Page 155 of The Serpent’s Shadow

Chapter 44

Ravinica

I PORED OVER THE FORBIDDENtext all night, locked away in my dorm room. Randi and Dagny had come through in the clutch, big time.

Most of the thin tome was filled with anecdotes, history, and hypotheses. But deep in the night, with my eyes getting droopy and the excitement of the last few days starting to weigh on me, I found what I was looking for: How to open a damned portal.

Specifically, I needed to know how to open anelvenportal, here in Midgard.

As it turned out, and as I’d suspected, it was no easy task. There was a reason the humans had never been able to break the ward that would send them to the elven world.

I recalled a conversation between Corym and his sister, Deitryce, a month ago.

“Careful, brother. You say too much.”

Those had been her words to him in warning. Now I understood them.

“The portal-blocking was a one-way ward,” Corym had told me, when he was trying to explain the history of our peoples’ tenuous relationship.“Our ancestors cast it to keep humans out of Alfheim. Humans did not possess the power to keep elves out of Midgard.”

Now the tome in front of me was telling mewhythat was the case: Because you needed to be of elven descent to open an elven portal.

Duh. It made so much sense. The answer was so simple, yet so unique to the problem that faced Vikingrune Academy.

Elven magic was strong, inherent to their species. Both Ljosalfar and Dokkalfar were expert mages. They had grown up with powers since birth, arcane magic flooding their veins.

I stood up and started pacing my room, lost in the swirl of my thoughts. Alone with only my mind to keep me company, I could think a bit clearer, dig a bit deeper.

The puzzle started to make more sense the longer I paced.

My head shot up, gazing out at the hidden moon behind the clouds outside my window. “It doesn’t say only anelfcan open a portal. It says only someone of elvendescentcan . . .”

I trailed off, talking to myself like a madwoman.

Was that phrase written on purpose, or was it a careless error? I doubted it was the latter.

“. . .I’mof elven descent,” I finished out loud.

When I heard the words in my own ears, from my own voice, they awoke something else inside me.

The visions of my past memories, from a life that hadn’t even belonged to me. Echoes of a life I’d never lived, shown to be my Lady Elayina, my supposed ancestor.

Gods, what a day this had been.

I could remember the memories clearer. The four fragments, coming like chapters in a story—from a point of view that didn’t connect me with either King Dannon or Lord Talasin, but perhaps someone near them. Someone who could record their heartbreaking history.

I thought of those memories in the context of Vikingrune Academy—the school founded after Dannon’s death, after theTaldan Wars, and after the severing of the alliance between humans and Ljosalfar.

“What does the academy want?” I asked myself, rolling with my thoughts.

It hit me two seconds later, and my feet froze to the floorboards.

“They want the same thing Dannon wanted. The same thing he was willing to die to retrieve, and willing to do horrific things to Lady Amisara in order to obtain.”

My lips parted, jaw falling to the floor.

---