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Rune sighed, his hand lifting to rub the red spot along his jaw from where Weston had hit him. “I told you what I knew of the box—that lore says the ring holds the soul of the last true Viking god.”
Her arms crossing over her ribcage, her head cocked to the side. “Some drunk old man in a tavern didn’t tell you that, did he?”
“No.” Rune shook his head, his copper-green eyes centered on her. “All of what I told you—that was my father’s research. Stories that had been handed down generation after generation. Maps. Sightings of it through the centuries.”
“And the wooden planks didn’t come from your captain?”
“No.” His lower jaw shifted to the side, cracking. “Handed down through generations. And I found two of them on an expedition in Egypt.”
Prickles of anger ran up her spine, swirling about her scalp.
The lies.
The lies upon lies.
Her eyes closed, her head shaking as words whispered from her lips. “Why? Why?”
“My father believed all of it. The power of the box—the curse of it. He was obsessed. Obsessed, but still at the mercy of the men that would fund his expeditions to find it.”
“Why the obsession?” Des asked.
Elle opened her eyes to glance over her shoulder at Des. His hand was still curling and uncurling, ready to strike again. She wasn’t sure if she was happy about that or not.
Rune’s shoulders lifted. “My father believed that he—that we are descendants of that last soul. He believed it was his mission to find the box and return it from whence it came.”
Elle gasped.
Rune nodded. “Exactly—from Jules’s own lips. It needs to go home.”
Weston stepped forward, setting himself to Elle’s right side. “But in all those years that you were around the box—on the ship, in London, at Seahorn—why didn’t you just take it?”
Rune looked to Weston. “I didn’t know what to do with it. Where it should go. What good is having the box if the power of it overtakes you? I know you know what it’s like, Wes, and I couldn’t chance it. I couldn’t chance becoming corrupted by it before I discovered where it needed to go. I didn’t want to be tested and found weak, to want to keep it for myself. I couldn’t fail my father like that. Not for all he gave for the box. His time, his soul, his life.”
“So you used us—you used us all—the deaths, the horrors at the hands of that curse,” Weston rumbled, leaning forward.
Rune pulled himself to his full height, meeting Weston’s fury. “No, whoever held that box wanted it. They wanted the riches and they never once considered what it would cost them. Their course was set whether I was there or not.”
Weston looked ready to pounce, until his mouth suddenly pulled to the side and he took an unexpected step backward.
Rune’s gaze flickered to Des. “But the time had finally come at your castle, Des. Not one of you wanted the box at Seahorn. That was when I was going to take possession, no matter if I was ready or not. But then a wrinkle appeared.”
“Jules’s vision,” Elle whispered.
Rune nodded and his stare settled on Elle. “That combined with the fact that Elle had seen the box in the mosaics in the baths—a clue—a clue like no other. You don’t know how many years my father searched for a trail like that. How long I searched for a trail like that. It was the closest we’d ever come to knowing the true origin of the box. So I had to see it—see the mosaics.” His voice went flat. “And I had to use Elle to see them.”
A cold shudder wrapped along her spine. To hear from Rune’s own lips how he’d used her. “Is this a lie, Rune? All of it, is it a lie?”
“Elle—”
Her hand curled into a fist, punching through the air toward the ground with a stomp of her foot. “Is this a lie?”
“It isn’t.” His shoulders dropped, as though all air had left him—nothing but a deflated shell. “This is the full truth of it. If Jules were here, she could tell you—tell you exactly what that room my father died in looked like. Exactly what my father looked like, what he wore, when her father shot him and he fell to the ground. I watched it, she watched it. How she looked when she pulled that box from his hand. Which side she knelt on. How she had to touch his lifeless fingers to extract the box. She could tell you all of it and it would match exactly what I witnessed.”
“Dammit, Rune, you’ve lied to us for years—hell, since you boarded theFirefox,” Des spat out. “Why in the bloody world should we believe you now?”
Rune’s gaze snapped to Des. “You’re right. I haven’t told you the truth of my past for years. But you know the code of the ship—we don’t inquire as to the past. And I’ve done everything in my power to protect you from Hoppler once I knew he was set upon getting the box for Lord Gatlong.”
The room fell silent.
