A Toast to the Raven

Characters & Entities

Elowen Thorne-Gale [EL-oh-win THORN-gayl]

Julian Thorne-Gale [JOO-lee-uhn THORN-gayl]- Elowen's father

Astrid Thorne-Gale [AS-trid THORN-gayl] - Elowen's mother

Killian Drakon-Vahl [KILL-ee-uhn DRAH-kahn VAHL]

Soren Drakon-Vahl [SOHR-en DRAH-kahn VAHL] - Killian's father

Maja [My- Uh] - Killian's mother

Sigrid Vane [SIG-rid VAYN] - Headmistress

Runa [ROO-nuh] - Head Valkyjra

Stellan Blud-Wyrm [STEL-uhn BLUD-wurm] - Vane's assistant

Magda [MAG-duh] - Elowen's stepmother

Katerina [kat-uh-REE-nuh] - Elowen's stepsister

Freyja [FRAY-uh] - goddess of love, sex, beauty, fertility, and war

Odin [OH-din] - god of wisdom, war, and magic

The Elder Beasts

Valkar [VAL-kar] - Killian's inner Drakon

Skorri [SKOR-ee] - one of Soren's inner drakons

Valthorn [VAL-thorn] - the other inner drakon of Soren

The Courts & Their Leaders

Gylldun-Heim [GILL-dun HYM]: The sun-drenched Southern human court... ruled by King Alaric [AL-uh-rick].

Eldr-Fjall [EL-dur FYALL]: The volcanic, ash-covered domain of the Drakon court... ruled by High Lord Soren Drakon-Vahl [SOHR-en DRAH-kahn VAHL].

Myrkr-Skog [MUR-kur SKOHG]: The twilight realm and shifting shadows of the Fae court... ruled by High King Alviss [AL-vis].

Vargr-Hold [VAR-gur HOLD]: The sprawling, frozen fortress of the Lycan court... ruled by Alpha Ulfric [ULF-rick].

Blód-Dalr [BLOHT DAL-er]: The eternal night and gothic architecture of the Vampire court... ruled by Lord Valdemar [VAL-duh-mar].

Hrafn-Skole [HRAHV-en SKOH-leh]: The brutal Northern academy acting as its own sovereign neutral ground... ruled by Headmistress Sigrid Vane [SIG-rid VAYN].

Isarn-Fang [EE-sarn FANG]: The sunless, iron fortress prison... overseen by Warden Kjell [K-YELL].

Helheim [HEL-hame] underworld

Terminology & Species for readability

Seidr [SAY-ther] magic

Hnefatafl [NEF-ah-tah-fel] Viking chess

Yggdra-Kjarni [IG-drah KYAR-nee]: The ancient, prophesied core of the realms.

Blót [BLOHT]: The thirty-day blood sacrifice trials meant to feed the mountain's wards.

Drakon [DRAH-kahn]: The ancient, white-fire-wielding beasts.

Fae [FAY]: The shadow-wielding, mind-bending immortals.

Lycan [LY-can]: The brutal, wolf-shifting species.

Valkyrja [val-KEER-yuh]: The elite winged warriors and guards of the academy.

Vakt-Menn [VAHKT-men]: The sentinels patrolling the lower levels of the academy.

Draugr [DRAW-gur]: The undead, heavily armored elite sentinels.

Nøkken [NOH-ken]: The dangerous, aquatic shapeshifters of the frozen lochs.

Huldra [HULL-drah]: The forest-dwelling, incredibly strong seductresses.8l

Berserkir [ber-ZER-keer]: The unstoppable, bear-shifting warriors.

Disir [DEE-seer] Ancient guardians

Jörð or Jord [YUR-th] Deity of Earth

Alfar [OWL-fur] Elves

Náir [NOU-eer] corpses

Lærimeistari [LAI-ree-MAY-star-ee] masters of lore

Kennari [KEN-nah-ree] teachers

Gleipnir [GLAYP-neer] A magical, unbreakable ribbon forged by dwarves from six impossible things, used to bind the great wolf Fenrir.

Níðingr [NEE-thing-er] A man who is entirely devoid of honor... a coward, a villain, or a traitor who commits unspeakable, treacherous acts.

Thank you all so much for reading and supporting this dark fantasy journey. Let me know in the comments which court or supernatural species you are most excited to see more of!

If any new readers would so kindly like this story to get my visibility up, it would be amazingly helpful.

And Continue reading with part 2

A Vow to the Drakon

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Before the iron... before the salt and the cold... there was the gold. Gylldun-Heim was a city that lived in the light. It was a place of white marble and trade guilds... a human fortress of wealth and rigid propriety built on the edge of a world that was anything but civilized. We lived at the very top of it. My father, Julian Thorne-Gale, was the High Trade Minister... a man who could move mountains of coin with a single stroke of his pen. My mother, Astrid, was the soul of our estate. She was a woman of ethereal grace... a vision of the North who moved through our sun-drenched halls with a quiet, melodic vibration that I can still feel in my bones if I close my eyes.

I remember my childhood as a series of polished moments. I was the "Golden Girl" of the city... the daughter of a demigod who had traded his immortality for a quiet life in the marble and a Fae queen who lived in hiding. Of course... I didn't know that then. To me, we were simply a family. My father worshipped the ground my mother glided over... and I spent my days learning the intricate steps of the ballroom, the proper tilt of a chin, and the art of the perfect, silent curtsy. It was a fairytale life... a world of silk-lined rooms and tea ceremonies that lasted for hours... where the worst thing that could happen was a rainstorm during a garden party.

Then the light went out.

My mother died when I was twelve. There was no illness... no slow decline. She simply went to sleep and never woke up. The healers called it a failure of the heart... but I remember the way the air in the house felt that morning. It felt thin... as if the very breath of the estate had been sucked out with her last sigh. My father became a ghost in his own halls. He was a man made of glass... fragile and hollowed out by a grief that no amount of gold could fill. He stopped going to the guilds. He stopped looking at me... because every time he did, he saw her stormy violet eyes reflected in mine.

And that was when Magda arrived.

She appeared at our gates like a vision of restored order. She was a widow of standing... or so she claimed... and she possessed a talent for manufactured sympathy that my father drank like wine. She brought her daughter, Katerina... a girl who looked like a porcelain doll and had the heart of a predator. Within a year, Magda was the mistress of the Thorne-Gale estate. Within two... she had convinced my father that my "wilful nature" was a sign of instability.

"Elowen, stand straight," Magda would whisper during those long, suffocating gala dinners... her fingers digging into the soft skin of my shoulder just enough to leave a mark. "Don't look at the guests with those wild eyes. You are a representative of this family. You are human. Act like it."

I didn't know then that her words were a leash. I didn't know that every "correction" she gave me was a ritual designed to keep my spirit in the dirt. I was the afterthought of the High Trade Guild... stripped of my mother’s jewels and relegated to the role of the "unstable" daughter who lived in the shadow of Katerina’s manufactured perfection. In front of my father, Magda was the doting wife and the caring stepmother. She would smooth my hair and speak of my "delicate constitution" while slipping me under-the-table pinches that drew blood.

She was a sculptor of shame. She spent six years chipping away at my confidence... telling me that the strange things I felt were a sickness. Because the older I got... the more the "strange occurrences" happened.

The air in my room would hum when I was angry. The silver mirrors in the hallway would frost over when I walked past... even in the height of summer. I felt a power clawing at the inside of my ribs that I didn't have a name for. I thought I was going mad. I thought the Thorne-Gale blood was curdling in my veins... exactly as Magda said it was. I didn't realize she was using her own dark magic to suppress the goddess waking inside me... slowly poisoning my father’s mind until he was a shell of the man he once was.

The night it all shattered was the night of my eighteenth birthday. It was the night of the Winter Masque... an elite affair of masks and hidden agendas set against a backdrop of Viking stone and iron. I had found my father in his study... away from the noise of the ballroom. He looked older than he had that morning. His skin was sallow... his eyes vacant. He was staring at a small, wooden box I had never seen before.

"Elowen," he whispered... his voice trembling. "I've made a terrible mistake. I thought I could keep you safe by keeping you small... but the blood... it won't be contained, will it?"

I stepped toward him... my heart hammering against my ribs. "Father... what are you talking about?"

He reached out... his hand shaking as he touched my cheek. "You look so much like her. I should have told you. I should have told you that Astrid wasn't just a woman from the North. She was—"

He never finished the sentence.

The air in the room didn't just move... it disappeared. A sudden, violent vacuum of pressure slammed the doors shut and shattered every stained-glass window in the study. The sound was deafening... a crack like a mountain splitting in half. I felt a surge of heat erupt from my chest... a roar of power that I couldn't control. It wasn't a choice... it was a reflex. My skin felt like it was made of lightning... and the darkness that had been creeping through the house for years suddenly met its match.

My father’s eyes widened. He didn't look at me with fear... he looked at me with a profound, heartbreaking realization. He clutched his chest... his breath hitching... and then he simply collapsed. His heart... his human, demigod heart... had given out under the weight of the force I was radiating.

I was on my knees before he hit the floor. I pulled his head into my lap... my hands frantic as I searched for a pulse that was no longer there. The vacuum had ended... replaced by a terrifying, absolute stillness. The study was a ruin of shattered glass and shredded parchment. And in the center of it... I was covered in the blood that had sprayed from his nose as his heart burst.

"Father!" I tried to scream... but the word was a rasp.

The doors didn't just open... they were kicked wide. Magda and Katerina were there... their faces already set in masks of horrified grief that were so perfect they had to have been rehearsed. Behind them were the city guards.

"My God!" Magda shrieked... her hand flying to her mouth. "She killed him! I heard them arguing... she finally snapped!"

I looked up at her... my father’s cooling blood on my face... and for the first time in my life... I saw her. Truly saw her. I saw the faint, sickly green glow behind her eyes that vanished before I could even blink. She hadn't been surprised. She had been waiting for this. She had used her own dark magic to poison the atmosphere of that room... to provoke my power until it killed the only man who could protect me.

But I knew... looking at the iron in the guards' eyes... that the truth didn't matter. She had spent the better part of a decade orchestrating this. I was the heir... and I was the last thing standing between her and the Thorne-Gale fortune.

The months that followed were a blur of cold stone and iron bars. I was the "Golden Girl" of Gylldun-Heim... and I was being held in a dungeon for a crime I didn't understand. I sat in the dark... the sapphire I had managed to hide in my palm my only companion. I didn't speak to the lawyers Magda sent. I didn't speak to the priests. I stayed silent... letting the grief and the hatred hollow me out until there was nothing left but the thrumming in my chest.

The trial was a farce. Magda played the grieving widow to perfection... weeping as she told the Council that she couldn't bear to see me hang. She "generously" suggested the Hrafn-Skole... a boarding school for the "difficult" and the "disturbed" in the far North. She told the city she was sending me there to be healed... to be reformed.

I knew her true intent. She was shipping me off to a nest of monsters where she assumed I would never survive the winter. It was a death sentence disguised as an act of mercy. By sending me away... she kept the Thorne-Gale title... she kept the inheritance... and she kept her reputation as the saint who tried to save a murderous daughter.

The night they came to take me... the air was thick with the scent of salt and rot. The carriage was a rolling tomb of black iron... windowless and freezing. I was shoved inside... still wearing the shredded remains of my champagne-colored silk dress. The journey through the city streets was a series of jolts and rattles... the sound of the wheels over the cobblestones sounded like the ticking of a clock.

We reached the docks in the dead of night. The wind off the North Sea bit through my silk gown like a thousand tiny needles. Standing at the end of the pier was Magda... her face illuminated by the flickering torchlight of the guards. She looked every bit the high-society matriarch... her fur cloak pulled tight against the gale... the sapphire rings on her fingers glinting in the dark.

"Go to your monsters, Elowen," she whispered as the guards hauled me toward the water. "Try to survive the winter. I'll be sure to tell the city you’re being well-cared for while I sit in your father's chair."

She leaned in closer... her breath smelling of peppermint and malice. "I always knew you were a beast... I'm just glad the world finally agrees."

The guards shoved me forward. My boots hit the damp... salt-slicked wood of the longship that waited in the dark. It was a predatory silhouette... a dragon-head prow that seemed to watch me with a knowing, ancient hunger. The rowers were giants draped in furs... their eyes reflecting the torchlight like wolves.

I didn't look back. I didn't give her the satisfaction of a plea or a tear. That girl... the girl who wanted to belong in the marble halls of Gylldun-Heim... she died on that rug with her father.

The oars hit the water with a rhythmic... funeral beat. As the ship pulled away from the docks... the golden lights of my home began to fade into the mist. I clutched the sapphire in my palm... its cold edges cutting into my skin... and looked toward the jagged horizon.

Magda thought she was disposing of a broken girl to save her crown. She thought she was throwing away the "Golden Dross" of Gylldun-Heim.

She had no idea what he was sending into the storm. And she had no idea that I was coming back for everything she took.