Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies)
Read Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) Online
Authors: A.K. Morgen
"It has everything. Romance, Supernatural, Prophesy and so much more... an amazing and fast paced read."
~Amazon Review of
Fade
(Book 1 of
The Ragnarök Prophesies
)
For Courtney, who knows me better than I know myself, and still goes to the bookstore with me every time.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
And for Grandma Lois, who has taught me so much about facing the worst with grace, humility, and that stubborn Southern streak.
I love you, Grandma.
For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter’d- fell
An essence- powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.
-Edgar Allen Poe
Iceland - December, 1783
y eyes burned from the acrid smoke billowing through the village in great plumes. Gray ash swirled within the noxious clouds, covering everything in an inky film. The maps spread across the table before me were stained with soot, making it all but impossible to see the siege lines laid out below. Still, the thin parchment fared better than most everything else caught in the poisonous mists.
How long had the fires from Laki burned now? Eight months? Longer?
I could not remember.
“Six months,” Katrín murmured from across the room.
I looked up from the table and into the weary, hazel eyes of my betrothed. A wild tangle of auburn hair highlighted the flush of her cheeks. Soot made dark streaks down her simple dress, but she was still the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid eyes on.
“Aye,” I said, deciding the maps could wait. I moved across the room toward her, my arms aching to feel her in them again. “Six months.”
And two and twenty days since we were betrothed.
My bottom lip curled upward when her soft reminder floated through my mind in a whisper. Two and twenty days since I promised to make her my wife. Despite the chaos swirling around us, and the fires burning the countryside alive, they’d been the best two and twenty days of my life.
Maybe our only two and twenty
, Katrín whispered on the private link binding us firmly one to another.
“Nei,” I said aloud, my heart stuttering at the fearful tremor rippling through her.
Geri rumbled in the back of my mind. As always when fear gripped Katrín tight, the great wolf curled his essence around her, protecting her as best he could. Flickers of images skittered through me in a soft rush as the animal living inside me pushed soothing thoughts at her. I did the same thing, wrapping my arms around Katrín and holding her to my heart.
Despite my and Geri’s combined efforts to ease her, Katrín still trembled in my arms.
Fear hung in the air around me as thick as the smoke and ash boiling from Laki. The villagers’ fear. The wolves’. Katrín’s. Aside from my betrothed’s, I scarce knew what came from whom any longer. Not even Geri and his sharp wolf senses could pinpoint which of our people owned the choking emotion.
I was no longer sure it even mattered. Man and wolf alike had plenty of reason to fear.
The fires of Laki had burned for six months now, covering the countryside in the same palpable film of ash and mist that marred the siege maps. The livestock was dying. The rivers and streams were polluted. Farmlands, once bountiful, produced little more than poisoned, rancid shoots. Katrín’s people and our wolf brethren were starving.
Worse, somewhere out there, hidden by the ash and lava still spilling through the countryside like a thing alive, Sköll and Hati roamed free. The monstrous wolves struck like snakes, rising from the mists when least expected. They attacked without mercy, felling their targets one by one. I had centuries of memories stored away, but not once in all of those lifetimes could I remember Fenrir’s brood ever coming so close as this to fulfilling their destiny.
Iceland was dying, and, soon, the world would follow.
Geri growled at me as another ripple of fear waved through Katrín like long grass in a summer’s breeze. Her wolf, Freki, whined.
The sound seemed little more than a hushed murmur in the back of my mind.
Nei, fallegt
, I soothed woman and wolf, reaching out to touch Katrín’s flushed cheek.
We shall find them again.
“Já,” she answered aloud. “We will.”
I didn’t need the unbreakable bond linking us to know she only half meant the words. Her fear was the same that had taken up permanent residence in my heart since the twin wolves took their latest victim a fortnight before. Katrín and I would find Sköll and Hati again, but gods only knew if it would be soon enough. Asdis and Dagur were the only of Sol’s descendants remaining, and I no longer knew if we could protect them from the hellhounds.
The combined might of the shifters and the wolves we commanded was failing. How long until Fenrir’s brood fulfilled their destiny? Until we were unable to beat them back as we were meant to?
I didn’t know, but I felt the end barreling toward us.
“You cannot think that way, Jon,” Katrín admonished, her worried eyes meeting mine again. “You mustn’t.”
I stood silently for a moment before sighing in defeat. Katrín was right; I couldn’t think that way. I couldn’t afford to think that way, but I couldn’t help it either. I knew what Sköll and Hati were capable of.
How many times had I lost the girl in my arms to them?
I’d lost count long ago, but I remembered each and every time vividly.
I still heard the way Katrín screamed for me when Sköll hamstrung Freki a century before. Katrín’s name was Sarah then, but her face had been the same.
I remembered the way she reached for me, mouthing my name, as Hati leapt upon her from behind three centuries before that, and the way her blood spilled across the
Savaran Pass
in the
Jebal Barez
a century before that.
Each time, she had a different name and lived in some new place, but she’d been the same. And so had her heart. That was as pure as Freki’s snowy-white fur had ever been, a lighthouse beckoning me home.
Home….
Mine and Geri’s home would ever be with Katrín and Freki.
“Jon.” Katrín said my name softly, the worried gleam in her eyes melting away.
I tilted my head down to hers and brushed my lips across her cheek. “Tis true, you know,” I said against her flushed skin. “You and Freki have always been home for us.”
And you, I
, she returned.
Ég elska þig. Always.
Geri rumbled in pleasure when Freki’s weak thoughts echoed Katrín’s vow of forever.
I closed my eyes as tension drained away, leaving peace in its wake. Only Katrín could do that for me, could calm me so easily. Geri felt the same, and so did Katrín and Freki. We were each parts of one whole. Soul mates in the truest sense, created and loved by Odin himself.
I scarce remembered Odin now, but a piercing sense of longing twisted through me and Geri at our master’s name echoing in the innermost places we shared between us.
“I think I remember him sometimes,” Katrín said, twining her arms around my waist and resting her head upon my chest. “I wake some nights and remember the feel of his hands, stroking Freki’s fur before holding out some new treat. There is always a sense of pride, as if, even then, Freki and I knew how loved we were by him. As if we knew the honor he bestowed upon us by feeding us from his hand….” Katrín trailed off with a sigh. “Do you think, when this is over, we get to go back to him, Jon?”
“I don’t know,
fallegt
.” I tucked her closer as Geri whined, the sound full of hope.
“I pray so,” Katrín murmured. “I think… I think I’ll be glad when this is over, Jon, when we’re finished.” Her shoulders slumped as soon as the confession left her lips. “I should not think such grim thoughts, either.”
Her guilt pricked at my heart like the point of a sword.
“Nei,
fallegt
,” I soothed again. “’Tis not wrong to wish this war ended.”
“Nei?” she said. “When it’s finished, the world ends, Jon. Everything Odin loved dies.”
“Aye, I know.” I stepped back and reached out to tip Katrín’s face up to mine. “But ‘tis ever the way it was meant to be, Katrín. There’s no shame in wishing to be done. Even Odin knew we could not stand against them forever. He would not begrudge you the desire to see this duty discharged.”
“Perhaps not,” Katrín said, biting her bottom lip. “But….”
“But what?” I prompted when she fell silent. I caught little more than the shape of her thoughts in my mind.
“But he dies, Jon,” she said. “When this is over, Odin dies.”
Geri whined, the sorrowful sound sweeping through me in a rush.
A soft, mournful flutter of thought came from Freki.
“Aye,” I whispered, wiping a tear from beneath Katrín’s eye with the pad of my thumb. “He does.”
“Do we?” she asked. “Do we die with him?”
“I know not,” I said, swallowing down the fear that thought sent spinning through me. My death mattered little to me, and I knew Geri felt the same, but Katrín’s death? Freki’s? Geri and I would fight Sköll and Hati back for another thousand millennia if it meant Katrín and Freki lived on to be reborn again.
