Page 39 of The Viking in the Vault (Galactic Librarians #2)

RAGNAR

I believe the world I knew might be just around the corner…and it terrifies me.

Not because I don’t want to see my crew, my friends—of course I do, and I would be thrilled to see them safe and alive. But that doesn’t change the fact that, if they still live, I will have duties to them that may interfere with my duties to my mate.

Elena…she doesn’t need me, not the way they will. She lives in this world, she thrives in it. My crew, if they are indeed alive, will need more help than she does.

I don’t want to be bound to them.

Only to her.

Fenrik trots ahead of us, tail wagging, breath fogging up in puffs of cold vapor.

Elena walks at my side, the tunnel wide enough for the two of us.

The ceiling provides just enough clearance for me, and I realize with a start that it’s because there’s been Skoll traffic through here—scratch marks on the ceiling from other sets of antlers.

Elena seems to notice at the same time, her eyes wide as she looks to me.

“Ragnar…” she breathes. “What are you going to do if they’re alive?”

Yrsa preserve me—I have no idea.

I look down at my mate, this miracle of a female walking beside me through ice and time and memory. Her brow is furrowed, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. She’s worried, and not just for me…but for us.

I reach for her hand. “I will do what I must,” I tell her. “But know this—you are my mate, Elena. I will not abandon you.”

She bites hard on her lip, hard enough to draw blood. I reach up to swipe it away instinctively.

“Okay,” she whispers. “But if you have to…”

“I will not.” I pause, clicking my tongue at Fenrik so he doesn’t wander off. The skarnhound takes a patient seat as I cup Elena’s cheek in my hand. “I am yours, Elena. My place is with you.”

“But your people?—”

“My people,” I interrupt, “will feel lost…but you helped me find a way. We will help them, my fenvarra.”

She chances a smile, her eyes glittering in the ice-glow. “Okay…good. Because I’m not letting you go without a fight.”

The idea of her fighting any of my crew is laughable, but I write it off as one of her strange human jests.

And we walk on.

The tunnel narrows, then widens again, the light growing brighter as we go.

I don’t know where the light is coming from until we round a bend…

and then it’s like we’ve entered a tunnel of glass, soft blue and pale gold dancing across every frost-covered surface, reflecting off the curve of the ice.

Above us, the ceiling shimmers with strange reflections, and Elena sucks in a breath as she grasps my hand.

“Ragnar…” she breathes. “I think we’re under the ocean.”

I look around with her, realizing she’s right; the glimmer we see overhead is water, with strange, dark shapes moving through it. Elena doesn’t seem nearly as impressed as I am–instead, she’s terrified, her hand squeezing mine almost painfully.

“How is this…this doesn’t seem safe?” she whispers.

I shake my head. “It is…hm.”

I reach up to touch the ceiling, finding it cool to the touch–but no moisture comes away on my palm. I smile, looking down at her.

“Frostglass,” I say. “We are safe; it’s nearly indestructible.”

“What is it?”

“An old Borean material, used for shipbuilding,” I say. “This place…it must be ancient. Leading us somewhere.”

Fenrik woofs toward something behind us, and the two of us turn just in time to see a massive sea creature glide overhead, wings spread wide and tail swaying behind it. Elena gasps, covering her mouth.

“It looks like a manta ray!” she breathes.

She presses close to me, her lips finally curving into a dazzling smile.

Another creature glides over us, larger this time, with glowing fins and an undulating motion that casts prisms of light across the tunnel walls.

The walls resonate just slightly, the creature’s call echoing around us like wind through the trees.

Elena wraps her arm around mine. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

I smile.

“Yes…and beautiful.”

She has no idea my eyes aren’t fixed on the ocean, but on her . On the wonder written across her features, the depth of her curiosity.

She has no idea how deeply I adore her.

Fenrik barks and takes off again, his claws clicking lightly against the frostglass path.

We follow until we find a set of stairs spiraling upward through the ice…

around and around, light shining overhead.

Elena’s steps quicken, her breath fogging as the incline increases—and I finally insist on picking her up to hoist her onto my shoulders.

She lets out a startled yelp but clings to my antlers with a laugh, her boots knocking against my chest.

“Ragnar!” she scolds. “You can’t just scoop me up like that! Or…you can, I guess, but please ask next time?”

I chuckle. “I make no promises when your sounds of surprise are so very sweet.”

I scent her arousal spike at those mere words, and I feel a rumble of satisfaction deep in my chest.

“I guess if you say it like that…”

She settles on my shoulders, soft and warm even in all her layers, then her hands weave into my hair at the base of my antlers. Her touch is reverent, steadying—I could carry her forever.

The staircase curves around a wide shaft of glowing ice, veins of pale gold catching and refracting from the ambient light from above. It grows brighter with each turn, until I finally see it.

A landing.

Then, a breath later, we’re stepping into the open air.

I reach up to help Elena down, and she slides from my shoulders with a stunned exhale.

The cavern we’ve emerged into is massive, crystalline walls arching high overhead like a cathedral of ice.

Shafts of sunlight filter through the fractured glacier, catching in the icicles above, and snow falls in soft spirals beyond the cavern’s opening, which looks out onto a turquoise, sunlit sea dotted with icebergs.

But even the cavern’s beauty is not enough to steal the breath from my lungs…not when I see what the cavern holds.

A circle of makeshift tents, fires burning among them. Skoll in the customary dress of my people millennia ago, antlers bedecked in gold and jewels, some broken. And wedged into the ice at the edge of the water…my ship.

Stormcaller.

She is tilted on her side, Skoll ironwood and Borean frostglass twisted around her hull, a gaping wound in the side showing where the vessel received its mortal wound.

She should not be here, yet here she is regardless—glorious even in her ruin, half-buried in the glacier’s embrace, as if the ice itself had mourned her fall and preserved her out of reverence.

At her mast is the visage of Yrsa, surrounded by lightning, the goddess that sheperded us across the galaxy… that brought me home to my fenvarra.

Elena steps closer to me, her hand slipping into mine. “Ragnar…is that it?”

I nod, unable to speak.

She had carried us into battle, into exile, into dreams of other worlds where the Boreans held no sway. And this ship…in a twisted, bizarre way, she delivered us to what we prayed for.

The last time I saw her, we were losing altitude. Fire in the engines. Ice in our lungs.

Cryopods sealing shut one by one, Fenrik whining in my ear before we both passed into oblivion.

“I don’t think they’ve seen us yet,” Elena whispers. “Do you…do you need a minute?”

I scan the encampment for any other crypods that appear to have malfunctioned, but I don’t see a single one. Syf’s pod must have been the outlier; everyone else is here, whole. My friends, brethren…

Here.

Alive.

Before I can answer Elena, Fenrik barks, tail wagging frantically, and he bolts down the stairs in a blur.

All eyes turn to us at the sound of Fenrik’s bark, and the answering chorus of barking reminds me that we were not the only ones who went into that long sleep together; there are at least ten other skarnhounds among the crew, all with white fur painted in light, icy tones.

For a moment, it’s chaos. Fenrik descends into a mass of wagging tails, wet noses, licks, and excited yips. They all begin to smell each other, Fenrik looking right at home. A ripple goes through the camp; antlers lift, eyes widen.

And one of them, with one broken antler and a burn scar trailing down their cheek, smiles in disbelief.

“Captain?”

They step forward, stopping halfway between the fire circle and the stairs, their gold-flecked eyes locked on mine, searching, disbelieving.

“Ragnar…” they say again, but this time it’s not a question—it’s a breath stolen from somewhere deep in their chest.

“Axl,” I say, my voice rough with emotion.

They surge forward, and I meet them halfway.

My arms wrap around them before I have time to think, and they cling to me just as tightly.

It’s not a commander’s embrace. It’s a reunion long overdue—one born of frost and fire, sleepless nights and whispered prayers.

This brave warrior and I grew up together, trained together…

they mapped the Stormcaller's path across the stars.

I feel them shake in my arms.

“I thought you were dead,” they murmur against my shoulder. “Ragnar…I thought we lost you in the descent.”

“I know,” I whisper. “I thought the same. But I wasn’t. I’m here.”

Axl pulls back, just enough to look at me. “Yrsa preserve us. Look at you. You haven’t aged a day.”

“You have,” I say gently, and their lips quirk up.

“Rude,” they murmur, but there’s a brightness in their expression I haven’t seen in years—not since before Boreans began to lock down on our village, kidnapping people from our clan.

Their gaze shifts to Elena, who’s still standing just behind me, watching with quiet curiosity.

“And this?” they ask, one eyebrow lifting. “A strange little alien…where in Yrsa’s name did you find such a creature?”

I huff out a laugh. “She is my fenvarra,” I say.

Axl’s jaw drops.

“You…” they pause, shaking their head. “You must know where we are, then. Is this the planet we hoped to find? This creature seems friendly–”