Chapter 34 – Neve
NEVE
The moment we reached the bottom of the steps, I exhaled, as if we’d already completed the heist when we’d only just begun.
Balvor walked the perimeter of a room, snapping his fingers every few paces. Faelights ignited, revealing hallways jutting off a circular room like spokes extending from a wheel.
My jaw set into a hard line. “Why not have faelights on the steps? It’s dangerous.”
“Are your servants always so outspoken, Lord Riis?”
Luccan arched an eyebrow. “Some. Answer her question.”
“We prefer people to take care with the stairs rather than run up and down needlessly,” Balvor replied smoothly.
I read between the lines. The steps were one of the last line of defense from thieves.
The leprechaun waved his hands and the faelights he had ignited floated over to hover in a circle around his bald head. “These faelights will follow us to your vault, Lord Riis. Come.” Balvor took the far right spoke, and once he turned away, I looked at Vale.
“What if mine is down one of the other spokes?” I whispered.
“It won’t be,” he assured me in an equally low tone only I—and probably Freyia, with her sharp vampire senses—could hear. “The Aaberg vault is this way too. It’s the best protected branch.”
I reminded myself that while the protections might be intimidating, they were also a safeguard that had prevented Magnus Aaberg from entering the Falk vault, despite being half Falk himself.
The sounds of our footsteps on stone echoed through the long, cavernous corridor. When we came across the first door, I took it in, hoping for hints as to what I might come across later.
There was no name, but a tower carved into the stone. The other doors were much the same, most with insignias I did not recognize. I suspected these were the vaults belonging to lesser noble houses. Or just wealthy fae in Avaldenn.
Occasionally, a hallway would branch off the main one. From those depths, I caught the sound of growls. Were there vaults that way? Or just more monsters?
Stars, I do not want to find out.
After almost five minutes, we reached an imposing steel door. Balvor pressed his hand to the steel, and it rose like a portcullis. We passed through and the gate slammed shut, the metal teeth digging into the stone below.
We’ll need the leprechaun to get back.
Deeper into the coinary we ventured. With each hurried step, the corridor grew dank smelling and darker. Worst of all, the growling returned as we came upon massive cages built into the walls, visible to us as we walked through.
On each side of us ogres towered at least five times Vale’s height.
Their great height shocked me, though I knew the tales.
Ogres were once the same as frost giants, but long ago some left their tribes.
Each generation of ogres grew more animalistic and smaller than their giant kin.
Now they were something else entirely. A stream of unintelligible words came from one such loathsome being. Another barked only two words.
“Blood! Meat! Blood! Meat!”
Had they been down here, caged, for so long that they’d forgotten all else? I took in their thin forms, their patchy hairy bodies and the graying skin beneath, their teeth all sharp points. One noticed me looking and roared. His breath, reeking and rotten, washed over me.
My stomach twisted and, fearing that I’d be ill, I covered my nose, and I wasn’t the only one. Tanziel’s face had lost all blood.
I’d been in Winter’s Realm for many moons now.
In all that time, I’d never seen an ogre, and I’d been happier for it.
They were as ugly and foul as I’d imagined.
Starving too, from the looks of it. If those beasts got loose, they’d eat us without a second thought and once we were gone, they’d turn on each other to fill their bellies.
And yet, knowing all that, I still felt a little pity for these fae.
Ogres were not bright like faeries, dryads, or other fae races that lived together in harmony.
They didn’t even possess an orc’s intelligence, but they were also not purely mindless creatures.
They spoke and thought. And they weren’t supposed to live down here, caged.
I doubted those that we passed would ever see the sun again. Never feel the snow fall or smell fresh air.
“Here we are,” Balvor stopped before a vault bearing a crimson ice spider in a web and a number one. “Lord Luccan, your vault.”
I hadn’t seen numbers on the other vaults, but those surrounding Luccan’s vaults also bore ice spiders and numbers up to three.
On one, only an ice spider gilded in gold glinted in the faelights.
I assumed the other numbered vaults belonged to Arie and Thantrel—each having their own wealth in addition to family wealth.
Lord Riis, as Head of his House, was the golden spider.
“Into the cauldron.” Balvor held out the cauldron he’d carried in one hand. From inside, a dagger of gold gleamed.
Luccan took the blade and drew blood across his hand. He then held his palm over the cauldron and allowed a few drops to fall in. The leprechaun did the same, and the moment the blood mixed, the door to the vault glowed.
Luccan pressed his hand to the door. It swung open, and he stepped into the vault filled with hills of gold and other precious items. We went after him, taking gold and shoving it into our pockets as Luccan plucked five gemstones from the top of a hill of gold without a care.
Balvor’s thin eyebrow knitted together when Luccan exited, and we followed. I was sure the leprechauns had thought we were intent on taking much more. Balvor opened his mouth, a question on his lips, but Bac had already moved into position, surely anticipating the questioning just as I did.
The rebel placed a hand on the leprechaun’s shoulder. “Take us to the Falk vault, Balvor.”
The Coinmaster jolted, and his face took on an amenable expression that surely did not stem from his heart. “The Falk vault, you say? Bad idea.”
“And why’s that?” Bac asked.
“You’ll all die.”
I stiffened. “Why do you say that?”
“Only a trueborn Falk can open it,” the leprechaun replied. “Many others have tried. Some attempted to steal. They all died. Others with a drop of Falk blood in their veins tried to claim the riches inside. Those fae lived, but none succeeded in their task.”
The tension left me, likely a foolish response. “We’ll take our chances. Show us the way.”
He smiled a lazy smile, taken over by Bac’s magic, though something in his eyes gleamed, a tell that hinted he did not take kindly to us tricking him. “It’s your necks.”
We continued down the same hallway. Vale strode at my side, his hands tense.
I had a feeling he was ready to pull one of his concealed daggers at any moment.
Tanziel, the recorder, had been fairly quiet since we’d entered Avaldenn, but she was taking everything in closely.
I hoped the nymph was getting a good record of the monsters and ogres we passed.
Would Thyra and the others in Bitra see similar monsters?
“You shall not pass!” A voice boomed out of nowhere, making me squeal, and everyone around me startled.
“They request the Falk vault,” Balvor said simply.
“Only the Coinmasters and the Blood of the White Hawk can pass!”
My heart raced, knowing this was a moment of truth. A test for me.
“I am the Blood of the White Hawk,” I said, stepping forward. “Daughter of King Harald and Queen Revna.”
“Oh, is she?” Balvor commented.
Bac chuckled. “Stay quiet.”
“Of course.”
That power of his was quite handy.
From a hidden door in the side of the corridor, a skeletal creature of horrors emerged. I leaned back as I took in the walking corpse dressed in old, rusted armor.
This had to be a draugr, an uncommon creature and for a good reason. They used to be living fae, but they’d long died, been resurrected, and then instructed to protect treasures of their bloodline.
Despite the terror I should feel at the creature’s appearance, pity filled me. To die and then be denied a trip to the afterworld by your own family was a fate I’d not wish on anyone. What had this fae done to deserve it?
The draugr approached me, the empty sockets of his eyes seemingly burning through me as he reached for his sword spattered with rust. “Are you sure, lady? Others have claimed to be of the White Hawk line, but they were not. The odds are not in your favor, and I do not take kindly to trickery.”
“How do I prove who I am?”
“Take my hand.” He extended a skeletal limb. “If you are of my line, I’ll recognize our bond.”
I refrained from wrinkling my nose and extended my hand to meet his. The lack of flesh was disconcerting, almost as much as the strength of his boney grip, and the deep cold that radiated from the creature.
And though he had no eyes, the moment he felt the truth within me, his jaw went slack right before a horrible smile crossed his face.
“Family,” he whispered longingly. “It has been so long.”
All the bad things I’d been thinking came crashing down and guilt filled me. The draugr was pitiable, not someone I should fear. Though I’d take what his family had done to him as betrayal, all he wished was to serve our line.
“A pleasure,” I said.
“What is your name?” he asked, that rotted smile still on his face.
“I’ve been going by Neve, but my true name is Isolde.
” When faced with a fae who had given up so much for his family, our family, the least I could do was own my name.
In front of him, it felt good and right, much like when Thyra had first uttered it.
“You may call me by the name my mother and father gave me. What’s your name? ”
The creature looked stricken, and I had to wonder if anyone had asked him that since he’d been down here. Stars, how long had that been?
“Harvadril,” he spoke his name as though he were speaking through a mouth full of food, his hand coming to his chest.
“A name for a guardian,” I whispered.
“In life and so beyond.”