Chapter 46 | Ravinica

AFTER PACING SO MUCH in my room last night that I wore the floorboards out, I had spent the rest of the night going through my textbooks. At one point, I had three tomes open at the same time on the floor, flipping through the pages, walking between them like a crazed detective.

I practiced Shaping the runes I found, over and over again. My fingers danced with magic, yet the outcome was always the same: a successful spell, but a failure of execution.

It was to be expected, given what I was trying to do, and I had to be content with that.

Once I was finally ready, and felt confident in my abilities hours later, the sun was beginning to rise on Academy Hill. Or at least it was trying its hardest to push its bountiful rays through the nasty storm that had been falling on us the past few days.

I hadn't slept a wink, yet I wasn't tired in the slightest. I was energized by the prospect of a successful mission.

Now, I was shocked to find myself in a convoy with Gothi Sigmund himself. Surrounded by two dozen Huscarls, including the scarred commander from Fort Woden, never leaving Sigmund's side.

I also had my mates with me, one and all: Sven, Grim, Arne, Magnus. Dagny and Randi had helped me rouse them once Gothi Sigmund agreed to my stipulations and told me I had an hour before we departed the academy.

An hour?! I remembered thinking.

And here I had figured the Gothi would shrug off my desperate ploy as foolish and unnecessary. It seemed he was willing to throw down his "busy plans" for the opportunity I presented him with.

It was a juicy one, after all.

We moved at a breakneck speed, atop horses and a few carriages. Our entourage was vast—likely the largest contingent Vikingrune Academy had ever sent outside the gates of the school.

The group moved through Delaveer Forest with purpose. My heart was thumping the entire time, throat hitching as I worried about my capabilities and what I was getting myself into.

I was on Gothi Sigmund's radar now, no matter what happened. That didn't seem like a good thing—an afterthought I hadn't considered when first concocting my scheme.

As we rode through the widest paths Delaveer had to offer beneath its thick canopies and jungle-like atmosphere, we stopped twice for food and drink, always next to a river.

My mates were giving me the cold shoulder, which was understandable because I had again done something foolish without telling them. Plus, they couldn't exactly whisper secrets to me with the dean of the academy never straying more than five feet from me.

I prayed they would forgive me eventually. They didn't even know what I planned, yet I hoped they'd agree with my reasoning once they found out.

I was sure my guys felt like prisoners at their own academy, forced into something against their will, when the term was technically over already. They could have been sipping frosty beers in Isleton, next to a fire at Trond's Pub or Liv's Libations. Instead, they were out here with me in the bitter cold.

That certainly spoke to their character, and showed they cared deeply for me and my safety.

Even so, Magnus kept shooting me with a what-the-fuck-have-you-gotten-us-into look. He appeared slightly guilty, too, since all of this was predicated on the bombshell of revelations he'd told me yesterday.

Please let this work without any problems. I'll make sure to pray to you forever, gods.

As the sun was beginning to set on another dreary afternoon in the Isle, we arrived at our destination. We'd been traveling all day, with little words spoken by anyone. My guys were acting pissy, the Huscarls were acting annoyed, and Sigmund was lost in thought with a determined bent to his severe face.

The elven encampment looked much the same as when I'd escaped it with Corym. The skeletons of burned-out tents and charred logs riddled the large clearing. Clothes, hangers, and overturned buckets were left near the riverside.

Immense guilt sank my stomach as I recalled my time with the Ljosalfar. Sweeping my gaze across the camp, I noticed the "corral"—a barn with an awning where I had slept most nights—was also razed to the ground.

Our convoy stopped on the fringes of the camp, on a gentle knoll looking down on it.

Gothi Sigmund, to my side, crossed his burly arms over his barrel chest. "Well?"

I gulped and pointed ahead, toward the back of the camp. "That way, sir."

"Lead on, Linmyrr." He swept his hand forward, and I took the lead.

I moved hesitantly through the waste of the camp. The dead bodies of the elves who hadn't made it out were gone, and their blood that had soaked the grass had been washed away by rain and animal prints.

Anger rose up inside me, knowing the man I now led through this camp had been the cause of its destruction.

Not anymore, I told myself. Never again. What I'm doing will help heal tarnished relations. I just have to trust the process and trust the people I'm with.

Trust, as I well knew, had always been a hard thing to come by in my life.

Now, I was trusting a proven tyrant to do the right thing.

It gnawed at me, making me feel foolish and stupid. My heart was sick, painful in my chest, as I crept to the back of the camp where a single building still stood intact.

It was nothing more than an open-faced longhouse. It had been used as all sorts of things when I'd been here—a room for elves to stay, a councilroom for elders, even a storage closet for gear.

Now, it was empty. But the memory remained: Deitryce and her ten survivors standing there, waiting desperately for Corym to make it to them in a mad dash, with the Huscarls hot on his heels.

The shimmering, spherical mirage bubbling around them, ripping the fabric of space and time.

Corym pushing his sister into the bubble, demanding she run . . . while he stayed with me here, in Midgard, to face impossible odds.

We had survived. He had stayed, and been imprisoned—first by the Lepers Who Leapt we called allies, and then by the academy itself.

Both times, he had been a prisoner because he was kept from me .

Not anymore, I repeated to myself. Never again.

"This is it?" Sigmund asked, nodding his bearded chin.

I swallowed hard and stepped forward hesitantly.

"Silvermoon . . ." Magnus groaned behind us, trailing off.

He was immediately scolded by the Huscarl commander and told to shut up.

Pindrop silence filled the space, hovering over me like a physical thing. My legs became wobbly, boneless, and I felt like I would collapse as I neared the wide opening of the building.

Then I squared my shoulders, stood taller, and tried to move with some confidence. I told myself this was for the best—it had to be done, or nothing would ever get solved.

At the building, I moved my hands in the air. I Shaped runes, first to test the waters in front of me.

With my fingertips alight, I stepped into the entrance of the longhouse, worried nothing would happen and that my plan would be a complete failure.

Dizziness washed over me, ripping a gasp from my throat. Lines of energy traced through the air over my head in ribbons of white, blue, and green. The colors of an aurora borealis, slightly neon, slightly there, slightly not.

Furrowing my brow, I followed the trace of the magic leading me. It spanned the entire circumference of the longhouse, from end to end. The ground at my feet was suddenly warm, even through the soles of my boots. In fact, the entire space was starting to heat up, fighting off the bitter cold outside the longhouse.

I heard murmuring coming from the entourage, thirty feet away, as everyone watched me work.

Sweat built on my upper lip. I stepped out of the longhouse, intuitively understanding the breadth of the spell cast here—of the powerful portal that lay dormant, that only those of elven descent could operate.

And then, staring up at the grassy roof of the longhouse, five feet from its entrance, I Shaped the sky.

I worked three, four, five runes in rapid succession. As one Shape began to fade into nothingness, I was already drawing the next, illuminating the air with my magic, building sources and giving them directives to hone in on the longhouse and the warmth at my feet.

Headiness swam through me, tugging at my insides, empowering me. It was a surreal experience, and there were no explosions or fancy shimmering lights past the vague spherical shape of the portal in front of me.

The portal that had shown itself to me only because I met the requirements to wield it. I was certain that had anyone else stepped into this longhouse—even a runeshaper as powerful as Gothi Sigmund—they would have been met with cold earth and dry walls.

With a flourish of my hands, I swept an arc through the sky above me, mimicking the examples and positions from the textbooks I had read last night.

The world seemed to shift on its axis for me and me only, tilting, and I swayed in place. I fought against the burn of exhaustion in my mind, reeling, blinking wildly to stay upright.

"Ravinica!" a voice shouted behind me, though I didn't know which mate it belonged to.

With my heart thundering in my chest, I turned to face the entourage.

Behind me, all was as I'd left it, with the exception of the small transluscent bubble of magic that had once been here and then been snuffed out by the elves leaving this realm.

"It is done," I said, directly to Gothi Sigmund. "The portal is open." When he grunted with a small hum, I added, "It's your turn to make good on your side of the bargain, sir."

The moment was agonizing. My fingers twitched, my eyes swerved from one mean-looking Huscarl to the next.

If Sigmund Calladan wanted, this could have been another rout, another slaughter. It was thirty against five. The expressions on my mates' faces were bewildered, slightly aghast at what had just happened. What I'd just done.

Gothi Sigmund stepped forward from the crowd, large and in charge. A black cloak swept behind him, making him not unlike the helmeted soldiers at his command.

"I am a man of my word, cadet."

With a flick of his wrist, Sigmund silently ordered two Huscarls to run off, back the way we'd entered.

Moments later, I gasped as the two soldiers led a bound man out of a closed, windowless carriage we'd brought with us. He was taller than the soldiers, ears high and pointed as he was pushed through the crowd, up to the fore. His skin shimmered, pale light in the darkening twilight.

"Corym!" I cried out.

I hadn't known he'd been in the convoy in a carriage.

Corym E'tar raised his bowed chin and looked at me, wrists tied with rope in front of his body. His expression brightened, a smile coming to his face . . .

. . . And then he looked past me, golden eyes widening, and his smile faltered. He let out a sound of despair, wrenched reflexively from his body. An appalled expression crossed his smooth, perfect face.

And Corym fell to his knees, awestruck.

" Lunis'ai ," he moaned. ". . . What have you done?"

I rushed to him, sprinting, my heart failing in my chest. Pain wrapped around me when I looked at the deathly pallor to his cheeks, the defeated expression twisting his features like his life was crumbling all around him.

It very well might have.

"Corym, please," I mewled, on my knees in front of him, gathering his shoulders in my hands. "I had to do it. You don't understand. I couldn't sit by and watch you die!"

Our foreheads met, tears trickling down my cheeks.

"You opened the portal to Alfheim," he whispered—a scathing sound. " Why , Ravinica?"

"I just told you! I knew you wouldn't do it because you're too proud, and they would have killed you!"

"And I would have gladly died for it! Now . . . my people are damned."

His voice was a punch to my gut. If I hadn't already been on my knees, it would have knocked me to them. It struck to my core, buckling my resolve.

I had never heard Corym E'tar lose his temper or shout at me with such seething remorse and . . . loathing.

The tears were coming faster now. My mates surrounded me, standing over me.

I said, "You can be with your people now, love. You can join your sister in Alfheim."

I had known this was a possibility, yet I'd been willing to sacrifice my love for Corym E'tar if it meant reuniting him with his people.

Midgard was not his realm. That much was obvious. He was a stranger here, even more than I was. The people hated him too much, and I couldn't selfishly keep him to myself if it meant he could be free and safe somewhere else.

All of this had been calculated in my plan, but now it agonized me to realize it was coming to fruition in the worst way.

I swept my hand out behind me, toward the portal. "It's right there, love. You can go to it and—" My brow furrowed, cutting me off short.

During my lament with Corym, Huscarls had wheeled around me and now surrounded the entrance of the longhouse, facing outward toward us. Nearly twenty of them.

Snarling, I ripped my face forward, up to Gothi Sigmund.

"I'm afraid that is not possible," he said in his low voice.

"What is this, Gothi? What trickery are you playing at?!" I screamed.

He gave me an unimpressed look, a slight pout to his lips as his arms remained crossed. "This elf has been inside Vikingrune Academy. He has seen our school, our defenses, our lives. You think I was going to let him skip into Alfheim and tell his people everything they want to know about us? What kind of fool do you take me for, young woman?"

My jaw dropped. "B-But you promised—"

"I promised to free him from imprisonment. I did not promise to let him leave the Isle." Sigmund shook his head, beard wobbling. "The elf remains here."

Shocked, I looked down at Corym, whose head was bowed in grief. He was . . . mourning.

I couldn't argue with the Gothi. I didn't have the manpower to fight him. Plus, he had freed Corym. Technically, he hadn't lied to me.

No, he had done what every formidable serpent did: He bent the truth to his liking, showing me fool's gold instead of the real thing.

I had fallen for it hook, line, sinker. He was the serpent, and I was its shadow—moving and changing on his whims.

The silver lining was that Corym was free. He could still be with me, if he'd only come to reason.

I put my forehead to his again, speaking hushed so only he could hear me. "We will find a way, love."

"I don't want to return to Alfheim, lunis'ai ." His words were a whisper. "Not if it's without you."

"Then y-you will stay?" Hope rose in my chest. He was speaking to me—he wasn't scolding me, damning me, cursing me.

"I'm forced to, Ravinica. Always a prisoner. Even now."

It felt awful to see him like this. Corym E'tar was a prideful elf, not a wallowing, miserable, self-defeated one.

I caused this, I thought with a sinking heart.

"I swear to you, Corym, I'm going to make my people see reason. Don't you see? This is the only way to mend broken relations between our—"

His head shot up, cutting me off. A look came over his golden eyes. One of pity.

"Oh, you good-hearted, foolish, infuriating girl," he said, cupping my cheek. "Have you not seen what your people are truly like? You were with me, Ravinica. You know what humans do. How will anything change, love? You can't pull hate out of a man's heart."

Grinding my teeth together, I fought back the sad tears. Now, they were angry, righteous lines down my face.

He could call me na?ve, stupid, silly, anything he wanted. It didn't change the fact I had resolve that would not be broken—determination that fueled my every desire and hadn't failed me so far.

I would make sure it didn't fail me now.

With a biting voice, I spoke to my broken, tattered elven lover.

"Things will change because I will make them change, Corym. The Taldan Wars didn't have Ravinica Linmyrr to contend with. But this is a new age. And if it's the last thing I do, I'll make people see reason. Both our people. In this timeline, both the elves and the humans are prosperous." I tilted his chin to stare deep into my eyes. "It is my oath to you: This time, it will be different."