The Ever After

by Amanda Hocking

  “Not this time.” I glared down at him. “Not ever again.”

  “Please,” Lemak begged. “I was only doing as Indu ordered—as—as your father told me to do, so that we could claim the kingdom we were denied, with our treasures and land waiting for us on the other side of the bridge. We never wanted it to come to this! This is the only way we could get what we were owed!”

  “Indu is not my father, and nobody ever owed you anything,” I said. “How do we stop this?”

  “You—You can’t,” Lemak stammered.

  “How did you maintain the cloaking spell?” Elof asked. He stood at my side just behind Lemak.

  “I didn’t,” Lemak answered. “My work was in blodseider magick, not in the incantations and reveries.”

  “Where would we find someone who could help us with incantations and reveries?” Elof asked.

  Lemak’s small, bloodshot eyes went up to the ceiling. “We were all at the ceremony. I alone left when I saw you return.”

  “Of course you did, you coward,” I sneered at him.

  “What about your books and scrolls?” Elof asked Lemak. “Where do you store your incantations and spell books?”

  “The girjastu holds all the books,” Lemak explained in his sniveling way. “It’s on the east wing of this floor, past the armory.”

  Sunniva was waiting in the corridor with a torch, keeping a lookout of sorts, though it seemed deserted down here. We couldn’t be too cautious with radical Älvolk and killer spiders lurking about.

  Dagny went out to join her. “It’s just straight down that way.” She looked back at me. “It’ll be easy enough to find. We don’t need him.”

  “Nobody does.” I turned and started toward the door.

  With my back to the häxdoktor, I heard Elof grunt and a loud clatter. I whirled around to see Lemak gripping the needle in his non-broken hand, and Elof breaking a beaker over his head.

  Lemak snarled and turned his rage toward Elof. I grabbed him to stop him, and he turned on me with the monster needle. I caught his arm, and without too much effort, I snapped his forearm with a loud crack.

  He screamed in agony, and I kept bending his arm back until the needle tore into his throat. His eyes widened, and he fell silent—aside from a raspy breath—as the metal cut through his jugular and windpipe.

  When I felt his blood hot and sticky on my hand, I released him. Lemak immediately fell to the floor, his blood pouring out from him as he stared vacantly at the ceiling. The blood pooled quickly and I jumped back to keep it from getting on my feet.

  “Ulla.” Dagny put her hand on my arm. “We need to go.”

  Elof nodded and pulled his gaze away from Lemak’s death rattle to look up at me. “You did what you had to do. You saved our lives.”

  “I know,” I said, but my voice sounded empty. I wiped my hands off on my jeans, and I followed Dagny and Sunniva as they walked down the long, narrow corridor.

  I tried not to think about what I had done or what it meant. The belief that Lemak deserved it, that he had given me no choice, was a cold comfort, and we had to keep moving.

  Dagny paused to look in the armory, long enough to let out an impressed whistle, but I stayed on task. We could check out the weapons once we had the monsters contained.

  The girjastu was a long room with low ceilings and dusty shelves. We didn’t have enough torches for everybody, so I stayed close to Sunniva, hurriedly pulling books off the shelf and flipping through them.

  Suddenly, Sunniva froze and cocked her head. “What was that?”

  “It’s just Dagny and Elof a row over,” I said.

  “No, not that.” She frowned. “This is something else.…”

  She grabbed me and pushed me back against the wall, and then I heard it too. A loud rumbling, and the room started shaking. Books and shelves tumbled over, and I put my arms over my head to shield myself.

  70

  Brimstone

  Bryn

  I ran down the stairs of the ruins and nearly got hit with a giant cat. Tove Kroner stood only a meter away from me, his hands held palms out and his face twisted up in concentration. He had used his psychokinetic abilities to throw the monster cat into the mountain wall.

  But the cat was on its feet almost instantly. It was a massive, stocky beast, built like a tiger mixed with a bulldog. The fur was mottled silver, with spots and rosettes of black splattered all over it. It had paws the size of baseball mitts, each lined with five hooked claws like a damn velociraptor’s, and its two sharp incisors extended several inches below its powerful jaws, making it some kind of saber-toothed pit bull of a cat.

  As soon as the cat was up, it started charging at Tove. He slammed it back against the wall, pinning it against the stone as its feet thrashed wildly in the air.

  Sumi finished killing a supersized spider, and she went over to the cat. While Tove held it in place, she stabbed it through the heart, killing it instantly.

  “The kuguars won’t stop coming once they have a taste for our blood,” Sumi said as she came toward us. A small spider scurried at her, and she absently crushed it with her foot. “But I can handle them. It’s the wyrm that’s beyond my skill set.”

  She nodded up to the sky where the shadows circled through the smoke.

  “You never faced one before?” I asked.

  “We stay in the valley, and the wyrms live in the mountain and caves that surround the entrance to Áibmoráigi,” Sumi explained. “We sneak by when we go through, but otherwise, we avoid each other, and on the rare occasion the wyrms hunt in the valley, we hide from them.”

  “So your tips for combating the wyrm are running and hiding?” Tove asked.

  She shook her head, making her dark coils of hair sway. “I’m only saying that I’ve never seen anyone or anything take a wyrm down, so I can’t speculate on how it’s done.”

  “There’s always a first time for everything,” I muttered.

  “I’ll need to get closer.” Tove squinted up at the sky. “It’s been flying high.”

  “There’s a crumbling tower back that way.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder.

  “That might be—” Tove began, but he was interrupted by the screeching call of the wyrm.

  It dipped low to the ground, its breath lighting up the smog. Trolls ran toward us, away from the wyrm flying at their heels, both allies and Älvolk alike.

  When Finn darted past us, we ran after him, following him down the winding trails through the crumbling, burnt remains of ancient buildings.

  Behind us, I heard screaming and smelled the burning air. It was brimstone and chlorine, smoky and chemical all at once. We stopped behind the stone-and-wood skeleton of a barn, hiding in the small area between the barn and the mountain wall, trying to catch our breath with air that burned our lungs.

  Sumi and Finn leaned against the back wall of the barn, while I paced slowly in place, my hands on my hips. Tove stepped a few feet away from us, nearly bumping into the wall as he stared up at the sky.

  Suddenly, the wyrm crashed into the barn—flying straight through the walls—making the crumbling structure explode in stone and rotten wood. I jumped out of the way and landed roughly in the dirt, and I held an arm over my head to protect myself from the shrapnel and splinters.

  Tove stood against the mountain, his hands out, and his face contorting in pain. The wyrm was frozen in the air, its mouthful of jagged teeth only inches away from him.

  The primal, emerald eyes of the beast narrowed—maybe in anger, maybe in confusion—and the veins on Tove’s forehead looked like they were about to burst. I grabbed my sword and charged at the wyrm, and I swung as hard as I could against the monster’s neck.

  But the thick, iridescent scales held strong, and it was my sword that gave. It broke in half, and I was left stumbling back with only a hilt in my throbbing hand.

  “I don’t know how to stop it!” I yelled, and smoke fumed out through the wyrm’s nostrils.

  Tove grunted, and his face
was beet red. He wouldn’t be able to hold the wyrm for much longer, and I scanned around for anything that I could use as a weapon.

  Before I could find anything, Tove let out an anguished cry, and he flung his arms upward. The wyrm’s body followed the motion as Tove threw the hundred-pound reptile into the mountainside as hard as he could.

  Tove collapsed to the ground, and I rushed over to him as pebbles rained down on us. As the rumbling began, I realized that he’d inadvertently triggered a rockslide.

  71

  Quaking

  Wendy

  Inside the tent, we tried to pretend like it didn’t sound like the world was ending outside. I helped Knut sit on a cot and made him as comfortable as I could, as the earth shook and the Tralla leather walls quaked.

  Throughout the loud shaking, a few trolls had been running in, dazed and battle-weary. I kept glancing back at the tent flaps that served as the door, hoping everyone I knew and loved was safe. I wanted everyone that had followed me here to be okay, but I hadn’t been so naïve, and this tent was evidence of that.

  But when my husband pushed his way in—dirty and dazed, his shirt torn, his chest scratched and bleeding—I let out a breath of relief. Knut was sitting up, and I asked Minnie to keep an eye on him before rushing over to Loki.

  The rumbling and shaking had finally stopped, but I could still hear the wyrm raging.

  Loki wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  “Are you okay?” I put my hand on his chest and tried to get a better look at him. His hair lay wildly across his forehead, and a bruise was growing dark purple on his cheek.

  “Yeah, it’s only a scratch,” he said with a smirk.

  Loki had been in plenty of battles in the past. Before he knew me, when he lived in the Vittra kingdom, he had been touted as the Warrior Prince. His childhood had been especially rough, but his super strength, quick wit, and endless compassion had gotten him through it.

  I knew he could handle himself, that he was one of the best soldiers we had, and that we needed him out there in combat if we were to have any chance of defeating these monsters.

  But I wished that, just this once, he wasn’t the King of the Common Troll. That he didn’t believe that if a war was worth fighting, he should be in it. I wished that he could stay back and stay safe, but I loved him because he knew that “safe” wasn’t where he needed to be.

  Someone outside screamed, and Loki looked through the gap in the tent. He swallowed hard and said, “I’ve got to get back out there. The rockslide is over now, and there might be trolls trapped under the debris.”

  “That was a rockslide?” I asked.

  He nodded, then looked back down at me and put a hand gently on my cheek. “You need to go, Wendy.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if we can win this battle,” he said thickly, and his eyes were pained. “But if we have any chance of winning the war against an unstoppable enemy like a dragon, we need leaders who know what they’re doing.”

  “Loki, no.” I shook my head. “I am the Queen. I am of service here.”

  “Wendy.” His voice was firm, but there was a slight tremor to it. “Our son needs a mother. Not all the choices we make can be for the kingdom. Sometimes we must choose our family.”

  “He needs you too,” I argued.

  “I know,” he admitted quietly. “But I can save them. I have to go back out there.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him fiercely. I loved him with everything I had, even more than the day I married him, almost ten years before. And even though it killed me to, I let go of him.

  He went out through the door, and I held the flaps open, watching as he jogged off into the smoke, toward the rockslide. A few larger boulders had piled up just beyond the tent, but the worst of it had sounded farther away, to the northeast.

  Rather strangely, all the iron and stone cages on the mountainside had broken open, some of them crumbling down. The slender, jelly-like Ögonen were free, climbing down the sheer mountain face with surprising grace and dexterity.

  But my attention was immediately on the animals crawling on top of the rock pile. A pair of spotted saber-toothed cats and a whole horde of spiders.

  None of us were going to survive up here much longer.

  “We need to evacuate!” I shouted, and I looked back to see Rikky and Patrik with panic in their eyes. “We have to get everyone down to the valley, and we have to do it now.”

  72

  Wolfram

  Ulla

  Sunniva and I had stuck close to the wall, and we’d mostly been spared from the book avalanche. I don’t know how long it lasted—it felt like forever—with the entire room shaking and the thunderous rumble booming.

  By the time it ended, all the shelves had fallen over, some of them splintering and broken. A pair of wrought-iron sconces fell to the floor with a loud clatter, and I heard the creaking groan of a door opening at the end of the girjastu.

  But I couldn’t see because the only light came from Sunniva’s torch. Elof’s had gone out, and I could see neither him nor Dagny.

  “Dagny?” I said once the quake had stopped. “Elof?”

  I heard a mumble, so I climbed over a fallen shelf and started hurriedly tossing books aside. Then an arm popped up from a pile of books, and Dagny sat up. Beside her, the books moved, and I hurried to help Elof out.

  “I’m okay,” Dagny said, but Sunniva offered her a hand anyway, and Dagny let her help her up.

  “I’m a little banged up, but I’ll be all right,” Elof assured me with a thin smile.

  Dagny was on the move, already searching through the piles of books for the right incantation.

  “Dag, are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I just need more light.” Her hair had come loose from her ponytail, and she brushed it back from her eyes. Then she gave Sunniva an irritated glance. “Can you bring the torch closer?”

  I waded into the books, digging around where Elof had been, until I found the torch he’d dropped in the chaos.

  I got it lit with the intention of helping them search. Elof used his good arm to sift through the books near him, and Sunniva stood between Dagny and Elof, so they could both use her light, and she picked through things with her free hand.

  There was another loud boom above us, and more dust and pebbles trickled down from the ceiling. That’s all there was this time, no prolonged quaking that followed, and I heard the high-pitched groan again, coming from the door swinging at the dark end of the girjastu.

  I went down to get a better look, and I discovered a thick copper door, oxidized green around the edge, standing ajar. I ducked under a spiderweb and peered in the doorway. The dim torchlight instantly picked up on the shelves lined with treasures—glittering jewels, works of art, dusty artifacts, and ancient tools.

  This must be an Älvolk vault, where they locked away their precious valuables. I stepped inside the crowded room, looking around at all the strange treasures. I was about to call for Dagny, thinking she’d like to see what was in here, but something caught my eye, and I froze.

  The large amber stone glimmered in the bronze hilt, beneath a sigil of the Omte—a trio of vultures. It was a short dagger with a wide blade made of wolfram metal. Runic symbols were carved down the center, along the blood groove. Though the dagger was battered and scraped, with the ridges on the handle dull and worn down, the edges of the blade were exceedingly sharp.

  It was the weapon of a warrior. The same one I remembered Thor giving to Orra Fågel, the one that Mr. Tulin had seen her carrying the night she left me at the inn in Iskyla.

  And then, after she’d left me, Indu had tracked Orra down and killed her. She died protecting me from him and his oppressive cult, and he had stolen the dagger from her. He had stolen my father’s blade.

  The leather sheath lay underneath the dagger, on a pile of gold coins and loose gemstones in red and blue. The belt
was long—Thor had been even wider than me—but there was a smaller handmade notch on it, one that fit almost perfectly. Orra must’ve been about my size.

  I secured the belt around my waist and sheathed the dagger at my hip.

  “Ulla! We found something!” Dagny shouted.

  I jogged back over to them, where they were crowded around a large, dusty book. It was at least two feet tall and even wider than that, and Dagny turned the vellum pages carefully. They were covered in drawings, pressed flowers and herbs, and writings in a runic language.

  In the margins, translations had been made in delicate calligraphy. Dagny read it aloud when I crouched down beside her to have a better look.

  “‘Take a flame to the blood of álfar; twice more than a drop will do,’” she read. “‘Together you bow and pray upon the earth, repeating these words: omorbba vid all sihkkamatön.’”

  “What does it do?” I asked.

  Dagny tapped a paragraph near the top of the page, next to sketch of a twisting flame. “‘If an enemy is too great, armor can be applied to the air. No arrows shall pass through, no warriors or beast. Time passes quickly under this protection, so prepare wisely for when it lifts.’”

  It was called “An Impenetrable Sphere.”

  “Do you think my blood will work?” I asked. “Since I’m only half-álfar?”

  “We’ll try four drops instead of two,” Dagny said, and looked up at me. “You can handle that, right?”

  I nodded. “Let’s do it.” I unsheathed my dagger and answered Dagny’s questions before she could ask: “It’s my father’s dagger, I found it in the vault. I’ll explain more later. Let’s get this over with.”

  Elof tore some pages out of a book for kindling. Sunniva used her torch to get it going, and I slid the blade against my finger, wincing at the pain.

  I held my hand over the fire and squeezed four big drops of blood. The flames flared up, turning gold and violent, and Elof handed me a handkerchief to wrap around my small wound.