Page 7 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

N ight passed shrouded in shame. When the next day descended into all-encompassing darkness and early snow dotted the ground in crystal white, I finally dragged myself back to the edge of the village.

Nearly two days had passed before I could bring myself to show my face in Skaldir again.

I’d just shed blood, royal blood. No, worse, I’d murdered two people. Their limp bodies and unseeing eyes filled every corner of my mind.

Their deaths confirmed they weren’t the monsters I suspected. They must have been people from Mara’s royal court who sought to drag me before the king after I’d ran from his guards.

Monsters didn’t drop dead so easily, and neither Astrid nor Sten looked like the beasts of rotted-flesh that the sagas described. I’d practiced in the dugout to fight and kill creatures like that, not people, but I’d let out the evil I kept beneath the surface.

My twisted darkness had once again emerged, twenty years after I’d buried it and had sworn I’d never let myself do something so unforgivable again.

They had to be people because now they were dead.

There was no escape from this memory no matter how deep in the forest I’d left them behind, or how far I walked. All I could do now was hope to follow the Gods’ guidance so I could forget myself in pursuit of what they wanted.

And what they wanted was for me to surrender to the king who’d come to kill me.

I paced the edge of the forest just behind the rotted ash tree. Beyond the trees, Skaldir was quiet. No screams rang out from the executioner’s punishments, and no shouts of glory nor echoes of celebration filled the air.

The autumnal revelry had been cut short by King Drakkar as much as the now falling snow.

“What can the king do for me?” I whispered as if the Gods could answer now. Even a witch had to sacrifice a piece of herself to hear them.

Perhaps if Midgard was closer to where they resided in Asgard, it’d be easier for them to reach us, but the Nine Realms spread vastly across Midgard’s sky, with Jotunheim separating us.

The realm of giants and trolls, battle and chaos.

No wonder it was so hard to hear Freya’s voice or see through Odin’s eye.

Come to me. I recalled the words I’d understood from the vision.

If I went before King Drakkar, how would I survive? I had to live at least long enough to honor the Gods so Hel could not drag my soul to the depths of the underworld where I’d never feast with Odin or roam in peace with Freya.

But survival at the king’s hands made no sense. Especially after I’d killed.

Steadily, snowflakes gathered on the ground, blanketing the patchy brown and gold leaves in white. Autumn had ended as quickly as it’d begun, which meant Vylheim was in for a dangerously long and dark winter. I shuddered, but not from the cold .

I’d killed. I’m corrupt. Broken. Evil.

Evil.

Evil.

Evil

My stomach twisted, and I wrenched my thoughts away from the darkness that stirred within me.

If I didn’t focus on one thing at a time, my thoughts would descend into a spiral of madness where this incessant dwelling would overcome me.

I’d be left paralyzed, incapable of following the vision that fluttered with hope in my heart.

My muscles had already stiffened and my heart skipped painfully.

This was my chance to find my mother.

According to the Gods, he was my chance to free her.

Was it certain death? The king stood at the helm of the system that exiled my mother for being a witch.

If he knew I was both a witch and a killer, spilling my blood wouldn’t be a waste at all.

It’d be a glorious message for all of Vylheim to witness.

And yet, the Gods had answered.

I was to go to him. If I did not, if I ran like I had when I hid under the hatch in the floorboards…

I shook my head, disgust coiling in my gut like sour mead. I would do this. I would do this because it was the clearest vision I’d had since my mother was taken from us ten years ago, just when I’d grown from a child into a young woman.

I ran my palm down the rough trunk where the bark was stripped and peeling and black. If I touched the tree of victory long enough, perhaps I’d gather the courage to force my feet forward. I’d march out into the village and track down King Drakkar, wherever he’d taken up camp.

Memory of his warrior’s stance and fixed stare sent uneasy flutters through me.

He’d been fixated on me and only me, with a smile and the lift of his brows.

Heat crawled up my neck at the memory. I forced a breath out and palmed my chest. I hated him.

He was the man responsible for ripping my mother away from me, not the warrior I dreamed of no matter how he knotted his hair or carried his weapon.

I sucked in a breath of icy air so quickly it felt sharp in my throat. The shock of the cold sent away the shameful heat gathering within me every time I thought of the king’s eyes on me.

Perhaps it wasn’t so terrible for me to want to see him again since it was the Gods leading me to him.

In the vision, King Drakkar said he had what I sought, but that was the Gods speaking through the image of the king. Maybe they wanted me to track him because the runestone with the image of the witch could be with the records stored at Mara’s Keep.

I had to prove that witches were more than the Gods’ vessels.

If she wasn’t a threat to the king’s beliefs, he’d have no reason to keep her in exile, and in a world bound by honor, he’d have to honor the truth.

This truth was a piece of lost history, a saga that spoke of the first witch, a woman who served the ancient king of Vylheim until his dying breath.

The saga shifted and altered from the mouths of hundreds over the years, twisting to claim the witch had Odin smite the king.

But my mother’s visions said otherwise. The witch was loyal and I had the Y Tree to prove it. My mother had sacrificed hundreds of plants, burning them for glimpses of these details.

If I found the original runestone with the saga and the indent to fit the Y Tree—the ancient king’s signature—then King Drakkar would have no choice but to acknowledge that witches existed, and that we were capable of both believing the Gods and recognizing human authority.

We weren’t a threat.

We were capable of keeping peace. All we wanted was to come out of hiding, to honor the Gods, and to share the history the people of Vylheim had forgotten .

Even the king and his council were bound by tradition.

I finally emerged from behind the tree, tapping the scab where Sten had cut a wound across my cheek. I never saw what kind of weapon he’d wielded, but it would scar my skin all the same.

Stalking through the quiet village, I noted no changes. No blood stained the ground. No royal camps were set up in the fields. Everything remained the same except for my home.

While other houses were dark, a candle flickered in the window.

I surveyed it. Had they waited up, hoping for me to return? Or would the king be asleep in my fathers’ bed while he and his wife took to the furs on the floor?

The heavy door groaned as I pushed my way through. Shutting it behind me, I blocked the chill of night, and the goosebumps on my neck finally sank back into smooth skin.

Without a candle, I had to feel my way through the long hall, and when my eyes adjusted, I caught the dim light streaming out of the vast front room.

The houses in Skaldir were one or two large rooms in an open space.

Each area was split for privacy with beaded curtains, tapestries, and a few strung-up animal bones.

The bones were extras we did not use to snap and create tools with which to hunt small animals and skin any larger ones we caught in traps.

The beads dangled on the other side of the opening to the front room, catching the flicker of the candle in the crystal blue glass.

I expected to turn the corner and step into the king’s presence, but I was met with the hard slap of an open palm. The slap wrenched my head to the side and threw me off balance.

I stumbled back, cupping my stinging cheek.

The force of the hit wasn’t unfamiliar. My father’s hand found my face whenever I dared defy royalty, whether it was whispering Freya’s name or even speaking my own, as if saying my name somehow conjured my powers as a witch .

“Foolish woman,” he spat. “What have you done?”

My heart stuttered. There was no way he knew about the bodies in the forest. They were so far from Skaldir, shrouded in darkness and soon to be buried in the snow where they’d remain.

They would be frozen and hidden for months.

But fear still struck me harder than his hand before the feeling quickly shifted to the same disgust carried in my father's voice.

“How weak and selfish do you have to be to call attention to yourself like that? Did you think of us? Did you think of Skaldir when you ran from the king?” His dark eyes flared. “Did you ever consider what would happen to the rest of us if they found out what you claim to be?”

Claim to be.

Claim to be.

I claimed nothing, I was only what I’d been born as. A seer, and a supposed threat to the king. And now? A murderer, too.

Disgust manifested as bile in my tightened throat.

“He was going to exile me,” I said between my teeth.

“No, he was going to kill you.” Breath left my lungs and sudden numbness swept over my body. I could no longer feel the dull ache from the wound on my cheek when he spoke again. “But I saved your life.”

Had King Drakkar taken to killing witches instead of exiling them?

My father turned and marched back to the chair at the center of the council hall.

My mother had once said it resembled the throne the king sat on in Mara’s Keep.

She’d visited Mara when I was a young child, having returned with curious news of the strange king before King Dakkar came to power.

I’d always fantasized about what the king’s castle looked like after seeing the similar chair.