Page 38 of The Soul of a Rogue

The latest expedition was successful, and it was not. I didn’t find what we’ve been searching for, but the team did discover a cache of unnaturally large emeralds in a bronze Mayan long box that the viscount was quite pleased with. He left port satisfied, with all the glory of what he will now claim solely as his discovery.

It was a reminder of a lesson that I have been meaning to teach you. You are old enough now to understand. The aristocracy—you must be careful with them when you take over these expeditions one day. Their blood, their entitlement sets them apart from us, and you need to remember that. They are not our kind. Our kind is adventurers, movers of the world with great destinies. The aristocrats are not, yet they are so desperate for it, they will ride on our backs to glory as it is the only way they can achieve it. You must always remember that if we start to think that we are like them, or that they are like us, then they will steal that glory, steal our destinies.

Always know where you stand, boy. And do not stand with them.

Use them as you need to, but never believe you are one of them. You are better.

Until I find you again, my son.

—Father

It took Rune long minutes after he’d read the words on the letter before he could neatly fold the creased and worn paper and set it back atop the stack, retying the twine with detailed precision.

Recommitted to his guiding light. What he had to do.

The darkness flooded him. The darkness he didn’t even remember was there. It’d been in him so long, become such a part of him that he’d long since forgotten he was a bad person. Nothing mattered but the box. Whatever it took to get it.

Just the reminder he needed.

He looked to the satchel and the scraps of history cobbled together inside.

Pulling papers and maps and even thin wood pieces that had been carved with old language, he splayed all of the history of the Box of Draupnir that he was aware of onto the bed. Everything that had been collected over the years.

He picked up the crystal clear sunstone, flipping it around in his fingers as he stared at the pile. The answer had to be in there somewhere.

His eyes drifted to the timeline of where the box had been seen, travelled in the last fifty years. Testimonials from those that had seen it, witnessed its power. Tales of where some believed the box to have come from—some outrageous, some with seemingly grains of truth, of sanity. The stories of the wars that some said had been won with it.

Rune reached to the far side of the bed to pick up several of the small slabs of wood with Old Norse carved into them, staring at the inscriptions.

Fragments of meanings, never full thoughts. Prayers for winds. Curses on the Christians. Words of undying love.

He flipped one of the pieces of wood over and, for the very first time, noticed the scratches on the back. Random scratches he’d never thought anything of, except in this light, they looked to be more than scratches. Quite possibly intentional scratches—carvings, worn down with time.

Papers flying across the bed, he frantically searched for the other eight pieces of wood—all with ragged edges—that had been collected throughout the years and he flipped all of them over.

A line here…he scanned the backs of the other pieces.

That could match up with the line on the one on the right.

He set them together, pushing and pulling the pieces together in a myriad of ways until lines seemed to hop the ragged, rough edges of the wood and become connected in a two-across block pattern.

And at the bottom, either two missing blocks or the lines ended unconnected.

He had to tell Elle. And he needed to see the inside of those baths again.

Where was she?

Rune hurried from the room, going first to her chambers. Empty. Moving through the house, he looked in room after room, searching for her.

No Elle. Was she outside walking the grounds again?

He aimed for the front door and along the way noticed the doors to the drawing room were closed. Unusual, as he’d never seen Elle hiding away anywhere and he’d never seen her in that room. He moved to the double-wide doors, opened the right one and peeked into the room.

No one.

Rune took a silent step backward and pulled the door toward him. Just before the room disappeared from view, he saw the tiniest tuft of a cerulean blue skirt on the floor just past the settee. The exact blue Elle had been wearing that morning.

He pushed the door open again, his look swiveling about the room. Empty.

---