Valkyrie's Sacrifice (Academy of Immortals 3)

“I can try.”

I don’t give her a chance before I go after her. She leaps out of Luke’s weakened arms and faces me. The moment is surreal, fighting myself, but I remind myself over and over this is magic. It’s all fake. Like everything else in this gods-forsaken place.

Elizabeth

’s voice enters my conscious—she’s muttering some kind of spell. Fake Hildi swings her claws at me and I jump back, barely escaping. I pivot and fling myself toward her, slamming my body into hers. The move stuns her and we fall to the ground. I land on top, pinning her to the ground.

She squirms beneath me, struggling against my strength.

“Who the hell are you?” I ask, but there’s no need. Whatever magic Elizabeth summoned works, and slowly her face begins to shimmer; the hair shifting from blonde to red, the face pale and the eyes dark as sin. Her lips are blood red and curved in a wicked grin.

Victorine.

My heart pounds in my chest; veins pumping with rage. With my eyes on her face, I grind out, “Get Luke out of here. I’ve got this.”

“But—” Elizabeth starts.

“Now!” I shout, my voice bouncing off the stone walls.

Elizabeth, half the size of Luke, helps him out to the balcony. Blood trails behind them. A moment later they lift off the ledge and soar into the air. I refocus my attention on the woman before me.

Victorine had made my life a living hell in the academy. She used and abused me, humiliated me, tortured my friends and lovers. She’s pure evil. A harpy—which explains the foul smell. I wrap my hands around her throat and say, “How dare you steal my face, my body, and my…”

Victorine grins, despite her position. “Your what? Your man? Your lover?”

“My mate,” I snarl.

She snorts. “You rejected him, Valkyrie. He was so lost and confused when he came here, when he came to me. But I gave him what he wants—what he needs. He cares for me. He loves me. He fights and kills for me, day after day.” Her tongue wets her lips. “And at night, every night, he comes back and sleeps with me and I soothe all that rage, all that anger, giving the God of Death what he needs to go back out there and do it again.”

At some point during that speech, my vision turns a blinding white, caught in such anger, such pain, that I barely notice that blood trickles from her chest where I point my blade.

“He’s mine,” I growl. “Mine. Bound to me by the Gods in and out of this world.”

“Is he?” she asks through a grimace. “Is that the truth? Or did you lose him? Did you lose him with your inadequacies? Your promiscuous ways? Your lack of focus and suspicion? Did you turn him away when he needed you the most and he found refuge instead, with—”

I slam the blade into her chest, straight through her heart. I yank it out and stab her again, over and over, until blood pools around us, thick and black, not human—harpy blood. It’s sticky and rank. It covers my arms and my legs, and even then, I can’t stop. I won’t stop. “Damn you to hell for eternity,” I cry, lifting the blade over my head, prepared to stab her lifeless body one last time, when a strong hand cinches around my wrist, stopping the blow.

I cry out in frustration and look back. I’m not alone. Wide black wings fill the room and Agis stares down at me incredulously, his face twisted in confusion. I have no strength left as he wrestles the blade from my hand.

For a long beat we stare at one another. I’m blood-soaked. He’s covered in dirt and sweat. Both of us wear the refuse of battle. He looks down at Victorine’s body; no longer recognizable. Her hair is matted with blood, her face coated in the spray of my fury.

Every single word she said about me was true. I’d done all of those things to Agis. I drove him to this. If I hadn’t sent him away, he would have been with me at Miya’s garden when the gate opened, he would have never been caught in Lucifer’s game.

And I’d just killed, no, slaughtered, the person that saved him.

What will he do to me?

“Hildi?” he asks, my name soft as a whisper.

“Yes,” I reply in an equal tone. We’re like two wild animals facing off in the woods. Friend or foe?

The tension leaves his face, his eyes clear, and as he falls to his knees he exhales, “Thank the gods.”

I reach for him, but his body turns limp and he slumps to the side, falling and cracking his head on the stone floor. My response if feral, a scream that starts deep in my chest and echoes in my ears. It’s too much, everything is too much, and as if my mind and body both know it, the fifth circle swallows us whole.

34

Luke