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“That’s because you still think this is a game, Elle. An adventure. You need to understand how the box can destroy things—people. No one is safe around that thing. Even if you don’t feel the power—the draw of it—others do. And others will always want to possess it. No one is safe.”
A frown set on her face for a long second before she shook her head, a weak smile curving her lips as she pinned him with a look. “But that’s what you’re here for—to keep me safe.”
He shrugged. “That mission is easier if you know exactly what you’re dealing with.”
She gave him a slight nod and turned, moving deeper into the chamber, her arm with the lantern lifted high. “Do you know anything else of it? Did your captain know?”
“The only other lore I’ve heard of it came from an old sailor in a tavern in the Port of Mogador that may or may not have been half mad on top of being soused.”
Her toe slipped on loose tile and she caught herself on the wall before Rune could grab her. She continued forward. “Lore? Tell me.”
“The old man said he saw the box once when he was in the Port of Benghazi, fifty years before when he was just a boy. It changed hands with the exchange of a beautiful woman—she was the price of the box. Flaxen hair, eyes of jade that held the souls of men. She knew of the box, knew its power—riches beyond compare—fortunes expanded by ninefold every third lunar cycle. But she warned of the curse of it. That the riches would only come at the pleasure of what the box held.”
Elle had stopped moving again, staring at him. “The ring?”
He nodded. “The ring, but it is more than a golden ring with a ruby. The ruby holds the soul of the last true Viking god. He traded his spot in Valhalla for riches on land. Riches and love. When he died, Valhalla was closed to him, so his soul was entwined in the Ring of Draupnir and it was set in the darkness. A tree grew in that darkness, grew through, around the ring, until the Viking’s lover found the tree. She couldn’t bear to be without her soulmate, so she carved a box out of the tree that held the ring—and her lover—inside of it. And then she disappeared onto the seas.”
“And she unleashed the curse onto the world,” she whispered.
“Exactly.”
Her shoulders lifted in a visible shiver. “That is a horrible story. Beautiful though—the love entwined within it.”
“From what I’ve seen, the box brings the curse of the riches, the curse of unimaginable pain, yet love to those that somehow survive it.”
“Like Des and Jules.”
“And Laney and Wes.”
Her eyes closed for a long second and she shivered again. “Jules—does she know this story?”
Rune shrugged. “I’ve never repeated what the old sailor told me. Whether or not another person overheard the story, I couldn’t tell you.”
She shifted the lantern in her hand, the shadows of the light sending dark streaks across her face. “She knew—Jules knew—this is what she saw in childbirth, what she saw in the pain of it. She saw that the box needed to go to its home.”
“That is the same thought I had when I heard her say that.”
“Why didn’t you say anything at Seahorn?”
His shoulders lifted. “The whole of it sounds crazy—even to my ears.”
Her eyebrows drew together, her mouth setting into a frown. “Rune, I wasn’t a believer before…but now…”
“Now what?”
“Now this.” She lifted her right hand holding the lantern to the wall next to them.
The orange glow of her lantern lit the wall, the circle of brightness bleeding into darkness along the edges. There, in the middle of the wall, the mosaic started to glow under the illumination—even through the dirt covering it.
A box.
An unmistakable picture of the box in the mosaic, but ten hand lengths high. The angry swirls of wood on the top of the box, surging and retreating, along with the shifting grains of wood on the sides were unmistakable.
“Hell.” The word slid past his lips in a whisper.
She lifted her lantern higher. “I wasn’t wrong, was I?”
His head shaking slowly, he lifted his own lantern to the wall, moving closer to it, his forefinger brushing the dirt from a tan tile in front of his nose. “No. No, you were not.”
