Page 79 of Vow of the Undead
“Not even sweet wine? King Drakkar nearly swam in it.” When he wasn’t downing his vessel’s blood.
He shook his head. “No, but thank you for sharing. I’ve deprived myself of simple pleasures for so long. This guilt doesn’t allow me to enjoy…anything.”
I nodded, dropping my gaze to the wringing hands in my lap, because I knew he was describing my own fate. What he’d suffered all these years was coming for me next. I cleared my throat.
“I understand what it feels like to be unforgivable,” I said. He dragged his gaze up from my hands and over my torso, searching every inch of my face as if he were looking into a mirror, understanding himself as much as he was getting to know me. “Thank you for stopping King Drakkar.”
“You know if you accept Odin’s trial too, you’ll be free of him.”
“I’ll also have to cut down hundreds of people, and weren’t we just talking of guilt and shame?” My teeth chattered as the wind shifted and carried the fire’s warmth away from us.
He set the spoon on the rock and took my hand. He was surprisingly warm, like a living being, and I could almost trick myself into thinking he wasn’t one of the undead creatures who crawled through the sagas. “There is no shame in destroying monsters for the safety of your own realm.”
With his gentle hold, his thumb brushing over my fingers, I almost believed him.
My heart didn’t skitter at his touch. When I first met him, I’d felt the flutters of blossoming attraction, but everything I was feeling for him now was akin to quiet comfort because we understood each other.
In that understanding, there was a strange sense of safety that made me want to sink into him.
Instead, I blew out a slow breath, tempering the nerves that crawled up my insides as my thoughts shifted. Staring at the flames beneath the pot, I could no longer think of anything but my mother. The witch who’d dedicated her life to looking into the future for the protection of others. If only I had half the skill of a seerborn that she did, I wouldn’t have been chosen to kill.
When Kayn gave my hand a quick squeeze, I looked up at him. He released my hand and gazed at the fire. “You should start preparing for what Odin has asked of you. I can train you.”
I cursed under my breath, but it was cut short as an idea came to me. Perhaps we could both get what we wanted.
“First, we heal my mother,” I said. His brows lifted as I continued. Flames danced in his dark eyes as they sliced back to me. “I’ll unbury a vampire and then compel them to pullthe toxins from her blood.” My gaze drifted to the graves. Light rain fell in scattered drops, dotting the headstones with dark gray spots.
A different shade of shame twisted my gut. Even if I wanted to become a killer, I didn’t know how. I was chosen by the Gods, a seerborn, and yet I still didn’t understand what they wanted from me. I’d misunderstood Freya’s trial, and no doubt would Loki’s be trickier.
Choosing me had to be a mistake.
Or maybe that was just the selfish side of me rearing like an angry horse again. I didn’t want any of this. I was meant to be a seer like my mother, a protector of witches.
This was…different, darker. Dark enough to match the wickedness I’d locked away, the pieces of me that kept others at a distance from me. Not Silver—me.The person only my mother would acknowledge, and since she was taken from me ten years ago, I’d been alone in this.
“Okay,” Kayn said. “Now you just need to learn how.”
Learn how? How was I supposed to learn to wake a creature I’d only just discovered existed? I knew of vampires from the sagas, but I’d thought they were realms away, or relics of the past, not rulers of Vylheim. And now, I was being asked, by both Kayn and the Gods, to learn how to compel them, to wake them, and to destroy them.
My tongue became heavy in my dry mouth as I worked up to a confession. I shook my head and swallowed through the thickness. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
My heart skipped.
I’m here, my mother’s last words before the Grimward dragged her away. She’d placed her hands over my eyes, reminding me her magic covered me and that my sight as a seer might give me a glimpse of her whenever I needed to see her again. It rarely worked, but I was grateful for the glimpsesI’d had, and the spreading blackness in my eyes to keep tabs on her life.
Kayn stood and offered me his hand. “I’ll piece it together with you.”
Though the rain extinguished the last of the fire, warmth coated me. I accepted his hand and he pulled me to my feet, before leading me through the steady rain to the graves.
Kayn was nothing like the other monsters. He’d stopped King Drakker. He’d admitted the horrible act he’d committed—something I wasn’t even willing to do to myself.
He may have had his own goal at the end of my Calling, but something about his willingness to help me understand it and learn it with him comforted me. Nobody had been willing to slow down and hear me out since my mother. He not only heard the plea behind my confession, he offered to work through the lack of knowledge and training with me.
With my hand in his, I wasn’t doing this alone.
Cold droplets beat down on my bare head as I followed in Kayn’s wake. Water sloughed off his broad shoulders where the animal fur blocked it from soaking the fabric beneath.
