Page 151 of A Thief Among Fae

Upon finding some mother-of-pearl brooches, I forget what he said—until I look up and see him climbing the dais in the center of the chamber. There’s a long box atop it.

“Is that. . .” I follow Desmond up the dais, trepidation squeezing my lungs. “Olin’s coffin?”

He nods. “Technically, it’s a sarcophagus. The coffin is inside.”

I stop on the top step, hesitant to get closer. A strange energy emanates from it, different from Desmond’s necrotic power. Somehow, it’s worse, and a shudder races down my spine. My chest tightens, like I’m trapped underwater and can’t find my way to air. My skin chills as if sheathed in ice.

“Something’s wrong with it. Shouldn’t we leave it alone?” I ask.

Desmond reaches over the sarcophagus as if reading the energy. His brows knit, deep in concentration.

“Seriously, I think we should leave it be.”

He tilts his head, staring at it. “I’m going to open it.”

An anxious laugh bubbles out of me. “Open it? You? Stop messing with me, Desmond. I know you’d never,” I curl my fingers into mock quotes, “disturb the dead.”

He doesn’t reply.

Everything about this makes me uneasy. The weird magic, Desmond’s silence, knowing there’s a dead king inside that slab of stone. I retreat one step down the dais. “Come on, let’s go find that thing you’re looking for.”

I bump into Finnian and flinch. He steadies me, and then squints at the sarcophagus. “What’s the likelihood that the king is a rather cranky draugr?” he asks.

“Fifty-fifty,” Desmond muses.

Finnian considers the odds with an uncharacteristically grim frown. “I give it eighty-twenty. But maybe that’s a bit too generous. Ninety-ten.”

I’m terrified to know the answer, but I have to know. “Why do you ask?”

Finnian winces. “Because I don’t suppose he’ll like being woken up.”

Oh, gods. They can’t. They shouldn’t! I surge up the steps and grab Desmond’s arm, yanking him back. “You can’t open it!”

He startles, then grimaces with a resignation that worries me. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t.” There are too many emotions welling up inside of me. Fear, so strong that it’s breaking free of the confinement I’ve shoved it in. Dread. Urgency. I tug his hand again. “What if a necromancer turned Olin into a draugr wight? Even you may not be strong enough to defeat him.”

Desmond’s jaw sets like he wants to argue.

“And what about your beliefs?” I’m so desperate to convince him that I feel like I’m begging. Something awful is inside the coffin, and after all the draugr we’ve faced, he should know better than to open it. Aren’t our lives more important than his curiosity? “The dead should be left alone, remember? Is everything you’ve told me a lie?”

He tenses like I’ve slapped him. “I⁠—”

“If he won’t open it, then I will,” Auri calls out. She strides up the dais, past Finnian as he nervously watches us, and she lifts her chin. “I have no such qualms regarding our mission.”

“Maybe King Olin’s just a rotted corpse now,” Finnian says, fidgeting with his gloves. “We’ll take a quick peek and put the lid back on, and no one will be the wiser.”

Desmond doesn’t look convinced. “Olin’s ghost isn’t here, which suggests his spirit is still tethered to his body.”

“Or his ghost is just somewhere else, like the afterlife,” Auri says. “What use is there in debating it? Let’s get it over with.”

Every instinct tells me to run now. “You’ll all die if you wake him up.”

“We’re not here for Olin.” Desmond watches me as if afraid of how I’ll react. “We need something that was buried with him.”

I remember his old book, his translation scrawled above the text.

Where the one-eyed sleeps