Page 11 of The Last Valkyrie

Yet my mind was oddly unfocused. I couldn’t see any enemies, and wondered if Gothi Sigmund’s intelligence had been mistaken.Perhaps the enemy avoided us and snaked deeper into the Isle right under our noses?There were a million possibilities.

Mostly, my distraction came from thinking of my mother, my dragonkin revelation, and the bigger revelation of Gothi Sigmund being a dragonkiller. It pushed my hate for him to new heights. After he’d broken his word once I opened the portal to Alfheim, my trust in him died. Now I felt I had to watch my back at every turn.

A thin fog swept through the lowest parts of the grassland valley about two hours before sunrise.

“Great,” I muttered, looking out into the gray. “Just what we need, a fogbank to roll in to make us charge blindly into the prairie.”

Other cadets were more perturbed. Whereas I saw a nuisance, they saw trickery.

Corym frowned, crossing his arms. “Similar to the mist we encountered when rescuing Elayina.”

I perked up from where I sat.Fuck. He’s right.

“Except that misthelpedus,” Sven said. “It guarded our six when we charged the dark elves from three directions.”

“Just like we’re planning on doing now, to whatever waits out there,” Arne added.

Our group fell silent. Heavy tension blanketed the camp as the fog slowly drifted into the trees, wrapping around branches like smoke.

“You think it’s magic, Corym?” I asked.

“Could be. Keep your wits about you, everyone.”

My jaw locked.

Then the first scream erupted from camp. So jarring in the silent night—so sudden—that all six of us jumped up from where we sat, startled.

My body went taut like an overextended rope in tug-of-war. I looked around at my men, eyes widening. “What the fuck was that?”

Another shriek, somewhere to the south.In the woods!

Torchlight puffed alive in pockets of trees behind us, from where we’d come from—notout in the plains where our attention was focused.

“Fucking Hel,” Sven growled, drawing his sword and shield.

“Form up, pack,” I ordered, taking the lead as our heads turned on a swivel to gaze into the dark patches of forest. “Shield wall!”

My men answered the call, grouping up with our backs to each other, forming a shoulder-to-shoulder ring.

Axel Osfen emerged from his tent, shield and axe drawn. Kelvar was behind him with his wicked daggers out.

“What’s going on?” Axel growled, bounding into our clearing.

“We aren’t sure, sir,” I said. “Someone screamed.”

“Two people,” Grim amended.

Axel stared out at our camp through the straight-trunked trees. “Are thosetorches? Fucking idiots!”

He made to move past us deeper into the camp—

Something made him stutter to a halt. Axel’s eyes veered to the ground, and we followed his gaze.

A pale hand wrapped around his boot, sprouted up from the ground like a gods-damn ghoul from a zombie movie.

Axel whispered, “What in the nine realms . . .”

A head burst through the soft dirt of the forest floor, a sickening wheeze croaking from a blackened, distended throat.

---