“The Valkyries are unimportant.”
He drew four lines in the dirt, all intersecting to form an eight-pointed star. “This is your map for striking with a sword. These eight maneuvers. You’ve learned six of them. You’ll learn the other two today, and we’ll start on the combinations.”
("I think that eight-pointed star was tattooed on you for a reason. Take that sword and go figure out why.")
Gwyn asked, “Why don’t we use the Valkyrie techniques; if you admired them so much?”
“Because I don’t know them.”
Nesta smirked. “If we are to be Valkyries born again,” she said, “maybe we should combine the Illyrian and Valkyrie techniques.”
She’d meant it in jest, but the words rumbled through the space, as if she’d spoken some great truth, something that made fate sit up. Azriel turned to them fully this time, eyes narrowed. Like those shadows had whispered something to him.
A chill breathed down Nesta’s spine.
And then:
“Emerie said, “Nothing can break us.”
The world seemed to pause at the words. As if it had been following one path and now branched off in another direction. In a hundred years, a thousand, this moment would still be etched in his mind. That he would tell his children, his grandchildren, Right then and there. That was when it all changed.
Azriel went wholly still, as if he, too, had felt the shift. As if he, too, were aware that far larger forces peered into that training ring as Gwyn moved.”
And:
“Succeeding in the Blood Rite didn’t mean the training stopped.
No, after she and her friends told Cassian and Azriel most of the details of their ordeal, the two commanders had compiled a long list of mistakes that the three of them had made that needed to be corrected, and the others wanted to learn from them, too.
So they would keep training, until they were all well and truly Valkyries.”
I cannot wait to see what the Valkyries are up to in part 6 and 7! ⚔️💖
