Page 80 of The Last Valkyrie

Ravinica

THANE CANUTE BELLOWEDan earth-shattering cry, launching to his feet. He flipped the table as everyone shot up and out so they wouldn’t get hit by flying wood or plates.

Everyone at this table had been trained to act on a moment’s notice. There was only time for a single breath before I was on my feet—

And Korvan grabbed my arm before I could scuttle away.

“Time to go, my dear.”

Still in shock, I instinctively moved to defend myself, throwing his hand off me and facing him.

In the time it took for the table to upend and all the food and bowls to go flying, Korvan hadchanged.

I was looking at a stranger. Gone was the firmness of his face, the appraising smile when I did a battle maneuver correctly, the stern glower when I failed. Replacing it all was a face black as midnight, silver-black hair down to his shoulders, piercing ruby eyes, and thosefuckingears.

“Shapeshifter!” Hallan wailed.

Before I could gasp, Grim shouted, “Ravinica!” and threw himself across the overturned table at this stranger.

But Korvan was no longer there. He had simply vanished, and I wheeled around as Grim took his place next to me—

To find the Swordbaron at the foot of the table, behind Lindi, a blade pointed at her throat.

“NO!” I screamed in a hoarse voice.

The dark elf’s sinister grin grew from ear to ear, making him an unhinged, dark lord of madness. Ma was frozen in shock in front of him, tight as a stretched band with his blade an inch from her neck.

“I’ve sired many spawn, but you’re the only useful one,” Korvan said to me. Close to Ma’s ear, he said, “You were always my favorite human, Lindi.”

Villagers shouted around the table, fleeing in a mad rush, just catching wind of what had happened to Gothi Sigmund.

My jaw dropped at Korvan’s admission.

That’s when I noticed the bent of his handsome jaw—so similar—and the tilt of his brow. The hair . . . silver with streaks of black.

In the past, I had assumed the streaks of black running through my own hair were the human muddling of my elven blood. Then after the Runesphere showed me what I was, I assumed they were remnants of my dragonkin lineage marring the elven part of me.

The truth rushed into me, buckling my knees. If Sven and Grim hadn’t been right next to me to hold me up, I would have collapsed.This man, this human man I had always thought of as a father because I never had one . . . actuallyismy father.

Thane Canute rushed Korvan, gods be damned if he was holding my mother hostage or not. Magnus and Corym tried to stop him, but the huge one-eyed brute bowled them over with his enormous shield, crackling energy sending my mates flying in different directions.

Korvan snarled, stamped his foot on the ground, and roared at the incoming stampede of steel and flesh, holding Lindi between them. Black wings sprouted from his shoulders, wet and scaled, shimmering in the torchlight. He beat the air once,twice, displacing the wind and momentarily stopping Canute’s heedless charge.

Gods above, a shapeshifter, dark elf,anddragonkin?! What the fuckisthis guy?!

“You’re the only one worth keeping, Ravinica,” Korvan shouted, no more than ten feet from me. “Join me.”

His words wormed their way into my brain like a black widow’s web, the sting of a scorpion to my heart.

I clenched my jaw and fought back with everything I had, closing off the doorway of my mind and stonewalling the mindshaped invasion I recognized from Kelvar the Whisperer’s tactics. “M-Monster! Let my mother go!” I wailed, and started to move toward him while drawing my spear.

He let out a frustrated sound, noticing I had fought him off and he was sorely outnumbered. “Then she’ll have to do well enough.”

Eirik and Damon drew their steel, closer to Korvan than I was.

“Release my mother, foul beast!” Eirik yelled, stepping to the shapeshifter.

Korvan lifted his free hand from around Lindi’s shoulder, and with a simple twist of his wrist both my brothers paused in mid-action like they were frozen.

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