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“Ingrid,” I said. “Drak will need you. I’m bringing him back for you—for us.” Really, this was all for me because I didn’t want to live without the only person willing to tell me the truth. But Ingrid didn’t need to know my selfish reasons. I swore to restore his body and soul, and she’d benefit from her son’s resurrection too. Tears swam in my eyes. I didn’t need to know her well to mourn her. Drak loved her, and that was enough for me. “Please.”

Begging was useless; she was gone. I’d witnessed enough death to know this was as quick and clean as it was horrifying. The arrow punctured through her skull, which meant she didn’t suffer long, at least.

“Get up!” A woman in a raven mask shrieked. The toe of her boot smashed into my ribs and her fingers curled into a fist around my shirt. She dragged me to my feet and threw me forward right as a man crashed into her. I stumbled away, unable to leave Ingrid, but wanting to get away from Raven.

The West Anglan’s eyes flashed the color of Wolfsbane flowers as he fought her. I froze. Never had I seen anyone with violet eyes before. He used nothing but his fists to slam the Raven into the sand. An odd hump crooked at his back, and it seemed he was choking her with inhuman strength. When his head tilted, his ear, oddly shaped and tipped with a sharp point at the top, made my pulse skip. What was he?

Once Raven got a better grip on her ax, she buried it into his skull, and I snapped out of my haze. “Get after them, Witch!” she screamed at me, but my heart only cracked as I stood helpless and Raven got to her feet and shoved me. Ingrid was dead, gone, just like that. Drak wasn’t here to mourn her, and I wasn’t allowed to sit with her.

Unable to chase after the fleeing Anglans, and without a plan to break away from Silver’s warriors, I didn’t move. There was no good option. If I didn’t return with a prisoner of my own, the executioners would torture me. Even seeing moments into the future wouldn’t help me against multiple armed men restraining me and putting a blade to the back of my neck. Likely, Silver hoped that I wouldn’t make it back to Vylheim. Whether I’d grown sick and weakened on the journey, was captured in battle, tortured by our own warriors for defecting, or succumbed to The Drowning, it'd be of no consequence to her in what way I perished. I couldn’t die, but being trapped without breath at the bottom of the sea terrified me even more, knowing it would not be the end of my suffering. It would never end. Until Ragnarok.

Suffering hovered around every corner, so I stood still, letting the battle and blood spill around me. I should have helped the other witches find a way out of this, but I couldn’t see beyond the stained shore or hear anything but the pleas of desperate, terrified men and women and children. Fear clawed through me with the old voices of my frayed nerves.

I closed my eyes, unable to drag a slave or sacrifice back for Silver, but not brave enough to offer myself up for suffering. In the black, I drew slow breaths, listening to the off-rhythm beat of my heart, because even though I’d replaced Odin as one of the gods, I still had the same body flowing with Freya’s tears as my blood. My weak heart would never follow a safe beat.

I let the pungent smell of blood burn in my nose and salty air wash over me with a sting. I’d been here hundreds of years ago, but I wasn’t alone, and our purpose wasn’t to support a vampire army, but to defend Vylheim and expand our exploration efforts. Back then, Drak stood beside me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

If I succeeded in restoring his soul and life, he’d come back to a world without his mother. I didn’t want to think of what I’d do the day my mother passed. Agony pricked at my heart, and I reached into the pocket of my trousers and wrapped my hand around the shard of Drak’s soul.

The only thing I could do now was find the next shard. I owed that much to him—to restore his soul so that in his human passing someday, he could be reunited in the afterlife with his mother.

I grounded myself with the feel of Drak’s shard. This piece of his soul had led me here as much as the ship that carried me across the sea. I’d failed to save his mother, but I wouldn’t fail him. Something happened on this shore that sent a piece of his soul here.

What could it have been?

This wasn’t only centuries ago, but lifetimes. Even though my memories had come back just before Drak died in the fight against Odin, I didn’t immediately remember everything from our first life, but being back here helped.

The raid at this shore all those years ago was the first time Rune, and I truly fought side by side. We were just teenagers, barely adults yet and certainly not married. Since we were children and friends who played at battle, we’d prepared for a raid like this our whole lives, even if his father’s focus was building ships and fishing, and I came from a family of farmers. Growing up together in a world at war shaped us into the warrior and shield-maiden we longed to become.

We’d have done anything to defend our farms, our home, even give up our lives.

It’d been a quick fight, one that exerted our dominance in battle and sent a message to West Anglor that we were not to be ignored. What about this simple raid had been the most important moment of Rune’s life?

My head suddenly wrenched backward, my neck nearly snapping as fingers grabbed a fistful of hair. Though my braids were wrapped tightly against my head with little to pull at, someone had buried their hands in it. My eyes shot open, and a yelp escaped me as I was bent back, staring up at the night sky smattered with crystalline stars.

A shadow cast over me, blocking the icy moon’s glow, and a serpent’s mask hissed in my face, his breath stinking of rot.

“No prisoner, eh?” He breathed, and I heaved at the odor. Bile filled my throat, and I wanted to spit it at him. “So you want to die? You should have just let me kill you on the ship.”

The glint of his dagger reflected the moonlight, but he’d yet to lift it to my throat. This would happen in the next three seconds if I didn’t do something. These moments of the future gave me an extra breath to react. Before he raised it, I yanked the crystal from my pocket and smashed it against his temple. He howled and released me. Off balance, I fell back against the ground. Despite the bed of sand, the wind knocked from my lungs, and I gulped desperate breaths as Serpent quickly recovered.

Blood trickled from where the sharp shard had bit into his slimy flesh. I should have paid closer attention to him as he stumbled toward me again, but the shard gleamed as brightly as the stars, burning whiter and more brilliantly as I twisted to the left. Even with flecks of Serpent’s blood on the crystal, it shimmered with such beauty and hope that I didn’t care about my attacker.

A piece of Drak’s soul was close. So damn close, and glowing like the promise of the stars.

Serpent stood over me with his dagger clenched in his white-knuckled fist and pointed directly at my heart. I should have seen this moment before it happened, but the shard called to me. Drak called to me with the warmth of the crystal against the frigid elements. Even in death, Drak was keeping my blue fingers from freezing entirely.

But the chill was the least of my worries. The executioner was upon me, looking every bit the role he’d played back in Vylheim, hunting and beheading witches, but he’d traded his heavy sword for a simple dagger.

Before his blade came down, someone else crashed into him. Someone with a familiar, kind face that sparked hope rising within me.

“Axel?” The name of Drak’s former advisor slipped from my lips. I didn’t know he’d been forced on this journey across the sea, but I should have. Of course, Silver wouldn’t allow someone loyal to King Drakkar to remain in her kingdom.

Axel was bound to this duty the same as the witches, but instead of fighting those whose kingdom we invaded, he’d saved me.

His salt and pepper hair and beard were a stark contrast to Serpent’s muddy brown hair, and though Axel was much‌ older than all the other warriors, he had a skill with sword fighting that none of them could even dream of. He’d sparred with a vampire king for many years, and if fighting a creature as fast and strong as a vampire hadn’t made him a superior swordsman, his decades of training the executioners under the Blood Council had.