Page 83 of Vow of the Undead
“How? He’s stronger, even, than King Drakkar.”
Stasia sighed. “You just woke up from a fitful sleep sweating like a hog and yet you’re full of questions.”
With that, she snatched the bowl from my hands and spun around. I dragged my feet to the edge of the benchand, on wobbling legs, shuffled across the temple to sit beside my mother. Her chest rose and fell with soft but steady breaths. She’d fallen back asleep, her body still fighting whatever sickness had poisoned her blood. A rosy hue had returned to her skin and the hollow of her cheeks filled in. She’d been eating.
I smiled as I brushed a wisp of hair from her face. She was better, but not cured.
“You’re okay,” a deep voice said.
I looked up to see Kayn having appeared on the other side of my mother. Orange light of the candle’s flames brightened his dark eyes. Though his features didn’t match the hardened line of King Drakkar’s mouth and his chin was cut clean of hair—without a thick beard like the king’s—the golden rim in his eyes and persistent behavior reminded me of the king.
“So is she,” I said, resting my hand on my mother’s bony shoulder. “But Stasia says it’s not for long. What happened to the vampire I raised?”
When he nodded, a strand of wheat hair fell into his face. “She’s gone, yes. I couldn’t stop her, even she had more recently fed on a human than I have. And she was newly turned, she doesn’t—” He shook his head.
“Now what? I raise another monster to suck this sickness out of her? And then another?”
“Now you face Odin’s trial.”
Stiffening, I frowned and searched his face for any indication of what he was about to reveal. “I’m a seer, not a huntress. I protect, I don’t hurt?—”
“That isn’t true” my mother said, her voice slight.
My stomach dropped.
Her eyes were still sealed shut, but her hand shifted, slowly moving across her chest to her shoulder where she found my hand. She held onto me, her grip firmer than I expected. But I wasn’t surprised that my mother was the strongest person I’d ever known. Even in sickness and after two vampire bites, shegrasped my fingers tightly enough to prove she was as tenacious as ever.
“What can I get you, Mother?” I asked, returning the squeeze of her hand.
She shook her head, eyes opened only to slits. “Nothing, Little Spider.”
I swallowed, tears welling in my eyes at the name nobody had called me since she was exiled.
She groaned softly and released my hand. Her finger pressed into my palm. At first I thought she was tracing the lines across my hands until I recognized the vague shapes of runes. A mountainous spike, an upright line with two jagged protrusions, and two corners hovering one another. Chance, protection, survival.
With my brow furrowed, I stared at the flesh of my palm, trying to understand the runes with more clarity. “Loki, Freya, and Odin?”
“I had hoped you would not be chosen. The prophecy is very clear. Once you accept the Call and pass the final trial, you will be bound to this duty until it is complete, or else their power will destroy you.”
“You knew?”
“I’d heard of these trials testing other witches in the past, yes.”
I sucked in a breath. “Freya’s made sense for a seer, but Loki’s and Odin’s…”
My mother squeezed my hand. “Perhaps you’re not meant to be a seer, Little Spider.” My heart hollowed and I didn’t breathe until she spoke again. “You’ve always been a survivor.”
Survivor. This was another word for fighter in the casual language of Skaldir villagers. Fighting wasn’t allowed, but many of us still practiced defense in secret, and when winter came, those who fought off illness and hunger were survivors.
The words were one in the same, and my mother’s way of reminding me what I’d done tosurvive.
A chill struck my spine and I dipped my head into my free hand.
“Don’t spiral, Spider,” her voice was as soft as it had been when I was a grieving child. “Commune with Freya and Odin. Offer a sacrifice and then you will know for sure. There will be no question, no more need for hesitation.”
Kayn made a noise between a huff and a grunt. I snapped my gaze up to him as he paced the length of the bench and raked his hand through his hair. When he noticed my eyes on him, he stopped and fixed his jaw into a tight hold.
“Do you have something to share?” I prodded, though I already suspected the source of his thoughts.
