Page 52 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 52

Ravinica

DAHLIA WAS DYING. NO amount of healing or recovery was going to fix the wound in her gut, which spilled dark blood down her front. Her face was white, bloodless—all of it spilling down her cheeks.

I crouched over her supine form, wincing as she convulsed. Her eyes rolled as she stared up at me with a grim, bloody smile.

“Why, Dahlia? Why didn’t you tell me what you had planned?”

With a cough, she croaked out words. “Would you h-have believed me, girl? Trusted . . . me?”

It was a fair point. The likely answer was no.

All this time, I had been misdirected to believe she was planning one thing, when in actuality she had schemed to help us. To end Korvan rather than help him.

The puzzle pieces started to fall into place as I stared down at the dying woman. Her chest was rising and falling faster and faster with each passing second, and I still had so many questions.

“. . . You never intended to use my blood to become dragonkin, did you?” I asked.

Her smile lifted, looking pained. “No. I-I’m assuming . . . you saw . . . my studies.”

Well, not exactly. Randi had told me about the books open on her desk. Portals. Runesphere. Dragonkin. I nodded anyway.

“Then you would k-know . . .” She paused, coughing a bubble of red. “Dragonkin can close any . . . any portal.”

My brow lifted. I hadn’t known that, based on Randi’s research alone. Now it made sense why she had been feverishly looking through the ancient texts about closing and opening portals.

She wanted to keep the Dokkalfar and jotnar out.

“And the Runesphere?” I asked, taking her shaking hand in mine and squeezing, trying to keep her conscious.

“W-We will never . . . fully understand it, Linmyrr. The tomes showed me that in order for a power to emerge, the user of the Sphere must sacrifice their . . . own power. I knew Korvan would be too greedy to stop himself from using it.”

There was a lot to unpack there, but no time. She was right about one thing for sure: We would never understand the Runesphere, because it had been outside the grasp of humans for so long.

What is this about the user sacrificing their own power to empower someone else? My thoughts immediately flew back to Lady Elayina, and my heart tightened into a knot. Shortly after she used the runes to summon the Sphere’s blinding light, she was ready to die. Already aging . . . and yet ready to pack it in.

Could it have been because the Runesphere had weakened her in order to unveil my own heritage and power?

It must have been.

Dahlia nodded, her head crunching back against gravel. “Yes, you see it, don’t you?”

“So Korvan was weakened when we killed him just now?”

Another nod. “The Runesphere sapped his strength. Made him stoppable. His soul was bound to the Sphere . . . much as I imagine . . . yours is.”

I glanced over my shoulder, past my huddled mates, mother, and Ma, to my fallen dragonkin father. “Will his soul ever find a way back? Can he ever return?”

She choked another laugh. “Time will tell, eh, girl?”

Shit. That’s not promising.

At every turn, I had been wrong about this woman. The only truth was she had always been a pain in my ass and mean. But that didn’t make her evil.

I’d assumed she wanted to get back at me for Astrid’s death, and that was why she had caged me near the Three Norns falls. But no, it was that she didn’t want me handing over my dragonkin power to Korvan when she already had a plan to finish him off, involving the Runesphere.

Her words, “Whatever it is you’re planning, I can’t let you do it,” made much more sense now.

My assumption she was betraying Vikingrune Academy and handing over the Runesphere to Korvan? It was to weaken him, because she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist its allure, its promise of unbridled power.

Trying and failing to resurrect Astrid? That part might have been a mother’s last stand, but in actuality she imbued herself with the mixture of Magnus’ and my blood to try and become “dragonkin enough” to close the portals.

Trying to open portals for Korvan to invade the Isle with more wicked bastards? She had been trying to close the portals, for everyone here.

Leaning lower, fighting back a lump in my throat, I said, “For what it’s worth, Tomekeeper, I’m sorry for Astrid. I never wanted her dead. I just wanted her to leave me alone.”

Dahlia looked worse off than even two minutes before. She was struggling to stay attentive, to keep her eyes open. The pool of blood beneath her was expanding. “I know, Linmyrr. Now . . . do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Bring me to the place you took y-your brother and the elf crone . . . reunite me with Astrid and show me what a valkyrie can do.”

I was instantly transported to the now-familiar land of snow and ice in my mind when my palm rested on Dahlia’s forehead.

I hurried to the other side, the greener side, and found the Tomekeeper’s golden soul floating just above the ground. Like the others, she was nude, peaceful, and weighed nothing at all when I hugged her against me.

My wings took me up into the sky, winding through the gnarled roots of Yggdrasil, and guided me toward the golden temple atop the mountain.

Valhalla.

By the time I had reached the stairs leading up to the giant double doors of the temple, Dahlia had reverted in age. She never became as young and childish as Elayina had—basically reverting back to infancy—but rather stopped somewhere along the way as a young woman.

I gasped when I looked down and saw I was holding a beautiful, stern-looking young lady with a strong jaw, curly dark hair, and a Viking’s thick physique.

Before the tragedy of her and Korvan began, and the birth of Astrid that had resulted from it, it was clear Dahlia Anfinn had been a much different person. A fighter, a warrior, sturdily built and strong .

The doors opened slowly, showing me the golden glow inside that was always just beyond my view. Laughter and pleasant shouting and jostling reached my ears, coming from somewhere in the great hall of the Asgardians.

Odin looked much the same as before, with his long beard, his tired gait, leaning on his staff.

I was pleased that the staff was in harmless mode rather than three-pronged spear mode when I had insulted him the first time by bringing Damon here.

I feared I wasn’t far from that stage, given Dahlia’s life up until this point and what she had done. No matter what good she’d done at the end, she had still executed questionable ideas and plans—controversial ones, at the very least—all throughout her life.

She was not an innocent person, by any means.

I also knew Valhalla was not searching for innocent people. Odin invited the fallen soldiers of battle into the golden hall because they were warriors worthy of sitting beside other warriors.

And in that sense, I knew Dahlia struck the right chord.

“You again,” he grumbled as he shuffled forward, the giant bearded god staring down at me. “Do you bring me another broken soul, valkyrie?”

I gulped, trying not to wilt under the beatific gaze of this deity. “Every soul is broken in some sense, Allfather. Are they not? Are there perfect souls?”

He said nothing, reaching out to take the golden body of Dahlia from me so he could examine, weigh, and judge her.

Dahlia’s soul was not as light as Elayina in her infancy, yet not as heavy as Damon, who had shown no “growth” or regression back to his means during our flight here, either.

It seemed the gods did not make it their business to answer the questions of humans. I had to be all right with my inquiries going unanswered.

Dahlia’s body floated in the air in front of Odin. His lips puckered and he tapped them with the head of his staff. “Hmm,” he said, circling Dahlia’s naked form in front of him, until his back was to me and showed me the great black cloak swooping out behind him.

Once he was standing in front of me again, with Dahlia’s floating form between us, he studied me with expectant eyes. “This one is different than the last. There is a touch of valor here. A hint of goodness.”

“She fought to defend people, in the end, Allfather.”

He tilted his head at me, leaning heavily on his staff. “This woman redeemed herself in life, did she?”

Um, I thought that was your decision to make. I was baffled to try and answer such a question.

“It is my decision,” he said, responding to my thoughts like he had plucked them from my brain. “Yet I would hear it from you.”

I nodded firmly. “She did.” What more could I say? I had nothing. It wasn’t every day a god put me on the spot.

Odin scrunched his chin, nodding. “I will allow her entrance into Valhalla. Let her sit and fight with the others.”

Hope bloomed in my chest. “Thank you, Allfather!”

He held a hand out to stop my elation. “I will tell you, chooser of the slain: Her daughter will not be found here. She was tainted by a vile, wicked spirit that had no place in my hall. Born from it, in fact, was the girl, with the darkness wrapped around her out of the womb. This will be Dahlia Anfinn’s burden to tolerate—her absolution from a life not lived wholly in service to her people.”

My throat constricted and I nodded wordlessly.

Again, what could I do? Hope dwindled, becoming a tiny light in my heart because I knew how much Dahlia wanted to be reunited with Astrid. Odin was telling me it wouldn’t happen since Astrid had been born from Korvan, through no fault of her own.

An alarming thought came to me.

“I fear I was born from the same darkness as Astrid Dahlmyrr, Allfather. Am I, too, cursed to suffer the same fate and never see Valhalla’s wonders?”

Odin chuckled humorlessly. “That may be true, valkyrie. Your fate is written by the Norns, but your future is not yet yours to know. You are not yet dead, are you?”

My brow furrowed. It was so simple and obvious a question, and maybe that was Odin’s point: I was looking too far into something I couldn’t control.

“No. I am not dead, Allfather. I’m alive.”

I’m alive.