CHAPTER ONE
Valkyrie
Funerals. So similar to weddings somehow, only the opposite. One celebrates a beginning and the other an ending. I stand on the shore while rain tickles my face, coating my lashes and I need to blink to be able to see clearly. My black boots dig into the sand and I stare out over the bleak sea.
I’m a widow. Sort of but not really. The man I was supposed to marry lies dead inside a wooden boat with his hands clasped over his chest. I don’t want to look at him. I’m scared of looking at him. I find his lifeless face frightening and I want to do what I always do.
Disappear into the crowd. Let myself be swallowed by black coats, muscles, weapons and violence.
Things that I am used to. Things that I always have found strangely comforting.
I’m not like other girls. I know that sounds like I’m bragging but I don’t mean it in a good way. IwishI was like other girls. I’d give anything to be able to gossip about boys with my friends, hang around in malls or go to the movies or whatever it is that regular girls like to do.
But I’m different. I’m Valkyrie Frey. Your friendly, neighborhood mob princess.
I was born into the Nordic Mafia on a cold winter night, so cold that some say it was why my mother died in childbirth. My father was never the same after that. I’m all he has left of her and I’m his greatest pride, his greatest joy which explains why he’s kept me even more protected than most young girls in the mob.
At the age of eighteen, I’ve never been kissed, never even been hugged by a man in the way a man hugs a woman. And the man who was supposed to be the one who would kiss and hug and give me babies is now already on his way to the afterlife.
I should be sad but I don’t shed a tear. Nobody finds it suspicious. They take it is a sign that my heart is hard and resilient; traits that they admire.
Everyone I know don’t just love violence, they crave it. They use it without blinking, without giving it a second thought especially if any of the women need to be protected.
Even I know how to defend myself better than most streetfighters. I know how to use a butterfly knife, what point to press on someone’s throat to make them go unconscious.
Luckily I’ve never had to fight a day in my life since I’m constantly surrounded by rough and gruff mobsters, but I’m supposed to rejoice in it.
I was meant to be fearless and warrior like.
Instead, I’m a wallflower.
Guess the old gods didn’t get the mixture right when they made me. They must’ve messed up the recipe, added a pinch too much of something or a pinch too little.
Patiently listening to the funeral song that’s being played, I wrap my coat tighter around me. My coat is black but then again I’m always in black. I hate black. I love colors, especially pastels, the pretty ones, the one that make a girl feel like she’s something special.
But the muted colors are required of me. It’s because I’m young and still unmarried. It’s for my own good I’m told, good for me to be unnoticeable. I swear I could walk up on a stage, jump up and down and wave with my hands and people still wouldn’t pay any attention to me.
Nobody ever sees me.
Except him.
He watches. He guards. He studies. His eyes are on me all the time. I feel them like fingertips tracing over my skin but whenever I turn to look, he averts his gaze. I don’t like it when he looks away because I like his eyes on me. They make my heart go fast and I get a sweet taste in my mouth as if my lips are ready for a kiss.
“Go ahead,” my father says and I realize the music’s stopped. “Give him a kiss.”
I freeze up and my skin crawls. Its custom to give the dead a kiss but I can’t kiss those grey lips. His eyes are shut, his face still as unappealing to me now as it was when he was alive. I try not to squirm, or burst into tears. Or run back home.
My father gives me a nudge. “What are you waiting for?”
“Fádir...,” I croak, my voice getting stuck in my throat and I clench my fists in the pockets of my coat. I take a deep breath, trying to ignore that I feel like I’m about to faint. I lower my face, inching closer and closer to my dead fiancé when a voice, sharp as an icepick cuts through the wind.
“Dolph Frey, don’t make your daughter do it. She’s heartbroken, grieving...a kiss could break her.”
I’m so on edge, my heart’s palpitating in my chest when my father snarls between his teeth.
“Know your place.”
Iversen Nox makes his way through the crowd and my eyes nearly roll back in my head. He’s in his mid-twenties, stronger than most and vicious. His height’s towering, his hair as pale as his skin, as pale as his eyes and when he speaks his voice rumbles and commands.