Page 89 of The Last Valkyrie

My old childhood friend held an empty bucket in her hand, and the irony of it brought new tears to my eyes. There had been a time, shortly before I left for Vikingrune, when Anna and I had gone to draw water together from a well. We had joked, teased, and laughed as we skipped our way back home, talking about men in her life and what I would do once I was accepted to the academy.

A simpler time, though I considered it a hellscape back then.

Now she held the same bucket. But it hadn’t been used to quench her family’s thirst. It had undoubtedly been used to help put out a fire—perhaps one that razed her family’s longhouse to the ground.

And it’s all my fault for bringing the destruction here, following me like a specter on a ghost trail.No matter where I went, I couldn’t escape devastation and death.

“Anna,” I croaked, rushing to her.

We embraced fiercely, and she sobbed in my arms, breaking. She seemed so small and frail now. She always had been a slight woman, yet I had become muscular and stalwart in my time away, while she had seemed to waste away.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I told her, taking her to arm’s length.

“What’s . . . what’s happening, Vini? What’sgoingto happen?”

I brushed tears from her eyes with my thumb. “I’m afraid I don’t know, hun. I just . . . don’t know.”

I wouldn’t lie to her. She didn’t need to know the gritty details of everything transpiring on the Isle. I wished I could have given her some solace, some recognition that I had things in hand. But I was just as lost as she was.

“Who are these men?” she asked me, motioning with her chin over my shoulder.

I gave her a sad smile, though it didn’t reach my eyes. “I took your advice, Anna. I found me some men worth fighting for. Men who fight forme.”

Sniffling, Anna nodded and gave me an equally sad smile.

“Your family?” I asked. “How do they fare?”

“We’re all alive. Most the villagers are. Klein took a sword in the neck and died protecting his daughter and grandson. Old curmudgeon went out the way he wanted, in battle. Another family was crushed when their burning longhouse fell on them in their sleep. Better than dying from fire, I think.”

My heart was so damned heavy, I didn’t know if it would ever fully repair. This was too much grief for me to handle, and I’d never been good at handling it anyway.

“Screw my family, Vini, what in Hel is going on with yours?!” Anna’s gaze drifted over to my stepfather’s corpse, thankfully facing down in the mud atop his pile of entrails. “Your stepfather . . .”

I sighed heavily. “Can’t say he didn’t have it coming.”

She gulped loudly, nodding at my macabre jest. “Damon and Eirik foughtagainst you! I saw it! And your poor mother. Oh gods!”

As she began to cry anew, I cradled her head in my chest and hummed a low sound, trying to quiet her hysterics. “I know, love. I know.”

“What c-can I do to help?”

I pulled her out again, examining her filthy face and crestfallen eyes. “You can live, Anna. Please, live, and I’ll return.”

“There!”

The voice shocked me, coming from Sven.

I wheeled, seeing him pointing at the sea—

Where a ship with an unfurled yellow sail crested around the side of the peninsula and drifted toward the fjord that would lead out of Selby . . .

. . . And back to the Isle.

The dark elves must be on that ship!

“Fuck!” Grim bellowed, a guilty look on his face.

“Love, what is it?” I asked, squeezing Anna’s hand one more time before running over to him.

---