“Kind of morbid, kind of beautiful.” The end of his joint burned steadily with his long drag.
“What’s beautiful about a sculpture garden made out of a bunch of dead people?”
“Serves as a reminder to us all.” He blew out.
“A reminder of what?”
“That we can’t escape death.” In offering, he held out the tightly rolled hemp paper, the skunky scent billowing in the night. “At least they went out having fun.”
Taking it from his hand, I tentatively pressed the unlit end to my lips. “Carpe diem,” I said with an inhale, the smoke searing my lungs, my throat.
“Isn’t that right.” A trace of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
I fought to hold my muscles still to avoid coughing.
“So, tomorrow’s the day,” he said in a raspy drawl, playing with one of the many rings on his fingers.
I raised my brows, nearly gagging on the smoke as I passed the joint back to him.
“When you go to Jarðarbæli,” he clarified, as if I had forgotten.
“It’s supposed to be,” I managed to get out without gasping too hard. I cleared my throat. “Got any advice? Nobody here seems to know anything, and the queen sure as hell hasn’t told me what to expect. It’s in the highlands.” I remembered what he’d told me when I first met him. “That’s where you’re stationed, right?”
“I’ve poked around there,” he said smoothly. “Never went in.”
I stared at him expectantly. “And…?”
“Whatever’s in that cave wants to be left alone.” His eyes fixed on my heart, as if he were counting the beats. “But isn’t that true of most good things? They’re guarded.”
“Great, so Fritz and Eva were right. There is a monster in there.” The tickle in my throat finally subsiding, a tingling calm washed over me. “Apparently the only person who’s been inside and lived to see another day is some dude lovingly named the Coffin Seeker.”
“Ah, Kistuleitarinn.” He took another hit. “That tracks.”
“The others seemed…” Words floated outside my head, swirling with the bright auroras, painting the sky in scattered colors and thoughts and dreams. “Scared to even mention him?”
“Nothing to be scared of. He’s in an oubliette in the ice dungeons.”
“An oubliette?” Such a strange term. Such a strange sound. I giggled at the way my lips puckered when I said it. “How intense…”
“Yes, in the Dead Man’s Zone. There’s no escaping that place.”
“What is he?” Innocence lined the question, almost awe. What could be so merciless, so evil, it had to be locked in a hole far beneath the ground?
“A demon.”
“What?” My chin fell, gaze level with his. I hadn’t even realized I’d been looking up at the stars. “The queen has a fucking demon under her castle?”
His mouth split into a grin, but it was all wrong. Menacing. He held out the joint.
Shaking my head no, I took a step back. I didn’t think I was that stoned, but surely I was hearing things. Because there’s no way he just told me… “Are you for real?”
“Where else is she going to put him?”
“I—uh, I don’t know. Why does she have him in the first place?” I squinched my lids closed, to shut out the world and give my thoughts a hope of being organized. But the shock and the buzz shuffled them into a meaningless mess.
“She keeps lots of specimens.” Moving next to a petrified troll, Flóki ran the back of his hand over its cheek. “Before Kistuleitarinn was a demon, he was Einar the farmer. Born in a typical village. Lived a quiet life. Until… he didn’t.”
“He was human?”
