Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 47068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Not with Abigail's vision still fresh in my mind. My friends' bodies weren't the only ones piled before us in an endless field of death. So was my father's.
The Forsaken have him.
And I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that.
I know what Dax would do, though. Dax would let him die.
I've never forgiven him for what he did. But I've never been able to stop loving him, either. That's my big secret. That's the pain I carry. My father tried to kill me…and some part of me loves him still.
How am I supposed to confess that to the man who would forsake the Light to avenge me?
Chapter Eight
Rissa
The drive down the mountain is every bit as treacherous as Damrion promised. I nestle in Dax's arms in the back of Malachi's truck, alternately gripping the door handle for dear life, and trying desperately to distract myself from my thoughts.
The truck slips and slides on patches of black ice, not even the chains helping much. Malachi is more serious than I've ever seen him, all of his attention focused on the road. Reaper's beside him in the front seat, his eyes focused on the roadway too.
"Close your eyes, Rissa," Dax murmurs. "Relax."
"Easy for you to say. I'm not entirely sure an accident would kill anyone else in this truck," I mutter, eyeing him sideways. "But if we go over the side of the mountain, it'll definitely take me out."
"Malachi won't allow us to go over the side." Dax smiles. "He doesn't suck as a driver."
"I heard that," Malachi says. "I'm fucking excellent behind the wheel."
I smile despite myself. The giant warrior is like a big kid. He doesn't take anything serious for long.
"You need sleep."
"I'm not very tired."
"You are." Dax runs his lips across my forehead. "Close your eyes, bittesmå ljós. I'll hold you while you sleep."
"What about you?" I eye him suspiciously. "Fae do sleep, right?"
"Ja." A smile dances across his lips, his eyes haunting in the pale moonlight. "Fae sleep, Valkyrie."
"Just checking." I lay my head against his chest with a sigh. "You might as well tell me how this Valkyrie power works, Dax. If I'm supposed to use it, I'm going to have to know how."
"You already know how," he says. "You wield it like the Fae wield Magn. It's an instinct for you, something you reach for when you feel something deeply. You've probably been grasping for it your entire life and just didn't know it."
"Wouldn't someone have noticed?"
"Humans don't notice most things that are right under their noses. They're oblivious," he says, running his hands through my hair. When his fingers catch on tangles, he sets to work gently unsnarling them. "And they have no aptitude for magic. At most, they'd have noticed a glow, but nothing more."
"Wouldn't I have noticed?" I ask, my voice whisper soft.
His hands still in my hair. "A Valkyrie doesn't reach her full power until adulthood, bittesmå ljós. You would have been using only small amounts of your power until recently. Perhaps not even enough for you to understand what you were doing."
Have I been using this Light my entire life? I think back, remembering all the times I was overwhelmed by emotion. Every time, I reached deep into that well inside, grasping for some hidden reserve I never understood. I told myself it was strength or courage, whatever I needed in the moment to face whatever stood in my path. Without fail, I reached for it. And without fail, I faced what came. I won battles I shouldn't have won, faced bullies who simply decided to walk away. I survived my father when I should have died.
Was that this power all along? Is that what got me through every hard day? Every impossible situation?
I think so. And if that was only a fraction of it…if what I did to that Forsaken at the bar or what happened with Abigail is only a fraction of what I can do, what are the true limits to the well within me?
I'm almost afraid to find out.
"So Valkyrie don't reach power until they're fully grown? They grow up normal?"
Dax hesitates.
"The Valkyrie weren't a race, Rissa. Once, they were human or Fae or giant or dwarf. They were called to serve because they felt a connection to the dead," Reaper says from the front seat, alerting me to the fact that he and Malachi are listening to our conversation. "They were the special few who could cradle the souls of the dead in the palms of their hands."
"Oh." I process this, trying to shift it into place in my mind. There's so much about this world I don't understand, so much about it that's completely at odds with the stories my mom told me. And yet so much of what she told me never felt quite right to me, either. There's a sense of rightness to this piece.