Page 121 of Vow of the Undead
“Silver?” I said.
Her lips spread into a grin and her knuckles went whitearound the blade in her hand. She kept it low and her body in King Drakkar’s shadow.
Perhaps this was all a trick that I couldn’t wrap my mind around. I’d learned so much truth, the vampires, pieces of the lost history, that the Gods I’d always believed in were real and active, and yet I was still left in the dark. Seeking truth and understanding was an endless quest.
Silver angled the blade with the tip up. It wouldn’t kill King Drakkar so why…?
“Lux!” Drak begged. “I can’t move, but you can.”
My mind caught up with his words and my heart, skipping and dancing, pushed cold blood through my veins. As Silver stepped forward, I knew based on the bloodthirsty look flashing in her eyes that she wasn’t focusing on Drak, she had her gaze fixed on me.
Silver wanted to kill me.
I didn’t stop to dwell on the reason, or how we’d come to this moment. Before she could thrust the blade into my gut, I dropped back and fell into a crouch. I yanked the fabric of my skirts out of the way and, breaking the chain, pulled the stake free. In one fist, I held the pendant, and wrapped my other hand around the stake.
In the moments that followed, chaos erupted. The vampires must have seen the blade and understood my sister’s intentions because Astrid was upon us and shouts rang out.
Silver bent forward and brought the dagger down in an arc. I swung the stake to intercept her arm as it dropped toward me. The force of the impact knocked the dagger from her hold and she shrieked.
Someone grabbed my veil and yanked me back, having gathered it and pulled it tightly against my throat. I fell back on my tailbone and Astrid pinned me to the floor, her knees on my shoulders.
“Do it!” Astrid screamed.
My sister scrambled for the blade but Ylva and Darius anda blur of a dozen other faces filled in the space around the throne. The distraction must have broken her control over the king because he swung a fist at Darius who barreled into him.
Ylva kicked the blade from my sister’s reach as Silver shouted. “I have to kill her!” The first words I’d heard my sister utter in twenty years were about my death. “I am queen.”
“That wasn’t the bargain we made with you, witch,” Ylva said as she gripped my sister’s throat. I didn’t know why she didn’t control her, or if she even could right now, but Silver only continued screaming about being queen.
“I will lead the vampires to victory! Astrid, tell them—” Her voice cut off. Ylva must have squeezed harder.
Astrid was too distracted with ripping the stake from my fingers and launching it away from me. It slammed into the throne and clattered to the ground where Silver had stood. Astrid’s fangs were exposed and her eyes red as she grabbed my now empty hand and brought my wrist to her mouth. The sharp ends sliced through the thin skin over the veins in my arm. With the pendant still in my fist, I twisted the tip to face out and smashed it against her cheek.
Suddenly, her weight lifted off of me and I scrambled to my feet. King Drakkar, having knocked Darius unconscious, threw Astrid away from me as easily as she’d thrown the stake. She fell face down against the stone floor. None of the other vampires dared approach the king now that he wasn’t under Silver’s compulsion.
Free now, I dashed to the stake and swept it off the ground. It was a weak reassurance in my aching grip.
“You can’t kill Lux,” Ylva hissed as she released Silver. The vampire woman went rigid, having been rendered immovable the same way my sister had controlled the king. “If you kill her, the first witch will use her body to resurrect. Even you can’t match the power of the first witch. Silver!”
Silver didn’t listen and she slunk toward me, her shouldersmashing into Ylva as she passed her. Her gleaming eyes fixed on me and she didn’t so much as blink when Ylva shrieked at her.
“Stop her!”
“You’ll thank me later,” Silver retorted.
Astrid lunged at the king again, and with his attention fixed on me, she caught him off guard. He stumbled, shouting for me as he righted himself and turned to face her.
“Lux, run!” King Drakkar’s voice was muffled from the pulse thudding in my ears and the haze of fixation I had on my sister. She wanted to kill me, and could I blame her after what I’d done to her?
Saving her was never going to free me from the darkness.
I adjusted my grasp around the stake, my fingers suddenly tingling. I gripped it tighter, keeping it angled out in case any vampires approached me. I’d been ready to destroy King Drakkar once I knew my sister was alive, but it wasn’t until now, when I recognized the truth within me that Odin granted me this gift; strength.
A shriek jolted me from the stupor and I snapped my attention to it. Astrid attacked the king but he tossed her away, and I saw my opening. The crowd was slowly parting as if to create another aisle for the bride to walk down. From the chaos where some of the guests stood and gaped while others ran, Kayn emerged.
But not the Kayn, I knew. Not Kayn with his hood up, sneaking through the shadows.
He wasn’t wearing his cape at all.
