ripped the stairs from the side of the building. Before I could move, he had lifted me up by the waist and placed me on the remaining iron platform above him. I was now ten feet above the ground, out of reach of the draugr.
Before I could ask what the plan was, he turned and ran into the darkness. For whatever reason, the draugr weren’t interested in him, only in me. And I stood above them like their queen.
On the frigid platform, I leapt to my feet, looking out at the ragged undead army as they spilled into Harvard Yard. The bluish, gnarled bodies of the draugr were everywhere. They moved in the shadows, giving me no free space to throw my vergr stone. Even if there was somewhere I could throw it, they would surround me while I waited for the stone to recharge. From here, I could see no escape routes.
Their rheumy eyes all fixed on my position. A shiver rippled over my body as I searched fruitlessly for a way out.
Nothing.
Why the Helheim had Marroc brought me here only to leave me among the dead?
Chapter 12
Marroc
What in the gods’ names had become of Midgard while I’d been in prison?
I hadn’t expected it to be quite this bad. In Cambridge, there wasn’t a single living soul apart from the Night Elf. Only the undead inhabited the streets of the old city.
Now, as I raced down Peabody Street, I thought of her strange silver eyes. I’d never spent any time around her kind. I hadn’t even gotten the chance to ask her name yet—or to carve the question in the snow with a stick, as it were.
And there it was again: that unfamiliar feeling, long buried. Fear. It was that ember simmering a little hotter—a need to get back to her.
But first, I needed to retrieve my house key, and I couldn’t let the Night Elf see where I’d hidden it.
That was the lie I told myself.
The truth was that she unnerved me on a deep level that I didn’t understand, and I wanted to get away from her.
When her silver hair brushed my cheek, a tiny flame flickered in my chest, like I had a heartbeat again. Like I was alive. It was only when she spoke that I wanted the gods to rise again and freeze everything on the earth just so I could have silence.
For a thousand years, I’d heard no one speak but the occasional guard. I’d grown used to the solitude, my stone grave in the Citadel. My world was one of ice and stone. And now I was bound by Wyrd to someone who had questions and screams, and who could break easily.
Mate or not, I wanted to leave her and never return. The dead couldn’t actually love, so what did I care?
But she had my soul, and that tied me to her for now.
I tucked my head down as I ran, my dark hair whipping around me in the snow squall. In Harvard Square, the draugr left me alone. They had no interest in someone like me.
And there it was again—fear, like a phantom, creeping up behind me. Would she be all right where I’d left her? I’d thought so at the time, and now I couldn’t help but worry.
She had my soul in her body. If she died, my soul died with her.
And the terrible truth was that if she knew who I was, she might want that to happen.
Whatever happened next, I couldn’t let her know the truth.
At the iron gates of the Old Burial Ground, I leapt the spiked fence. Snow was thick on the ground of Cambridge’s oldest cemetery. Only the tops of the gravestones poked through, black curves in a sea of white. The graves were ancient, some from the days when the humans had hanged witches. I scanned the stones, looking for the familiar tomb.
I’d buried my key among the bones of Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth. I didn’t have any particular affinity for the old president of Harvard; it was simply that his grave was tomb-shaped, with a flat capstone atop an open chamber—the perfect place to stash something that needed to remain hidden.
But as I surveyed the cemetery, I couldn’t find it.
The last time I’d been amongst these stones was nearly a thousand years ago. Had the tomb disappeared?
Clouds slid over the moon such that I could hardly see. The Night Elf wouldn’t have this problem, would she? Her strange silver eyes would be able to