The fire shrank to embers, and with it the night seemed to draw closer, pressing in on the hollow until even her breath felt loud. Anise opened her eyes. Thygon hadn't moved. He sat as he had before, one knee bent, forearms resting loosely, his silhouette carved cleanly against the dim gray creeping in from …
The forest thickened as they descended, the pines closing ranks until the sky became nothing more than a jagged ribbon of gray above them. Anise stumbled once, exhaustion finally clawing its way up her spine, and would have fallen if his hand hadn't shot out to steady her again. "Easy," he murmured. The word did …
The snow burned her lungs, each gasp a hot sting against the cold. Her legs ached, her arms trembled, but she didn't dare slow. Behind her, the growl of the dogs grew closer, and the pounding of boots—hunters, relentless and precise—made her chest hammer in panic. She clutched the signet tighter, her fingers digging into …
Sleep never came, but stillness did. Anise let her eyes close halfway, enough to dull the ache behind them, enough to pretend her body wasn't unraveling thread by thread. The stone at her back was cold, seeping through her clothes, but she welcomed it. Pain anchored her. It reminded her she was still moving forward, …
Anise followed him into the trees, her senses stretched thin as wire. The forest changed the moment she stepped where he stepped—snow no longer cracking beneath her boots, branches no longer clawing at her cloak. He moved as if the world parted for him, and somehow, impossibly, she began to move the same way. Each …
The hollow would not hold. Thygon knew it the moment the wind shifted and crept through the trees with that low, testing whisper. Shelters like this were lies the forest told the desperate—good enough for a night, maybe two, but never meant to last. Snow would find its way in. Hunters would, too. Everything left …
The forest was a blur of white and green as Thygon moved, silent among the snow-dusted pines. Every snap of a branch, every faint gust of wind against the treetops, was a warning—and yet he welcomed it. He needed to be close, and the trail of the fleeing child was faint, fragile, almost invisible to …
Thygon moved through the antechamber like a shadow, silent and deliberate. The stench of blood and iron filled the air, clinging to his senses, but he hardly noticed. His eyes were fixed on Veronica's still form, the faint rise and fall of her chest a cruel tease against the finality he knew was coming. He …
Veronica lay dying on the floor of the antechamber, blood leaking and slowly flowing out of her. Two-thirds of her coven slaughtered and her daughter now missing. She was weak...Fragile...Vulnerable...mostly violated. It didn't matter anymore. It was the least of her worries. She felt like a failure for not protecting her people. They lay dead …
When hunters slaughter a hidden coven and leave ruin in their wake, Thygon-a hardened Viking warrior bound by honor and shadow-arrives too late to save the woman who defied death itself to protect her child. Veronica's final act is not one of surrender, but of legacy, and it binds Thygon to a promise that will alter the course of his life forever.