Page 21 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

I woke to the roaring crackle of a fire. Rolling my head to the side, I found the source of the heat pulsing through an unrecognizable room. Flames licked high up into the flue above the fireplace, erasing my body’s memory of winter in Skaldir. For once, my hands weren’t painfully cold.

Too dizzy to move, I lifted my hands up to inspect my fingers. My skin glowed with a rare but healthy pink, even if I felt horrible.

Too much wine left me waking with throbbing at my temples. After the announcement, hundreds of villagers descended upon us, each clambering to grace us with their congratulations. Some I’d thought I even recognized.

Had one of them been Ragna? Impossible, she wouldn’t congratulate this corrupt betrothal. But I’d seen her face in the crowd, I could swear it on Odin’s eye. Shouldn’t she and the other witches have been taken beyond Mara and to the wasteland?

I never had the right mind with which to ask King Drakkar. I didn't even have the opportunity to speak with my betrothed again after he’d officially introduced me, not with the swarm of faces asking to kiss their new queen’s knuckles.

It was a title I never wanted and definitely didn’t deserve. Hearing them address me as it over and over and over sent me into a downward spiral of thoughts as loud and as painful as the thumping in my head now.

Wine quieted it one sip at a time, until I’d lost track of myself.

And my father. I recalled seeing him speak with King Drakkar. I remembered my father saying goodbye, that he already planned to return to Skaldir.

After that, the last moment I remembered was a handmaiden guiding me down a freezing cold hallway. Her name was Stella, or maybe Sara. My stupid drunken mind didn’t let me recall the details, and now nerves rushed back with the force of a wave crashing over the fjords.

“I’m marrying King Drakkar,” I said.

The room was vast and with a vaulted stone ceiling, but I didn’t speak loud enough for the sound to catch an echo.

My pulse thumped erratically. The wine was too much, I never drank it and avoided mead for the same reason, my heart felt like it’d burst from my ribcage whenever the haze of the drink sunk in.

My body disliked it, but it had seemed my only escape last night.

This was another selfish choice, number one thousand and one. Likely twice as much, but I didn’t actually keep count because tallying each mistake would make it too easy to slip into a cycle of dwelling. I already laid awake most nights replaying what I could have done differently.

I could have let Ragna make the choice she’d decided for herself.

I could have stopped my mother from sacrificing herself to the wasteland ten years ago.

I could have been an honest child instead of hiding in the hatch when the Grimward knocked on our door.

But those choices were in the past now and impossible to change. Today, I could get out of this bed and track down the king.

I’d find where he practiced with that sword. Surely practice would occasionally draw blood. The blood the prophecy said I needed to follow in order to uncover truths about King Drakkar and pass Freya’s trial.

My only other options were dependent on an external event; if he was attacked, or if a member of the Grimward tried to defect and the king cut them down, resulting in a scuffle.

Groaning, I rolled forward and dragged my pounding head up with me.

I slipped my legs from beneath the blanket to hang over the edge of the huge bed.

These bedchambers were nothing like the open space we shared in the longhouse.

At home, we separated the two large rooms of the house with colorful tapestries and curtains strung up with glass beads.

Here, narrow halls stretched into an endless maze.

I hadn’t explored the other rooms, but if they were anything like this one, the tight hallways would open into oversized spaces with a large mantel over the fireplace, a deep oak cabinet, an ornate mirror placed precariously against a thick stand, a stone tub in the far corner, and a bed so large it could fit four of me.

Like the castle itself, the bed was sturdy, heavy looking and gray with posts on each corner that reached up toward the ceiling in the imitation of spires.

I flattened my bare feet against the cold stone and stood. Like a fawn just born, my legs shook. Must have been from the combination of nerves I tried to lock away and hours of standing until late into the night.

The loose silver gown fell around my feet. Not a gown I ever remembered seeing before. Where my original dress had ended up, I had no clue. It damn well better have been the handmaiden who changed me and not King Drakkar, or one of the leering guards.

I brushed my palm over the sheer fabric as I shuffled across the room. The gown was so light and airy, it clung to every dip and curve as I walked. I stood before the oversized mirror, feeling like a child’s doll in the massive room.

The light weight of the dress felt wrong. A small gasp slipped out as I palmed the non-existent pockets.

My Y Tree.

I’d forgotten it was tucked away in the loose pocket of the clothing I wore from Skaldir. Now it was gone, along with the dress.

And my enchantment. I blinked at my black eyes. After waking, I always had to recast it to hide it, but not without first inspecting just exactly how many threads of darkness spread through the thin veins. I leaned closer, trying to spot any hint of white behind the inky black.

My mother’s enchantment was almost entirely gone.

Which meant she was almost entirely gone. Claws seemed to squeeze my chest, like a giant had reached through my ribcage and picked me up by my heart.

I’d lost my pendant, my freedom, and almost, my mother.

Usually, I needed a bowl of water to speak incantations over for my concealing enchantment. Today, tears slipped from the edges of my eyes, rolling slowly down my cheeks as I whispered the familiar words.

I caught two teardrops in my palm and enchanted them to become a watery film that’d make my eyes look normal, at least for a day. Tilting my head back, I slipped each droplet back into my eye where the magic concealed the black.

The center of my eyes looked oddly pale and not fully round now, like a crescent moon clouded by a retreating storm, but I was used to it. And at least they weren’t two black abysses.

The door to my bedchamber creaked as a small and pale servant, not unlike Thora, slipped inside the room. Gathering myself, I wiped the look of horror from my face and twisted to see a young woman so pale she nearly glowed luminescent in the dawn light.

She made quick work of laying a new dress across my bed and setting out several bracelets, a necklace, and earrings for me to wear. Her mouth hung open, breathing rapidly as her empty stare fixated on the dress for a moment.

She turned to me, her stare haunting as I returned it through the reflection in the mirror.

“Are you all right?” I asked, hopeful she would speak to me. The servants didn’t exactly refuse to talk, but those I encountered last night didn’t make conversation either. She’d only responded in single words, and when I’d asked for her name as she’d guided me to bed, she’d whispered it; Embla.

At least that much I could remember before the wine carried away most of the previous night.

“The king requests your presence at a celebration for your betrothal.” It was all she said before she finally snapped her jaw shut.

“Another one? Didn’t we celebrate last night?”

She hummed, but it didn’t sound like a confirmation. “And now another day has passed with sleep. The time to be awake passed several hours ago. They’d like plenty of time to celebrate before dawn.”

I rubbed my eyes. No way had I slept that much, but the exhaustion pulling at my eyes said otherwise. Perhaps I’d never become accustomed to the flipped schedule in Mara where the people prepared for the dark of the Polar Nocturne.

“You are to become our new queen,” she continued. “I’m told there is a long process. Approval, appointing, and then application. But not to worry, it all takes place during the celebrations.”

“Is this just an excuse for the people of Mara to drink more wine?” I asked.

She gave me the faintest shrug. I almost didn’t catch it before her frail shoulders fell and she pointed at my hair. “May I redo your braids?”

My gaze flicked from her to my reflection.

I ran my hand over the heavy braid laying atop the rest of my hair.

The side where smaller braids pulled tightly to my head had come loose with wild hairs after my night of drunken stupor.

The heat of too many bodies had twisted the escaped hairs in weak coils.

Already, my hair had adapted to the humid southern weather. The curls changed so easily, so quickly, I almost didn’t see Silver now when I looked in the mirror. This was King Drakkar’s future wife, a woman I didn’t know.

I sighed and nodded. “If you keep it in the style of Skaldir.”

Women in the northernmost village wore two tight braids against their skull on either side, joined with a thicker braid in the center and then laid over free-flowing hair to imitate the fall of water over the cliff of Iskniv, the highest peak visible from our village.

Embla worked in silence, tugging lightly at my hair, quickly weaving and tightening each braid with her slight fingers.

It didn’t matter how many little questions I prodded her with, she only hummed in response.

I didn’t dare ask her where the king practiced wielding his sword, or if servants or courtiers ever tried to challenge his reign.

Knowing where the king stored his weapons was likely not allowed, and I wouldn’t get this poor girl in trouble.

Silence settled in my throat, but she continued to hum.