Page 86 of Vow of the Undead
But before the words were all the way out of my mouth, Odin had vanished.
I let my head relax and I leaned into Kayn, finally humming confirmation to his question. I had what I needed, a visit from the most powerful God and a single command—a step forward. Though I didn’t know why he spoke of more than one king. Perhaps that was my tired mind misunderstanding Odin’s strange voice.
Kayn reached around to the other side of my jaw, cupping it gently in his hand as he twisted and carefully tipped my face toward him.
With my eyes half-lidded, I lazily scanned his tender expression for understanding. He bent closer to me, our lips almost touching. My breaths, which were already rapid, quickened as his dark eyes fell to my mouth.
He drew my face into him, his kiss soft, lingering, and with just the right amount of sweetness.
The pain in my palm faded with every breath that passed between us. I took his tongue into my mouth and deepened the kiss.
Whatever this healing magic was, I felt every inch of it knitting my flesh together again.
Breathless, I pulled back just enough to speak. “How?” I whispered.
“I can share my power to heal myself with those I…” he paused for a beat. “Those I desire.”
Our lips collided again and I drank him in.
He’d admitted it. There was heat between us.
Three days later my hand had completely healed. No scar remained and the pain had ceased immediately. While Kayn’s kiss had strengthened a connection between us, it was the vitality that channeled from him that ultimately healed me.
Now, I spent every waking minute training.
In nine days the Polar Nocturne would end, and King Drakkar would cut me down. Worse, the Grimward would be transporting every exile from the wasteland to The Sea of Skalds. Exploration would dawn, and Alva would never see her mother again. Two mothers and a daughter destroyed by King Drakkar and his council.
This haunted me until I wrapped my fingers around the solid cut of an ash tree.
With the weapon in my hand, the promise of destroying the king triggered a flash of hope. Sick and twisted hope, but hope for my mother’s survival, for Ragna’s, and selfishly, for my own.
Before training to fight, Kayn had insisted I practice every skill I could, even those that weren’t powers grantedfrom the Gods. I expanded my knowledge of vampires by studying him. I ran to push my body to the brink to test Freya’s visions, gaining glimpses of Mara’s Keep, the graves, images I wasn’t sure of but knew would be useful later.
For the compulsion, I practiced on him, building my resilience and strength so that the power would not strip all energy from me.
Starting with small commands, I compelled him to stop moving, then to look at me, then to come closer to me.
Each try drained me a little less, but my body was still in need of rest. My heart still hammered too fast with skipped beats and pain striking my chest.
No amount of training, no amount of power from the Gods, no amount of healing from Kayn changed this illness that plagued me, but I learned to train around it. To use the skill I’d learned from my mother to calm myself and observe. It forced me to slow down, to consider every angle and think before I acted.
This, Kayn said, would be my survival, and my greatest skill as a huntress.
And finally, he’d led me outside, his fingers twined through mine.
After enough careful training, it was time to learn to fight a vampire. If I could at all.
Moonlight coated the abandoned landscape surrounding The Hall of the Gods. Shadows from the headstones stretched like yawning arms over the dewy grass. Silhouettes from the trees beyond blanketed the weeping Valkyrie in gray.
We stood over the graves of the men and women of Mara who once dared to honor Odin and Freya, and the vampires who may or may not be buried with them. This is where I’d tease out Odin’s gift and learn to cut down monsters.
Kayn enclosed his fingers over mine and around the branch. “A stake will work better than your silver pendant.Because the tree of Yggdrasil is Midgard’s connection to the Gods, any sharpened cut of a tree will destroy a vampire, not just hurt them.”
As a witch, of course I was well versed in the understanding that Yggdrasil was the source of our magic since it was the gateway between Asgard and our realm. Odin had hung from the tree for nine days and nine nights for knowledge and to keep this connection between him and the people of Midgard.
But I hadn’t known of the tree’s power against monsters.
“Is this how you trained Ingrid? The last huntress?”
