Page 96 of The Viking in the Vault
“This is it?” she asks.
I nod. “This is where I woke.”
She brushes her fingers along the metal, wiping a streak into the frost. “I keep trying to picture it…what it must have been like to open your eyes and find everything gone.”
I do not speak at first; the memory is more painful than I’d expected. I remember the strange sensation of waking, Fenrik whining and nuzzling my cheek, trying to wake me fully. I remember the dread I felt, knowing that something had gone wrong…and then the awareness ofher.
That even if something had gone wrong, it was because Yrsa had a different path for me than the one I intended.
“I thought I had failed,” I murmur. “I worried that all I knew was gone.”
Elena turns to me, brow furrowed. “I’m so sorry, Ragnar.”
I meet her eyes. “Don’t be,” I reply, lacing our fingers together. “Now I know I was meant to sleep all those years so I could findyou.”
Her breath catches, and she leans slightly closer. A surge of possessive pleasure courses through me, a reminder that I claimed this female last night…that she ismine.
“I’m really glad you woke up,” she whispers.
A sharp bark from Fenrik breaks the moment.
We both turn as he trots toward the far end of the chamber, in the opposite direction from the one I took when I first emerged. There, the frost-covered floor drops away into a dark, wide opening: a chasm cut into the ice, deep and yawning. Mist drifts up from its depths, and below…light.
Something is glowing down there.
Kallisto is already following Fenrik, eyes flickering from the chasm to her comm, where she’s pulled up a map of the Eiskammer. She looks back at us now, frowning. “There’s…it appears that there’s a chamber down there,” she says. “But it isn’t on the map.”
I step closer to the edge, boots crunching in the frost, and peer down into the chasm. The drop is steep, nearly vertical, but not infinite. And below, the glow strengthens…pulsing in rhythmic intervals like a heartbeat. I inhale deeply, scenting what might lay beneath.
And there–something familiar.
Skoll signatures…crew.
“My people are down there,” I say, the words rushing out of me.
Elena gasps. “What? Really?”
“Yes…I must find them.”
I’m already peering into the darkness and mist, sizing the drop. Kallisto frowns, moving toward me like she’ll hold me back. “There’s no safe way down–not without setting up our climbing gear first. You need to?—”
I lift Elena into my arms. Ves lurches toward us as if they believe I’ve suddenly lost my mind. Perhaps I have.
“Ragnar–!” Elena squeaks, her arms looping instinctively around my neck.
“I have you,” I rumble, stepping closer to the edge.
Fenrik, picking up on my cues, is already at the chasm’s mouth. He looks back at me and then leaps into the darkness, and I hear the faint sound of his claws clicking as he touches down. He woofs once from down below, but it doesn’t seem to do much at all to set Elena at ease.
“Ragnar,wait, can we just talk about—” she starts.
But I do not wait.
I leap.
Ves shouts after us; Davina lets out a cry of shock from back toward the passage; Kallisto curses. The air whooshes past us for only a moment before I touch down, bracing both of us against the impact…safe.
“What the fuck, Ragnar?!” Ves is screaming. “Elena? Talk to me!”
