Page 105 of Blood of Ancients

And finally, the clue that made me more fearful than any other—what Frida Gorndeen had told Jhaeros of the Skogalfar:“I came to the wrong place.”

She had meant Alfheim. Which meant shehadwanted to travel somewhere out of Midgard, just not the home of the Ljosalfar.

The stew of disparaging thoughts swam in my head as our boots suctioned on the swampy turf, kicking up peat. The night was cold and gloomy, the snow had stopped falling.

When we burst through the gangly trees, evading the stamped path for the swamp, we slowed our charge, weapons coming out. I drew my spear, Grim took his battle-axe from his back, and Sven rasped a sword from his hip. Magnus still had his wood-cutting hatchet from Alfheim, though I had no idea where he’d gotten it from. Arne’s sword was thin like him, lightweight, easy to maneuver. Hersir Kelvar unleashed two black-bladed daggers spinning in his palms.

Our faces were distant, fierce, awaiting whatever stood through the distant murkiness of the bog’s mist ahead.

If anything stood there at all.

We approached, sliding our feet through the ankle-high mud to get to Elayina’s cave, bending our knees to creep forward. Gliding through the muck rather than sloshing it around, so we could hide our ambush.

And there, as the thick fog started to thin, I squinted and saw a dark figure. Facing the cave, back to us.

I glanced over at my hidden mates, eyes widening in recognition before earning a nod from Magnus and Kelvar.

Those two swept off to the right, while Grim and Sven instinctively slunk to the left. Corym and Arne stayed with me at the front, the elementalist already Shaping the air to draw a coat of crystals over his palm; the elf drawing his shining silver steel.

We were thirty feet away, drawing closer, almost close enough to recognize the person’s features if he turned to us.

And then another figure showed, off to his right. Speaking a language I didn’t understand—similar to Corym’s Elvish but altogether different and harsher at the same time.

A third figure sprouted up through the mist, and then a fourth, fifth, sixth—another handful of them were whittling away at the cave entrance, smacking it with steely weapons that glowed with purple and black energy. They attacked a barrier warding them off at the mouth of the cave, tinged blue and puffy, slightly spherical—clearly keeping these invaders from getting into Lady Elayina’s sanctuary.

Fuck. There’s nearly a dozen of them.

And what werethey?

One of the grim marauders straightened, body going taut, forcing me, Arne, and Corym to stop twenty feet away and crouch in the fog. We held our breath, the bloody heartbeat in my ears beating a steady tune.

His hair was unnatural in its sheer whiteness, with streaks of dirty black running through it. He wore it long, to his shoulders, with a small bun clasped at the top of his skull. His armor was pitch-dark, black studs swallowing up any of the moonlight that might pierce through the mist.

This was not a man I recognized, yet I knew exactly what he was. He turned to our fog-patch and revealed a face just as black as his armor, with reddish eyes cutting through the mist, staring straight at me.

Yet it was the ears, of course, that confirmed my awful suspicions: long, tapered, pointed.

“Dokkalfar,” Corym hissed in a furious tone.

Dark elf.

I took one breath. Time seemed to stop.

Four of the Dokkalfar spun away from the barrier at the guttural command of their comrade, to face the mist and the Vikingruners who slunk toward them. The men and womenlooked uniform, lean and mean, with their white hair, blood-red eyes, and elegantly cruel weapons and armor.

Time resumed as my breath exhaled.

A roar split the night, a white flash to my left—

Grim Kollbjorn roaring out of the mist in his bear form, while wolf-shaped Sven danced beside him and howled.

“Fuck!” I cried out, realizing they were taking it upon themselves to jump the gun and ambush the ambushers.

To the right, the mist lit up crimson and violet, energy tossed into the air.

Magnus flew out of the fog, his cloak billowing behind him, blood running from his fingertips. In one hand he held his hatchet, and in the other he swung a blade of his own coagulated gore. The bloodrender’s tattoos poking through his cuffs and collar glowed blue with runic power, and he bared his teeth.

Kelvar dashed behind him, low to the ground, and straight-up disappeared as a few Dokkalfar turned to face him, leaving them confused and glancing around fruitlessly.

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