Ruined King (Night Elves Trilogy Book 2)

by C. N. Crawford

  Revna’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. “She has enchanted him. But don’t kill him, Father, please. I want him in a prison. I want him in chains.”

  King Gorm looked to the crowd. “Our subjects came here for an execution.”

  “No!” Revna screamed. “We can keep him locked up. An iron cuff around his throat, locked to the wall.”

  A heavy silence fell over the amphitheater, and my fingers twitched where my sword should be. With my finger still healing, I wasn’t sure I could fight even if I’d had a sword.

  King Gorm raised a hand. “Kill the Night Elf first. I have not yet decided what to do with the prince, but I may feed him to my troll. Porgor has been so hungry of late.”

  The king flicked his fingers. Instantly a soldier fired a hex. I dove in front of Ali, and the spell slammed into my legs. There was no slowing my momentum. I tipped over into the Well of Wyrd.

  Chapter 37

  Ali

  I felt like someone had just carved my heart out. I pushed away from the soldier who’d been holding me and ran to the edge of the well, watching Galin disappear into the darkness. Silent horror chilled my soul. Frozen by a stunning spell, I knew without a doubt there was no way he could have survived the fall.

  The Night Elves had lost the Winnowing. The High Elves would remain in power and my people would be exterminated.

  And now, I’d lost Galin, too. I felt like my heart was shattering into pieces.

  Back when I was imprisoned in the Audr Mines, I’d spent every waking moment dreaming of his death. I was sure that was my fate—I would end his life, bring down the wall. It would be the answer to everything.

  But I’d just watched him fall to his death. I felt numb. I no longer thought his death would free my people, that it was the answer to anything. It was as if my chest had been carved open, hollowed out. I was empty.

  I felt like I’d fallen with him, plummeting into a void.

  It took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t just Galin’s loss that had left me feeling ripped apart. With his death, the bond between our souls had broken. I was completely unmoored, plunging through the dark.

  But I couldn’t lose myself in grief right now. I had to be sharp and clear as a star in the sky, or I’d be dead, too.

  Revna stared at the well, looking nearly as devastated as I was. As I watched her, a strange thought occurred to me. Had she actually loved her brother?

  She whirled to look at me, tears gleaming in her eyes. Her golden hair caught in the icy wind. “This was your fault. He was going to be my husband, just like the ancient bloodlines. Two royals, joined in a perfect union.”

  “He what?” Gorm spluttered.

  “Don’t act shocked, Father. You know we have different fathers.” With tears streaming down her face, Revna stalked towards me.

  “Skalei,” I whispered, readying myself for a fight. But it would be damn hard to fight here when soldiers were pointing their wands at me.

  I was inches from the lip of the well, and my senses raced into overdrive. High Elves surrounded me. Above me, I heard the wingbeats of hovering moths, the buzzing of spells. There had to be dozens of wands pointed right at me, far too many for me to dodge. All King Gorm had to do was say the word and I was dead.

  Revna took another step towards me.

  “Come any closer and you’ll feel my blade between your ribs,” I said, but I knew the threat was empty.

  And yet, maybe if I goaded her, I could gain the upper hand.

  “I’m sorry your brother didn’t love you,” I said bitterly. “I know for a fact that he loathed you.”

  Her jaw tightened. “Put down that blade, bitch, or I’ll have you shot.”

  I dropped Skalei onto the dark stone. I’d follow along. I’d draw her closer.

  Tears streamed down Revna’s pale cheeks. “Now put that gag back in your mouth.”

  So, she was clever enough to know that I’d simply call Skalei back if I could. I pulled the gag into my mouth anyway.

  Revna took another step closer. Her face was a mask of pain and rage. Like me, she appeared unarmed, but I knew there was no way that was actually the case. She’d have a blade close at hand.

  It took a second for me to glimpse the hilt of the dagger in her sleeve. She thought she was being sneaky, didn’t she?

  When she was within striking distance, steel flashed in her hand.

  I caught her wrist, driving the dagger away. In one fluid motion, I slipped behind her and pulled her close to me, pressing the dagger against her stomach. Any movement would cut her open.

  I wanted to kill her, but I could use her life as leverage. She was the only remaining heir to the High Elf empire. The perfect human shield.

  Gorm bellowed, “Let her go!”

  I was still gagged, so I could only shake my head no.

  And that was where I fucked up. Because Revna wasn’t a normal person who thought in normal ways. Revna was driven by some sort of insanity. She wanted to win at all costs.

  She ripped herself out of my grasp, and the dagger carved into her gut. Even as she shrieked in agony, she elbowed me so hard in the chest that I fell backward.

  Everything moved in slow motion. I tried to balance, but there was no ground under my feet, only the depths of the Well of Wyrd yawning beneath me.

  For a split second, my fingers clawed at the lip—then I was in free fall.

  Chapter 38

  Ali

  Cold air rushed past my face as I plummeted into the darkness of the Well of Wyrd. The dark granite of the well flew by, just a few feet from me. I had thirty, twenty seconds before my body shattered on the roots of Yggdrasill.

  I was about to die. Tumbling and spinning. Faster and faster. Panic ripped my mind open.

  I was about to become a fresh corpse on King Gorm’s bone pile. Galin and I would be companions in death.

  Air rushed in my ears, and with it came a sound echoing in the depths. “Aiiiiiiieeeee …”

  Strange … I’d remembered the Well of Wyrd as a quiet place, but there it was again. A noise, louder this time. A voice.

  I flipped around, flinging my arms out to steady myself. Far below me, there was movement in the darkness, and a faint purple glow. A dark form clung to the rock.

  I understood the noise now. Not a scream, but my name drawn out.

  “Aaallliiiii!”

  Sacred gods. Galin was alive?

  With one hand, he clung to the wall of the cave. With the other, he reached out for me. I extended my arm, but too late. Our fingers brushed, and then he was gone.

  I kept falling. Sleek rock rushed past me, a gray blur only a foot away. And something else, black and sinewy, twisting in the cracks. Dark tendrils like the bodies of snakes. The roots of Yggdrasill.

  I doubted they’d hold my weight, but I grabbed one anyway. My fingers wrapped around the wood. My arm jerked, and I slammed into the granite wall. The air rushed out of my lungs; my arm nearly wrenched free of its socket. Yet somehow, my fingers remained locked on the root.

  I hung for a long minute, trying to catch my breath.

  Then I looked up. My Night Elf eyes could pierce the darkness, but still, I couldn’t see much—gray stone and the World Tree’s roots twisting along the wall of the well, forming a ladder.

  Galin was up there, somewhere.

  I began to climb the roots. My shoulder and chest throbbed painfully, but I was able to make it work. Slowly, I made my way up the side of the well.

  Above me, a violet glow began to illuminate the shaft of the well. It came from a hollow in the rock, a sort of cave. And standing in front, silhouetted against the violet glow, the muscular body of a High Elf I’d come to know very well. He waited for me on a narrow ledge.

  My heart started beating faster, harder, hope lighting me up. “Galin?”

  “Ali? Is that you?”

  “Who else would have been thrown into the well?” I climbed towards the light. There were fewer roots here, and I had to find handholds
in the rock itself. My forearms burned with fatigue.

  When I was a few feet below him, Galin pulled me up onto the narrow ledge, then wrapped his strong arms around me, practically crushing me into his steely chest. Warmth radiated from his body over mine.

  I looked into his golden eyes, not quite believing he was real. “I thought you were dead. But I guess it’s not the first time you survived a fall into the Well of Wyrd.”

  “Are you hurt?” he murmured.

  I shifted away from him, rolling my shoulders cautiously. There was some soreness, but no serious pain. “A little banged up, but nothing major. Did you know your sister is in love with you?”

  He shuddered visibly. “I’m not sure love describes it. She wants to control me. I’m a thing that she wants.”

  I wondered if Revna had managed to survive. “I, um … stabbed her in the stomach.”

  His eyes widened. “Did she live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s something very wrong with her.”

  “I realize that now. How’s your hand?”

  He held it up, and I was shocked to find that his finger was still there, albeit mangled and with a jagged red scar at the bottom. “I whispered a spell to heal it, but the spell only worked partway. As soon as I climbed up here, it stopped working.”

  I frowned. “Wait, so you could have healed my finger all along?”

  He shook his head. “It had to happen right away.”

  Behind him, violet light bloomed from an opening in the rock. I had the vaguest recollection of seeing something like this when we had first descended the well on the moth’s back.

  “There’s something in there.” I stood on the narrow ledge, gripping a strand of Yggdrasill’s root for balance.

  I moved in quietly, keeping to the shadows. Who knew what else lived in the well—I distinctly remembered how I’d nearly been eaten by a Nokk in a subterranean lake. All sorts of creatures could be lurking in the darkness. Quietly, I tiptoed into the glowing mouth of the cave.

  I could feel my eyes widen as I surveyed the interior. It was full of glowing purple crystals, like the inside of a giant geode. And these were not any crystals, but vergr crystals. More than I’d ever seen before. If I’d found a cache like this when I’d worked in the Audr Mines, I’d have been immediately granted my freedom.

  “Hello, hello, hello,” said Galin, his eyes wide. He stepped inside the cave by my side.

  “Galin,” I said excitedly. “Do you know what this means? With this many crystals, we could outfit every soldier in the Night Elf army with a vergr crystal. Can you imagine that? We’d be unstoppable.”

  Galin ran his fingers along the crystals. “The magic in this place is like nothing I’ve seen before. Simply amazing.” He turned back to me, and the violet light illuminated his golden eyes, his finely sculpted cheekbones. The cave went about twenty feet in, then ended abruptly in a curved dead end. But there was so much crystal in here, it could change everything for the Night Elves—even after we lost the Winnowing.

  Maybe I was the North Star after all.

  Galin flashed me a sly smile. “Alright, where should we go?”

  Someplace no one will find us. “The Prudential Tower?”

  Galin nodded and began to trace the air. I’d seen him do it enough times now that I recognized the portal spell.

  As he finished, I waited for the static pop of the portal materializing, but it never came.

  “Hmm …” Galin frowned. “I must have missed a rune.”

  Quickly, he scribed the spell a second time. Again, nothing happened.

  Galin moved back to the entrance of the cave and tried again. This time, for a brief second, a portal appeared before it disappeared with a hiss of static. He tried again and again. Nothing.

  He turned to me, frowning. “Something is interfering with my magic.” He held up his hand. “Just like the spell was interrupted when arrived here. My magic isn’t working down here.”

  Oh, no. “Try something else,” I said desperately.

  Quickly, Galin scribed kaun, but the fire only appeared for an instant before disappearing. Galin’s eyes widdened suddenly.

  “What is it?”

  Galin didn’t answer. Instead he reached up and gently touched the Helm of Awe. Then he took it off.

  “Did you just—”I began.

  Galin nodded. “The spell is broken.I can’t even hear Ganglati.”

  He held the helm in his hand a moment longer, then with a hard flick of his wrist he threw it into the well.

  Watching it drop into the depths gave me an idea. “Maybe we can use one of the crystals. Do you know how to enchant one?”

  Galin shook his head. “Even if I could, how would we get it out of here? There’s no way to get it to the surface. The roots stop soon, the walls smooth out. And if we dropped it down the well, it would shatter …”

  “And if we teleported to it, we’d simply reappear in a thousand pieces,” I finished grimly.

  I sat down on the edge of the ledge, my legs swinging over the abyss. Quietly, Galin sat next to me. For a long time, we looked out into the darkness of the well without speaking.

  “Let me see your finger again,” I finally said.

  He held it out, and I grimaced. It had started bleeding again.

  I tore off one of my shirt sleeves. “Here, let me bind it for you.” I took Galin’s hand in my lap, then picked up my sleeve. “This is going to hurt.”

  “I was dead for a thousand years. I’ll withstand a bit of your shirt.”

  “There you go.”

  “Thank you.” His voice was quiet and subdued.

  I nodded and looked out into the darkness again, sighing. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what would happen next. With the Winnowing tied, who would win? The Vanir, or the High Elves—and what would become of my people?

  Sadness shattered me, and my head fell into my hands. “We’re trapped here, aren’t we?”

  Chapter 39

  Ali

  Grief-stricken, I peered over the edge. The vines I’d been climbing wouldn’t take us down far enough to get to the bottom. Above and below them was sheer rockface, slick as obsidian. So, it was just us and the rocks.

  I tried not to imagine how our death would go. We would become severely dehydrated within days. We’d starve and possibly consider eating each other.

  “I’m not going to eat you,” I muttered.

  “That’s a relief.” Galin stared into the darkness. “This wasn’t in my vision.”

  “What vision?”

  “My vision of my fate. I saw myself as king.”

  “Of course you did.”

  He shot me a sharp look. “My visions don’t lie.”

  “Right. Fate. Wyrd. You are deeply committed.” I peered over at him skeptically. “Was I in this vision of yours? You said our souls are entwined.”

  He shook his head. “No. That perplexed me. You were not there with me in my kingdom. Which is wrong, obviously.”

  “I thought your visions don’t lie.”

  His jaw tightened. “I am admittedly confused.”

  “The story of fate that my mother told was one where I killed you. So, if you really believe in fate, maybe we’re not supposed to be lovers. Maybe our souls are entwined for an altogether different reason.”

  “And why would you kill me now?” he asked.

  “For sustenance.” It was a grim joke, and neither of us laughed.

  Galin had gone completely silent, so quiet it was starting to worry me. “Maybe you’re right,” he said quietly, finally.

  “What?”

  “A thousand years ago, I devoted my life to the gods. Everything I did was to honor them.”

  “What about the women? I heard you had legions of women following you around. Desperate for your attention.”

  He shrugged. “The women were nice. But if it weren’t for the gods, my life would have been empty. The deaths on the battlefields, the magic. When I
died, I lost all those memories. I lost all meaning. For a thousand years, I was a shell of a person. I only started to feel alive again when I met you, even if I was still a lich. It was like I could feel my heart beating again, even if it wasn’t supposed to.”

  I felt my own heart speeding up, warmth blooming in my chest. “Yeah?”

  “And then my soul returned to me. With the power of Loki’s wand, I had blood flowing in my veins. And my memories came back for the first time in a thousand years. But with that came the horrible realization that the gods were dead. Nothing meant anything anymore … except you. Maybe Wyrd no longer means anything. Maybe fate was wrong, or stopped mattering after the gods died. But I do have you, and you’re my light in the darkness. Where I once sacrificed to the gods, I’ll now sacrifice to you.”

  I felt my breath catch at his words. “Wait, what? I’m not like the gods. I’m nothing like a god. Haven’t you been paying attention? I’m deeply flawed. You’ve heard me sing, haven’t you?”

  “You gave me a reason to be alive. Which means you’re the reason I have to die again.”

  Fear snapped through my brain, and I grabbed his bicep. “What are you talking about?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “If I become a lich again, I can survive the fall.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. You’re not going to kill yourself. I won’t let you lose your soul again. Not until—”

  He met my gaze, his golden eyes piercing me. “Until what?”

  “I don’t know. Just give it time. Maybe something will happen. Maybe a moth will fly down here. You’ll forget everything again. You might not remember who I am. And what if we can’t get Loki’s wand back?”

  Galin stood on the ledge, then crossed back into the cave. “Stay where you are, Ali. You don’t need to see this.”

  “No!” I jumped up as he crossed into the glowing violet cavern. Galin picked up a sharp chunk of vergr crystal from the cave floor—a jagged shard, like a blade. He held it above his wrist.

  My heart skipped a beat. I wasn’t going to stand by and watch this happen.