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Lux’s voice faded after she no longer addressed me. When she didn’t touch my soul, I couldn’t reach her, but I had all the fucking time in existence to consider where that last shard went. I’d locate it and tell Lux because I wasn’t convinced Soren could—or would—find it.

Or even should…Instead of an endless search for the last piece of my soul, he should remain with Axel and devise a plan to free the bastard. Not while I was stuck in the ether with only this damn puzzle to solve.

This was on me.

Which experience as a human shaped me the most profoundly? If it wasn’t when I decided to become a vampire, it had to be when I killed King Roderic.

But it wasn’t that either, because after reliving that delicious moment when the king withered to ash in my hands, I was no closer to the truth. The memory sparked nothing but the urge to laugh at that waste of flesh as his own blood destroyed his body.

I ran a dozen other possibilities through my mind. When I won a debate against the Blood Council. When Darius finally admitted I was a better king than Roderic. When my mother’s mind cleared for almost an entire day, we spent it laughing and reminiscing about my father. None of these moments triggered anything in me.

Nothing I came up with made sense. My existence had been colorless and full of pain and a constant, gnawing vengeance until I met Lux.

Hel, maybe we did need Soren. Since I failed to recognize the most important moment of my own life, he was our only hope.

Lux

Relief buzzed through me with renewed energy. Axel survived, and despite being chained, bound, and imprisoned, he was on the verge of reuniting with his son. After all this time.

After all this grief, I finally found something to rejoice over.

Tears brimmed in my eyes as I relived the moment Soren crouched beside Axel in the dungeon. I carried the image with me as we snaked through the tunnel, passing hundreds more roses in paintings that faded in color and style, some with petals and thorns so gnarly and twisted that I couldn’t bear to imagine what Soren must have felt as he painted them.

I never met him, and yet I grew eager to see Soren.

Something about the fact that he was alive gave me hope that I’d see Drak again. His friend had survived Silver’s brutalities, and I would too, for Drak.

As we approached Drak’s old bedchambers, I kept my eyes trained ahead. Finan listened in the halls for us, while I projected my sight forward to see the moments ahead in case anyone patrolled the halls. Crossing through the fireplace, Finan kicked at the ashes, and I wrenched my head away from the cloud of black dust—a sight too painfully similar to my last image of Drak as his ashes flaked in the wind and mixed with the remnants of a torched Yggdrasil.

My ribcage enclosed tighter around my heart as I refused to look at the bed. Though this wasn’t where Drak and I consummated our fake marriage, the style of the wood frame and the linens matched it perfectly. I slipped my hand into my pocket and prayed that his soul had warmed.

But nothing changed, the crystal remained neutral.

The heat behind my eyes threatened to sting, but I blinked it away. If I trained my focus on projecting my foresight into the halls and forward over our next steps, I could skip the experience of this room entirely. I could ignore the creak of the hidden hatch beneath our feet where Ingrid used to hide, and the bloodstains on the rug under the four wooden posters from the first time I saw Drak feed on a human. The moment I’d decided to kill him.

Something brushed my arm, and I snapped my attention to Stasia as Finan approached the door with us in his wake. We were still inside the suffocating chambers where memories were as sticky as the blood dripping outside.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you need to rest?” Her pink lips quirked and her lashes fluttered with a hint toward the bed. “Now’s a good time for a nap.” I tried to smile at her attempt to brighten me, but I couldn’t, so she gave my free hand a light squeeze. “When this is over, I’m baking you the fattest sweetbread.”

“There’s going to be a shortage of food because of how many captives we brought back from West Anglor,” Finan commented, his gaze fixed forward.

Stasia rolled her eyes. “Which is exactly why I belong on that throne. I’d make food our number one priority.”

“As it should be,” Finan added. It was the first agreeable thing I’d heard him say in…maybe forever, but the light in Stasia’s eyes dimmed, and that perpetual smile on her mouth twitched.

My brow furrowed as I tilted my head at her, but I didn’t have a chance to return the favor and ask her if she was okay. We slipped into the hall, and I sucked in a slow breath as if I were the huntress again, stalking through this maze of grey to stake vampires sent by Silver.

Hel, I hated that calling. I hated having to wrestle with cocky, blood-lusting men and women. I hated to have to kill them after their souls had already been ripped away from them. But at least Drak was alive when I was a huntress, at least I could talk to him and feel his arms around me, even if every time I came close to him, Odin’s cruel voice clawed at the inside of my skull.

Talk of sweetbread got me through Drak’s bedchambers, and now I thought of nothing but Soren and the final piece of Drak’s soul.

It had to be in this castle, but with every corner we turned, and every staircase we descended, the crystal stayed muted. Unchanged. My soul did the opposite, shuddering like a chilled child in the dead of winter.

Finally, Finan led us to that same crowded staircase I’d seen through Soren’s eyes where the steps shrank into a tight tomb. He went ahead of us, prepared to find another executioner standing guard, or perhaps a vampire, though it was unlikely a vampire would stoop low enough to stand post in a dungeon. Or to stand post anywhere, unless Silver compelled them to do so.

An icy finger drew down my spine at the thought of my sister’s unchallenged power, the maker. Only Drak could dethrone her.

The thought of living here with him as king soured my tongue because he didn’t want it, and what he said when he died—right before I killed him—proved that. We both wanted the same thing: to return to our lives as Rune and Myrah, on a farm, peaceful except to defend our home against West Anglans.