Page 56 of Vow of the Undead
As I continued, time stretched on.
I followed the snaking hall with the only sound coming from my groaning stomach. I scolded myself for leaving the cinnamon pears behind. I hadn’t touched the food, and by the time I made it to the end of this hallway, a door, anything, I would be another year old. I’d have wasted away but not from famine alone.
This doorless path felt more like a trick, an illusion to get curious villagers lost. Perhaps it led to the council so that lost stragglers could be taken for feeding once they came upon the council of vampires, because if they tried to run, there was nowhere to go but straight back toward the throne room.
Finally, the hall came to an intersection leading left and right. I stopped, carefully scanning for another speck of blood.
Nothing told me which direction to go, not Freya’s vision, not a hint of where King Drakkar had gone. No blood.
If I failed now, in the heart of the trial, I would not have another chance. The Dawn of Exploration was set to begin in a few weeks and my mother was slipping away much sooner.
I closed my eyes before panic surged.
My chest tightened and air was harder to come by. The ground seemed to shift and sway beneath my feet and I knew if I dared peel my eyes open, black spots would prick my sight. Little by little my nerves frayed like the torn hem of an unraveled dress.
I crouched with my hand on the wall to steady me even inthis hunched position. The stone floor still rocked beneath my feet, threatening to topple me.
Tipping my legs forward, I dropped my head to my knees. I curled in on myself in the empty hall, praying to the Gods that no monster came upon me in my moment of panic.
With my head spinning, I forced slow breaths. One after another, after another. The single moment stretched and every minute that passed tugged the trial further and further from my reach.
I couldn’t break down now. I didn’t track the passage of time, but some of these attacks of the nerves lasted beyond an hour before I became stable enough to resume cutting the wheat, or following the other gatherers out of the forest, or facing my father after I embarrassed him by placing last in a footrace.
But I wasn’t in Ragna’s field with the faces of those who died last winter haunting me. I wasn’t foraging wild berries in the forest outside Skaldir and spotting a shadow with flaming eyes.
I was finally following a full vision.
One that would eventually lead me to my mother.
Drawing a breath through my nose, I smelled nothing but the rosemary soap lingering from my own hair. I tasted a hint of sweet wine left on my tongue. Feeling the rough stone wall, I held my breath and listened for any sound.
Muted conversation came from behind me.Finally.
My eyes popped open and I straightened. Fully standing, I tested my steadiness with one step into the hall on the left. Panic still quickened my pulse, but I remained upright as I slowly shuffled toward the voices.
I’d finally reached a stretch of doors that peppered both sides of the hall.
It wasn’t until I was outside the door where a wild voice full of venom drifted that I recognized Ylva’s tone. I reachedfor the handle but thought better of it. Marching into a meeting in a room filled with vampires left my blood chilled.
Was this really his most vulnerable moment?
I didn’t have time to think about it when the door handle dropped. I backed away but not fast enough. When King Drakkar emerged and spotted me in his path, the heavy door fell shut with a slam behind him, and I froze.
His chest heaved as we stood face-to-face. “Are you following me, wife?”
He certainly didn’t look vulnerable. Instead, he was self-assured, powerful, dripping with the kind of strength I could only fantasize about from the warriors in my favorite sagas.
I said nothing, but a curl of satisfaction trickled through me. I’d found him, even if this wasn’t the end of the trial. And when he called me by my future title, it left my veins buzzing.
“It’s late,” his voice was as rough as stone and his eyelids hung heavy and half-lidded. It was the same look I’d seen on so many friends and family, villagers who ran out of food in the dead of winter, pure and desperate hunger. Until branches of scarlet slowly stretched across the icy blue center of his eyes
My breath hitched.
I’d never seen a monster’s eyes shift gradually, they’d always flashed red. When he blinked, the scarlet lines vanished, but only for a moment. Jagged branches grew longer and wider, gradually bathing the blue in blood red.
He dipped closer to me, his face only a breath away. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Was this the moment of vulnerability? After attacking a man for merely calling me rude? After being scolded by his own council?
