Page 51 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 51

Ravinica

GIVE THE OLD WOMAN credit, she moved faster than I thought her body would be able to, dashing the ten feet between her and Korvan and reaching out to place a glowing hand on his shoulder.

It still wasn’t fast enough.

Korvan’s wicked black blade was unsheathed in a blur, and he spun around with a grimace and ran Dahlia through, planting his sword in her stomach.

The Tomekeeper’s eyes bulged, mouth falling open on a weary sigh as she looked down at the sword she had run right into in her haste to wound the dragonkin rapist.

The sword-tip burst bloody out of her back, and Korvan quickly slipped it out of her with a flick of his wrist.

Fuck!

As Dahlia crumpled in a heap, my mates and I were already sprinting forward with our weapons drawn, silent as death.

Kelvar vanished into a shadow and reappeared in Korvan’s, behind him. He twirled two daggers, crouched, and stabbed—

Just as Korvan spun and smacked the Whisperer across the face.

And he fucking flew .

Kelvar landed at the feet of the jotnar, his cloak billowing around him before covering his body. The giants took a single step back and stared down at the Whisperer blankly, the looks on their faces judging him.

Gods, he’s fucking strong!

As my mates and I spread out and circled him, coming at Korvan all at once, I noticed a hitch in his step that hadn’t been there back in Selby Village.

He tried to ply his mindshaping magic on me, staring into my soul—

Then he grimaced, screwed his eyes shut, and shook his head. I didn’t even have to fight it off.

He saw the group of magic-wielders heading straight for him and hopped, slapping his wings on the ground and lifting himself twenty feet into the air.

My mates reached but missed—Magnus’ bloodblade, the swords of Arne, Grim, Magnus, and Corym, all sweeping past the mark.

Korvan’s eyes flared dark red.

“Watch out!” I screamed.

A stream of fire erupted from the dragonkin’s mouth and surged to the ground beneath him, billowing out in an explosion on all sides.

My men rolled and scattered. Magnus’ cloak singed and went up in flames, though Arne was quickly beside him, blanketing the fabric in sheets of water.

As my guys regained their balance, I threw my arms down and jolted up with my wings beating.

“Ravinica, no!” Sven cried out.

Wind sailed past my face and I met Korvan in the air.

My spear lunged, but with the strange weightlessness of being airborne, Korvan easily batted aside my thrust with his wing and dashed to my left.

He had more control with his wings, clearly, given his decades or centuries of experience with them. But I was fueled with rage and animosity, and it helped me against the strange sluggishness that seemed to weigh him down.

The Runesphere . . . somehow?

Black energy rocketed from his sword in a swirl.

I dive-rolled to the right, banking hard on the wind and fluttering to stay aloft. My wings curved around me and absorbed the magic, but not before pain lanced through like I’d been shocked by electricity.

Wincing, fighting against the clattering of my teeth, I went upright, levitating with my wings taking an updraft and billowing out.

“It is not in your best interest to fight me, daughter,” Korvan growled with a cruel smile. “You cannot win.”

“Give me back my mother, you fucking fiend!”

He had gained the high ground—if there was such a thing when you had wings.

A spear of ice whizzed past Korvan and he stared down at my mates angrily. “Fools.”

Twirling his wrist, portals opened up on the ground. Rock-faced apparitions emerged from the half-dozen windows of blue light. They were vaguely humanoid, built of sheer stone like some sort of mad scientist’s automatons, and trudged toward my mates.

I gasped.

Unlike Magnus’ shadow-images, these specters were real . My mates had to fight them, swinging their weapons and Shaping their magic as the impervious summonings attacked my men—distracting them from the aerial battle going on over their heads.

Korvan smiled at his handiwork. He looked at me. “So, you’d like to see her, would you?”

“Yes! This can all end if you just—”

With another tilt of his wrist, the fabric of reality split and Korvan opened a black portal beside him in the sky. He reached in, drawing out the handle of a . . . leash.

And tied to the end of that leash, forced out of the portal, was my mother. She looked bedraggled, with listless eyes, hair a mess, face bruised, and only a potato-sack tunic on her skinny frame, hanging off one shoulder.

The black rope was looped around her neck.

My teeth ground so hard together I thought they’d crack. “You gods-damned monster. Let her go !”

Korvan laughed darkly. “Poor choice of words, lass. As you wish.” He flew away from the portal, dragging my mother out of the blackened doorway, and Lindi plunged the length of the rope—at least ten feet down through the air.

“NO!” I cried.

Her neck didn’t snap, thank the gods, but her hands immediately went to the tight noose clamped around her neck. Her legs kicked wildly as she dangled in the air, held effortlessly by Korvan’s single hand.

My heart plummeted.

Korvan shrugged like torture was the easiest thing in the world. “I’ve grown tired of the whore anyway. It’s you who are my future, Ravinica Lindeen.”

A sob rolled through my choked throat. “Please . . .”

He tilted his head, that sadistic smirk only growing wider at one end of his mouth. “Oops.” Lifting his hand near his head, Korvan dropped his end of the leash.

I was free-falling through the air quicker than my mind could react, instincts taking over as my wings curled around me and I dove like a falcon. My stomach launched to my throat and the ground exchanged places with the sky, rushing toward me.

Ma fell, her hands and legs pinwheeling as she cried out.

The sting of the wind blurred my vision, slashing tears away from my eyes as I set my jaw and gained on my mother.

Forty feet from the ground.

I reached out and missed her.

Twenty feet.

A roar ripped past my chapped lips. My fingers reached, fear and anger and every other emotion running rampant through me.

Ten feet—

I grabbed the leash, yanking it, hauling it toward me and shimmying along its length—

Five, four, three—

I wrapped my arms around Ma’s center, hugged her body against me—

And spun just as I crashed into the ground.

My wings folded, creating a small layer of protection as agony jolted up my spine, my back, and crunched my bones. Dust exploded as my rocket-fall landing cratered the earth.

I let out a ragged sound.

“RAVINICA!” one of my mates shouted.

Darkness dimmed my vision. Korvan took up the space in the sky above me, black wings against purple.

I croaked, loosening my hold on the frail body wrapped tightly in my arms. A body that was beginning to squirm.

She’s . . . she’s alive.

It was all that mattered.

I knew I was fucked as Korvan slowly began his descent toward the ground. Unstoppable, triumphant, smiling.

Through the dizziness in my head, I glanced over and saw my mates rush toward me from all angles.

Korvan swept his arms out and tossed them aside with a massive gust of wind. When they stood, pushed back twenty feet, the automatons were on them and they were forced to fight for their lives again.

“V-Vini?” my mother mewled in my ear. Her soft hand caressed my cheek. “Oh gods, daughter. What has that bastard done to you?”

No, Mother. What has he done to you?

I coughed, tasting the warm trickle of blood on my tongue. I was likely bleeding inside, as would happen when anyone dropped from over sixty feet high. I was just thankful my wings had been out, even though they now felt broken.

Slowly, with Ma’s help, I sat up when Korvan landed lightly on the ground.

He advanced amidst the angry growls of my mates—the roaring of Grim’s berserk rage, helpless to do anything as Korvan kept a barrier of green energy around the three of us.

“Impressive, daughter,” Korvan said. “You’ve learned to utilize your wings rather quickly, I must say.”

I couldn’t speak, so I just stared. Seated on my ass, wobbling where I sat.

Korvan crouched five feet away so we were at eye-level. He drew his wicked blade, tsking. “Let’s finish this, shall we? You’re coming with me whether you like it or not.”

I struggled to get to my feet, swayed, and landed back on my ass.

Korvan laughed. “Careful, lass.”

“F-Fuck you.” Blood spilled down my chin. Each blink took effort, and there were three Korvans when I opened my eyes, then two, and finally the dual vision coalesced into one.

He flared his nostrils. “I think the wings might be a nuisance. Perhaps I kill your doddering old Ma and keep you from being so pesky with those things fluttering about?”

He drew his sword back.

Ma managed to get to her feet, hands balled into fists, and stood in front of me like a sentinel. “Get away, Korvan.”

Her tone was tired but firm. The voice of a woman, a mother, who would not allow anything bad to befall her child. A protective bear shielding her cub.

You . . . can’t fight my battles for me, Ma.

I shook my head, trying to use more words but finding my brain must have scrambled in the fall and I was unable to grasp anything useful. So I landed on, “Fuck you” again, aiming it past Lindi to the dragonkin monster.

Korvan sighed, the sound weary and bored. “So protective, aren’t you, Lindi? I suppose it can’t be helped. She is our daughter after all. I really hate to forsake a daughter her mother. But, like I said, it can’t be helped.”

I curled my sweaty hands into fists, my fingernails biting crescents into my palms. Trying to find the energy— any energy—to do something about what I knew was coming. The connection of my power, the source inside me, seemed shriveled up and unreachable. I felt so damned helpless.

Korvan’s hand lurched back, ready to plunge the black blade into her.

My world stood still.

The sword thrust forward.

My broken left wing launched out reflexively, dragging a bellow of agony from my throat—

Shielding my mother.

Korvan’s sword sliced into my wing and ripped down the leathery sinews and glinting scales. The pain was so insane I nearly passed out from shock, my brain short-circuiting into sheer numbness.

I could see how close the sword’s tip came to my mother. The blade was an inch from her skin. She had huddled inside my wing for protection, the appendage creating a cocoon that had crumpled under Korvan’s sword like a hot knife through butter.

Korvan grunted. “Hm. Come on out and play, Ravinica. This will all be over soon, and then we can get on with our beautiful lives.”

Lindi hugged me behind the alcove of my torn wing. Korvan had left a gaping hole, a tear through the flesh of my new limb. Ma’s arms felt so frail as they wrapped around me.

She tugged on something at my hip and whispered, “I love you, Ravinica. You’ve always been enough.”

She kissed my cheek.

Korvan moved to lift my ruined wing and open the cocoon folded over me, to expose what was inside—

Just as Ma launched herself through the ragged, bleeding hole simultaneously, making herself impossibly small like a darting spearhead.

Her emergence and quick maneuver startled Korvan, and with a hiss he backed up a step—

But not before Ma sank the sword she’d stolen from my hip into the dragonkin’s torso.

Korvan gasped at the surprising attack, the show of finesse, the pain I hoped he shared with me. Through the circular open flap of my damaged wing, I saw how his face twisted with rage and despair.

He raised his hand to wrap around Lindi’s neck—to instantly crush the life out of her.

My wings shot out, flaring wide, knocking everything off-balance with the outburst of wind. I sank deep inside my soul, my power, while lacing a vicious glare at Korvan.

The tether took hold in my mind—

And Korvan’s hand stopped in midair, inches from Ma, held back by the sheer force of my inner source.

Lindi pulled the sword out of him, bringing with it a spurt of blood, and stabbed again. “You killed my husband.” Her voice was low, brooding, seething with a life of hatred and the need for vengeance. Another stab, more blood, with Korvan backpedaling and slowing. “You killed my son.” Stab. The cracking of bone and ripping of muscle as she plunged once more. Vicious, agonizing thrusts that poked holes in Korvan’s soft skin, through his tunic. “You blackened my other son’s soul and stole him from me.”

Korvan’s mouth fell open, eyes bulging and dimming, a waterfall of dark blood spilling down his chin.

Her voice rose to a shriek of incredible wrath.

“ But don’t. Ever. Touch. My. DAUGHTER! ”

Lindi pulled back and slashed the blade across the dragonkin’s throat. A spray of gore splashed over her and Korvan gurgled, reaching for his neck.

I released the hold over him that I’d been holding with sheer concentration, allowing him the ability to feel his lifeblood fleeing. Knowing it would do no good.

The rapist bastard had been ended by his victim. Blackened blood seeped between his fingers.

Lindi stood over Korvan as he collapsed onto his back, seizing and trembling. His red eyes turned grayer by the second. It was unfathomable. The sheer stun on his face was enough to satisfy my need for revenge a hundred times over.

I crawled forward, broken and bleeding.

To my left and right, my mates rushed over. The golem sentinels had crumbled into inanimate stone with Korvan’s lack of magical control over them.

My dragonkin father reached up, clawing at air or at some invisible force, choking on his own blood as it bubbled on his lips and spilled down his cheeks and chin. Then his hand froze, his eyes quivered, and his bloody chest stopped rising.

The dripping sword dropped from Lindi’s hand.

I wrapped my arms around her from behind, making her jolt with shock. “It’s okay, Ma. I-It’s over. You saved me.” My voice was quiet in her ear. I wasn’t well enough to stand on my feet.

Lindi melted into my grasp, quiet tears trembling her body. “No, daughter,” she said, clasping a hand on my forearm across her collar. “We saved each other. That’s what family does.”

Beyond the ring of our battle, the jotnar frowned and crossed their arms over their chests. Above us, along Academy Hill, it was strangely quiet.

It seemed everyone had stopped fighting when they witnessed two dragonkin battling in the sky. It was quite an attention-getter.

The darkness and pain that threatened to consume me crushed tighter, bringing me close to unconsciousness.

Before my mates could get to me, I glanced over at the fallen form of Dahlia Anfinn. The Tomekeeper of Vikingrune Academy . . . and trickiest bitch I’d ever seen.

I still had one more thing I needed to do.