Page 5 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

W hen I came to only moments later, nobody was there. I was alone, suspended by the grip of something I couldn’t see. I narrowed my focus, gazing into the darkness until my eyes adjusted and I could make out the shapes that melted from the shadows like black clouds forming into a human.

It wasn't a boar’s mask and a lynx looking at me. In the pale light stood a man and woman dressed in fine clothing. They each held one of my arms to keep me upright. Like a doll, they propped me up with what seemed to be unusual strength.

These people dressed in royal finery were not only an oddity this far north and away from Mara, they were the last thing I expected to see in the forest.

Mara was the largest and most powerful village in Vylheim, nearly a kingdom of its own, though the king who sat on the only throne in the entire continent ruled over us all, every single villager from Skaldir, to Torsholt and Einnland, as well the other towns.

What would bring courtiers here ?

I stared, my mouth gaping, waiting to see if this vision would dissipate as easily as the mist crawling across the forest floor.

After a moment, I determined that not only were they real, they were a threat. They gripped my arms so tightly they could snap the bone beneath my reddened flesh with a mere flick of the wrist.

Without a word, they stepped forward and yanked me along beside them. My numb feet padded heavily as they forced me to walk with them.

Slowly, they picked through the forest, cutting a new trail to the south of where I’d run. With my throat still dry and my head spinning, I couldn’t conjure words. I merely wrenched my neck to scan the woman.

Had the executioners taken off their masks? Her eyes were a pale gold, not that of the deep brown I’d seen beneath both the boar’s mask and the lynx’s mask. Executioners also didn’t dress in finery with detailed embroidery.

My mind had been right the first time, these people truly were courtiers.

A shiver cut through me as the woman’s eyes flashed with a spark of red, like blood, before it vanished just as quickly. Her gaze raked over me as she dragged me alongside her.

“What do you want with me?” I asked. Shudders rippled through my breathless words.

This wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed shadows lurking alongside me, but they’d never come this close.

“You’ll know soon enough.” Her voice cracked like a frozen lake, the tone sending my heart into my stomach as if I were falling through the ice.

Every nerve in my body fired warnings at the sight of hunger and hatred mixing in her eyes. The sudden and sickening urge to attack her swelled in my mind. She hadn’t hurt me, or even threatened me, and yet I wanted to shove her away, hard .

This was more than the need for survival. Was it from fear? Or was this the darkest part of me itching to break free?

I tried to focus on studying her.

Curiosity prickled through the dizzying fear that twined around my heart like the mist at my feet. Everyone said giants and trolls, spirits and the undead didn’t exist, but neither did humans with gold eyes who could emerge from the darkness faster than a blink.

I scanned the shape of her cheekbones and the chestnut hair piled messily atop her head, noting her golden eyes again. It was a shade I’d never seen on anyone before. A shade my mother taught me was reserved for creatures damned by the Gods.

“You’ve followed me before haven’t you?” I refused to let them drag me along in silence. The man only laughed as the woman ignored me.

I could have screamed, but I’d strayed too far from the village. Running wasn’t an option, and fighting— No!

Even if I could hurt them, I wouldn’t, not unless it was absolutely necessary. I’d spent too long locking that vile part of me away, as if I could bury memories like a key in a hatch under the bed.

“Why grab me now?” I asked.

Her fingernails dug deeper and deeper. “Because now we know what you are.”

The man’s hand squeezed tighter as he shoved me forward so hard I slammed into the woman. She bared glistening white teeth at me. Anger flared in me as I tried to wrench away from them both.

If I dared stab him with the tip of the silver pendant weighing heavy in my pocket, I’d lose my head to an executioner’s blade.

All for a mere prick from the sharp edge of a necklace, a piece of jewelry my mother said represented the tree of Yggdrasil, and was purified with the power to cut through cruel humans and monsters.

Even if the undead couldn’t die, she said it could hurt anyone who defied the Gods.

The tree’s trunk was long and fashioned into a sharp tip while the top had only two split branches like arms reaching up to the Gods.

She’d called it my Y Tree, a silver pendant designed in the exact shape of the ancient king of Vylheim’s signature.

On the side, a small carving of his name was left in the same cut and style as on the runestones; Volrik the Rune King.

While the witches believed this shape was the tree of Yggdrasil, the king and his council claimed the ancient king used this shape to represent two choices. That it had nothing to do with the Gods and witches.

I couldn’t use it as a weapon. It’d be stripped away from me and I’d lose my chance to prove it matched the indent in the ancient runestones.

“And what are you ?” I demanded, staring into the woman’s strange eyes.

She only scoffed and yanked me forward.

A skip in my pulse told me these people who’d slunk out of the shadows as if their bodies had been molded from the darkness, were not human.

Monsters only existed in the sagas, but that was what the kings and leaders said about the Gods too, and I’d witnessed Freya and Odin’s visions in my own life.

Had it been a trick of the light or did they blend with the shadows the way undead did in the stories?

“Don’t look so pitiful,” she said. “We won’t hurt you.”

“Much,” the man added, as he came up behind me while his partner prodded me from the other side.

His breath brushed over the back of my neck.

“Silver Norn,” he said, his tone mocking.

“You can’t hide who you are. Did your parents think your name would spare you from us?

” A raspy laugh erupted from him, sending my blood boiling.

I hated that he taunted me, that he knew to bait this urge to attack them I had building inside of me .

Despite the woman’s hold on me, I spun around to face him. “You better hope I’ll spare you,” I spat.

The wicked side of me had slipped out.

“The wretched witch spat on me.” He stopped walking to put space between us.

Satisfaction spread like warm mead across my chest—the mark of someone disturbed.

The woman clucked her tongue as if she were a disapproving mother and I a child. “What a foolish girl. Don’t you know the executioners will have your head?” The woman’s fingernails slowly dug deeper into my flesh, splitting the skin apart in crescent slices.

I tried yanking away again, but when she only squeezed harder, the flood broke loose, the hatch unlocked, and my wickedness spilling out.

“I could say the same to you. You’re hurting me, and when the executioners find out, you’ll no longer have a tongue to speak.

They’ll brand your face with the death knots and then they’ll exile or behead?—”

“Shut up!” She cut me off. “Do you not recognize royal embroidery when you see it?” With her free hand she ran her palm down the front of her dress, the stitching intricate, obviously too detailed to be from a seamstress in Skaldir or any of the surrounding villages.

She thought she was untouchable. I’d never been to King Drakkar’s castle, but I heard rumors, tales that those who lived there didn’t answer to any of the same judgments held against the rest of the people of Vylheim.

Though I’d never heard of royals inciting violence, they’d skirted other crimes, like bribery, abduction, or breaking an oath.

These stories were merely nightmares, unreal to someone who lived their entire life in the distant village of Skaldir, weeks' travel from Mara where Mara’s Keep, the castle itself, housed the only throne in Vylheim.

Had King Drakkar sent them in case the executioners didn’t carry out their mission ?

“She doesn’t have a lick of sense,” the woman drawled with annoyance. To her partner she said, “Sten, are you so sure she’s the one?”

“Are her nasty little beetle’s eyes not enough proof for you, Astrid?” he said.

My stomach flipped. The enchantment had never faded before the next morning. Could he see through the magic? I eyed him as he toyed with a bronze ring that held a ruby jewel at the center of the thick band, emphasizing his wealth as a royal.

She glared at me, taking in the black apex of my eyes that’d spread like a perfect circle of spilled ink. She could see it too. “Hideous. We should scoop them out?—”

“So you do intend to hurt me,” I interrupted. The pendant weighed heavier and heavier in my pocket. “The king sent you after me?”

Astrid’s eyes flashed and, for a moment, our roles as predator and prey swapped. I knew the strange place in between fear and anger too well.

Was she afraid of me? Angry at the king? I couldn’t begin to understand it.

Perhaps they wanted to impress King Drakkar by bringing me before him, but that didn’t explain why shadows like them—moving too quickly and with inhuman eyes—had lurked at my heels since I was a young girl.

King Drakkar had only held the throne for seven years since he’d replaced King Roderic at only nineteen.

Both kings had been on a witch hunt my entire life, while skillfully denying we existed at all.

A king who looked like the warriors in our sagas was no different.

Just because he had long hair, wielded a weapon, and carried bloodlust in his eyes did not make him sympathetic to our history, to witches.

“Are you taking me to King Drakkar?” If so, everything would be easier. I could go with them without a fight and follow the vision .