Page 26 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

I limped down the hall with the angelic woman’s help. Staring at her, I tried to match her pace, but my body was having none of it.

Somewhere behind us, I was sure King Drakkar and the cloaked man were pursuing me. Though if they were, they’d already be upon us. Even with her hurrying and dragging me along, we wouldn’t be fast enough to run from monsters.

“Walk quicker, my queen,” she said. I slowed her down, and maybe made her one of their targets by proximity. Still, she walked with me, keeping me upright with a wiry strength not unlike Ragna’s. “It isn’t safe to roam the halls near dawn.”

“Where’s Embla? Are you my other handmaiden?”

Suddenly her pinched face and formal posturing vanished. Her brows furrowed and she let out a breath, slightly slumping forward. “Yes, clearly I’m your handmaiden. Why else would I be dragging you along like a sack of flour?”

“Because you’re kind?” I muttered, still in a daze from the vision and the thought of her as an ethereal being.

She snorted. “Kind? Kind of a genius, actually.”

I only blinked at her. My mind was too muddled from the vision, exhaustion, and the chaos of the last hour.

“And for your information,” she said, all politeness now gone from her tone. “Embla is merely a Lady’s Maid.”

Before we turned another corner, I twisted to catch a glance of the hall behind us. My captor did not lurk our way, and neither was King Drakkar anywhere in sight.

Another servant passed across the end of the hall then vanished into a room.

Finally, we arrived in the same room I’d left so many hours ago. My original dress was clean and dry, hanging from a hook on the ornate cabinet. My handmaiden helped me climb into the high bed where I gently rolled and collapsed on my back.

Staring up at the ceiling, all I wanted was to slide my eyelids shut and sleep for days, but with every minute lost my mother was slipping away.

I turned my head to see my handmaiden pouring water from a pitcher. “Thank you,” I said as she placed a full cup beside the bed on a narrow table with spindly legs. “Why did you say that, about the danger of being in the halls near dawn?”

Would she admit Mara’s Keep was crawling with monsters?

Did she know? I really needed to know if it was safe here in my room, or if it was as dangerous as the halls.

. Not that I was going to venture out without resting, I would always listen to my body.

If I pushed it to the edge, I would take care of it after.

“Because I can’t let you get hurt,” she said.

“Did King Drakkar assign you to protect me?”

Another snort. “Sure.”

“And who protects the king?” I asked. Her brows scrunched. “I mean, if he were to slip up and get hurt, who helps him?”

“Are you referring to when his eye was wounded? Don’t worry it has fully healed. You won’t have a one-eyed husband.” Judgment twisted her voice .

“I know it’s healed, I’ve seen it. That’s not—” I sighed.

She folded her arms and popped out her left foot. With a single brow arched, she eyed me. “Why are you asking?”

There was no easy way to form the slew of questions into words. If the mention of blood in the first vision was the king’s blood, or the blood of one of his victims, it wasn’t clear.

But I couldn’t outwardly ask if the king and his courtiers were monsters. I’d out myself as a believer. And if the people turned on me, would the king?

My execution had been pardoned by him and only him. Now I’d found my way inside the castle that housed the runestones with the key to my mother’s freedom. I couldn’t throw it all away.

Blinking, my gaze slid from the dress hanging behind her back to her forest green eyes. “I need to know if he is safe, and if you think he is ever in any danger, would you tell me? Please?”

She clucked her tongue and dropped her arms. “King Drakkar is extremely powerful, but I’ve seen him argue with Ylva and Darius before.”

Since she answered every question I’d thrown at her, I wanted to keep asking. “Have you heard of the lost history?”

She thought about this for a moment. “Maybe.”

“Stories from our ancient ancestors to the wasteland war. My mother—” I stopped and swallowed my words. Nobody needed to know about her visions. “I’ve heard there are missing runestones hidden in Mara’s Keep.”

“There’s a lot hidden in Mara’s Keep. But if it’s not in the kitchens, your bedchambers, the servants quarters, or visible from the windows, I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

I nodded, sobering to the fact that even someone who’d lived in this castle for years didn’t know how to find the runestones.

“Now,” she continued, “you need to rest. The king says you tire quickly and you get cold easily.” She pointed to the fire. “I’ll return in a few hours to keep it burning.”

Without letting me speak, she swiftly marched to the door. I propped myself up on my elbows, though even that made me breathless.

“Am I safe here?”

She paused and turned at the door. The thick hem at the bottom of her skirts swished at her ankles. The pale green brought out the forest in her eyes. “You’re the king’s betrothed. Only someone stupid enough to sacrifice their life would dare harm you.”

I swallowed through my dry throat. Would the man in the tunnels pay for what he’d done? Had King Drakkar spotted him in the darkness? They were both monsters. I had no idea how monsters treated one another, only that they’d left me as curious as I was unsettled.

Flashing red eyes would no doubt appear in my nightmares once I slipped into an uncomfortable unconsciousness.

“And what about the king, am I safe from him?”

Her pale lashes fluttered as she considered this. Finally, she shook her head. “Nobody is truly safe here. But escape is never entirely impossible. Even a bird with clipped wings can escape its cage.”

Cast off this colorless cage.

My handmaiden didn’t match the masculine energy that came with the vision, but her words struck me as oddly familiar.

With that she twisted the doorknob and swung it open.

“Wait,” I nearly shouted before the heavy door fell shut. “It’s shameful, but I was too drunk to remember your name.”

Her arm shot out to stop the door, and her pink lips pursed in a playful smirk. “Shameful? No. Was it stupid not to drink water and eat plenty of food to soak up the wine? Absolutely. Next time you drink, I’m shoving bread down your throat. Then maybe you’ll remember, I’m Stasia. ”

Stasia, nearly the same name as my mother’s. Though her full name was Anastasia, she went by Anya to those who did not call her Mother.

When the door eased shut behind her, I lay back on the pillowy bed and pulled the blanket to my collarbone. Despite the all-consuming exhaustion weighing heavy on my eyes, I kept them peeled open so that I would not fall asleep.

The second vision told me to leave Mara’s Keep.

If the male voice belonged to Loki, I didn’t know if I could trust it.

He was the trickster God, the one who was always playing an angle that often got Odin and Freya, Thor and the others into trouble with the giants or the dwarves of the other realms.

I couldn’t leave until I found the answers Freya promised me. I had a trial to pass before I could understand it all, and tonight led me a step closer to that understanding which meant Freya’s guidance had proved perfect.

From tracking King Drakkar I learned it wasn’t his blood that I would follow. Rarely would a king—or anyone in Vylheim—bleed unless they were involved in an accident. I didn’t have to wait around for the king to slip up and the guard to slash him.

The blood he left behind was likely from his victims, whether he devoured their flesh and tasted their blood, or he simply ripped them to shreds and absorbed their life to continue his existence. Could this be when he was most vulnerable?

His claim rolled over in my head. He’d said he was starving. Even humans grow weak and touchy when they haven’t eaten. For a monster, I could only imagine this was magnified, because the sagas hinted that the undead were never satiated. Never truly alive. Never fully dead.

I already knew the time to track him down. He fed just before dawn, confirmed by Stasia’s warning.

Now I needed to know which shadows King Drakkar dragged his prey into to feed on them .

None of it completed a coherent picture. How would the king’s appetite for human flesh give me the runestone that proved witches didn’t deserve exile?

I could turn this question on every side. I could mull on it for hours and still come to no conclusion other than that I had to trust the vision.

Seers trusted their visions; they trusted themselves. But I’d been lying to myself for my entire life…

I shook that off and squeezed my eyes shut. That didn’t matter right now. I only needed to focus on one thing; where the undead king killed his victims.