Page 13 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

I n the last seconds of my life, I watched the man who should have been dead pull the pendant from his eye socket.

He’d lived. The damn king had fucking lived.

I didn’t know how to feel about it. The witches’ plan had failed, but at least the woman who’d stabbed him wasn’t as disturbed as me. I’d buried my silver pendant into Astrid and Sten’s bodies far deeper. Deep enough to kill.

She’d only injured King Drakkar’s eye, though I supposed she had intended to kill him.

She and I both had drawn blood.

Any moment, I expected the executioner standing over me to swing her axe down on my neck. I lay flat on my back, staring up at her eagle’s mask like an animal sacrifice laid out for the slaughter, a secret ritual practiced by few witches, and one I’d only witnessed twice.

A small rock dug into my spine. My legs and arms throbbed with the effort of stopping Ragna. Miniscule stars simmered in the inky gray sky as night crawled closer to dawn. Thick black clouds were scattered above, rolling in to slowly block any sign of the realms beyond Midgard .

I’d never see the sun again.

This was my end, and yet my heart didn’t slam against my chest. I had full use of my lungs, and my eyesight was clear of black spots.

In facing death, I should have screamed, fainted, or at least lost myself to a spiralling descent.

But hundreds of overlapping thoughts didn’t crowd my mind.

Everything was entirely clear, and I was…

calm. Focused even, just as I had been when I fixed my sight on Ragna and threw myself in between her and the king.

Only one thought sent my heart skipping; I’d failed my mother.

I barely breathed as I ripped my eyes away from Eagle. Time slowed as I looked from Ragna to the eagle mask, then to the king again.

Blood trickled from King Drakkar’s eye. He held the pendant in his fist as the two executioners restrained the offending woman. I gritted my teeth at the sight of them dragging her by her hair, but at least it wasn’t Ragna.

The woman screamed and cursed at King Drakkar, but he paid no attention to her cries. He tossed the pendant into the mud and buried it with the sole of his boot. Pain must have consumed him because he turned away from the executioners when they made their announcement.

Another voice spoke in my mind, her tone different than mine.

“There is a time when he is more vulnerable. You’re not there yet, huntress.”

Where had these thoughts come from?

“Come!” A man’s voice bellowed, tearing me from the voice haunting my head. From beneath his bear mask, he shouted for everyone to gather for the routine announcement.

I’d heard every version of the executioner’s call before.

It was our duty to watch the criminal die so that we would remember the wasteland, remember the blood that was shed, that poisoned the soil and plunged our ancestors into starvation and the extinction of all but one small group of survivors in Mara.

He paused and asked the witch her name. They purposely and loudly announced the name of the offending person to drive the knife into the heart of their loved ones.

Her only response was to spit in his face.

I would be next, except my father was too far in the back to be affected by it. If he even loved me at all.

My ribs were met with the toe of a boot. Lightning pain crackled up through my bones and I grunted to hold back a curse. Eagle stooped to snatch the fabric at my shoulder. Pulling me forward, she forced me to sit up and watch.

The announcement continued. “By the law of Vylheim since the dawning of the wasteland, you are required to witness the execution of one who has spilled blood.”

Stormdal villagers slowly crowded together. They formed a crescent around the two executioners and the witch as the masked men shoved her to her knees.

“Gather and see this criminal’s blood stain the earth as a small sacrifice of life, and an important reminder that we will never again suffer the poison of our land that comes with great loss. We refute war and all fighting beneath it for the survival of our posterity.”

This was when we were supposed to echo the Grimward, but I couldn’t find the words on my tongue.

The witches’ attack was self defense, however reckless. These women were bound for the wasteland already, so I could not blame them for taking one last opportunity to make a change for their families.

Kill the king and perhaps the witch hunts would end. Perhaps executioners wouldn’t prowl our villages. Perhaps we could live without the threat of a beheading and choose to refute violence just because we valued life.

But history said otherwise. The wasteland was proof of it .

Many people carried corruption within them, even if it wasn’t as dark as mine.

The second executioner pushed the witch’s head down, holding her there with the nodules of her spine protruding at the back of her neck.

Her entire body convulsed, either with anger or fear—likely both.

The first executioner in the bear’s mask listed her crime one final time before unhooking the weapon at his waist.

Sickness swirled in my gut as he tested his grip on the axe.

When my gaze sliced to Ragna, I recognized the cool relief that’d been washing through me.

Sickening. How could I feel good right now?

Since she hadn’t drawn the king’s blood, it wasn’t her neck beneath the blade.

They wouldn’t waste her life, though how could she contribute to our society when she was bound for the wasteland?

Another one of the mysteries my father had brushed off as something we simply couldn’t fully understand from the remote village of Skaldir. We weren’t part of the southern kingdom, and we didn’t border the wasteland, which meant we didn’t have the experience to speculate on it.

The offending witch cried out as sobs wracked her body, and still, I was thankful it wasn’t Ragna on her knees.

You selfish wicked fool.

After Bear finished announcing her crimes, a hush fell over the crowd so heavy that the only sound was the rush of wind through the trees. The world gifted this witch with a sound like the fjords in spring for her final moments.

Everybody watched and waited except for the king.

King Drakkar stayed turned away from us as he removed his cloak and stripped off his shirt. I blinked at the dozens of tattoos covering the muscles of his back. Crouching now, he tore the fabric of the shirt into strips. Three guards each individually attempted to help him, but he sent them away.

Eagle kicked my hip and I snapped my attention forward.

I was taught from a young age not to close my eyes when they brought the axe down, so I stared forward, unblinking like the corpses I’d left in the forest. Just like the executioners, I was a killer, but it wasn’t sanctioned by law.

The violence I’d caused came from within, the sickest and most wicked part of me.

With practiced ease and the entire force of his body, Bear cut into her flesh, through her spine, and split her head from her shoulders.

Bile stained my tongue in the familiar seconds that followed.

The spray of blood. The dull thud. The chilling echo of hundreds of breaths released at once.

It was over.

Until mine.

And still, my head was clear. Perhaps hours of being consumed by circling thoughts and the dizzying weakness that came with it had prepared me for the worst.

Every day I found myself shaky, scared, spinning out of control over a small reminder, a single thought like: what if the corrupt side of me emerged again and I couldn’t stop it from damning another innocent person?

Now, with pain cutting through my bones and muscles, and death looming, I breathed easily.

Perhaps the Norns threaded the constant and consuming fear into my life’s thread so that it would prime me for this end. Perhaps I needed to stay calm as Hel claimed me for the underworld.

Or had my fight to save Ragna been enough for the Valkyries to choose me for an afterlife in Valhalla?

No, because my effort wasn’t honorable, it was selfish.

I did it because I couldn’t bear to watch her give her life, not because I was a hero like the warriors from the sagas who fought giants and the monsters from other realms.

Eagle gathered my collar in her fist again and forced me to my feet. I stumbled into her when my knees gave out .

Ragna looked up at me between the trickles of blood splitting into two streams around her right eye.

I’d never seen her cry, not when her sisters had to cut her son out of her stomach, not when she lost those same sisters to a bear’s attack, not when three of her pregnancies ended in still, blue babies.

Ragna released her pain through screaming, not tears.

So today she must not have felt pain, but regret. Or perhaps fear for the unknown she’d face in the wasteland, and now without one of the other witches to keep her company.

She swallowed and her voice came out smaller than I’d ever heard from her. “It should be me.”

Hissing came from beneath the eagle’s mask as the executioner shoved me forward.

My feet couldn’t keep up with her pace, so she half-dragged me across the path. Eagle shouted something I didn’t understand to the Grimward—the collective group of executioners. The one holding the axe dripping with the witch’s blood nodded before turning back to the crowd.

Eagle threw me to the ground beside the witch’s body.

I refused to look at the witch. I would not see this woman at her worst. Hopefully, she was already being taken to Valhalla by the Valkyries. Or if Freya had chosen her for a more peaceful but less honorable afterlife, she’d be in Folkvangr.

Eagle shoved my head down where I was forced to look at the blood pooling in the dirt. I closed my eyes and listened for the rush of wind, the sound like melted fjords.

“Remain to witness a second execution?—”

“No.” A deep voice echoed from behind.

Footsteps approached and my eyes sliced to the right to see a shadow nearing. Black boots stepped up between several browns.