I ground my teeth as I tried to shove the images away.
“The gods are calling you.” The king’s voice sounded far away. “You need to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t sure if it was only in my head that my voice was so weak, but Darcke’s grip on me changed, one hand coming up to cup my face.
“Her eyes are white,” he said.
I blinked. The light brightened Darcke’s face, and when I pushed away from him this time, he let me.
I missed him even though he was standing right before me. But there was something about his posture, his proud shoulders slumping and his face devoid of the furious creases it usually held, that made that feeling of loneliness surge within me.
“Go, Elvara!” King Gustief ordered.
Slowly, I faced him, just as the other warriors reached us. Only a few steps away, the last of King Gustief’s men were trying to protect us, but blood made the pathway slick, and the guard fell before I had the time to draw air into my lungs.
The sounds of the battle were still muted. And when I took a step toward the king and a woman with pale hair rounded the royal warriors, I found myself farther away, heading toward the door.
“I don’t want to,” I said, but even my voice betrayed me, the words feeling more like a lie than any fictions I’d told before.
“You need to go, child.” Gustief nodded to someone. “You need to make her.”
Time stalled when Darcke dragged me backward. A warrior fell to the ground where I’d just stood, his face full of rage even in death. A woman—my mother—smiled as she ran past us. With a crack that echoed in my blood, she struck the king, her blade lodging in his chest and taking the light from his eyes.
“No!” The word flew from my lips as Darcke groaned in pain.
When I turned my head over my shoulder, the hilt of the dagger buried in his shoulder brushed my cheek, and he flinched before ripping it out, sending a hot copper spray acrossmy skin.
His face came an inch from my own, and I didn’t have time to react before he crashed his lips against mine. As he pulled back, that lethal smirk fought itself into place across his features while he said, “I’m so fucking sad that I won’t be there to see you rule.”
Then he threw me backward, and everything became white.
The mist filled my lungs. My mind. My body.Everything.
I walked blindly through it, but my steps had never been more assured. The gods’ presence was everywhere, their voices beating against my ears and my limbs and my nerves.
I felt weightless, like I was floating through a sea, and when the mist cleared, I gasped.
The highest ceiling I’d ever seen was arched over me, built of thousands upon thousands of gilded shields, each one echoing its owner’s bravery—battles fought and won and lost.
To my sides, rafters reached toward the ceiling, each made up of the blades and axes and spears of the same men and women the shields whispered of.
The floor my feet barely touched was crimson, the blood from every lineage of Vikings painting it, sharing their stories of lost times and of the men and women who came before.
My breaths came out as white clouds as I walked toward a table made from white rowan, where a wave of ethereal light rolled back and forth.
Don’t look.
Darcke’s voice rang in my mind. And while anger hissed beneath my skin, making my teeth chatter, I turned my face to the floor, listening to generations of Vikings telling me their stories as I approached the gods.
Bow.
I followed Darcke’s order when I reached the table, falling onto one knee. A wind wrapped around me, sending my hair whipping around my face.
When I closed my eyes, the Aesir’s voices filled my mind.
Welcome, child. We’ve been waiting for you.
Odin’s divine power flitted over me until my body trembled.
