Page 43 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

C old droplets beat down on my bare head as I followed in Kayn’s wake. Water sloughed off his broad shoulders where the animal fur blocked it from soaking the fabric beneath.

When he twisted to see me behind him, I squinted through the sheets of rain to see he was pointing across the hill at the same stone Valkyrie. Nodding, I swept water away from my eyes and hurried to catch up with him.

His narrowed eyes and lifted chin made him look so determined. So confident in what we were about to do.

But I had no idea what that could be.

“Was Ingrid like me?” I asked, referring to the woman he’d mentioned earlier. “Or did she know how to pass the trials?”

“She did the best she could with the knowledge she had. She was a witch like you, but she was discovered and promptly punished for it, so she didn’t have a lot of freedom to explore the Gods’ guidance.”

“Exile?”

I didn’t ask if she was executed.

He tilted his head, seemingly understanding my confusion.

“Not everyone has the same punishment. Not when the king takes pity. King Roderic had taken Ingrid as one of his favored women before he knew she was a witch. When she was outed, he kept her close by deeming her punishment a lifetime as an executioner. I found her not long after, and she tried to become the huntress, but she could not handle the Gods’ power.

It drove her mad. But you…” he paused at the grave and turned to me. “You’re aware of your limits.”

“I have to be,” I said, flexing my cold fingers.

His gaze rippled from my hands back to my face. A glimmer of pride, or hope, or perhaps admiration coated his soft eyes. “It makes you strong.”

“I doubt strength will raise a vampire from deep sleep.” I waved my hand at the grave.

“Awareness will. The answer will be unique to you.”

I stared at him as if he’d suddenly provide an answer and deliver an explanation to me, but the only movement on his stoic face was the rain streaming down in little rivers. I trailed his line of sight back to the grave.

The Valkyrie with a broken wing lay with her body draped over the headstone, her face hidden in her arm.

Her stony hair looked as smooth as if it were real waves and her wing was sculpted so carefully it could have been real feathers, which gave the whole sculpture an ethereal look among the pouring storm that could not soak her hair or send her feathers shuddering with the wind.

My eyes fell to the soil beneath her. Digging wasn’t a smart option because vampires didn’t wake simply by exposure to the air. I had Freya’s visions, perhaps I could run and push myself to break to glimpse an idea. Except that this was Loki’s trial, and he hadn’t spoken to me.

I scraped my brain for an idea.

“Each huntress’s Call is personal,” Kayn shouted over the deafening rain.

I looked up at him while he kept his eyes on the grave. “ Huntress?” I’d heard it before but every time I said it, the word tasted sour. I didn’t like the connotations that came with huntress .

“It is what you will become when you pass Odin’s trial,” he said. I swallowed a curse and turned back to the grave. “If you consider what behaviors make you who you are, it’d help narrow your unique abilities down.”

I knelt over the grave, my hand brushing the stalks of grass that had grown over it. The grass squelched beneath my feet and it felt as though I was sinking into the earth one breath at a time. Was the storm more of Loki’s chaos?

I closed my eyes for a moment, and the rush of the rain splattering the ground faded.

When I opened my eyes, a spot of red drew my attention.

A single red petal, like blood among all the green, quivered in the breeze as it caught between two blades of grass.

I picked it up, examining the spidery veins as I rubbed the soft velvety texture between my thumb and forefinger.

Looking up, I scanned the graveyard but couldn’t spot where the petal had come from.

No rose bushes grew anywhere near the abandoned ruins.

I pressed my hand against the soil, as if I could feel the shape of the sleeping vampire beneath. “What can I do?” I whispered.

The only person who’d know the answer was slipping away.

A sob caught at the center of my chest. My heart thumped painfully as I thought of existing in this world knowing my mother was gone. When she was in exile, I planned to go to her, someday, to see her again, to thank her for always teaching me the truth, and most of all, for believing me.

That was all different now that I’d found her here, but if I failed the trials where would she end up? She couldn’t survive in The Forsaken Hall forever. Not now that King Drakkar knew where she was. Not with the council of monsters dragging witches and anyone they could grab to sea .

I could not fail.

A bang echoed from behind us and I startled. Kayn and I whipped around to see Stasia running toward us. “She’s worse! Her heart’s even slower now.”

“Shit,” I breathed.

Kayn crouched beside me, his voice steady. “Take it slow. What is a skill you know well?”

Working on Ragna’s farm. Whispering the sagas with my mother. I could run but was never skilled at it, and my visions were sporadic and the result of beating my body into the ground. Did I have to do that for Loki’s trial too?

Hope waned.

I dropped back down in front of the grave, scanning the Valkyrie, the headstone, the grass beneath. My hand splayed out on the earth as if searching for the pulse beating beneath our living realm.

Panic wrapped around my throat like the hand of Loki to choke the answer out of me.

This is your last chance. My pulse doubled, tripled.

Bile pushed up into my mouth, bitter and burning on the back of my tongue.

With black dots spotting my vision, I knew I’d lose consciousness if I didn’t calm down.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “I hear my voice. I smell the rain—” Before I could finish my routine, I lost control of the words, my mouth moving of its own accord until I gained command of my tongue again.

My mind flooded with what to say, like magic, like Loki speaking to me but without actually hearing his voice in my head.

This compulsion was a pure kind of sorcery, wild and addictive in how easy it came to me.

I simply knew what to say. Of course, the years of repeating sagas that spoke of Draugr and monster and Gods may have had something to do with it.

And I couldn’t deny that it’d taken preparation. I could compel when I tapped into the sensations rippling through my body. Attuning myself to my own body and the world where it existed made me aware of everything. Aware enough to bend and control the will of the other person.

I knew this as if the Gods had simply placed this information in my brain. Perhaps this was what it meant to truly be connected to Odin and Freya, and by necessity, Loki too.

“Wake, Draugr,” I said. My will and my senses seemed the source of how strongly it worked. The more I wanted it, the lighter the tension in my head became.

The earth pushed up from beneath me. Cold, dead fingers wrapped around my wrist with a painfully tight grip. A scream ripped from my throat as the hand yanked me toward the ground, the creature’s strength overpowering the earth itself.

Kayn dropped beside me and reached for the hand, but I shouted for him to back off. I had to compel this vampire myself. I had to do this to pass the trial.

It was enough to know he was there if I needed him.

As if the soil was water and my arm weightless, the vampire pulled me into the soil all the way to my shoulder until I fought the voice in my head.

“ Create chaos. Spite Odin. Destroy those who worship him.”

No! I’m listening to you only for this trial.

I was doing enough. I woke the vampire. This had to be enough. I opened my mouth, ready for Loki to speak through me. “By breath and blood your will is mine.”

All at once the monster’s hold on me loosened.

I scrambled away from it as both hands jutted from the grave and dragged the figure from its dark slumber.

The earth seemed to shift beneath me as the vampire clawed out of the ground.

Rain lightened to scattered droplets, as if the night greeted its monster with a calm welcome.

Her fangs were exposed already and her eyes blood red. She crawled toward me, lifting and dragging herself from the grave. I swallowed another scream and tried to form words around my fumbling tongue. This time, it was me speaking. “Your will is mine. ”

The vampire’s eyes shifted from red to gold, and my courage bolstered. I pushed to my feet, and backed away from her with the dregs of energy simmering in my veins. “I am your path now. Come with me.”

In a trance, she mirrored me by climbing to her feet. Soil tumbled off of her velvet dress, revealing the violet shade buried by moist dirt. The corset at her torso was covered with detailed embroidery. Not all royals were vampires, but perhaps all vampires had once been royals.

In my own kind of daze, I led her to the Hall of the Gods where I invited her across the threshold into the house of Freya and Odin.

Dizzy, I struggled to hold the compulsion, the invisible string pulled taut between me and my compelled victim.

The vampire’s fangs sank into my mother’s neck.

The last thing I remembered was compelling the vampire to drain only the toxins and then to stop drinking from her. And then, the clouds darkened.

The world faded at the edges of my vision first until I saw only one thing.

A massive wolf towered over me, his eyes gleaming like two shimmering moons in the thick of his broad skull.

His jaws split open and the echo of his howl resonated around me, all-consuming.

But Fenrir, Loki’s son and the most feared creature in all the Nine Realms, didn’t attack me.

Because of this, I knew Loki's trial was complete, and I’d passed.