Page 31 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

A fter the guests realized King Drakkar would not, of course, pay too heavily for his crime of bloodshed, the celebration continued. The people of Mara danced, and stuffed themselves with figs and wine until they were laughing and sweaty.

I gave Vigg a wide berth, which was easy enough since he’d limped to a group of courtiers who eyed him hungrily. I didn’t want to know if they were about to choose him as their next vessel.

Slipping from the throne room only minutes after the council had guided him out proved effortless. The door fell shut behind me.

Servants passed through the hall, but I was mostly alone with the draft sending goosebumps over my bare arms. I scanned both sides of the hallway until a spot of red caught my eye. Hurrying toward the drop, my heart thumped faster and faster.

Freya’s trial was finally surging forward.

I crept down the hall and stopped where another corridor forked to the right.

Another drop of blood guided me to this new section that branched off. Like all the others, this hall stretched into what felt like an endless abyss. With no end in sight, I kept walking, walking, walking until all sounds of the celebration faded completely.

There were no doors, no new corridors splitting left or right, just a straight forward stretch of deafening stone. If I’d gone the wrong direction, I would have lost half an hour already, but the last blood drop was in this hallway, so I stayed the course.

As I continued, time stretched on.

I followed the snaking hall with the only sound coming from my groaning stomach.

I scolded myself for leaving the cinnamon pears behind.

I hadn’t touched the food, and by the time I made it to the end of this hallway, a door, anything, I would be another year old.

I’d have wasted away but not from famine alone.

This doorless path felt more like a trick, an illusion to get curious villagers lost. Perhaps it led to the council so that lost stragglers could be taken for feeding once they came upon the council of vampires, because if they tried to run, there was nowhere to go but straight back toward the throne room.

Finally, the hall came to an intersection leading left and right. I stopped, carefully scanning for another speck of blood.

Nothing told me which direction to go, not Freya’s vision, not a hint of where King Drakkar had gone. No blood.

If I failed now, in the heart of the trial, I would not have another chance. The Dawn of Exploration was set to begin in a few weeks and my mother was slipping away much sooner.

I closed my eyes before panic surged.

My chest tightened and air was harder to come by. The ground seemed to shift and sway beneath my feet and I knew if I dared peel my eyes open, black spots would prick my sight. Little by little my nerves frayed like the torn hem of an unraveled dress.

I crouched with my hand on the wall to steady me even in this hunched position. The stone floor still rocked beneath my feet, threatening to topple me.

Tipping my legs forward, I dropped my head to my knees. I curled in on myself in the empty hall, praying to the Gods that no monster came upon me in my moment of panic.

With my head spinning, I forced slow breaths. One after another, after another. The single moment stretched and every minute that passed tugged the trial further and further from my reach.

I couldn’t break down now. I didn’t track the passage of time, but some of these attacks of the nerves lasted beyond an hour before I became stable enough to resume cutting the wheat, or following the other gatherers out of the forest, or facing my father after I embarrassed him by placing last in a footrace.

But I wasn’t in Ragna’s field with the faces of those who died last winter haunting me. I wasn’t foraging wild berries in the forest outside Skaldir and spotting a shadow with flaming eyes.

I was finally following a full vision.

One that would eventually lead me to my mother.

Drawing a breath through my nose, I smelled nothing but the rosemary soap lingering from my own hair. I tasted a hint of sweet wine left on my tongue. Feeling the rough stone wall, I held my breath and listened for any sound.

Muted conversation came from behind me. Finally.

My eyes popped open and I straightened. Fully standing, I tested my steadiness with one step into the hall on the left. Panic still quickened my pulse, but I remained upright as I slowly shuffled toward the voices.

I’d finally reached a stretch of doors that peppered both sides of the hall.

It wasn’t until I was outside the door where a wild voice full of venom drifted that I recognized Ylva’s tone. I reached for the handle but thought better of it. Marching into a meeting in a room filled with vampires left my blood chilled.

Was this really his most vulnerable moment?

I didn’t have time to think about it when the door handle dropped. I backed away but not fast enough. When King Drakkar emerged and spotted me in his path, the heavy door fell shut with a slam behind him, and I froze.

His chest heaved as we stood face-to-face. “Are you following me, wife?”

He certainly didn’t look vulnerable. Instead, he was self-assured, powerful, dripping with the kind of strength I could only fantasize about from the warriors in my favorite sagas.

I said nothing, but a curl of satisfaction trickled through me. I’d found him, even if this wasn’t the end of the trial. And when he called me by my future title, it left my veins buzzing.

“It’s late,” his voice was as rough as stone and his eyelids hung heavy and half-lidded.

It was the same look I’d seen on so many friends and family, villagers who ran out of food in the dead of winter, pure and desperate hunger.

Until branches of scarlet slowly stretched across the icy blue center of his eyes

My breath hitched.

I’d never seen a monster’s eyes shift gradually, they’d always flashed red. When he blinked, the scarlet lines vanished, but only for a moment. Jagged branches grew longer and wider, gradually bathing the blue in blood red.

He dipped closer to me, his face only a breath away. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Was this the moment of vulnerability? After attacking a man for merely calling me rude? After being scolded by his own council?

My dry lips peeled apart as I straightened my spine. I had to press on. “Where is the lost history?”

Shaking his head, he pulled away and ran his palm over the back of his neck. “Not yet.” He turned his back to me and placed one hand on the wall .

His head hung as he muttered something to himself, not in a rush to get away from the door in case Ylva or Darius came out to interrupt us. They must have been busy.

There was no use keeping my plan a secret now. I was waist-deep in Freya’s trial. This was it. “The wasteland is killing my mother. If she survives that, she’ll be shipped off to die at sea in only a few weeks because of your plan to explore?—”

He spun around, and before I could blink, his hand wrapped around my throat.

“Not me.” His fingers tightened until any thread of air cut off from my lungs.

“Do you hear me? It’s not because of me.

You witches are to do my bidding.” Red entirely stained the center of his eye.

Sharp-tipped teeth dripped from beneath his top lip, growing and stretching into long fangs.

Ylva’s shrill voice grew louder and a hum of other voices responded to her. Muted footsteps approached the other side of the door King Drakkar had burst from.

Releasing me for a single breath, he pressed a palm to my stomach and swung open the door behind me. He grabbed my arm and pulled me inside, slamming me against the wall where the door fell shut beside us. Red eyes raked over every inch of me.

A shuffle of footsteps faded as the council disappeared down the hall. Once they were long gone, he sucked in a breath and dipped his mouth to my throat.

But he didn’t brush his lips against my skin. I barely breathed, almost wanting it. No, definitely wanting it. What the fuck? What the fuck?

With the tip of his fangs grazing my throat, he spoke. His lips brushed my skin, sparking every nerve alight and tingling. “You will do what I want. Right, Silver?”

Yes , edged on the tip of lips. I gnawed at the inside of my mouth to keep from giving him a promise my body wanted—I wanted. The simmering heat flamed in my belly. I had to refute this depravity. My mother, the witches, the Gods were counting on me.

“I am a God,” he breathed. “Well, nearly.” My brow furrowed as I stared up at him. His fanged mouth tipped into a devious grin. Dropping his gaze to my lips he trailed it slowly back up to my eyes. “Yes, I can hear your thoughts.”

A slight gasp escaped me. Arching my back against the wall, I pressed away from him as if the stone at my spine would block my mind from him.

He chuckled. “You can’t get away from it.” As he brought his mouth to the corner of my jaw and just below my ear, he brushed a faint kiss across my skin. “Not while you’re aching for me.”

“I’m not,” I whispered.

“Liar.”

Fuck.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do. And I know you do too. This heat you have for me is the only reason I can even hear what you’re thinking right now. When you desire me, I know your every thought.”

My entire body buzzed with his confession and my thighs were slick with wanting despite his blasphemous claim.

I am a God.

“Do you doubt that I can become one?” he asked.

I bit my lip and glared at him, tempering the desire coiling in my belly. Through the haze of it all, I managed a single clear thought. “Doesn’t the king traditionally deny the Gods were ever real?”

Another hooked grin seemed to sink into me and reel me closer to him. I tipped my chin up as he spoke. “I became a vampire. I will become a God.”

“Impossible.”

The bright red in his eyes darkened to a pooling crimson. Hunger hollowed his gaze as it fell to my throat. He gripped my chin and tilted my head, stretching my neck to a curve. A sharp prick scratched across the pulse beating in my throat.

He was going to devour me, and I didn’t even fight back. I wanted him to touch me.

The darkness within reared its ugly head, fighting every logical thought with baser, selfish desires.

He suddenly paused and breathed a string of curses. Shoving back, he left me panting as he stepped away. Before I could think, he yanked open the door and vanished into the hall.