Chapter Twenty-One
An arrow narrowly missed Lumi as he raced for the double doors. They started opening, and several of the men shouted. Clutching the pack, he shoved himself through the small gap that appeared.
Tivar yelled, and Lumi almost expected to be snatched backward, but he made it through.
Lumi heard a scream that wasn’t from Jaki.
In the dark, something nearly hit him in the face, and he wildly swiped at the hair.
His fingers hit metal, and sudden, dim light from a dangling crystal lantern showed a slightly raised walkway leading to a dais.
The stone box coffin wasn’t decorated, and nothing adorned the room or said the first King lay there. Lumi’s boots pounded the stone flooring as he headed for the coffin. He didn’t dare to stop to look behind him as he heard someone following.
His hands shook as he yanked the Crown from the pack and dropped it.
He nearly tripped as he stepped up onto the dais.
Tivar wasn’t going to let either live. If he broke Jaki and forced him to breed, he’d be killed once a son was born.
Lumi would be used in some way to force Jaki to do what was wanted.
Whatever happened, they’d be dead in the end if a boy were born.
Lumi shoved aside the top of the box. The stone grated as the bones inside were revealed. Rinder had been laid to rest on his back with his arms at his sides. If he’d been wrapped in a shroud or dressed in anything, it was long gone.
A small bed of white roses cradled his skull, and they were fresh as if they’d just bloomed despite the lack of light and water.
“Let him go in. He knows if he gets too stupid, we can end Lumi in a second. They've cornered themselves.”
Lumi dared to glance behind him. Shit. Words might be meant only to be pretty, and nothing else. Jaki had come in, and judging by the blood on his sword, he’d killed the nearest man before racing in.
The other winged men had flown down and were blocking the door. Those who couldn’t fly would be hurrying down the ladder. A few stepped in, and Jaki backed up toward Lumi with his blade ready.
Nothing was happening.
He’d end up back in the room. He could barely get the Crown around the skull and resting on the white roses with his trembling hands. Once it was on, he gripped the edge of the box, afraid his legs might collapse.
The eye sockets of the skull stared upward. The Crown had a lovely sheen. Even in death, it responded to Rinder. Surely, the land would come back now that it rested on the bed of white roses, and it had been returned to its rightful owner.
But still, nothing happened. Lumi’s last, feeble hope had been for nothing, and he stared at the side where the bone cracked, and he could see white roses must have filled part of the skull inside.
The words were only words and not a threat. A command that couldn’t be enforced. The small quake had meant nothing either.
How many cycles of light would he have to see? How long until it faded for good, and he knew nothing? How long did Jaki have before Tivar got a damn son? All he could see was the skylight above, dim with the promise of another sunset. The final one for both him and Jaki.
What if Tivar found a way to get to their daughter?
“Lumi.”
The stone returned under his hands as he dragged in a breath. “I’m not g-going back. You can’t let him take you either.”
He’d rather die than lose Jaki.
“We’ll fight,” Jaki whispered.
“If we have to hurt you, we can keep you alive until you give me what I fucking need,” snarled Tivar. “I’ll let Lumi live as long as you do what I say. You’ve cornered yourself. It’s over. Drop your fucking sword, put your hands behind your head, and come over here. Now.”
“You won’t let either of us l-live,” Lumi said as Jaki tugged on his arm and pulled him around the coffin.
Lord Smith sighed as if this was all such a bother. The rest of the men kept their eyes trained on their quarry.
Lumi had bought them a few seconds. Tivar and the rest didn’t immediately attack, and a few of the men looked rather unsure. They’d clearly been ordered to take both alive, but if things got a little too nasty in the heat of the moment…
Perhaps Tivar wanted to wear them down with fear. He needed his new baby maker alive, not hacked to pieces because he resisted.
Facing the rest, Jaki blocked Lumi’s body with his own, and lightning crackled around his free hand. “If you take us, or even one of us, and try to leave, my men outside will kill you.”
Tivar smiled enough to show the tips of his fangs. “Your unaware men?”
“At the very least, you’ll lose a few. Maybe you’ll lose your life.”
“I doubt it. A few arrows will send them into a panic. I’m sure they’re sitting on their arses around a little fire and hoping you hurry the fuck up. They'll be easy enough to deal with. Get them. Now. I’m tired of waiting.”
Lumi summoned fire to his hand as the men stepped forward.
“Even if you have a son from Jaki or me, you won’t have the Crown.
You can’t rule Iceland without it if you can’t coronate a son, and you’re the fake heir, so you can’t do shit.
Iceland’s so far gone at this point, you won’t be able to unite it either.
Even if you did, you’d be a fake King over the tattered remains while whoever is left slowly starves. ”
Tivar curled his lip. “The Crown is right there.”
“You can’t mess with a body.” Lumi’s breath came too fast. Taking something from a tomb or messing with a corpse at rest was one of the worst crimes a fairy could do, and it was worthy of death anywhere. Only the worst would rob a grave if it happened to have anything, which was highly unlikely.
Tivar likely didn’t care anymore. Lumi knew he was grasping at air even though his words made the men pause.
Tivar must have risked telling a few the truth.
Clearly, if he needed someone to breed, and wasn’t working on making his own heir without Lumi and Jaki, he wasn’t the real heir.
He must have offered them a lot to make them stick by his side.
Clearly, they didn’t care what was done to fix Iceland as long as they had wealth or even holds to themselves in the end.
Lord Smith gestured. “Taking the Crown will save Iceland. Elira will understand.”
“I didn’t sign up for this,” snapped a man. “We were supposed to get these two, not steal from the first King’s tomb.”
“So we should leave it and let Iceland continue to fall to pieces?” snapped Tivar. “I didn’t see you rushing to stop Lumi from putting the Crown in the coffin.”
“But-”
“Get them, now! And only kill Lumi if Jaki fights too hard.”
“No amount of money and a hold is worth this,” said the man. He glanced at the coffin.
Tivar turned red, and Lord Smith lifted his sword slightly as he turned to the speaker. The man hastily backed away.
“I thought so,” said Lord Smith.
The man pointed. “What the fuck is that?”
Another made a strange sound and loosed an arrow. It hit the wall near the floor and snapped from the force. It didn’t bother the ice-blue vines slithering from where the wall and the floor met.
“What the fuck?” Jaki moved, forcing Lumi against the wall right behind them.
A man lashed his sword at the air as more vines came from the other side and inched toward the group. The vines, thin with thorns, had a shiny appearance, rather like ice, and they moved smoothly along. A couple lifted slightly.
“What are they?!”
“Get away!”
“Hack them off!”
Tivar jerked as one got too near to his ankle, and he drew his weapon. With the others clustering closer in the center to avoid the multiple vines, he dared to approach several that were getting closer and twisting together.
He swung and caught the bunch a few inches down. With a sound like glass shattering that made Jaki and Lumi jump, pale pieces flew and skittered along the floor only to start melting.
What was left snapped forward as the vines continued twisting together.
Losing a chunk didn’t seem to have done much, and it reached its former length as if it had endless excess somewhere in the wall behind it.
Others were also twisting, braiding, and wrapping around each other to form huge, thick vines the thickness of a man’s legs.
Behind them, new, thin ones inched out too.
The thorns gleamed, and Lord Smith moved, ready to hack the thickening piece inching closer.
A single vine jerked forward and wrapped around his wrist. Lord Smith cried out as the thorns must have bit through his sleeves.
Another snagged onto the end of his cloak and pulled.
He lost his balance, and most of the others dissolved into pure panic.
A few wildly slashed with their swords, and arrows flew.
Tivar shouted to attack as Jaki kept his sword and lightning ready. A man broke and ran for the doors. A vine made of several twisted together wrapped around his ankle and yanked. He fell forward, and several others struck like snakes.
More poured from their hidden place along the walls. Tivar hacked at one too close for comfort, and even though pieces fell to the ground to melt, it kept coming.
The men attacked, although it did little.
Lord Smith shouted for someone to slice the ones holding him, but no one listened.
It was every man for himself. More twirled together and lashed out to wrap around swords, legs, arms, wings, and torsos.
Fire flashed as a man tried to burn off the ones holding his ankles.
It worked, but several more attacked him from behind. Lightning arced across the room.
The icy vines didn’t stop as they thickened and continued attacking. So many were wrapped around Lord Smith, he could barely be made out anymore. From the thick vines holding him down, the thorns grew into jagged pieces like ice.
Lord Smith’s body suddenly jerked as blood squirted from his body like juice from a squeezed fruit, and bones cracked.
Lumi almost screamed and barely held it back. If he’d fucked up, and they came for him and Jaki…