Chapter 41 | Ravinica

Chapter 41

Ravinica

I STOOD OVER THE TABLE for an unknown amount of time. Staring at the family tree, all the names I'd racked up over the many weeks of coming here. They funneled down to the four names at the bottom of the list.

How is this even possible? What are the odds that something like this is true?

I wondered if it was an omen from the Norns—the wise spirits who controlled our fates. I reflected at my time at Vikingrune, thinking that perhaps a greater destiny had called me to this place only so I could meet the men who had destroyed my family.

Except, they didn't destroy my family. Right? It was their ancestors who destroyed my ancestors. There was a definite distinction there, and I tried to grasp it and hold it close to my heart.

But my heart was already broken. After what I'd done with Grim, with Magnus just now, even with Arne in the mess hall, and had started to feel a draw toward my adversary Sven Torfen . . . there was no getting over the stab of betrayal deep in my gut.

My flimsy excuse that they'd had nothing to do with the eradication of my family name didn't hold weight. The facts remained that someone had to pay for our familial destruction. Since the ancestors who caused it were long dead, it would have to be their descendants.

Of course, there was no way for these four young men to know what I'd discovered. They couldn't know their families had played a part in the dismantling of mine unless they'd done the same research I had.

Even now, when I glanced over my shoulder and saw the gentle rhythm of Magnus' chest rising and falling, I felt confused and unsure of myself.

Passing Runeshaping Basics and Combat & Strategy midterms had reignited my confidence. The wins had given me a sense of belonging—like I truly was meant to be at Vikingrune Academy, even though I couldn't yet summon my inherent magic.

As my world came crashing down around me, I now understood it as a false sense of security. I didn't belong here. I couldn't trust these men. That understanding made me nauseous and drenched in self-pity.

Magnus' throat looked so supple as he slept. His tattoos lined nearly every inch of his skin, down to his muscled thighs, his cock, his knuckles and toes. He was a piece of art . . . and I could have easily slit his throat as he slept.

The mere thought of it alarmed me. I jolted back, bumping against the table, shaking books.

Magnus' eyes jolted open. His head lifted. He stared at my naked form standing in the candlelight of the table. "Silvermoon?"

He had a curious look on his face. I could only imagine I was sporting a sickly one on mine.

I opened my mouth to say something, though I couldn't bring myself to point out what I'd uncovered. I needed more time to think about all this—I was too stunned and dumbstruck to gather my thoughts.

Something saved me, perhaps another cruel twist of the fates, as a sound clicked through the room, lifting up from the lower levels of Mimir Tomes. It was followed by the soft thudding of boots.

"Fuck," Magnus hissed, rolling onto his front and getting to his feet. He glanced out the window behind us, noting the placement of the moon. "We've overstayed our welcome. Why didn't you wake me?"

I blinked rapidly, staring at him. The pain and grief settled deep in my bones, because even after the glorious affair we'd just had, rolling around on the floor like star-crossed lovers, I now felt like I was looking at a stranger when our eyes met. Like he was a traitor who didn't even know how he had deceived me. It was an odd flavor of cognitive dissonance.

"S-Sorry," I eked out, urging myself to say something, anything. "I guess I got too caught up in my research."

"Did you find what you need?" he asked, quickly grabbing his clothes from piles on the floor.

"I guess so."

"Good. Because I'm not sure we can come back here. Grab what you need."

In a flurry, he stuffed things away in his backpack—the empty wine bottle, the mugs—and stepped into his clothes.

I stood there inert, watching him. A heady daze flitted through my mind.

He paused, looking over at me. "Ravinica." His voice was a whisper. "They'll be here soon. Snap out of it."

With a nod, I came to and started moving. I put my clothes on then closed the texts I'd been working on.

I had half a mind to burn the family tree in the candlelight—the pages I'd painstakingly hand-written over weeks—because the truth of them hurt me more than being left in the dark.

I wanted to go back to an hour ago, when I'd had Magnus inside me and his boot on my face while I licked wine off the ground. That despicable, filthy, perfect time, when we could both forget the tortures of our lives and just be in the moment, one with each other.

In the end, I folded the pages of my family tree together and stuffed them in my shirt. Everything else, including my notes, I had to leave behind, as the boots from the first level of Mimir Tomes were growing louder, moving to the second level.

The Huscarls were making their rounds.

Magnus and I hurried out the window together, climbing down at a measured pace. Magnus went second and made sure to close the window behind us. We were leaving enough evidence behind that our secret spot had been burned.

It didn't matter. We had made our discoveries.

And truth be told, just like that, I never wanted to step foot into Mimir Tomes again.

Over the next few days, I was adrift. I had two midterms to finish to close out the week—a written test for Hersir Thorvi's History & Tomes class, and another one for Hersir Kelvar's Stealth & Interrogation class.

Both of them I drifted through, acing them without needing to try. I was good at scholarly pursuits, and I'd hardly needed to study.

Randi and Dagny noticed my lethargy and tried to pry answers out of me for why I was being so dour, but I gave them nothing. As the weekend hit, they stopped asking, only looking at me sadly when I passed, as if I was a shell of my former self.

I couldn't fight off the bleakness that overcame me. The truth of my time here was barreling toward me at a breakneck speed, and nothing I did—no extracurricular gallivanting with Grim in the woods or Magnus in the library—would change it.

My mission was still the same.

Now I just needed to figure out a way to execute it.

Over those days, the doubts weighed me down. I was listless and dismayed, and there was no one I could talk to without outing myself. I didn't want to put my friends in danger by telling them I had been moonlighting as a research-assassin in the forbidden section of Mimir Tomes.

Dagny knew a little bit about it, after I'd given her the Snorri poetry book, yet that was all. She knew no details. Not even my mother knows what I've discovered here.

I wondered, vaguely, if telling Ma about what I'd found, and the resentments and difficulties holding me back—falling for the men I was supposed to kill—would sway her mind at all.

That cycle of thoughts only brought me to another one, where I debated the necessity and rightness of carrying out Lindi's mission at all .

Family was everything, of course. I loved my mother, and I hated being chastised and tormented by the people of Selby Village, by the students and staff at Vikingrune Academy—by every Viking-born supernatural I seemed to come across. They all hated me because of my name.

At the same time, did I care as much as my mother? She saw retribution and vengeance as the only way out—the only way to vindicate our family's struggles.

I was starting to doubt that was the case.

It made me feel weak even considering going back on my oath to her.

Into the weekend, I kept floating by, dissociating. I felt like I was on the outside looking in. Unsure what to do or where to go or who to talk to.

Obviously it couldn't be any of the four men in question. "Hey, Grim, I've discovered your family bloodline hated mine and did everything in their power to eradicate us. Funny, huh? Now I'm supposed to kill you. Thoughts?"

Yeah, that would go well.

It wasn't until Saturday after midterms, when countless other students were celebrating in Delaveer Forest outside the academy and inside the walls of the school, that I finally got a wake-up call.

Something snapped me out of it.

The night began with me retreating to Nottdeen Quarter after a lonely supper at the nearby mess hall. Dagny was behind the counter, looking pensively at me when I shuffled toward the stairs.

"Rav," she called out when I put my hand on the railing.

I paused, my sad eyes facing her.

She frowned at me and grabbed a piece of paper from the table, wagging it in the air. "You got a letter from a messenger raven. Came in this afternoon."

Furrowing my brow, questions spiraling in my brain as I hurried over to her. I took the letter from Dagny, muttered, "Thanks," and peeled it open at the counter.

It was a short missive, hand-written.

Ravinica,

Arne is in trouble. Meet at the southern longhouse near Vala Chamber to discuss. Ten PM sharp.

-Frida

My pulse spiked, heart slamming in my chest. I hoped Dagny couldn't see the look of sheer shock on my face, or the sweat starting to sheen my skin.

"Anything wrong?" she asked.

My neck tightened. Everything is wrong, bestie. It had been for days now, so I supposed my lack of emotion, response, or feeling didn't alert her to how I actually felt.

From her outlook, it was just more of the same: a mopey, sad, unconfident Ravinica who looked nothing like the woman she and Randi had come to befriend and appreciate.

"No," I said simply, and then raised the letter. "Thank you."

With that, I headed for the stairs. It was already almost ten o'clock, which meant I could have easily missed the meet-up with Arne's sister Frida.

This time, when I reached my dorm room, I didn't wallow and I didn't plop down on my bed like a depressed teenager who'd had their little na?ve heart broken.

Instead, I strapped on my spear, opened the small window over my bed, and crawled out to the roof. I exited Nottdeen that way, so Dagny wouldn't ask questions and wouldn't see me leaving.

If Arne was in trouble, I had a duty to help him. Even if I was feeling conflicted and utterly lost about how to engage with Arne, Grim, Magnus, and even Sven, I knew I couldn't turn my backs on those first three.

Not now, after all we'd been through. After all they'd helped me with.

I'm coming, Arne. Even if I have to eventually kill you.

The night was dark, cloudy, with a chill breeze sweeping through the academy. I heard voices and things going on all over the place—parties being held for people who passed their midterms, revelers in Tyr Meadow a couple miles away, carrying on the wind.

It was much quieter on the far eastern side of campus, where Vala Chamber's domed structure stood not too far from Nottdeen Quarter. The peripheries of the academy, especially toward the east instead of the west, weren't visited often unless classes were in session.

The small village of longhouses there—storerooms, housing, and other lodgings—shielded me from some of the wind whipping my hair about.

I felt an eerie sensation fall over me as I entered the smattering of dwellings, deciding to draw my spear because of the anxiety creeping along my skin.

"Frida?" I called out in a low voice.

The longhouses were close together, their walls high, creating little alleyways between the five or six structures. I stepped between the buildings, eyeing each corridor I crossed.

I noticed a shadow in the distance under the awning of a longhouse. From my distance twenty feet away, in the moonless night, I couldn't make out who it was.

"Frida?" I repeated. "Is that you? How did you get onto campus past—"

My words cut off as Astrid Dahlmyrr stepped out from the shadow, a cruel grin on her face. She carried a spear with her, the haft stamped on the ground.

I lowered my chin, flaring my nostrils. "Astrid. What the fuck is this?"

She stepped closer to me, closing the gap from twenty feet to fifteen in a hurry. I had an urge to either charge her and complete the closed gap, or backpedal and get out of there.

But I wanted to know her motives, first.

That was my mistake.

I already fucking knew her motives. I didn't need anymore ammunition—I had defeated her at every turn, humiliating her in front of her friends.

"You should have never come to Vikingrune Academy, bog-blood." Her voice was dark and sinister. Not much different than when she usually spoke with me, though tinged with even more malice this time.

I squared my shoulders. "What is this? Some kind of—"

A blurring shadow to my right cut me off, launching from an inky patch between two longhouses.

I spun toward the charging student—one of Astrid's minions. A first-year like me, baring her teeth in a snarl.

My spear went up at the last second as she tried to smack me over the head with a cudgel.

I blocked the blow, sidestepping—

And tripped when something hard kicked the back of my calf, bringing me to my knees.

Pain shot through my side when a fist smacked against my ribs.

I let out an oof and doubled over, dropping my spear.

I tried to whip my head around to defend myself from the new attacker I hadn't seen coming.

It only gave the girl with a cudgel more room to hit me, and she brought me to the ground with a kick to my spine.

"An ambush?" Astrid asked, finishing my sentence as her friends battered me. "Yes, whore, it is. It's time you learned you don't belong here, and don't ever try to take my man from me."

I could hardly hear her over the vicious kicks being lobbed at my torso, my head, my legs. Was she talking about Sven ? The man she pined after—the same man who had been busy chasing me and Grim during the Lunar Night when she wanted him to be ravaging her? The same man I loathed just as much as I loathed her ?!

Why would I ever want him?

I tried to hold back my cries, not wanting weakness to take me, but I felt so defeated, and I had for days. This was just the icing on the cake. The straw that broke the camel's back and sent me in a spiral of despair.

Crying out to the moon, which didn't even have the decency of showing itself tonight, I finally lost my will. I curled into a ball to try and defend myself and keep my bones from breaking. Pain and agony hit me everywhere at once, both physical and mental.

"That's right, bog-blood," Astrid said with a laugh, while her three goons kicked the shit out of me. "Cry for me. Cry for your mother. Show how weak you really are when you don't have those feckless boys around to defend you."

Once the rainfall of kicks stopped coming, I was a pummeled mess. Mewling in pain, bruised everywhere, I felt like I was internally bleeding and that at least a few ribs had broken.

"Get her up," Astrid growled to her comrade.

One of the girls lifted me by my hair, ripping a groan from my throat as I was forced on my knees.

I wobbled in place, wanting nothing more than to embrace the ground and fall asleep forever. My head swam with dizzying pain. My eyes were half-lidded.

Astrid took the cudgel from her friend. She stepped in front of me, crouching. Then she pointed the small club at me.

"Know your place, you swampy slut," she muttered.

She swung the cudgel, bludgeoning me across the face, and darkness swallowed me completely.