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I lunged forward, shoving the poker as hard as possible into King Roderic’s side, but he didn’t flinch.

He spat the pieces of flesh and my father’s face at me, and my stomach convulsed. Without giving me any more attention, he lapped at the blood pouring from my father’s broken face. With another scream from my father, I found the nerve to wrench the poker away and plunge it into the king's back. He twitched, twisting away from the makeshift weapon, but not stopping.

Again, he bit into my father’s face, tearing him apart piece by piece, drinking the blood that spilled, and ripping into him until he was nothing but a husk. The screaming suddenly stopped. I drove the poker harder, firmer, and with as much force as possible into the king’s back.

I cursed when the poker wedged so deep between the bones of his ribcage that I couldn’t pull it back. King Roderic swiveled, letting my father’s body fall in a heap, and the silence that followed haunted me. I didn’t make a sound. My mother’s cries silenced, and my father would never speak or scream again.

I didn’t step back when the king bent over me. Without even looking at it, he grasped the poker and snapped it off. A piece of it remained inside his body, but his flesh healed and closed over the steel, forever sealing it inside‌ him.

He grinned, showing me my father’s blood dripping from his fangs and coating his lips bright red. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? That’s what Ingrid told me.” His eyes flicked up and past me, presumably landing on her. “Isn’t that right?” He was speaking to her now, but she said nothing back. No sound.

Was she dead, too?

I would not cry. Never once had I seen a vampire cry, so I decided right then that I wouldn’t either, not only because I was told to be a man, but because I swore to become a monster.

Only a monster could stop someone like King Roderic, and I would not let my father’s plan go. To fix this disturbed world, I would conquer Vylheim’s ruler and seize his vacant throne. I’d be more than a vampire; I’d become the thing the vampires hated the most: a god.

As I lifted my chin, the king snapped his gaze back to me. “I’m going to kill you,” I said without a quiver in my voice.

He laughed, and when he went to reach for me, a voice stopped him.

“My king,” a man said. Axel. The swordsman who trained the executioners, and my father’s friend. Not that King Roderic knew that, and he never could—which was why Axel didn’t sound shocked when he saw my father dead and his face half-eaten. He had to hide his pain. “I have news about a huntress.” The tiniest hitch hiccuped in his voice.

Why the Hel would the king care about a huntress? Why would a woman who hunts animals possibly interest a king of vampires? But it clearly interested him greatly because his back went ramrod straight, and he forget me and my claim to kill him.

He straightened his collar and stepped past me. I turned to watch him walk away with Axel who exchanged a look with my mother, and then with me.

I caught the faintest nod bending his head forward. He acknowledged us only in the moment King Roderic had his back to him as he stepped over my mother and into the hall.

Run to Axel.

But I didn’t need to. He came to me. He came to us, and I realized now that the news he had was worthless. It was fake—a ruse to distract the king from killing the rest of us.

Axel rescued us, and despite his status as the best swordsman in Vylheim, he needed no weapons. His mind was sharper than a blade, my father would say, if he could still speak.

I didn’t look back at his body and the flecks of his flesh littering the floor of our room.

But I did stop and look at my mother as I drifted toward the hall in Axel and the king’s wake. I knelt beside her and brushed her blood-soaked hair from her face.

“I have a plan,” I whispered to her. Her slitted eyes rolled up to meet mine, but she kept her head against the floor. “You rest, Mama. I know the voices keep you up at night. Even when you try to hide it, I hear you talking to them. You must be really tired. Rest now, and I’ll be back. I just want to visit my friend, okay? For my birthday?”

She said nothing back as she stared at me with blank eyes, as if she’d forgotten who I was. She did that often, muttering nonsense, staring at nothing, and I had no idea what it meant until my friend in the dungeon beneath Mara’s Keep told me.

We liked to read together, my friend and I. We’d study the histories of Vylheim and learn so much. After spending so much time reading, her knowledge surpassed mine, and she claimed she possessed the understanding and ability to create monsters all on her own. An ability that could help me now.

“Goodbye, mother,” I said. “Sleep now, while I go see Silver.”

Her eyes shut, as though she awaited my approval to rest, and I stood, leaving her broken on the floor at my feet. I ran—not for Axel, as my father said, but for my friend. I had no doubt she could make me into the monster that’d kill the king.

And then, once I had a plan in place, I’d fall into Axel’s arms and let myself cry for my father.

Seven more years would pass before Silver mastered the craft of creating monsters.

As soon as she claimed to master it, I let her shatter my soul, but I didn’t let her see me cry when that piece of myself splintered like broken glass. Only Axel saw my tears when I returned to our old bedchambers and wept in his arms, ready to grieve my father, who was lost to the vampires, and my mother’s mind, which was lost to the gods.

As a child, I didn’t know about my parents’ reincarnation because they didn’t even know, but now that I recalled my time in Valhalla, speaking with my father—the same man from my life as Rune and Drakkar—I knew I’d see him again someday. If only I’d known then, would I have chosen to become a vampire?

An emptiness ached in my chest for the parents I lost, but I knew the truth; I’d turn into a vampire a hundred times over if it led me back to Lux.