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 faeraces 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 hadthought 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.
