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Steadily, we flooded the narrow grey halls. None of the vampires Lux had seen were around, only the dwindling Grimward. I couldn’t help the crooked grin on my face when they charged us, animal masks plastered to their faces as always.

They were about to be slaughtered. Axel alone gutted a crow-faced woman with one slash across her midsection. Her gut spilled with blood and entrails, and she promptly crashed to the stone on her knees.

We forced further and deeper through the tight space, weapons clashing. The Grimward were trained fighters, so it wasn’t as easy as trampling them, but we surged inward, slowly, steadily.

When the first adolescent boy fell, his head cracked against the wall and eyes left wide open in terror, dying instantly, I froze. Where I’d once ignored death, pesky human reactions forced me to double over. The contents of my stomach suddenly pushed up into my throat. How weak I had become, but how human, too. To experience empathy this deeply for a stranger gave me as much horror as it did hope. Once I sat on that throne again, I wouldn’t be King Drakkar as they knew me. I wouldn’t be like Silver, out for revenge or Hel-bent on godhood, but a simple king longing for his farm. Maybe Stasia was right; food and farms were the future focus of Vylheim.

A man in a goat mask charged me with his ax swinging—one of the very few Grimward still clinging to Silver’s promises. He was going to die fast. I used every trick Axel had taught me when wielding a sword, but the executioner had fought more recently, and I was still getting used to this human body like a fawn on wobbly legs.

The hilt of his ax clashed against the handle of my weapon, and my fingers almost crushed beneath the weight. He slammed against me with more force, and when he huffed and smashed me against the wall, I released the pressure on him and dodged. He barreled forward, but would not be fooled. He pulled the ax back before cracking the blade against stone.

I ducked as he swung at my neck. While I wasn't as fast as a vampire, it was enough. He missed, letting out a grunt as the swing's momentum pulled him to the left. I followed Axel’s lead and simply slashed my sword across the executioner’s exposed torso. It wasn’t deep enough to open and expose his organs, but he stumbled back from the pain and rush of blood to his stomach. Gut wounds always hurt the worst, and festered.

I backed into the wall with a huff, trying to avoid any weapons from behind. “There’s a dozen of us for every vampire in this hall. Join us in ending Silver or die now.”

His eyes flashed, and he took the bait. Rage fueled the power with which he stormed at me, but clear-headed, I only stood and watched as Soren’s shadows materialized into a solid body of wiry muscle between us and slit the man’s throat with nothing but a kitchen knife.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked as the goat mask clattered between our feet and the man crumpled in a pool of blood and piss. The hall ripened with the stench of men and women soiling themselves in death. Copper, from so much spilled blood, stained the air, sharp and tangy, and heavy enough to taste.

Soren looked at the knife and shrugged. “Pickpocketed it off someone in a sparrow mask.” His brow furrowed. “Do they really think sparrows are threatening—” his words cut short, and his eyes widened as he stared past my shoulder. Horror swept his breath away, and his mouth hung open in a soundless scream.

He shoved past me as he tried to work his way over bodies and past clashing blades. His path was fixed on the first vampire we’d spotted, and of course Axel was fighting the fanged monster. That honorable idiot.

My molars gritted, and I forced off the wall, every muscle in my body tense as the vampire bolted past Axel’s sword. Fingers with nails too long, sharp, and overgrown, clawed at Axel’s throat. The female vampire’s eyes flashed red with bloodlust as her fingernails buried into his soft flesh and drew blood, and it was only then that I recognized her. Ylva. Silver had asked the leaders of the Blood Council to defend her throne. I should have known, and now Ylva foamed with bloodlust and almost ripped the muscles and tendons out of my advisor’s throat. This was personal for her. Ylva wanted Axel’s death after Axel manipulated King Roderic many times, and I leaned on Axel’s advice instead of the Blood Council when I sat on the throne.

“Axel!” My shout died on a wave of steel meeting steel. Shrill cries echoed through the hall as another vampire tore through the crowd. He disarmed a young woman and ripped through three more villagers with nothing but a child-sized dagger. As expected, his speed and strength were unmatched, but he’d eventually be overpowered when a dozen bodies closed in on him. I had to believe it because I couldn’t help them now. Not with Axel bleeding.

Soren’s shadows surrounded Ylva, wrapping her throat like a black scarf, but it wasn’t enough. Bloodlust empowered her, and with her sheer strength, she slowly sank her talon-like fingers into his skin.

I ran, my boots slamming against stone, but I wasn’t fast enough, and even in the short distance, I didn’t reach him in time.

Blood spurted out from around her fingers, and the sword fell from his limp hand.

Despite the screaming around me, the sickening gurgle from his last choking breaths haunted me. Crimson flared in Ylva’s eyes, and though Soren materialized and tried to yank her hand free of Axel, she was too powerful. This was what Odin had hated about vampires. Even Valkyrie versus vampire was not enough.

Her fingers buried all the way to her third knuckles before she whipped her hand back and her tongue snaked out of her mouth, licking greedily over her blood-soaked fingers.

I threw myself forward to catch Axel before he collapsed on the body of a fallen Torsholt woman. In the crook of my elbow, his neck tilted back too far. I cupped beneath his arm to keep him upright, but it was only my own strength holding him there. Crimson gushed from every hole in his neck, and though his tense muscles twitched, his eyes stared at nothing.

I swore to Valhalla that my soul shattered all over again, and Soren would pillage the pieces, but this was simply grief.

“No!” Soren screamed from the shadows as his power tightened around Ylva more and more until her head severed from her body. He materialized and slammed a stake through her heart before stumbling toward us and tugging Axel into his arms. I let go, backing up to give father and son a moment of grief.

“Father,” my mouth formed the word. I watched as another man I loved and admired fell in defense of me, and suddenly I was that little boy again in my bedchambers witnessing King Roderic eat my father’s face.

Axel had been there for me when I fell apart. Now he was gone, and yet, somehow Soren had felt this coming. I should have listened to him. I should have forced Axel to stay in Old Skaldir. He could have focused on rebuilding the farmhouse.

He could have lived.

Soren sobbed over his father’s limp body, but he didn’t linger amid the battle. He dissipated into shadow, shrouding Axel’s body in darkness. The cloud of black moved through the battle and out of my sight. I followed, pressing between bodies with my eyes fixed on the throne room doors.

Finally, I’d made it to the point where I’d lay eyes on the throne and face Silver. Axel gave his life for this, and though Lux didn’t want me to face her alone, it was now or never.

I had to dethrone Silver.

I plucked an ax from a fallen executioner’s belt, pulled the ash stake from my own belt, and crossed the threshold dual wielding weapons while my boots met ‌slick blood across the stone where a vampire sat on his knees sucking the life out of another Torsholt villager. Torsholt was the first to arrive and the fiercest, having stood bravely at the front of the siege alongside us.

When the vampire dropped his victim, the man’s neck twisted the wrong way, and a venomous expression met mine. One I knew too well. Darius had been in the throne room with Ylva, ever the loyal leader and ever the manipulative vampire, using every opportunity to grasp at control and fulfill his blood-lusting needs alongside his partner. Ylva was dead now, but the Blood Council’s legacy would live on in Darius if I didn’t cut him down.