Page 121 of The Last Valkyrie

I wanted to wake up from the dream now.

“You’re not real,” I said, my voice little more than a whimper. “None of this is.”

“Yet your fate is entirely real, cub.” His voice was how I remembered from my youth: instructive, decent, proud. “As is your mother’s.”

Anger shot through my stomach, flexing my muscles. I raised a fist at him and instinctively looked for my spear on my back, but it wasn’t there.

Fucking Hel, I realized.Nothingwas there. I was naked.

With shame and guilt speeding through me, I barred my breasts and took a step away from Korvan.

“You look like her, you know,” he said, eyeing my nude form.

Why does he have to look human and normal when he stares at me like that?I would’ve much rather had the dark elf dragonkin be the figure I saw in my vision. The man I hated.

Loathing filled me. “Shut the fuck up, you monster!”

I wanted to beat my fist into his face—shatter him into a million dreamlike fragments.

“You are the One Who Flew,” Korvan said.

The next moment, with a blink, my wings were out. The waterfalls behind me seemed to grow in volume, as if the Norns were stringing my fate along, guiding me and telling me they were enjoying this new state I’d found myself in.

That’s it, I thought.The Norns.

Urd, Verdandi, Skuld. Past, present, future.

“We could rebuild our bloodline, if you’d only join me in thefuture,” he said.

He emphasized the last word interestingly.

It was a clue.

But all I could do was resist the bile rising in my throat, keeping nausea from buckling my knees at his words—his crude suggestion.

The truth dawned on me in his eyes. They lookedhopeful, this egotistical, disgusting bastard.

Making an over-the-rainbow gesture with his hand swiping through the air, he said, “Picture it. Dragons could fly the lands of Midgard again. A full thunder of them.”

I understood his purpose now, and why he was holding Lindi over me.

My words came out savagely, a hound’s bark. “You’re myfather, you sickening prick!” And he was talking of breeding me to prolong ourbloodline?

He laughed at that, and his face seemed to shimmer like a mirage—like he was having trouble keeping the pale mask of humanity in my dream. His demonic side wanted to break free.

“You humans have a simple understanding of birth and procreation. Think of the power we could share.” His shoulders rose in a shrug. “What else am I to do, when you’re the only one left,Ser’karioth? You are the last of us, as you so love to tell people. I refuse to allow our blood to die off.”

Korvan gave a bored sigh, looking away. “There was your half-sister, but she never manifested, sadly. Besides”—his gazenarrowed wickedly on me, coupled with a grin—“you made sure to end her.”

No!I wanted to cry out. I could only think of one other half-blood I’d known.

Astrid Dahlmyrr.

It couldn’t be true. There was nowayshe could have been my half-sister!

And yet, part of me felt the ragged truth at the edges of my conscience. In my dreamland, there were no lies.

Tomekeeper Dahlia had never treated Astrid with respect—barely even acknowledged her existence here at the academy. It wasn’t until Astrid’s death that Dahlia began to act crestfallen that her daughter was gone, and started to make moves against me and my men.

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