Sadly, they hadn’t known the Vanir were behind the plague then. Naïve to a fault, his great-grandfather had been unable to conceive of such treachery. All he’d known was that Gullveig was a goddess of healing and her skills in that regard legendary.
So Woden had swallowed all pride and appealed to her to save the life of his son Tyrin and their people. As a goddess of healing, it should have been easy for her to do so. And that was all that had mattered to the Aesir king. Not his pride. Not his crown. His love of his son and people had led Woden to make a bitter, foolish bargain.
But that was the way of the Aesir. They were a communal race who believed in the good of all. One life was inconsequential when compared to the benefit of the whole. They were born a cog in a larger machine, and it was hard-wired into them to serve the good of their race. To put others before themselves in everything.
Not so with the Vanir. To them, the one was always greater than the whole. Petty and vain. Better to sacrifice their entire species than see one hair on their individual head harmed. The rights of one individual were forever superior to the rights of the whole.
They were selfish, through and through.
And so Gullveig had agreed, but only if she married the king and was given the whole of their gold.
Since his people didn’t value gold over life, Woden agreed. After all, what good was gold to the dead? It was only a metal to be bartered for supplies. Too weak to smelt for weapons, it wasn’t even used by his people for decoration. The Aesir had never placed any real value on it. In fact, they’d used iron for coin because it was the more valuable metal to their people. Far more important than gold.
So they had turned all their gold over to the greedy goddess without hesitation.
The moment Gullveig had it and was wed, she’d used her magick to poison the great king and all his heirs from his first wife. Her people had quickly moved into their lands and begun taking everything for themselves.
But Gullveig hadn’t known about Woden’s daughter, who’d married a fey husband long before the arrival of the Vanir goddess. A daughter who had gone to Alfheim to live there among her husband’s people.
Determined to avenge her Aesirian family and save what remained of her people, Devyl’s grandmother had returned to her father’s home. There, Kara had stabbed the goddess and set fire to Gullveig in the hall of the murdered king.
Not once, but thrice she’d laid the goddess down in flames.
Each time, the Deruvian whore had returned to life. That had been the Aesir’s first exposure to the regenerative powers of the Vanir Deruvians.
Worse? Gullveig had come back stronger after every death, and on her third incarnation from the flames, she’d emerged as the goddess Heiðr—more powerful and more evil than any creature the Aesir had ever encountered before.
A ten-year bloodbath had ensued as the Vanir gods had demanded vengeance against the Aesirians for the attacks on Gullveig. They’d wanted the life of Devyl’s grandparents.
And all hell had broken loose as a result.
Yes, his people had gone more and more feral during that war. The Deruvians had forced them to it in order to survive against them and their unholy magick.
The sad truth of survival was that it seldom brought out the best in anyone. Rather, it forced people to take actions that went against every moral they held and left them bankrupt and bitter. Wondering if they’d ever be whole again.
Over a thousand years later, and Devyl was still as broken now as he’d been then by his own wars he’d led against the Deruvians for additional crimes.
And for what?
Not a damn thing, in the end.
I should have stayed in hell.
At least there he knew his place and had found a sick kind of comfort with his misery. Or at least he’d come to terms with it.
He didn’t belong in this callous world where no one could be trusted. He never had. There was nothing here for him save pain and utter misery. Everything he’d ever loved had been brutally stripped from him.
Friends. Family.
Devyl had no quarter of any kind.
Suddenly, and as if to prove those very words, he felt a sharp, stinging pain to his side. Gasping, Devyl doubled over from the vicious ache.
“Captain!”
He tried to blink past the staggering agony, but even without Will and Bart, who continued to call out to him, he knew what had happened.
Marcelina was wounded. Damn her for her blindness in dealing with the other Deruvian wench!
