Page 88 of The Last Valkyrie

I nodded glumly, looking over my shoulder at him before standing. He wrapped me in a huge hug, protecting me with his size, and I noticed blood dripping from his arm where he had been sliced by a dark elf.

“You’re wounded,” I said.

“Nothing compared to your wounds, little sneak. I am so sorry.” Patting my head, he rested my cheek against his chest while I cried softly, my body shaking.

It was only then, looking out through blurry eyes, that I recognized the devastation outside my family’s longhouse.

Thane Canute stood stoically over the dead body of Gothi Sigmund like a statue, showing a ripple of anger on his flat face.

In another corner not far off, Hallan lay in a pile of his own guts, looked after by no one.

My entire family had been decimated over a single dinner.

Stepfather, dead.

Younger brother, dead.

Older brother, run off with the dark elves.

Mother, kidnapped.

Kidnapped by the man I once called a tutor and foster father.

My entire world, everything I had known before Vikingrune Academy, was crumbling before my eyes. I couldn’t fight back against the weight of sadness and helplessness that washed over me. It was too great a burden, too overwhelming.

All I could do was look to my mates to try and maintain some semblance of sanity. With my chin trembling, I took in their handsome faces, dirtied and bloodied from battle.

No one would leave this night unscathed. Death had come close to Arne with his sister, close to Magnus with Kelvar’s near-murder, close to Sven with his brother.

Now it had come for me, in all its twisted, macabre glory.

How did we not see it? How were we so unprepared?I didn’t even know what to think of Swordbaron Korvan and what he had become—what he had been all along.How did a shapeshifting dragonkin dark elf even get into Midgard?I vaguely wondered.The wards have only fallen recently, letting in portals from other realms, and yet he was watching me fordecades!

The answer came a moment later, another punch to my chest.

He was here all along. He didn’tarrive. . .

He never left.

Korvan must have been a holdover from the Taldan Wars, or the ilk of some nefarious Dokkalfar—from my paternal bloodline dating back a thousand years to Elayina’s sister, Syndriel, and the dragonkin Azerot the Wrathseeker. His own Dokkalfar ancestors must have eluded capture and managed to make lives in Midgard, plotting their revenge, biding their time while stealing the skin from other folk.

Turned out I wasn’t the last dragonkin after all.

If all of that was true, then Korvan—or whoever he truly was—had to be even more powerful and ancient than I realized. A true threat to our survival. Someone who could destroy Vikingrune and Midgard as a whole if we didn’t stop him.

He had my mother captive, and the gods only knew what he would be doing to her.

I cursed myself for being weak and cowardly. For not being able to stop him. For allowing Grim to pull me back, even if I knew he was right, deep in my heart, and that it would have only led to my death or some sort of mindshaped control over me.

We had been looking for a boogeyman this entire time: Who controlled the draug, who led the jotnar to our doorstep, who partnered with the Dokkalfar and showed them into the Isle?

Now we had found our man.

“V-Vini?” a voice chirped, scared and lonely.

I spun away from Grim, the familiarity of the voice making me jolt.

Anna stood on the edge of the clearing, tears running tracks down her muddy face. Her golden hair was grungy, blackened by soot and ash.

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