Page 40 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

I n a blur of images sweeping through my mind, I imagined King Drakkar at his knees with my harvesting scythe buried into his throat the same way his fangs were buried in my mother’s neck.

The Gods knew I’d seen too many beheadings. It was too easy to picture the king’s head severed from his body after he’d bitten my mother.

But I blinked the vicious thoughts away and suddenly shame coursed through me, hot and sickening where it pooled in the pit of my gut.

If I attacked the king, I’d be giving in to the darkest side of me again. I’d become what I’d locked away. Everyone would know the wickedness lurking deep within me.

But my mother wouldn’t live to see the next minute if I didn’t act, and that was enough to push me into action, even if I barely had the strength to take one step.

It took me entirely too long to move, to rip the pendant from my pocket and aim to plunge it into the king’s arm so that he might suffer the horrific pain that he was inflicting on my mother.

He was stooped over her, fangs deep in the soft flesh of her throat, kneeling in the middle of the Hall of the Gods where his kind was unwelcome.

Why had she called him to her?

The moment I forced my foot forward, time blurred. I threw myself at King Drakkar, ready to hurt him. To stop him from bleeding her dry in her most vulnerable state.

I lifted the Y tree gripped tightly in my fist and arced my entire arm down to land on his hand so that he'd let go and lose his grip. He held the edge of the bench where she lay so that he could hover over her, his other hand cupping beneath her head so that her neck angled open toward him.

Before the sharp tip sliced through his skin, his form flickered in a blur my eyes couldn’t comprehend.

In one breath, he dropped her back to the bench and shot to his feet with his fingers wrapped firmly around my wrist. With little effort, he held my arm steady, the pendant safely away from where it could touch his flesh.

“I need you to wait,” he said, voice low, infuriatingly calm.

“I only speak the truth, but I know you won’t believe me.

So wait.” His icy gaze shifted to my mother and then back to me.

“You’ll get what you want, and then…” his wicked mouth curled in a sickening grin.

He released a faint laugh, the force of the air puffing through his nose. “Then I’ll get what I want.”

When I glanced down at her limp, helpless body, thinking of the mere seconds we had together before he bit her, my eyes burned.

Tears stung at the edges until my vision swam and hatred laced my choking voice. “How am I getting what I want when you’ve killed the only person I care for?”

Fuck his claim to speak the truth, she was the only one with enough guts to say our history was tainted and incomplete. She was strong and brave and if only I could have been like her, I could have stopped him.

“Silver!” A harsh voice shouted from somewhere behind me, the sound vague and clawing at the edges of my focus. “Call me to you.”

King Drakkar’s brow twitched as he used his hold on my wrist, pulling me closer where we stood over my mother’s body.

His face was a mere breath from mine and I resisted the urge to spit in it, not wanting to disrespect the most admirable person I’d ever known in case the spit dripped onto her.

The red-stained gold in his eyes was receding, returning them to the color of water in the fjords.

He no longer smirked, but held his mouth in a steady, emotionless line. “She’s not dead?—”

“Turned into a monster then?” I cried, my voice squeaking and desperate like a young child who’d slipped through a crack in the ice. I sucked in a shuddering breath. “I know the sagas better than anyone else. She taught me every single one. Draugr can make more from the shell of our bodies.”

Now he smiled, but for once, there was no arrogance, no amusement, just a hollow, lifeless lift of his blood-stained lips. Stained with her blood. My throat tightened, another well of sadness swelling within me. “Not every single one.”

“What?”

“Silver!” I blinked, finally recognizing Kayn’s heavy voice. “I can help.”

I twisted my neck, if for nothing else than to angle my face away from the man I hated, to break our gaze before I screamed at him and descended into a pitiful, grief and rage-induced disaster. At the corner of my vision, I saw his dark frame in the doorway.

“Come,” I whispered with as much effort as I could give to my splitting voice. It didn’t help that aching exhaustion was tugging at my bones. I needed to listen to what my body was screaming at me, but another rush of tears blurred my eyes as I spoke the same word that was my mother’s last word.

How could he claim she wasn’t dead when I just witnessed him drinking the life of another innocent person only two nights ago?

He’d done the same to her, sinking his spiked teeth into her neck until her blood coated his fangs.

Through the tears, I only made out vague shapes as King Drakkar’s grip on me went slack. My arm fell limp at my side and I stumbled back, no longer held in place by his grasp.

Kayn was upon him before I knew what had happened.

His eyes shining a brighter gold than I’d ever seen on the king.

He ripped King Drakkar away from my mother, away from me, and slammed him against the wall between the benches.

Somehow, Kayn was stronger than the king, able to pin him to the solid stone.

King Drakkar seethed, his eyes golden again, though not as striking as Kayn’s eyes. “Think about this Exile. You cannot kill the king.”

“I have nothing to lose.”

“Don’t you? Opportunity is a great stake.” King Drakkar tilted his head, his mouth a wry smile even though Kayn still overpowered him and held him pinned like a criminal ready for the swing of an executioner’s blade.

“You will leave,” he said. “And I won’t rip your head from your shoulders.”

King Drakkar only laughed. “Try to kill me, Exile. You can’t. We’re perfectly matched in strength and speed, made by the same power. We’ll destroy each other.”

“Except I don’t care if I die.”

Another laugh slipped from the king. “Really? You’re not hoping for a soul first?”

Kayn grunted, holding his gaze on the king. After a moment of thick air and little breathing, Kayn finally wrenched his hand away from the king’s throat. His chest heaved with what I could only guess was a mixture of frustration and fight.

King Drakkar stared down at him for a moment before shoving past him.

He marched toward me but I thrust out the pendant as a silent reminder to keep his distance from me.

He didn’t bother to even glance at it, keeping his gaze on me.

The iciness had softened. Was it that Kayn’s threat had stripped the king of his arrogance?

No, the arrogance remained at the corner of his mouth where his lips lifted in a perpetual curl.

“When you see what I’ve done, come to me,” he said.

I recoiled. “Never.”

“I’ll either marry you or kill you, Silver, and I’d really hate to do the latter.”

“Leave!” Kayn shouted.

King Drakkar didn’t move, clearly unbothered by the vampire who could easily overpower him. He took no threats which only sent heat flaming up my chest and neck. Anger burning all the way to my tongue.

He’d threatened me, trapped me, used my past to claim me and now he’d done it again. I wanted Kayn’s threat to bring him to his knees—no, I wanted to bring him to his knees.

What had made the trance successful? And how could I recreate it? If I could compel him to leave, he’d have no choice. Maybe I could even compel him to never return.

What had I done when I saw King Drakkar covered in blood? I’d nearly vomited.

But I didn’t. Instead, I’d tried to calm myself. I whispered the incantations to keep my heart from exploding.

My lips parted, the phrases my mother used to say coming to my mind.

“I am in control of my own fate.” My mouth moved of its own accord as energy tingled through my veins.

Freya’s words in The Thorns of Betrayal, my mother’s phrases, my incantations, memorized and repeated a hundred times to slow my pounding heart.

My pulse thumped twice and then paused, twice again then paused for too long as a pang struck across my chest and then the beating resumed slow, too slowly.

“You’re a blight upon this realm…” my voice faltered as my head spun.

Black spots dotted my vision and a heaviness tugged at my limbs and face.

My mouth felt as if it was melting off my chin, sealing shut as it slid down, down.

I slumped, my body suddenly thick and falling like gathered snow tumbling down the mountain. King Drakkar darted forward and I opened my mouth to scream but it felt like it was lost on the floor beneath me. I fell into the crook of his arm, as vulnerable as my mother, when darkness overcame me.

I’d pushed myself too hard and without enough rest. Yet Freya wasn’t granting me a vision now. I was on my own, succumbing to the darkness that my foolish, relentless determination had driven me to.

I should have listened to my body.

When I peeled my eyes open, I was still in the king’s hold, except now he was slumped too and I was laying across his lap.

He leaned against my mother’s bench, his head hanging.

Something heavy draped over my mouth and I realized it was his arm.

I jerked, throwing it off of me only to send blood splattering across my dress that was splayed out in front of me.

It was then I tasted wine sweetening my tongue.

I drew my hand to my mouth, my fingers coming away with the stain of the king’s blood.

With my heart skipping, my gaze slid to where his heavy arm lay. A jagged wound cut up the flesh of his forearm with blood trickling out…and it’d been in my mouth.

Why did he feed me his blood? Why hadn’t Kayn stopped him this time? Was this another way to turn a human into a monster? Or was this to poison me?

His words came back to me. I’ll marry you, or kill you.

I scrambled away from him, frantically wiping the blood from my lips.

Red seeped into the ridges of my fingers and stained beneath my fingernails.

The worst part was that I wanted to taste it again, to fill myself with it like sweet wine warming me from within.

I forced my legs beneath me so I could stand and back away from King Drakkar’s reach.

Kayn stood over us, casting a long shadow from the flicker of torches on the temple walls. “You’ve done enough. Leave.”

King Drakkar dragged his head up with a lazy smirk at Kayn. “I did what you could not.” Weakly, he pulled himself into a straighter position, glaring at Kayn who stood over us.

When King Drakkar turned to me, his blue eyes heavy as they searched my face, he reached out and tipped my chin.

I didn’t recoil this time, something in his eyes pinned me in place.

His touch was a mere brush against my skin, sending goosebumps along my jawline and down my neck where they spread over my collarbone and chest. “I didn’t kill her. ”

“Liar,” I said weakly.

He chuckled. “I’m not the liar here and you know that.”

“I said leave!” Kayn shouted.

Again, the king ignored him. What was stopping Kayn from attacking him again?

King Drakkar dropped his arm. “When you’re ready for the truth. Find me.”

“I’ve already heard your plan.”

I would never choose him. Find me, he’d said, as if I’d ever seek him out.

I could hardly believe this was my reality. Two unliving beings fighting over my mother’s body in a forbidden and abandoned temple, when only weeks ago I was a hopeful, simple woman traveling into Mara’s Keep in search of lost history.

“Here’s a piece of truth for you, my wife.” He pointed at my mother. “I pulled the poison from her. I took it, for now.” My heart flipped. I snapped my gaze to her limp body. “This won’t last, she’ll grow weaker again, and I won’t help her until you take my hand.”

My eyes sliced back to the king. “How can I believe you helped her when she was speaking before and she’s helpless now?”

“I told you to wait. You’ll see when she wakes.”

King Drakkar thrust his hand out toward Kayn, silently demanding he keep his distance as he strode out of the temple, the cracking stone doorway looking as if it’d crumble around him.

He stopped just outside and turned, his eyes first on Kayn then shifting to me, still soft but hardening to an in-between state like a melting icicle.

“I may be too weak to fight now, but I am still the king and you’re in my kingdom.

” He held my gaze. “You will be my wife.” I opened my mouth to reject this, but he continued with a steady voice, no malice, no passion, just a pure, icy calm that I could only achieve with incantations.

“And if you choose otherwise, both you and your mother will die.” He tilted his head, face devoid of emotion. “How tragic that will be.”

“You’re cruel,” I said, my voice weak from my aching throat.

“Then I’ll fit in perfectly with the other Gods,” he said. “Remember what I said, Silver. You have until first light.”

With that, he melted into the darkness beyond the glow of the temple’s torches. The moonlight couldn’t reach into the shadow cast by the towering structure, but it filtered in through the splinters in the stained glass windows.

The aura of his calm may have come from his weakened state, however that’d happened, but I couldn’t help longing for it to remain when he left. How could the chaos and bloodshed caused by him end this way?

With him gone, perhaps I should have sought out Stasia, wherever she’d disappeared to. Or I could have thanked Kayn for his help. I did neither.

I simply dropped to my knees and draped my arms over my mother’s body, my head resting on her chest. I twined my fingers into her hand and squeezed, but she remained limp. Grief gutted me, scooping deep between my ribs and hollowing out my heart.

If King Drakkar truly helped her, there’d be evidence of healing.

I straightened and tilted my head over her chest. With my ear pressed against her, I heard it—a faint but rhythmic thump deep within her, growing stronger and stronger with every beat.