likely worried sick about me. They probably felt betrayed that I had left without so much as a note, spurred on by my fever dream.

“Suppose the dark lord has played both of us for fools.”

I had so many assumptions about Dahlia, still wondering where she had gone and what she was planning with the Runesphere.

Part of me felt this was vindictive, getting back at me for the death of Astrid. Even if I hadn’t directly caused Astrid’s death, I had been Magnus’ impetus for it.

If that was true, then she wanted to see my own family suffer as vengeance. Ma. She’s going to team up with Korvan, hand him the Runesphere, and the keys to the academy.

How had no one seen enough to stop it? Not Kelvar the Whisperer, wicked Ingvus Jorthyr, or even Gothi Sigmund before his death? The Hersirs had been so determined to contend for power that they’d dropped the ball on their most cunning, devious member.

And now Tomekeeper Dahlia held the entire fate of Vikingrune Academy, the Isle, and Midgard slung over her shoulder. Who knows what power Korvan can draw from the Runesphere, if it was strong enough to bring out my dragonkin blood!

I had to wonder what she was getting out of this dark alliance with the Swordbaron. A seat at the table, perhaps? Control over Vikingrune Academy as its newest Gothi, with the ability to depose Salos Torfen? Land, power, and influence among the Dokkalfar? The possibilities were endless, and none of them were good.

Dahlia’s words about trying to resurrect Astrid also had a sense of wrongness to them. She had become desperate, it seemed, to bring life to her silvermoor daughter. So much so that she had shrugged aside all decency and tried to pump the mixture of Magnus’ and my blood through her deceased daughter’s veins.

When that didn’t work, she turned the powerful blood on herself . That crazed, Helbent woman.

The Tomekeeper’s words, as well as her actions against me, revitalized my anger.

I stood from the ground, using the small three-feet of space I had to shimmy my back against the force field. Wobbling to balance myself without the use of my arms, I listened to my heart.

The rhythm of it had become slow, plodding. Despite my anxiety, it seemed my reaction was going backward, not spiking my blood pressure but mellowing it.

I tried to fight off the rage, the hint of sadness and weakness, and closed my eyes.

There, I found myself in the snowy place of my mind, dressed in shimmering radiant armor with my wings unfurled. Staring between the high walls of the tunnel valley in front of me, yet with no soul for me to bring to the gods on the other side. No golden target for me to grasp. I was on my own.

When my eyes opened, the calmness beating a steady rhythm in my ears consumed me completely. I felt . . . at peace, oddly enough.

I didn’t bother struggling with the ropes binding my arms to my torso. They were too tight, the action was futile. I couldn’t draw my wings out, for obvious reasons.

Instead of fighting against the binding, I looked down at my constrained body, frowning, and imagined the thick rope falling off my body like a slithering python falling off a tree branch.

And they did. My eyes narrowed, power shifted inside me and roiled my blood, and with a snap and rustle of clothes and fibres, the rope dropped from my body.

My narrowed eyes bulged wide. “What the . . .”

I pulled my sore arms up, red lines embedded in my flesh where the rope had dug into me. I stared down at my hands as if they didn’t belong to me, waggling my fingers, noticing they absolutely did belong to me.

Instinctively, I looked up at the force field. The previously invisible barrier was outlined now in a shimmering, translucent blue hue.

I raised a palm and placed it on the barrier, flattening my palm and drawing myself back to the snowy place—finding the threads of my mind that dictated my power and action.

A hiss reverberated through the clearing, and the sky-blue shield dissipated.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, taking an unsteady step forward.

The power inside me burgeoned, like a physical cup I could drink from. Next second, my wings sprouted, stretching my body. I let out a moan of a sigh, relieved at the freedom coursing through me, empowering me.

I gazed at my hands again in wonder. This power . . . I didn’t understand it, but intuition told me what was happening. The Runesphere had done more than awoken my dragonkin blood and wings. With the glowing energy inside me, and given my studies in runeshaping, I understood that I no longer had to search for a source of magic.

It was inside me now, begging to be unleashed.

No longer did I need to draw into other realms for their elements; Shape a rune with a directive, telling it what to do.

Instead . . . I was the source.

I didn’t know if it had been inside me all along—if it was inside every runeshaper, lying dormant until being unleashed by the Runesphere—or if this was a new development that emerged from my desperate circumstance.

It didn’t matter what I knew or didn’t know. All that mattered was this was something new, incredibly powerful, and enlightening. It was a gamechanger, completely shifting my attitude and way of thinking. Confidence swelled inside me as I took to the sky, beating my wings to get high above the trees of the jungle and the cliffside waterfalls.

I hovered for a moment, searching desperately between the canopies to try and find Dahlia. It was too dark, and one thing the Runesphere hadn’t done was give me an owl’s vision. It would take hours to find her, if she was still here.

The sky was dark now, the moon murky from wispy clouds.

I inhaled and sniffed something sharp and unpleasant.

Spinning to my left, I noticed a plume of thick black smoke mottling the bruised sky.

The power inside me surged, and my breath stuck in my throat. “Vikingrune!”

Even from this distance, without a visual on Academy Hill, I knew in my heart what was happening.

The Dokkalfar had somehow skipped over a day, managing to get to the academy faster than I had thought possible—probably through their dark ground-portals, their shadow pits.

The academy was under attack.

Bunching my hands into fists, I leveled myself horizontal in the air, hammered my wings against the wind, and launched through the sky toward the academy.