Page 49 of Vow of the Undead
From tracking King Drakkar I learned it wasn’t his blood that I would follow. Rarely would a king—or anyone in Vylheim—bleed unless they were involved in an accident. I didn’t have to wait around for the king to slip up and the guard to slash him.
The blood he left behind was likely from his victims, whether he devoured their flesh and tasted their blood, or he simply ripped them to shreds and absorbed their life to continue his existence. Could this be when he was most vulnerable?
His claim rolled over in my head. He’d said he was starving. Even humans grow weak and touchy when they haven’t eaten. For a monster, I could only imagine this was magnified, because the sagas hinted that the undead were never satiated. Never truly alive. Never fully dead.
I already knew the time to track him down. He fed just before dawn, confirmed by Stasia’s warning.
Now I needed to know which shadows King Drakkar dragged his prey into to feed on them.
None of it completed a coherent picture. How would the king’s appetite for human flesh give me the runestone that proved witches didn’t deserve exile?
I could turn this question on every side. I could mull on it for hours and still come to no conclusion other than that I had to trust the vision.
Seers trusted their visions; they trusted themselves. But I’d been lying to myself for my entire life…
I shook that off and squeezed my eyes shut. That didn’t matter right now. I only needed to focus on one thing; where the undead king killed his victims.
The stress of sneaking and running left me bed bound for too many hours. Laying awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if King Drakkar, or my captor, or any number of Draugr would come to devour me.
Stasia’s sack of flour reference was more than accurate. My legs swelled to puffy tree trunks and weighed about as much. Even rolling over left me breathless and my pulse racing.
I was used to my body shutting down, but not while surrounded by monsters.
If nothing else, the hours gave me enough time to think, and since I had plenty of information to mull over, I skirted on the edge of nerves, never sinking into a spiral of dwelling.
Astrid and Sten were undead which meant I couldn’t have killed them, and yet, they’d collapsed with unblinking eyes. The only explanation I came to relied on the silver, though I never thought the Y Tree was truly silver since pure metals were unheard of across Vylheim. True silver and gold were said to be cursed, weapons against Draugr, but the only saga to mention the undead was also part of the historythat’d been lost. We didn’t have the details about what it meant to wield a weapon against a creature that was neither alive nor dead.
I decided that though they were undead, it was thanks to the purity of the Y Tree that I destroyed them. It was the only thing that made sense.
That left me with one impossible question. Why had King Drakkar allowed me to keep it?
This catapulted me into a hundred other thoughts that needed answers. I had no clue what an undead king would want with a human bride, or how these creatures came to be on the throne, courtiers, and members of the king’s council. I’d sensed a threat in the cold stares of the courtiers, but I never expected soulless monsters.
At least one question was answered.
Now I knew why the shadows followed me. They wanted to tear me apart and use my life to fuel their existence, though that didn’t explain why they’d only lurked atmyheels. What about the thousands of other lives in Vylheim from which to draw life?
A shudder cut through me. I didn’t wish this curse on anyone else. I didn’t. Truly, I wasn’t that selfish.
Evil.
Selfish.
Ugh!
The door creaked open and my heart caught in my throat. I rolled my head to the side—without getting dizzy. I didn’t breathe until Stasia’s cherub face appeared. Sliding my eyes shut for a moment, I exhaled as slowly as possible to stop my pulse from running away.
The thumping in my chest slowed to an off-rhythm ticking.
As Stasia bustled about the room, carrying a new deep magenta dress, and a cup of fresh water, I tested my recovery by lifting my heavy arm. When the effort didn’t send my hearthammering again or sweep my breath away, I dragged my legs to the edge of the bed and sat up.
“Finally,” I whispered.
“Seriously,” she said, shaking her head. She set the cup down on the table beside my bed then spun and hung the dress over the cabinet next to my original clothing. “You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness for hours, but I couldn’t find a single bite on you. Also, my concoction of nettle, dandelion, and dark greens in broth barely helped, which really threw me. Usually that works. Trust me when I say I know my food.”
I blinked at her. “A bite?” The Draugr had not sunk their teeth into me, yet. “From what?” I shook my head. “Wait, when did I eat?”
“Like I said, you were really out of it.” She spoke as she smoothed out the bottom of the new dress. The lace beneath the overlay of silky fabric didn’t want to lay flat. “I propped your head up and had you take sips whenever you were half awake.”
