Dark Desires After Dusk (Immortals After Dark #6)(26)

Warmly,

N?x, Proto-Valkyrie, Soothsayer without Equal,

Demigoddess, your loving auntie

Folding the letter, Holly sat stunned. Too much to think about. So much information, and she was only on the intro letter. Simply learning her father’s occupation was momentous for her.

With a sigh, she pulled out The Book of Warriors and flipped to the “Origin of the Valkyrie” section—and found herself growing enthralled with the tale.

The Lore said that millennia ago, the gods Wóden and Freya were awakened from a decade of sleep by a maiden warrior’s scream as she died in battle. Freya had marveled at the maiden’s valor and wanted to preserve it, so she and Wóden struck the human with their lightning.

The maiden woke in their great hall, healed but unaltered—still mortal—and pregnant with an immortal Valkyrie daughter.

In the ages that passed, their lightning would strike dying women warriors from all species of the Lore—from Furies to shapeshifters to Lykae.

Freya and Wóden gave the daughters Freya’s fey looks and his cunning, then combined these traits with the mother’s courage and individual ancestry. The daughters were all half sisters, each one unique; but according to the Lore, one could always recognize a Valkyrie if her eyes fired silver with strong emotion.

Holly glanced up. “Did my eyes turn silver tonight?”

Cadeon nodded, finally giving her a glance. “It’s how I knew you’d turned Valkyrie, or had begun to.” He rubbed his palms on his jeans, briefly steering with his knees. “All Lorekind have eyes that turn a specific color.” Cadeon’s had been black.

Running her pearls along her lips, she pondered this new information. If Holly believed this legend, then that would mean that she was the granddaughter of Norse gods.

It was one thing for an adopted person to find out he or she came from a family of wealth or fame. But this was ridiculous.

And yet, this information explained so much about herself that she’d never understood, things that a pompous psychiatrist had been all too ready to medicate away.

Her obsession with shining jewels? All Valkyrie had it, because they’d inherited their acquisitiveness from Freya.

Holly’s captivation with lightning and her “uncontrollable urges” to run out into thunder storms? Valkyrie derived nourishment from electricity, taking energy from the earth. Lightning was how the species was first created—and how Holly was first turned.

She wondered if her “grandparents” had struck her with that comforting bolt, or if the lightning had been drawn to her during her emotional turmoil.

And Holly’s freakish strength that she’d fought so hard to disguise? Valkyrie were preternaturally strong, fierce, and warlike.

As well as amorous . . .

She remembered the first time she’d been in bed with a male, a schoolmate named Bobby Thibodeaux. They’d been sixteen, and a few of Bobby’s unpracticed kisses had made her crazed. She’d leapt upon him, overpowering him.

Holly had been so caught up, she hadn’t realized how distressed he’d become. She’d eventually registered that he’d stopped kissing her back—and that her fingernails had been digging into his arms, holding him as he’d desperately tried to get out from under her.

As he’d gaped up at her in fear, she’d blinked down at him. As though someone else had inhabited her body, she’d throatily murmured, “I guess we should part ways here?” When she released him, he’d fled.

Once Bobby’s tales had made the rounds at school, no boy would ask her out, so she’d buried herself even more in her studies.

In fact, she hadn’t attempted to be intimate with another male until her first year in college. The only thing different about that encounter was that she’d grown more aggressive and even stronger.

Shaking away that memory, Holly turned to Greta’s page in The Book of Warriors. Greta the Bold had been a master strategist and had led troops of Valkyrie, witches, and Furies in the great Battle of the Plains of Doom.

If the dates of that battle were correct, then Greta had gone to war when she’d been pregnant with Holly. Six years later, Greta had lost her life on the front line in the infamous Eighteen-Night Siege.

Holly was struck by the fact that if a new world existed, then she would have an entirely new history to learn.

Suddenly feeling exhausted, she dragged the weighty Living Book of Lore onto her lap without enthusiasm. Scanning the pages, she found encyclopedic entries on each of the “known species.” After a brief intro, a more detailed history would follow. Flipping through, she found everything from wraiths and sirens, to Wendigos and demonarchies . . . .

“Do you want something to eat or drink?” Cadeon asked.

She wasn’t hungry whatsoever. “Do you have anything to drink other than Red Bull?”

He pulled a bottle of water from the space behind her seat, handing it to her. My favorite brand.

“Thanks.” She carefully twisted the cap, determined not to touch—

Crap! She’d touched the bottle rim. With a sigh, she put the cap back on and placed the bottle at her feet.

“Something wrong with the water?”

She debated not answering, but figured he’d encounter all her quirks over the next couple of weeks anyway—the eating difficulties, the germophobia, the endless arranging.