Page 13 of Vow of the Undead
The heavy door groaned as I pushed my way through. Shutting it behind me, I blocked the chill of night, and the goosebumps on my neck finally sank back into smooth skin.
Without a candle, I had to feel my way through the long hall, and when my eyes adjusted, I caught the dim light streaming out of the vast front room. The houses in Skaldir were one or two large rooms in an open space. Each area was split for privacy with beaded curtains, tapestries, and a few strung-up animal bones. The bones were extras we did not use to snap and create tools with which to hunt small animals and skin any larger ones we caught in traps.
The beads dangled on the other side of the opening to the front room, catching the flicker of the candle in the crystal blue glass.
I expected to turn the corner and step into the king’s presence, but I was met with the hard slap of an open palm. The slap wrenched my head to the side and threw me off balance.
I stumbled back, cupping my stinging cheek.
The force of the hit wasn’t unfamiliar. My father’s hand found my face whenever I dared defy royalty, whether it was whispering Freya’s name or even speaking my own, as if saying my name somehow conjured my powers as a witch.
“Foolish woman,” he spat. “What have you done?”
My heart stuttered. There was no way he knew about the bodies in the forest. They were so far from Skaldir, shrouded in darkness and soon to be buried in the snow where they’d remain. They would be frozen and hidden for months. But fear still struck me harder than his hand before the feeling quickly shifted to the same disgust carried in my father's voice.
“How weak and selfish do you have to be to call attention to yourself like that? Did you think of us? Did you think of Skaldir when you ran from the king?” His dark eyes flared. “Did you ever consider what would happen to the rest of us if they found out what you claim to be?”
Claim to be.
Claim to be.
I claimed nothing, I was only what I’d been born as. A seer, and a supposed threat to the king. And now? A murderer, too.
Disgust manifested as bile in my tightened throat.
“He was going to exile me,” I said between my teeth.
“No, he was going to kill you.” Breath left my lungs and sudden numbness swept over my body. I could no longer feel the dull ache from the wound on my cheek when he spoke again. “But I saved your life.”
Had King Drakkar taken to killing witches instead of exiling them?
My father turned and marched back to the chair at the center of the council hall. My mother had once said it resembled the throne the king sat on in Mara’s Keep. She’d visited Mara when I was a young child, having returned with curious news of the strange king before King Dakkar came to power. I’d always fantasized about what the king’s castle looked like after seeing the similar chair.
When my father turned and took a seat, I met his harsh gaze. I folded my arms, bracing for what he’d say next. What had he bargained for my life?
“You are to serve in the royal court of Mara for the remainder of your life.”
“No,” I breathed. My mother had told me stories of the servants in Mara’s Keep, dazed men and women who were never heard from again. Though, of course, this servitude was safer and more palatable than living in exile or a beheading.
“I suspect it will be more than working as a cook or a maid,” he muttered.
I opened my mouth to protest again, but stopped myself. This was my invitation to the king—to follow the Gods’ guidance.
The castle I’d seen in my vision must have been Mara’s Keep. Odin and Freya had paved the way for me, perhaps bargaining with the Norns, goddesses who determined our fates, to weave this into my life’s thread.
“And what if I collapse and he deems me unworthy of this service?” I asked. I willed my heart to slow, but of course, it did not obey. Laying bare my illness in front of my father was as foolish as it was humiliating.
My heart failed me every day, and he denied the pain I suffered as my legs and feet swelled, my hands were always cold, and exhaustion bore down on me heavily even after a decent night of sleep. The erratic pulse wasn’t like Dain’s severed foot after it’d turned black from frostbite. I didn’t wear it on my skin like the burns on Bjorn’s hands and arms.
Because my father could not see this suffering, he refused its existence. I was simply a disappointment.
Of course, he didn’t acknowledge what he could see either, not when my eyes first turned black from magic, and not when my fingertips became blue with lack of blood. More proof of this came when he didn’t so much as glance at the scabbed wound cutting across my cheek.
To my father, I wasn’t a witch, and I wasn’t suffering.
To me, I wasn’t really Silver. I’d never truly identified with the name my parents had thrust on me. Maybe because I justwanted to deny something he’d given me the way he denied who I truly was.
“You will manage,” he said, irritation lacing his voice.
