The Mercenary's Valkyrie: Book One

Cause & Consequence

The voices were in the distant reaches of my consciousness. Then they were very loud.

"—HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!" A familiar male voice roared.

"Point your fat, primitive finger away from me before you lose it, mortal." Another painfully familiar female voice growled back.

"I do not give a shit what threats you make! We may as well all be dead now anyway!" It snapped right back.

I groaned loudly from the softness of a bed and pressed a hand to my temple. It felt like someone had split my skull in half...

"Good, she's awake. Now Tayah can also tell you how much of a ridiculous fool—"

I heard a snap followed by a loud crash a moment later. That got my attention. I snapped my head up sharply to focus on the situation before me. My head spun but I made them out well enough.

Kaden was in a heap on the floor unconscious and a seething immortal stood over him with an armoured fist clenched. John stood off to one side with fury on his features yet concern in Kaden's direction. 

Gods save me.

"Can someone calmly explain what is going on?" I said slowly as I rose into sitting position and set my feet on the wooden floor of Xerxes' room.

John took a step forth and looked ready to shout but the Valkyrie silenced him with a look.

"The assassins took you hostage. Now they are dead." She said cooly.

John left out an incredulous scoffing sound.

"Let me add to that detailed analysis." He snapped. She glared death at him but he continued on and strode towards me. "This... demon, decided to let them take you so that she could track down an even larger number of assassins and kill them all at once!" He took a breath as I froze and shot the immortal a glance. 

She seemed entirely unbothered by the story and strolled over towards the balcony instead. "Tayah, she not only killed half a dozen of the guild but Lukon Karvello."

"What." I said dazed.

Karvello. The guild master's second hand. John kept talking but I did not hear his words, I could only stare at his angry and terrified face as he told the rest of the damning story. We may as well have waltzed up to the assassin guild master himself and spat into his face as we told him where he could shove his—

"—she has just started a war, Tayah. One that we cannot win."

Well, that much was true. I took a deep breath in. Then released it. I dragged both hands slowly through my hair and held it there.

"Say something damn it!" John shouted a foot away.

His brown eyes that were usually lit with mischief and humour were nothing but pools of fear and anxiety. That was not a rarity. It was an impossibility. 

"Odin's... Beard my head." Kaden rumbled from the floor nearby.

John snapped his eyes off me and towards him.