Shadow Empress (Night Elves Trilogy Book 3)

by C. N. Crawford

  His eyes glinted. “There was a time when you might have known instinctively, and when you could have demanded that I tell you things. With our mating bond severed, that time is over.”

  Great.

  “I guess we need to go back, then. We need a new plan.” My tone sounded icy. “We don’t have years to spend here. You know, you could have mentioned this in the planning stages, that maybe there was no bridge left? We just wasted time.” I wondered if I had enough anger in me now to summon fire magic. “Every day that we lose, the draugr will get closer.”

  He folded his arms, the wintry wind whipping at his dark hair. “I could have learned this faster alone. You were the one who insisted on coming.”

  I sighed, reminding myself of how quickly he’d moved on. Yes—he was defying Hela by trying to defeat the draugr. But he was also her consort. She was his queen, his lover. Thinking of them together, I shuddered.

  And worse—I knew that he was keeping more secrets from me.

  As my mood grew darker, Galin drew another portal. I sighed as it crackled into existence. I wasn’t looking forward to telling the council we were coming back empty-handed. Still, I was alive. We’d just have to figure out something else, because letting the draugr overrun us was not an option.

  Galin gestured at the portal. With a final glance at the barren peak of Mount Steton, I stepped through the magic opening. And as I did, my stomach flipped.

  Where were we?

  Smoke filled the air, and it smelled absolutely terrible. It took me a moment to recognize the sandstone walls, the familiar bird cages. We’d come to my quarters. But what had once been my favorite sofa now smoldered, and burn marks scorched the walls. Strangest of all, a small boulder lay in the middle of the room.

  My heart started to hammer, breath shallowing. What the fuck?

  Something had gone terribly wrong in my absence.

  I looked around, quickly checking for danger. Was this a stone from a catapult? Were we under attack? Were there draugr in the temple? Could draugr build catapults?

  “Skalei.” I felt the hilt of my blade arrive in my palm.

  I glanced at the portal in time to see Galin arrive. “Galin,” I whispered. “I think we may have been attacked by draugr.”

  He turned, surveying the damage. In a flash, his eyes moved from the burned sofa, to the walls, to the rock in the middle of the rug.

  “Ali,” said Galin, failing to hide a tone of laughter, “there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “What do you mean? My room has been burned and pillaged.”

  He nodded at the rock. “Where did you send that troll’s head?”

  I grimaced, only now noticing that I was looking at stretched gray skin. “No …”

  “You sent it here.” He gestured to some gray dust on the sofa. “This was the troll’s blood that spurted into the portal. It’s blazing hot. You’re lucky you didn’t burn down the entire temple.”

  As I exhaled slowly, my eye fell on the shelf where I’d been storing my vergr crystal. The entire wall had been ripped open, and shattered crystal twinkled on the ground. Piles of ashes and rubble covered this part of the room. I’d sent the freaking portal through the shelf with the vergr stones. If Barthol tried to get back now, he’d be split into a million pieces.

  My throat tightened. “Oh, fuck.”

  I picked up one end of the burned shelf. As I did, a stone slid towards the floor from under the ashes. Galin’s hand shot out to catch it.

  When I examined it more closely, I could tell by the size it was Barthol’s.

  I bit my lip. “I guess I need to practice the precision of that spell.”

  Brushing the ash off myself, I turned and crossed to the door. The guard standing before the door turned to look at me, his eyes wide.

  “Empress, are you all right?” Worry etched his features as he tried to determine how much trouble he was in. “Empress, I’m so sorry. I’m not allowed to enter your quarters without permission—”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a decapitated troll’s head that I sent through a portal. Normal stuff. Might need a bit of a cleanup. A cleaning and repair crew has my permission to enter.”

  He stared at me as I turned to cross down the hallway, already thinking about what I’d tell the council. I might leave out the specifics of the troll’s head.

  When we reached the council chambers, I paused at the door, my stomach tight. I was supposed to be returning victorious, with information on how to stop the draugr horde. Instead we’d barely escaped with our lives, and been unable to cross the Bifrost.

  I was reaching to push open the doors when Galin said, “Ali, before you go in, let me give you some advice. There’s telling the whole truth, and then there’s telling the relevant truth.”

  “What?”

  Without further explanation, he went inside. The full contingent of the council sat at the table, surrounded by fresh bread and fruit. Apparently, we’d come into the room while they were in the process of eating breakfast.

  For a long moment no one spoke, their eyes moving between Galin and me with increasing degrees of concern. Then Sigre dropped a spoon, and that broke the spell.

  Swegde jumped up. “What happened? Did you learn how to defeat the draugr?”

  “We hiked all day, Galin caught a fish but he accidentally cut it in half. But the thing is, that saved his life later because if he hadn’t shown me what a portal spell could do, he would have been killed by the troll—”

  “A troll?” Swegde cut in.

  Galin held up his hands. “We ran into some difficulties, but no one was hurt.”

  “You have blood all over your face,” said Sigre.

  “I ran into a rock,” said Galin. Then, defensively, “It was dark.”

  “You ran into a rock …” Swegde repeated slowly, like he was trying to decipher a foreign language.

  “In any case,” I said, using my in-charge-Empress voice, “We didn’t make it to Asgard.”

  “I gathered as much,” said Swegde.

  “What about the Bifrost bridge?” asked Bo.

  I sighed. “It’s almost completely destroyed. Ragnarok wrecked it. Galin says it would take years to repair it. We need a plan B.”

  Swegde shook his head. “There isn’t another way to get to Asgard. Only the Bifrost, or a portal if someone had been there.” He frowned. “Gods weren’t really very big on visitors.”

  I rubbed a knot in my forehead. “Any estimates on how long we have before the draugr overrun our gates?”

  “Maybe two weeks,” Swegde said quietly.

  Balls. I racked my brain. “What about animals?”

  The entire council stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I remember hearing the great squirrel Ratatoskr brought messages to an eagle that lives at the top of Yggdrasill. And the eagle once spoke to the gods, when they were alive. That means the eagle can fly to Asgard.”

  Silence filled the room, and frustration simmered. They thought I was crazy. “Ratatoskr is still climbing up and down Yggdrasill. There is every reason to think the eagle is still there, too.”

  Galin scrubbed a hand over his jaw, studying me. “It’s not a bad idea.”

  “Empress.” Sigre flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder. “This is even crazier than trying to cross the Bifrost.”

  Galin glared at her. “All of this is insane, including the draugr invasion. And yet it’s happening anyway.”

  I crossed my arms. “So if we went to the Well of Wyrd, we could climb back out on Ratatoskr. This time, we let him take us all the way to the top of the tree. If the eagle isn’t there, we just portal back again.”

  Swegde had gone pale, and he rose from his chair. “What you’re proposing is returning to the bottom of the Well of Wyrd, finding and then riding a vicious giant squirrel to the top of Yggdrasill, where you’re hoping to convince a giant eagle to fly you to Asgard?”

  “Yes,” Galin and I answere
d at the same time.

  Chapter 16

  Ali

  An hour later, I stepped through a new portal and into the cavern at the roots of Yggdrasill. It was just as I remembered, dark and wet, with the smell of rotting wood permeating the air.

  Galin’s portal had placed me on top of one of the giant roots, and beneath my feet I could feel the humming tree-magic. A massive pile of bones in the center of the clearing rose high above us.

  As I surveyed the now familiar space, Galin appeared next to me. With a quick flick of his fingers he cast sowilo, and a glowing rune appeared above us to cast more light.

  The pile of bones was huge. Femurs, skulls, ribs … how many elves had died to build it this high? I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about that. My stomach clenched at the horror of falling to death in this lonely place.

  “The dead here,” I whispered. “It was mostly executions, right? By King Gorm?”

  “Yes,” said Galin softly. He gazed at the bones, his expression unreadable. Black vapor from his chest tattoos swirled round him ominously. At last he spoke again. “It’s a terrible legacy for my family.”

  I sighed. “That, and the Night Elves Gorm hunted.”

  If it weren’t for Galin, the High Elves would have destroyed my people completely. There would be no Night Elves for me to protect. I glanced at him, a strange thought striking me like a diamond bullet. If it weren’t for Galin, I wouldn’t even exist.

  I studied him—dark hair, broad shoulders. He met my gaze, and I felt like his eyes were piercing enough to penetrate my soul.

  For just a moment, I felt as if we were connected again—my soul to his. No one else could compare to him, but he was scarred. Imprisoned for a thousand years, his mother and father murdered, raised by cruel and savage High Elves. He’d been forced to protect himself among the enemy. No wonder he’d taken to magic. Not just for self-preservation; it must have been an escape, a way to add order and purpose to his life.

  There were walls around him—and not just magical ones. He was adrift.

  I pulled my gaze away from him. “As Empress of the Vanir and leader of the elves, let me formally thank you for your sacrifice when you put up the walls to protect the Night Elves from King Gorm.”

  When I met his gaze again, he was staring at me, eyes gleaming like burnished obsidian.

  Then, a smile ghosted over his lips. “Would the Empress of the Vanir like to formally join me on a giant squirrel?”

  “Of course.”

  I walked at his side, past the elven remains. There must have been ten thousand bodies in the massive unorganized ossuary.

  I could see where Ratatoskr had bashed the pile when it first attacked—back when we’d visited Yggdrasill. The creature had broken and scattered the bones like a dropped box of matchsticks. Glowing sap still dripped from the wound where its saw-like teeth had carved a six-foot hole into one of the roots.

  As we walked around the bone pile, I looked out for signs of the squirrel, but the place seemed silent as a grave.

  When Galin stopped, I followed his gaze to a black patch next to a broken femur. He cocked his head, staring at dried blood spread over the bones.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “This was where I fell.”

  I sucked in a breath. “This is your blood?”

  Galin nodded.

  An ache welled in my chest, and I wished I could go back in time to stop it from happening. “Is this where Hela found you?”

  “The shade Ganglati found me. Still alive.”

  “You must have been …” I trailed off. When I saw Galin fall into the Well of Wyrd that final time, I’d assumed that he died instantly, that the impact killed him. It was only after I came back to check that I started to have hope again.

  But while he’d been down here, gravely injured, he must have thought he would die alone. And then Ganglati came, and brought him to Hel. No wonder he agreed to serve as Hela’s king, her consort. She was his salvation.

  “I wish I’d found you sooner. I don’t like thinking of you lying broken down here.”

  Galin shrugged. “The important thing was that you were safe.”

  I’d already severed the soul bond by the time Galin fell into the Well of Wyrd. He shouldn’t have cared whether I lived or died.

  Earlier, he’d said he didn’t feel a thing. Had he been lying?

  He turned from me and shouted into the darkness. “Ratatoskr!” His voice echoed off the walls, but not another sound. “Let me try again.” He drew in a deep breath. “Raataatooooskrrrr!”

  I winced at the sound, much louder this time. Still the squirrel didn’t come barreling out of the darkness.

  “Let me try.”

  Galin nodded. I shouted Ratatoskr a few times, but nothing moved in the shadows beyond Galin’s magical light.

  “Wait.” I touched his arm. “What if we do the squirrel call? Remember how it screamed when it attacked us? Maybe we need to speak its language.”

  “I had no voice for a thousand years. I’ll need you to attempt that.”

  I cleared my throat, straightening. Then I cupped my hands around my mouth, and screamed. “Kuk kuk tzztzt tzt zzzzzttt!”

  The sound reverberated in the cavern until only silence remained. Still, there was no sign of the squirrel.

  “Maybe it needs more Kuks?” Galin offered.

  I tried again, over and over, my voice echoing, throat getting dry. When it was clear nothing was happening, I plopped down on the tree root. “I don’t think it’s coming.”

  Galin turned to me, eyes alert. “Do you know what? We can use a moth.”

  And without another word, he was already scribing a portal.

  Chapter 17

  Ali

  Ten minutes later, my legs were wrapped around the body of a giant moth—and my arms wrapped around Galin’s chiseled abs. My thighs were pressed against his as we flew through the air.

  We swept over the bone pile, then Galin pulled back on the moth’s antenna, and we began to climb, nearly vertical. I tightened my grip around his stomach. My hair whipped behind me. And despite the obvious danger of what we were doing, I felt secure this close to Galin.

  Quickly Yggdrasill’s roots disappeared into the shadows of the cave. For a long time we simply climbed in tar-black air.

  Even with my night vision, the cavern was so dark, so large, I could hardly see a thing. It was like the bottom of the sea, no sensory input beyond the rhythmic beating of the moth’s wings. I pressed my head against Galin’s back. With my ear on his skin, I could feel his heart beating, strangely comforting. When I first met him, his heart hadn’t beat at all. Now, I felt in tune with the rhythm of his blood.

  Every now and then, he would adjust his grip on the antenna, and I could feel the thickly corded muscles shift in his core. His smoky scent wrapped around me.

  When I looked up over his shoulder, I saw the first tree branch, looming out of the darkness—large as a bus, and directly above our heads.

  “Galin! Watch out!”

  Galin jerked the moth’s antenna hard to the right, and we just barely avoided slamming into the branch. Once we’d cleared it, Galin called over his shoulder, “Can you use your Night Elf vision to look out for more of those things?”

  “On it.”

  We climbed higher, and I shifted even closer to him, nestling my chin over his shoulder. I focused on looking out for Yggdrasill’s branches. Eventually, light began to filter in from above, and it became easier to see. Galin directed the moth higher and higher, easily avoiding the branches on his own.

  A breeze began to rush over us, and I could sense the moth struggling, its flight more erratic. As we flew higher, the branches thinned, and Galin directed the moth to land on one of them. It slowly glided down to rest on the bark.

  Only then did I realize I was out of breath from the effort of holding onto the moth with my body. Slowly, I unclenched my arms from Galin. He slid off first, and I followed, touching down on the branc
h.

  “We should ascend on our own now.” He looked up at the branches, spaced far apart. Climbing would not be easy. “I can shadow jump from one to another. And when I get up, I’ll reach for you. It will be the fastest way.”

  Before I could utter another word, he flickered out of existence in a haze of smoke. He reappeared again, face down on a branch, arm extended to me. On my tiptoes, I reached up and gripped his forearm. For a moment, I was filled with the dizzying fear that I could fall to my death with one slip—plummeting hundreds of feet to that bloodied pile of bones. But then Galin pulled me up with his tremendous strength, until I could grab hold of the branch myself and swing my leg over.

  We moved like that, from one branch to another, until we’d built a sort of rhythm together—shifting between limbs. But as we climbed, gusts of wind began to rush over us, making it harder to stay balanced. Then, I’d cling to the branches, or to Galin.

  I started to see glimpses of the sky between Yggdrasill’s massive leaves—a strange but beautiful inky black night, punctuated with stars so vivid they nearly hurt my eyes.

  As I slid my leg over onto one of the enormous branches, I stopped to catch my breath, looking up at the glittering sky. When I glanced at Galin again, he was silvered in the starlight, the light and shadow sculpting his cheekbones, glinting in his dark eyes.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? I said. A thousand years in a prison cell, and I didn’t see starlight the entire time. I couldn’t remember what I was missing, either. But I was missing it all the same.”

  “But I’ve never seen stars like these before.”

  “Me neither.” He met my gaze and quirked a smile. “But I was missing them all the same, even if I didn’t know it yet.” His deep, velvety voice skimmed over my skin, making goosebumps rise.

  I wasn’t sure why his words made my heart race faster, but they did. With a great deal of effort, I pulled my gaze away from him again.

  As we stared up at the sky, a shadow blotted out some of the stars. At first I thought it was a cloud, but it moved too quickly. A black silhouette against the sky.