Page 53 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 53

Ravinica

MORE TIME HAD PASSED than usual when I returned to Midgard. I could tell because more people had gathered at the base of Academy Hill.

Thankfully, the battle was still at a standstill.

Dahlia was dead. Korvan was dead. Their bodies lay where they’d fallen.

Magnus was looking after his father Kelvar, who had taken a severe hit from Korvan that jostled his head, but the Whisperer looked like he was getting back to his normal cunning self. My other mates surrounded me and Lindi, with the exception of Corym, who now stood next to Maltor Vaalnath on the outskirts of the ring we’d created during the battle. Hersirs Axel and Gudleif were near Kelvar, everyone staring into the center of the circle at me as I rose from Dahlia.

Across from Vaalnath was a dark elf commander I didn’t recognize, his face stern and grim. He also stared at me.

The jotnar made up the other section around the ring, all five of them now down here, looking incredibly intimidating and making my skin crawl with their size and authority. Everyone seemed to be avoiding them.

Why is everyone looking at me? Is it my wings?

My wings were fucked up. There was no other way to put it. Every step I took brought agony searing through me, and I winced and grimaced, trying to hide the pain.

When I glanced around at the gathered forces here, I realized they weren’t staring at me .

They were looking at the thing in the ground next to me.

The Runesphere. Sitting there like a stupid fucking rock. The source of everyone’s troubles.

Vaalnath and the remaining dark elf leader had intense expressions across their faces. Jhaeros, the Skogalfar hunter-chieftain, scowled at both of them.

Shit, things could get out of hand in a hurry here.

Instinctively, I knew what to do. My eyes landed last on my mates, one by one, and I saw the apprehension—the fear, even—in their beautiful eyes.

I had to do something. My dragonkin blood was telling me to make the right decision, because it could affect everything here in Midgard, for all time, and impact the other realms just as much.

So I started speaking.

“The elves and the humans have been at war for too long.”

My words drew everyone’s attention. Vaalnath looked at me curiously, head slightly slanted in that ethereal expression that made them look like a ghost. The dark elf crossed his arms, seething behind a mask of hatred.

I raised a finger and suppressed another groan as my ragged left wing forced my muscles to move a certain way my body didn’t appreciate. “I believe there is a way to answer this ageless dispute.” My eyes swiveled from Vaalnath, to the dark elf leader, to the Hersirs gathered on the fringes. “And none of you are probably going to like it.”

Their faces twisted with confusion, with the elves looking angry.

I bent down and picked up the Runesphere amidst a tumble of gasps and murmuring voices—as if the thing would sting or burn or change me, even from just touching it when its magic lay dormant.

Even now, the Sphere held superstition among every group gathered here.

Unity , I thought. That was always my gameplan. My goal.

And now it was within my grasp.

I just had to make sure I didn’t start an extraplanar war at the same time.

I walked with the Runesphere, slowly, agonizingly in pain.

“Ravinica . . .” Magnus said from Kelvar’s side, in warning. Each of my other mates instinctively moved to follow me, to get my back, but I held up a hand as I continued walking—

And stopped in front of the five jotnar.

They were twice my height. Two of them were coated in blood and soot from battle, and I had to crane my neck to look up to them.

I reached out with the Runesphere, a universal sign if there ever was one. Something that was impossible to misinterpret, even if we didn’t speak the same tongue.

“This, I think, should go to you,” I said simply. “ If you agree to leave our realm in peace.” I glanced over my shoulder at Korvan. “He promised the same thing, went back on his word, and look how he ended up.”

The woman of the group, with the black bindings, bare tits, and skull helm, stepped forward in front of me. Slowly, she lifted the horned skull off her head. Beneath, she had sheer, milky white eyes and a rough face of scars and mottled flesh that had seen its fair share of burns, wounds, and battle.

Yet despite it all, she looked beautiful to me.

“We agree,” she said in a guttural, raspy tone thick with an otherworldly accent.

I lurched, shocked she could understand me.

“ Flytja’orlog belongs to us.”

“. . . Flytja . . . ”

“What humans call Runesphere.”

I played over the word combination in my mind, realizing that her name for it was just as much of a translation as ours was.

“Transfer” and “fate.” Fate Transfer. My brow shot up. By the gods, Dahlia was right. The stone is a means of transferring power, from wielder—the source—to a designated person. In Elayina’s situation, she had been the source of the power-sapping, and I had been the designated recipient of it. For Korvan, he was the sacrifice, and had no recipient but himself, which is why it must have failed to power him.

Greed is not the answer to the Runesphere.

My idea had come from a much simpler place, an understanding that I really was in no position to make, but decided to authorize anyway and hope for the best.

In short, the humans and elves had been fighting for the Runesphere for hundreds of years. Without it . . . they had no reason to fight anymore. Nothing to fight for .

And now this jotun was telling me it belonged to them ?

“How does it belong to you, if I may ask?”

“ Flytja’orlog was crafted by jotun-Asgardian alliance,” she replied. “Eons ago. When jotun fought alongside gods. Not against them.”

The murmuring around the field became louder.

“Let me ask you, little human. Where was Flytja’orlog found?”

“The First Taldan War.”

“Yes. When . But where ?”

I . . . didn’t know. Thorvi’s history books never told the exact spot, other than under a mountain—a glimmering light Lord Talasin and King Dannon found together.

“Jotunheim, little human.”

My jaw dropped.

“Little humans, little elves. Stole it from us. You are the first to recognize it must be ours.”

“I was doing it out of self-preservation,” I croaked.

“Reason matters not. You are dragon. You see truth, whether you know or not.”

My brow furrowed. “Then why did you ally with the Dokkalfar against us? Seems you chose a side.”

She shook her head, the matted locks of her long stringy hair swaying across her breasts. “We did not bring ourselves here, little human. The winged little elf promised us new realm, the return of our relic. He did not expect fragile humans to put up vicious defense. You did. The act of retrieving Flytja’orlog was to be fluid. Seamless. It was not.” She eyed the dark elf commander behind me to my left, and Vaalnath behind me to my right. “We kill dark elves. We kill light elves. We kill humans. All the same to us, while you lord our relic as your own.”

Was that true? I glanced back at my mates and saw Grim and Magnus nodding.

Grim said, “I thought it was odd when I saw that club-wielding jotun killing Dokkalfar as they came up the hill, and the dark elves avoiding them just as much as we were. She’s speaking the truth, Ravinica.”

I turned back to the giant necromancer, with the confused knot in my brow flattening. “Then I feel even better about giving the Runesphere to you, since it truly belongs in Jotunheim where it was found.”

She glanced down, seeing my hand was still holding the Runesphere out for her. Gently, she took it. Then she lifted her head to address the entire audience—elves and humans alike.

“ Flytja’orlog is dangerous. You know not its power. Your races have attained great magic with it. Now, that magic flows in your blood. Enough magic in your bloodlines to last ages, if not forever.” She stuffed the Runesphere in a pouch at her side, which was the size of a backpack when adjusted for our size difference. “If, in thousand years, that power runs out . . . Jotunheim will be there. You may come study it once more, under our watchful eye.”

When I turned to see their reaction, both Vaalnath and the leader of the dark elves looked stunned. They didn’t know what to do— not returning with the Runesphere to their respective realms had clearly never crossed their minds.

But it had to be done. For Midgard, for our people, and to stop this bloody fighting.

There would always be spats and quarrels between the dark, light, and wood elves. That was their nature, as it was the nature of humans. Conflict was not always a bad thing—it led to evolution and innovation.

But fighting over this fucking rock made no gods-damned sense to me. It had to stop, because Midgard was getting thrust in the middle of it. I wouldn’t let my people suffer over something none of us collectively knew much about.

The jotun woman was right. I didn’t even know her name, and I didn’t need to.

She said, “Your fallen humans will remain underground, honored in your way,” and turned around to walk off.

I assumed she meant to say that she would no longer felt the need to summon draug and terrorize us with the ghoulish dead of our own damned people.

It was a small kindness, but a kindness nonetheless.

Her four huge, alien comrades walked off with her in the slowly rising gray morning of dawn. They reached a point in the earth and the jotun woman cast a spell and easily summoned a portal at her side.

“Little winged human,” she called to me, and I blinked in awe at her power, her grace when I had expected none. “Dragon can close portal. Do so once we leave.”

I nodded firmly, and then the jotnar vanished to their realm, one by one stepping through the misty mirage-looking gateway the necromancer had summoned.

My heart dislodged from my throat and I gawked as I turned to everyone else gathered there. “Well . . . that went better than expected.”

Maltor Vaalnath said, “For you, perhaps. The Ljosalfar have lost a treasured artifact.”

“No, Maltor ,” Corym said at his side. “We have not lost a treasured artifact. We have gained peace . Don’t you see?”

I said, “If you disagreed so heartily with what I was doing, Malto , then why did you not try to stop them from leaving with it?”

Vaalnath sighed and shook their head. “Because you were right. As were they. I may not like it for my people, yet I cannot deny the usefulness of the endeavor. It is a job well done, dragonborn.”

The dark elf at the other end of the crowd scoffed and shook his head. He turned away with his white-haired Dokkalfar.

“Wait!” I called out, rushing over to them.

When the trio of leadership turned with their hands on their weapons, apprehensive expressions on their faces, I lifted my hands in surrender.

“Do you agree to abide by the terms set, Dokkalfar?”

“We had no part in making such terms,” the leader said. “Neither did you, human.”

“So you will continue to attack Midgard and Alfheim?”

He flared his nostrils, clearly chagrined, and swiftly shook his head like he was embarrassed to say what he had to say. “We will return to Svartalfheim. Consider our options. Consult our leaders. One thing the giant was right about: None of this has come as easy as Korvan or Gresh’kellen promised.”

I swallowed hard, nodding. “We have all lost so many.”

“Aye.”

With that, the dark elves departed. They had a much larger contingent than the jotnar, and it took a long time for them to make their way to the base of Academy Hill and abandon their siege.

As the sun began to rise across the Isle, pushing past the clouds and signaling a much-needed sunny day, my mates and I watched as hundreds of dark elves left Vikingrune Academy, heading for the elf portal north that would lead them back to their realm.

Vaalnath, Deitryce, Jhaeros, and the elves weren’t far behind, with the Maltor telling Corym he still had a promise to make good on.

Corym nodded in his usual deference when speaking to his father-mother, and said, “I know, my liege. It will be done.”

The expression on his face was one of fear and sorrow, knowing what he had agreed to do. And it broke my damn heart too, because it just seemed so careless and unnecessary given everything that had happened here.

Perhaps my people, my lovers, my mates, were always meant to be strictly human. It sure didn’t feel that way when the five of them surrounded me—Corym included—and embraced me as the savior of Vikingrune Academy.

“You did it, Vini,” Arne said for the group with a wide smile. Dieter stood next to him with a grin, as well as the remaining Lepers Who Leapt who had turned against the Dokkalfar at the perfect time to help us.

“I hope you know what you’ve just done, little sneak,” Grim said with a crooked smile. “You’ve changed things forever. For all of us.”

I let out a heavy sigh, wrapping my arms around my guys. “I know. I guess time will tell how it all works out. All I can say is, the important part . . .” Odin’s parting words returned to me. “We’re alive.”