Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Last Stand of the Valkyries

When she woke up, she went to Jasper, suddenly needing to find him. To talk to him, to see him, to just...be near him, her rock in the turmoil, her light in the darkness. She tore through the tents until she reached his and found him gone.

He has to be somewhere, she thought frantically. He has to be. Maybe he left a note or...

There. A scrap of paper, and nothing more, hurried letters painstakingly etched in.

I'm sorry

Those two words tore through her as she searched for another note, a message, anything...What had Jasper meant? What was he apologising for? Where had he gone? Myra tore out of the tent, looking around hopelessly.

"He's gone," Viktoria said hoarsely, and she finally noticed her queen standing outside. "We don't know how, or when. Or where he could have gone, with the mountains north and the army south, and sea at east and west."

The army south. But he couldn't have. Jasper would never have left them to return to Medea. Not for anything.

I'm sorry, he had said. She had seen those words reflected in his sea-green eyes last night. Ignored them. You should not trust him. Those had been Nala's words, the words of his own aunt. Myra had dismissed them as the anger of someone grieving and betrayed, but what if she had been right all along?

Could Jasper have left them to return to the empress? It seemed impossible. Yet everything about him, about them had. A human loving a valkyrie. How could it have been real? Had he been a spy all along? Had whatever she thought they had together been a lie, designed to trap her? Or had he just fled when he was afraid, a coward to the last?

Myra was not entirely sure which would have been worse. All she knew was that he had betrayed her, left her. And that she had been a fool enough to love a man who was either a coward or a spy.

She had been such a damn fool. Such an idiot, to fall in love with him.To fall for some kind words and laughing eyes that reminded her so much of the sea. At some point, she realised she was crying, and Viktoria put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"I'm here," she whispered softly. "I'm here."

"I know." Myra replied. Always, always Viktoria was there for her. They were two sides of the same coin.

"You really loved him, didn't you?"her friend asked softly.

"Yes," she answered. So much. More than she had ever known before now. "How could I have been such a fool?"

"You were not a fool," her queen said. "He was the fool, and he will pay."

But she did not want him to pay. How many times did he have to betray her for her to learn?

"Do you think it was a lie all along?" She asked, looking up at Viktoria.

"I do not know," her friend answered.

"Do you think...do you think Medea..." she trailed off, unable to form the words. Had the Empress taken Jasper back? Or had she killed him?

"I do not know," Viktoria repeated. "Myra, we have to prepare."

Of course. There were defences to be put in place, strategies to be decided, a last stand to prepare for. A thousand hopeless things.

Myra looked out at the field of valkyries and she felt something in the air. A silence. A hollow silence had descended on the mountains where the valkyries would make their last stand. It was the silence of warriors who had faced and lost a war and knew this was their last battle. That today would spell death. It was cold and hard and sad on that pale morning. There were no speeches on that day, for the queen and heir had run out of words to say. All they could offer was their swords on those battlefields, to march with them and die with them.