Now, its light has dimmed, and its movements are subdued.
Can it feel my sadness?
Does it know my grief?
Graviter lowers his head even further toward me, a slow and careful movement as if he would nudge the tip of his nose to my side. “You will be whole again, Asha. I have seen it.”
When Graviter Rex first came upon us on the snowy mountain east of here, and after we fought him and survived, he ate a leaf from a monstrous tree that I healed with my power.
It was baffling to watch him pop that bright-blue leaf into his mouth and chew. But then he exhaled burning-blue flames, and his words struck me with foreboding.
He said that the magic in the leaf—my magic—had shown him all my memories. But more than that, it had shown him all that will be. My future and beyond.
He said that there will be a war in which dragons, humans, Blacksmiths, and fae will stand across a battlefield from one another and be tested. A war that will only be the beginning of other wars.
But he also said that without a beginning, there can’t be an end.
Now, the mighty dragon edges so close to me that the heat of his fiery breath warms my cold cheeks.
His earnest eyes are huge in my vision. “You must take the hammer and use it?—”
“I don’t want it.”
Graviter’s expression hardens, a frightening sight, given how close his mouth is to me. “You must move away from Erik?—”
“Donottell me to let him go.” I bare my teeth at Graviter, as ifIwere the beast that Erik once was. “Don’t tell me to give him to the ground.”
Graviter doesn’t flinch or retreat, no matter how fiercely I return his stare.Why would he?He is the strongest of all dragons, and I am refusing the power that would give me the physical strength to challenge him.
I am refusing to pick up the hammer.
Surprisingly, his voice softens. “I will not tell you to let him go, Asha Silverspun. But for now, you must move away from him so that his soul can be claimed as is the custom of his people.”
My eyes widen as I realize what Graviter means. “A Valkyrie will come.”
Erik explained to me that he was born into a clan of humans known asEinherjar. Members of the clan spend their whole lives building and cultivating their deep light—a spark of magic that exists in all humans, but few know how to harness it, let alone how to increase it.
An Einherjar’s greatest ambition is to burn out their deep light in battle, giving themselves incredible strength and speed. By burning out their light, they trigger their own death, but that is not what matters. What matters is that they achieve a glorious death in battle.
The Einherjar believe that if they die this way, a Valkyrie will come for their soul and deliver them to the Hall of Warriors.
I twist away from Graviter Rex, my focus now drawn to my left.
Not ten paces away from me, there is a stone statue.
It is the statue of a man, frozen mid-battle. His left leg is forward, his sword raised and poised to strike. In the moonlight, I can see every detail of the statue’s face and the resemblance of its features to Erik.
The man within this statue was once Erik’s father. Malak Ironmeld turned him to stone in a fight that happened because of me.
Erik’s father is a powerful figure, although slightly narrower in the shoulders than Erik. The blade of the sword he’s holding catches the moonlight and reflects it. Despite the years the weapon has been exposed to the elements, the blade shines a bright steel-blue.
Erik described to me his deep sadness when his father’s soul was not claimed by the Valkyries. Erik’s theory was that his father’s soul couldn’t be claimed because it was trapped in stone.
My eyes slowly widen.
And then my shoulders slump.
I, too, have the power to turn living things to stone. Although… I’m nearly certain I can’t do it with a hammer alone. Each time I did it, I used a medallion—a strip of specially forged metal—that was wrapped around my left hand and gave me access to my power.
