The Ever After

by Amanda Hocking

  “I don’t think I’ll know the answer to that question for another week at least.” I sighed. “I don’t know. But I just keep thinking of what my mother said.”

  “That only they can stop the monsters that chase them?”

  I tilted my head to look up at him. “We have to be prepared for that. We need to tell Finn to make sure that the arrows are tipped with sorgblomma poison.”

  “Sumi and Jem should know about that,” Pan said. “We’ll talk to them in the morning.”

  “Why do you think my parents didn’t see the spider?” I asked.

  He exhaled loudly. “I have no idea. I mean, I didn’t see the memory.”

  “Yeah, I know, but…” I paused, thinking about why the spider had bothered me so much. “Spiders make me think of the Ögonen. They chased me out of the catacombs with spiders, and my memory filled with spiders when the Ögonen tried the aural healing.”

  “Are you saying that you think they implanted a spider in the memory Sunniva just showed you?” he asked—not so much dubious as confused. “Why would they do that? And how could they do that out here? We’re so far from the Mimirin.”

  I sat up and looked down at him. “The Älvolk have Ögonen helping to mask their location. And someone told me that they have a hive mind.”

  “So wait.” He scooted so he was sitting up with his back resting against the headboard. “Why are they putting spiders in your memories?”

  “I don’t know if they’re trying to tell me something or scare me off.” I shook my head. “Maybe it’s a warning.”

  “You think they’re warning you that a monster is coming?” he asked.

  My breath came out short. “What if they are?”

  Pan ran a hand through his hair. “Why? Why warn you?”

  “Because I was nearby? Because I’m Omte so I can handle the aural healing better? Because I’m half-álfar?”

  “Dammit.” He glanced over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “Elof’s probably asleep now. We’ll have to wait until the morning to talk about the Ögonen with him.”

  “And we should get some sleep.” I sighed and lay back down, resting my head on his chest again. “Or try to, anyway.”

  He wrapped his arm around me, and I snuggled deeper against him. I tried not to think about the terrifying things crashing around us. And even as tumultuous and frightening as things were, being with Pan did make it easier. In his arms, I felt like his love could protect me from everything.

  Deep in the logical part of my mind, I knew that wasn’t true. Love hadn’t been enough to protect my parents—or me—from harm, and it wouldn’t protect us now.

  But I managed to fall asleep quickly, and morning came too soon. It was still dark when we got dressed and headed down to the hotel restaurant to meet with everyone.

  Over harsh nettle tea and stale pastries, I told Finn, Elof, Dagny, and Sumi about the memory of my parents. The most pertinent bit seemed to be the arrows, and Finn immediately set about getting the very limited sorgblomma supply to tip our weapons.

  “Sumi and I were up late trying to figure out a way to do the leat fámus en masse,” Elof explained with a suppressed yawn. “We think we got it now.”

  Áibmoráigi was protected by such a thick cloaking spell that even trolls couldn’t see through it. The entrance to the city looked like it was blocked by a giant boulder, but the Älvolk and thrimavolk alike had a powerful and painful incantation that allowed us to see through the spell. It was called leat fámus, and Sumi was capable of performing it.

  But there were nearly fifty of us going to Áibmoráigi, and it would take a very long time for her to do it to everyone. Not to mention that doing the leat fámus fifty times in a row could be very draining and likely damaging to her.

  “Have you tried it yet?” Pan asked. He sat beside me, his arm on the back of the bench behind me. Elof and Dagny sat across from us, with Sumi sitting at the corner with her feet propped up on Finn’s now empty chair.

  “On a small scale,” Elof said tentatively.

  “Two drunk townies and that fella named Knut,” Sumi amended, and sipped her tea.

  “But it’s impossible to know if it works until we get to Áibmoráigi,” Elof clarified.

  “So how do you do it?” I asked.

  “I channel Eliana,” Sumi said.

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “Álfar blood has unique properties,” Sumi said. “It has an amplifying effect on our supernatural abilities, but its potency fades with time. So Eliana is more effective than Jem.”

  “Wait, are you stealing her blood?” I asked in horror.

  Sumi snorted. “No, of course not. I just hold her hands.”

  “And you think that will work?” Pan asked.

  “We hope it does,” Elof said.

  61

  Summit

  Patrik had arranged the transport, a series of Mercedes Sprinter fifteen-passenger vans. They were more luxe than we needed, but they held all of us in four vehicles, so it worked.

  Pan, Jem, Sumi, Eliana, and I joined the Ten in their van, and Sumi drove because she knew the way best. It was a long drive across the Swedish landscape. Eliana sat in the back, chatting up the Ten, but eventually, even she ran out of things to talk about, and the van fell into silence.

  At some point in the afternoon, when the road had been long but there was still a long way to go, and we were all getting restless, the Omte among us had to do something to pass the time.

  Knut started first, low and slightly tremulous, then Jennet joined in, harmonizing with him, singing an old Omte folk song.

  Sing, sing the heroes

  The worm is full of flowers

  Hush, hush the morning light

  Down falls the darkest night

  And now the end is ours.

  They had stopped singing before we reached Lake Sodalen, which is when we left behind the vans and switched to traveling on foot, but the haunting melody lingered with me on the long trek across the valley and up the mountainside. It was a hard journey for all of us, but Elof especially struggled, and I carried him most of the way up to Áibmoráigi.

  As we rounded the summit of the snowcapped mountain, the path growing more narrow and treacherous, Eliana slipped once, and her heavy pack threw her off balance. Pan saw and grabbed her arm, just in time to catch her before she tumbled miles to her death on the rocks below.

  “How much farther?” Pan asked.

  “Just around the bend,” Sumi said without slowing as she led the way.

  The path widened a few yards before the giant boulder blocking the path, but it was still only wide enough for two or three of us to stand shoulder to shoulder. Sumi crouched down in front of the boulder, then summoned Eliana to help her with the leat fámus. Everyone else waited in a long line behind us.

  “The boulder isn’t really there, right?” Pan asked.

  Sumi and Eliana crouched down facing each other, and Sumi didn’t break eye contact with her, even when she answered Pan, “It’s not and yet it is. It disappears like mist but you cannot pass through, even when you know the truth.”

  “How are you going to make it so we all can go through?” Dagny asked, hovering just behind Sumi.

  “I will do it the way it is done.” Sumi cast an irritated glare toward us, and then she looked back into Eliana’s big doe eyes.

  “Will it hurt?” I asked, remembering how my skull felt like it was going to explode when Indu did the incantation on me.

  Sumi put her hands on Eliana’s face, so her thumbs were over Eliana’s eyes and her pointer fingers were on the temples. “Yes, it will.” And then quietly, Sumi said, “Leat fámus.”

  It was like being cracked in the head—a quick but blinding pain. I heard others crying out, and I leaned back against the mountain face, steadying myself on the rocky wall.

  When I opened my eyes, with the pain already just a dull ache, the boulder was gone. The grassy plateau was covered in the ruins of a civilization.
Crumbling structures of stone and iron had mostly been taken back by nature, with weeds overgrowing and birds nesting in the remains of a tower.

  I hadn’t heard anything a few moments ago, but since the leat fámus had removed the boulder and cloaking, now sound could travel through. And now I heard it, the haunting choir singing the enn morgana fjeurn on ennsommora orn.

  While the others gathered themselves as the pain subsided, I slid past Sumi and knelt with Eliana, her eyes tearing and her hair rippling through every vibrant hue of the rainbow.

  “Is she all right?” Elof asked, sounding concerned, and I was dimly aware that I should be worried too. Eliana had collapsed, others were still groaning in pain, and I had no idea how the Ten had handled the leat fámus.

  And deep down, the fear was there, the urge to stay and listen as Sumi explained that the incantation took a lot out of Ellie but she would recover soon. But the song was calling me, pulling me into Áibmoráigi.

  As I walked through the ruins, winding between the tall grass and broken-down shells of homes, I heard someone shouting my name, but I didn’t stop. Not until Pan grabbed my arm, and then I whirled around to face him.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, and put a gentle hand on my face. “Are you okay? You’re walking like you’re in a trance.”

  “Yeah…” My voice sounded far away and I shook my head. “I was following the song.”

  “You’re best not going alone,” Sumi said as she joined us. Dagny followed a few steps behind her, her bow and quiver of arrows strapped to her back.

  Behind them, I saw Jem standing with Eliana, whose hair had finally settled into her natural chartreuse. Finn was near them, getting the troops into formation.

  “Why are they singing?” Dagny asked.

  “I don’t know.” Sumi scanned the ruins, her lips pursed and her hand hovering above the weapon sheathed on her hip. “They never sang up here when I lived here. The children are hardly even allowed on the surface.”

  “We shouldn’t wait,” I said with a certainty I couldn’t explain. “It’s happening now.”

  “What?” Dagny asked incredulously. “How do you know?”

  I slipped out of Pan’s grip. My Omte strength meant that I could easily overpower him, so instead of wasting time fighting, he fell in step beside me and let me lead him through the crumbling remains of Áibmoráigi’s glory days.

  As we walked, I remembered flashes of the lysa Illaria had shown me. The walls falling, the smoke blotting out the light, the men, women, and children running as they screamed in terror. The air smelled of sulfur and blood.

  At first, I had thought the lysa was showing what I needed to prevent. But now I understood the truth was far darker. Illaria was taunting me, showing me the horror she was about to unleash on the earth, because she didn’t think I could do anything to stop it.

  The song echoed off the mountains, and I hurried toward the stable. It was a large building, weathered and worn, but not overgrown or a pile of rubble like everything around here.

  As we approached—Pan, Sumi, Dagny, and I—slinking along the walls, I noticed a strange buzzing. And then I saw the dark cloud of flies swarming around bleeding elk hides, still with clinging hunks of meat and fat and bits of bone. So much blood that the grass had become a sanguine swamp outside the main doors.

  At the edge of the growing pool of blood, I paused to see the carnage inside the dimly lit stables. The corpses of the great giant animals were piled all down the corridor. Some of them still had the skins on, others’ skins were partially removed. Broken antlers, shattered hooves, a long tongue in a puddle of fur in bile littered the floor.

  They’d slaughtered their entire herd.

  Pan had only peeked into the stable before dry-heaving, and Sumi was ashen and cursed under her breath after she saw it.

  “She should move on,” Dagny suggested as she swatted at flies.

  Pan wiped his mouth with his shirt, and I took his hand. He walked more slowly, still in shock over seeing the majestic animals he’d cared for as a peurojen butchered in such a violent way.

  “Are you sure we should find them? After what they did?” he asked in a low, thick voice.

  “The suns will set in the green sky when the good morning becomes the violent night,” I answered darkly.

  Sumi looked sharply at me. “What did you say?”

  “Hush,” I said, because as we rounded the collapsing tower, I finally spied them.

  The Älvolk and thrimavolk were surrounding an unusual turret-shaped gazebo. All of the walls were open, to the cauldron and large pit in the center. The roof was tall and shaped like a teardrop, with a point at the top and curved eaves at the bottom, and it was covered in scalloped crimson tiles.

  62

  Temple

  Beneath the temple, a cauldron boiled over an angry pit of fire. The bloodred flames licked at the iron cask, and above it, flat tins simmered on a grate, their maroon contents curdling over the sides.

  The Älvolk and thrimavolk circled around the temple. The men and boys knelt in the closest circle, the choir of younger girls in the second, and the young women brandishing weapons in the outermost ring.

  The Älvolk wore kaftans of red, and the choir wore kaftans of marigold. Their hair hung in twin braids, and they wore crowns of reeds and sorgblomma flowers. Behind them, the thrimavolk wore uniforms of cobalt that were more fitted, with breastplates made of elk hide and bones. Bold slashes of cobalt were swiped across their eyes.

  Ragnall emerged from the crowd, and he grabbed the tins from the fire, unbothered by the hot metal searing his skin. In a booming voice, he shouted an incantation I couldn’t understand and raised the blood pudding over his head.

  “No!” I shouted, and Noomi snarled at me from across the circle.

  Ragnall faltered, but only for a moment, then he plunged his bare hand—blistering skin and all—into the tin and brought a handful of the gelatinous muck to his mouth.

  I ran toward him but Noomi rushed me, hitting me with a bardiche. The first time, the stick connected painfully with my shoulder, with the blade of the axe just nicking my skin, but the second time, I caught it before the blow hit. I yanked it from her and broke it over my thighs, but Noomi charged at me again.

  I punched her—hard enough that my knuckles split—and she collapsed back on the ground. Sumi knocked Tuva back, and Dagny set her bow only to be thwarted by Indu.

  Finn shouted behind me, and I looked back to see him arriving with the small army. The thrimavolk charged at them head on. The younger children screamed and scattered, as did some of the Älvolk, but the rest of them clamored toward the cauldron to get their hands on the boiling blood pudding.

  I dodged another stick attack and lunged at the cauldron. The hot iron burnt my skin, but I easily tipped it over, covering the earth with boiling blood and spilling the tins of pudding.

  The flames exploded in a black smoke, and I jumped back out of the way and fell in the dirt. I saw a man reach for a tin that fell in the fire, howling as the flames ate his flesh.

  “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” Indu growled, and I looked up at him just as he pressed the tip of his sword against my throat.

  And then Pan was there. He grabbed Indu by the throat and threw him back against the temple wall. With his other hand, he took Indu’s arm and bent it back until he dropped the sword.

  “Don’t ever touch her again,” Pan spat at him.

  Indu looked at me over Pan’s shoulder. “I brought you into this world, and I will take you out.”

  I got up and sneered at him. “You’re not my father, you worthless worm.”

  His eyes widened, and then Knut came crashing through the wall as he tackled a pair of thrimavolk warriors.

  I grabbed Pan, pulling him out of the way so he wouldn’t be buried under wood and fighting trolls, the way Indu was.

  The ruins were in chaos. Sumi and Dagny were lost in the fray, and I had no idea where anybody else was.
It was a blur of bodies running—the bright colors of the thrimavolk and Älvolk, the subdued greens, browns, and pale blues of the Trylle, Omte, and Skojare.

  Pan and I leaned back on the exterior of the half-broken wall, and I tried to catch my breath. I was strong, but I had never been in a real fight before, let alone a battle. What little preparation I had gotten in beforehand had hardly been enough.

  Then, through the crowd, I saw him running away. Ragnall Jerrick was taller than most—other than some of the Omte—and he had a bloody handprint splattered on the back of his shaved head. He was escaping from the mess he’d created here and going for the bridge.

  I couldn’t see the bridge from where I was—the plateau of Áibmoráigi curved slightly around the mountain, and that’s where it connected with the bridge.

  —as I had once before, when I followed the white elk through the ruins and Illaria found me at the waterfall—

  I couldn’t let Ragnall cross the bridge or enter Alfheim, so I raced after him. Someone dove at me, but I ducked out of the way, and I punched another Älvolk soldier and pushed him to the side.

  I ran faster than I ever had before. My lungs burned, and I pushed myself as fast as I could, and I was managing to close the gap.

  The Lost Bridge of Dimma was just before him, a stone arch stretching over the canyon between the two mountains, and I shouted, “Ragnall! Wait!”

  He paused long enough to look back at me, smirking over his shoulder, and then he charged across the bridge.

  “You’re going to kill us all!” I yelled after him.

  He laughed loudly—the bombastic sound ricocheting off the mountains—and he ran so fast he was nearly across the bridge before I’d even reached it.

  “Maybe,” he called over his shoulder. “But I will live eternal.”

  I stopped at the bridge, hunched over with my hands on my thighs as I struggled to catch my breath.

  Ragnall made it across the bridge. He laughed again, almost hysterical, and he ran his bloodied hands over his smooth scalp as he looked around in delighted amazement.

  The air rippled, and I heard a strange sound. A crackling bleat strangled by a guttural growl. Behind Ragnall, water sprayed out from the ethereal waterfall. From the correct angle, the way the water fell, it looked like a woman in her bridal veils.