Vikingrune Academy 2: The Serpent's Shadow, page 1
Vikingrune Academy 2:
The Serpent’s Shadow
KC Kingmaker
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2024 by KC Kingmaker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.
Cover art by Gombar Sanja
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Vikingrune Academy 2: The Serpent's Shadow
Author’s Note:
Book 1 Recap | (Spoiler Alert! Do not read if you haven’t read book 1!)
Chapter 1 | Ravinica
Chapter 2 | Arne
Chapter 3 | Sven
Chapter 4 | Grim
Chapter 5 | Magnus
Chapter 6 | Ravinica
Chapter 7 | Corym
Chapter 8 | Ravinica
Chapter 9 | Arne
Chapter 10 | Sven
Chapter 11 | Magnus
Chapter 12 | Grim
Chapter 13 | Corym
Chapter 14 | Ravinica
Chapter 15 | Ravinica
Chapter 16 | Ravinica
Chapter 17 | Ravinica
Chapter 18 | Ravinica
Chapter 19 | Ravinica
Chapter 20 | Ravinica
Chapter 21 | Ravinica
Chapter 22 | Ravinica
Chapter 23 | Magnus
Chapter 24 | Ravinica
Chapter 25 | Ravinica
Chapter 26 | Ravinica
Chapter 27 | Ravinica
Chapter 28 | Corym
Chapter 29 | Ravinica
Chapter 30 | Ravinica
Chapter 31 | Grim
Chapter 32 | Ravinica
Chapter 33 | Ravinica
Chapter 34 | Ravinica
Chapter 35 | Sven
Chapter 36 | Ravinica
Chapter 37 | Ravinica
Chapter 38 | Ravinica
Chapter 39 | Arne
Chapter 40 | Ravinica
Chapter 41 | Magnus
Chapter 42 | Ravinica
Chapter 43 | Ravinica
Chapter 44 | Ravinica
Chapter 45 | Ravinica
Chapter 46 | Ravinica
Chapter 47 | Ravinica
About the Author
Books by KC Kingmaker
Briarwitch Academy:
A Whisper Before Dawn
A Dream Before Dawn
A Journey Before Dawn
A Storm Before Dawn
Dragon Shifter Dominion:
Passion of the Summer Dragon
Serenity of the Autumn Dragon
Cold Heart of the Winter Dragon
Vibrance of the Spring Dragon
Rapture of the Sun Dragon
Shadowblade Academy:
Darkness Calls
Darkness Rising
Darkness Falls
Shadows in the Dark
Blood of Darkness
Camelot Untold:
Realm of Sin
Realm of Ruin
Realm of Kings
Robin Hood and Her Merciless Men:
Daughter of Sherwood
Huntress of Sherwood
Queen of Sherwood
Vikingrune Academy
Into the Isle
The Serpent’s Shadow
Author’s Note:
VIKINGRUNE ACADEMY is a reverse harem/why choose paranormal romance series that dives into some darker subject matter.
I want my readers to be aware of possible trigger warnings before setting forth on this journey, because, as an author, I would never, ever want to hurt anyone’s mental health.
If the subjects mentioned below might be too much, then it is probably best to skip this one. For those who enjoy triggers and read content warnings like a checklist, enjoy!
Trigger Warnings:
Abduction
BDSM
Blackmail
Bigotry
Binding/Tied Up
Blood
Breeding
Captivity
Childhood Trauma
Death
Degradation
Depression
Domination
Dubious Consent
Forced Blood Draw
Forced Lab Testing
Foul Language
Gratuitous Sex
Gratuitous Violence
Imprisonment
Misogyny
MM/Gay Sex
Objectifying
PTSD
Self-Mutilation
Submission
Tragic Backstories
Trauma
Violence Against Women
Violent Sex
Book 1 Recap
(Spoiler Alert! Do not read if you haven’t read book 1!)
RAVINICA LINMYRR IS a half-human and half-elf. Everyone hates elves, so this isn’t great news for her. She lives in a fishing village on the edge of Iceland, off the grid, called Selby. Everyone torments her, her stepfather beats her, and yet she is still the best fighter in the village.
This is important, because she uses her combat skills to beat her alcoholic loser half-brother’s ass (Damon) in a duel, so she can be the single “initiate” from her village to attend the renowned Vikingrune Academy this year.
Her other half-brother, Eirik, is a second-year cadet at the academy and returns on a magical longship called the Gray Wraith, to announce who this year’s chosen initiate will be.
Drum roll... (It’s not Ravinica.) It’s Damon. The alcoholic loser who lost to his half-sister.
Rav is understandably pissed. So she chokes her drunk half-brother out in an alley and runs to the ship to take his place. Oops. Sucks to suck.
Only problems for her now are her tapered half-elven ears everyone can see, her silver hair (the color of elven hair, except streaked with black), and the fact she can’t do any magic! That’s a big no-no at a magical academy.
Oh, and there’s one other thing: Ravinica has a secret mission for attending Vikingrune, put on her by her mother. And that mission is to assassinate anyone who played a part in destroying her family’s name and making them hated.
Ravinica just needs to figure out who those people are, first. Then she can do the throat slitty.
Suffice to say, things do not go swimmingly for Ravinica when she first arrives at Vikingrune. She catches the eye of dangerous, bully wolf shifters, including the hot pack leader, Sven Torfen. Another asshole who torments her is Astrid Dahlmyrr, a certified Mean Girl with a bitch squad.
She meets a fanciful, pretty blond guy named Arne Gornhodr on the Gray Wraith, and he’s pretty funny and cute and good at magic, or “runeshaping,” as it’s called.
Then there’s the mountain-of-a-man named Grim Kollbjorn, who she can’t stop staring at because he’s so huge. He’s also a bear shifter, so the size makes sense.
Rounding out Ravinica’s eye candy is Magnus Feldraug, a mysterious, gaunt “dead man” whose whole body is covered in scars and runic tattoos. Because of that, he wears a trench coat to hide his wounds.
Classes start, and Ravinica makes friends. Thank God. The first is Dagny Largul, a book-smart cat shifter who is also the RA of her dormitory, and a second-year student. The other is Randi Ranttir, a rambunctious initiate girl who stands out in a sea of white because she’s Black. She also saves Rav’s ass from a beating.
Grim helps protect her like a stoic sentinel. They eventually fuck under a full moon when he’s in heat. (Not in his bear form. Sorry, monsterfuckers.)
Magnus helps Ravinica learn more about herself by helping her break into Mimir Tomes, the campus library. They get closer, but Magnus is also something of a sociopath (foreshadowing for later). They, too, fuck, in the library, deep in the night. (He ties her up, in case anyone is wondering.)
In Mimir Tomes, Ravinica learns the most important thing yet: That all four of the men she’s drawn to—Sven, Grim, Magnus, Arne—are related to families that messed with hers in generations past. Essentially, these four hotties are her assassination targets. Shit!
She puts the assassination mission on the backburner because, eventually, things with Mean Girl Astrid reach a breaking point. Ravinica keeps fighting back, humiliating her, and so Astrid stages an ambush on our girl. Ends up sending Rav to the hospital . . . and her four dudes do not like that one bit.
So Magnus (foreshadowing complete) decides to straight-up kill Astrid, draining her blood with his magic, turning her into a human raisin. Grim stumbles upon her dead husk of a body and gets caught and wrongly blamed for the murder. He gets arrested.
Magnus is a sociopath/psychopath, remember, so he’s like... meh. But Sven, who has been a total asshole to Rav up until this point, realizes something is off and decides to break Grim out of jail (his rival, in true bear shifter vs. wolf shifter fashion), because he knows Ravinica likes Grim but hates Sven, and Sven wants to warn Ravinica that something is up.
Enter Arne, the fancy blond cutie, who leads Ravinica out of campus to a cave where an ancient half-elven woman named Lady Elayina lives. There, Ravinica learns abo
These fragmented memories are played out at the begging of each new “part” of the book. There are four of them, and they talk about the “King Who Saw” and the “Deceiver in Gold,” a human king and elven king from a thousand years ago who were besties, then frenemies, then total adversaries.
Remember, everyone hates elves. It’s because of the “Deceiver in Gold,” Lord Talasin, that Vikingrune Academy was first built. But Ravinica learns from the ancient half-elf bog-seer that the elven king was not the bad guy. It was actually the human king. Big surprise.
So Vikingrune Academy’s existence is based on a lie. Ravinica does not like that. She rushes out of the cave to return to the academy with Arne so she can warn people...
And then Arne betrays her! Total douche move, he already has academy soldiers there to arrest her!
Luckily for Ravinica, she is “rescued” by a group of elves, led by a shining beacon of studliness named Corym E’tar. Arne barely manages to live (because Ravinica can’t pull the proverbial trigger and kill him), and all the rest of the academy soldiers are slaughtered.
Elves haven’t been on Earth (aka Midgard) for a thousand years. So this is a Big Deal. The book ends with Ravinica a prisoner of the elves, her mates looking for her... oh yeah, and Ravinica’s magic actually starts working! Enjoy!
Chapter 1
Ravinica
CORYM E’TAR, THE TALL light elf with flowing silver hair and long tapered ears, moved in a zigzag pattern as he charged me with his strange curved sword.
I watched his feet, as I’d been taught by Swordbaron Korvan, and found him utterly mesmerizing. As a whole, the Ljosalfar elves were entrancing.
Corym moved with gracefulness I’d never seen in humans. Even charging in a jarring, serpentine path, he effortlessly pushed off the tips of his lithe feet and made the whole motion seem organic and fluid, like a river bending around rocks, uninterrupted.
When his sword struck mine, the dazzling moment was lost—his strength much less graceful and pristine than his movements. Pain blared in the bones of my forearm as I held my blade diagonally, sliding it along Corym’s curved weapon to try and detach.
When I pushed off, he kept on the attack, sword blurring as he moved it at odd angles I wasn’t used to. I was on defense the entire time, backpedaling toward trees behind me.
Corym was relentless. His eyes didn’t betray where he would go next—warm orbs the color of summer wheatfields locked on my face, never wavering. His sword arced left and right, circling and riposting with unmatched speed.
Gritting my teeth, I tried to change my momentum frontward, digging my back foot into the mud before pushing into him.
Corym held his ground, spun, and watched as I stumbled forward, making me look like a damn whelp holding a sword for the first time.
It was aggravating, because I was one of the best melee fighters of my class at Vikingrune Academy. From my hometown of Selby Village, I’d been the preeminent champion in combat.
Yet this damned elf made me seem a bumbling fool. He was too fast, too strong, and his onslaught was oppressive. The alien man didn’t seem to tire, which only made things harder.
I recalled the academy, the people I had come to care about there—my friends Dagny and Randi, the men Grim Kollbjorn and Magnus Feldraug. My men. A mammoth of a protective bear shifter; a mysterious bloodrender with every inch of his body carved in tattoos and scars.
I yearned to see them again. In the two weeks I’d been a “guest” at the elf encampment, the men and women here had stolen all my focus. I felt honored, in a way, to be the first living human in generations to see elves firsthand.
It kept me here. Kept me curious. The fact they didn’t throw shackles on my wrists or pin me to the corral helped—their treatment of their prisoners, half-elf or not, seemed much more humane than how humans treated their captives.
Now if only they’d tell me—
Corym charged again, whipping his sword in a blur. With a twist of his wrist and a yelp from me, he nicked the inside of my palm and sent my sword spinning away to the ground.
The elf frowned, his elegant face contorting with small lines near his full lips. He sheathed his weapon over his back, folded his hands in front of his belly. “You are distracted, lunis’ai. Your eyes are elsewhere, when they should be on me.”
I still didn’t know what the elven word “lunis’ai” meant, but Corym seemed insistent on calling me it. Hells, I didn’t know much of anything around here, and I was vexed at being kept in the dark.
Despite the tranquil atmosphere of the elves at the camp, and the respect with which Corym E’tar treated me, I still felt like the clock was ticking. It was like I needed to be back home, at Vikingrune Academy, to make sure everyone I cared about was all right.
I flared my nostrils and walked over to pick up my sword. “Can you blame me?” I asked. “I’ve been here two weeks and you haven’t told me shit, Corym.”
The elf did not twist his face with disdain or make any acknowledgement of my gripe. “Swordplay does not change,” he said, ignoring my complaint. “It is the same in Alfheim as it is in Midgard. Footwork, eyesight, focus. The tenets remain the same.”
“The wielders and combatants change though,” I spat, twisting my back to stretch my weary muscles and bones, before sheathing my sword at my hip. “You are unlike anyone I’ve ever fought. I don’t know your tactics, you move in unexpected ways, like a spider. I can’t read you at all. It’s not like fighting a human because . . . you’re not.”
The elf simply nodded. He moved his hands from in front of him to behind him, clasping them together. Studying me, he pivoted back to his first claim: my distraction. “You wish to return to your school.”
“I do.”
“Are you not getting schooling here, in more than just swordplay? In the runeshaping arts you so desperately sought before arriving here?”
Crossing my arms under my chest, I shook my head and looked at the grass in front of him, defiant and embarrassed. “It’s not the same. I appreciate your aid, Corym. You are skilled. Very skilled. And a good tutor. But I have a life back at Vikingrune Academy, which I’d like to begin again. I have people there who will be worried about me.”
“You can leave whenever you’d like.” He said it with gruffness behind his smooth voice. It sounded like he was getting testy hearing about my life away from the elves, for some odd reason.
Almost like he wants me to stay. I ignored that thought, and his tone, and packed it away for a different time. “Plus,” I said, “your, um, comrades don’t especially like me. I’ve heard the way Logaithn speaks about me—wishing you’d killed me back at the river with the other Huscarls.”
Corym turned away, finally breaking his unnerving eye contact on my body. “Logaithn says a lot of things. As I understand it, from what you’ve told me, your time at Vikingrune Academy was not much different. Threats at every turn. Attempts on your life. Persecution.”
He had a point there. For some reason, it was different when it was an alien race from a different plane lobbing those threats at you and not your own race. Even if I hated people like Astrid Dahlmyrr and her goons, and wanted vengeance against her for ambushing me, her reactions were still human reactions to what she perceived as a slight against her.
Namely, I had been outplaying and overshadowing the Tomekeeper’s daughter all term long. It was partly my fault, pushing her buttons until she decided to take violent measures into her own grubby hands.
Logaithn and the other Ljosalfar elves, however? I didn’t understand their motivations for wanting me gone, because I didn’t understand their people or history.
“You still have much to learn here, I believe, lunis’ai,” Corym said, ripping me away from my thoughts. “Your runeshaping is progressing. You’re showing promise. When you return to Vikingrune Academy, you will make fools of all the naysayers.”
A small smile curled my lips. Slowly, I lifted my gaze to his beautiful features. “So you do plan to let me go, eventually, then? Because I’m not buying the whole ‘you can leave whenever you want’ rhetoric.”
Corym nodded. “Once the council agrees to trust you, Ravinica.” He spoke with a thick accent that was unlike anything I’d witnessed—sort of a mix between British English and something else where the consonants weren’t always emphasized in the right place.
