I sprinted down the hallway, arms pumping. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised to meet a draugr here. They made excellent guards, as they were obsessed with protecting treasure. Undead and untiring, they shredded thieves like me into little pieces.
At the far end of the hallway, I spied what I’d come for—the vault. But it wasn’t what I’d expected, and my mouth went dry. Not only did a heavy steel door lock it shut, but protection runes glowed over the metal. Not insurmountable, but with a draugr hot on my tail, I had no time to crack it.
I’d need to improvise.
Adrenaline coursing, I pulled my crossbow from my back, then kneeled to reload it.
The draugr shuffled into view. It was an animated corpse, its emaciated body sinewy and leathery. It licked its lips. Then, with a bellow, it charged. As it bounded down the hallway, I felt the floor tremble beneath me.
I raised the crossbow to my shoulder and fired. Satisfaction lifted my heart as I watched the bolt slam into the center of the draugr’s chest, only ten feet away from me. It grunted, looking down at the tiny bit of wood, then took another step toward me.
That was the problem with draugr. They were undead. You couldn’t kill a magically animated corpse just by shooting it in the heart, because they didn’t need their freaking hearts.
Good thing I’d fired an incendiary bolt.
The draugr was nearly on me when flames began to lick its skin. Something deep within its dead brain must have registered that fire was bad, because it finally stumbled back, clutching at its chest.
Ducking past it, I sprinted back toward the banker’s office. I knew that the gas filling the draugr’s body was extremely flammable. Just as I rushed into the windy office, the draugr detonated. I covered my head as the building shuddered with the blast.
In the next breath, I was up again.
I grimaced as I stepped out. The once gleaming marble hallway was now coated with leathery bits of draugr flesh. But I grinned when I saw that my plan had worked. I’d lured the beast close enough to the vault door that the explosion had blown it clean off its hinges.
Sometimes I really was brilliant.
I hurried inside the vault and began scanning the safe deposit boxes. I’d been assigned to steal box number 314, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.
But my smile disappeared when I discovered that the explosion had done more than just open the vault. The rack holding the deposit boxes had fallen, and their contents had spilled across the floor.
I glanced at my watch. Thirty seconds left.
“Balls,” I muttered, and began to search through the mess. Amid burning scrolls, I snatched up bits of broken unicorn horn, old spell books, even a velvet pouch of giant’s teeth. Priceless relics.
Problem was, the Shadow Lords hadn’t told me what was in box 314, so I had no idea what I was looking for. That sort of info was above my pay grade.
So, I stuffed anything that seemed remotely interesting into my pockets, hoping I was snatching the right thing.
“Crap,” I said again as my watch buzzed. Time’s up.
Then a gleam of metal caught my eye from under a faded scroll. I kicked the curling parchment aside and found a simple gold ring underneath.
Might as well take it.
I plucked it from the ground. But as soon as my fingers wrapped around the gold, a blinding flash of white light shattered my mind into a million pieces.
Chapter 3
Marroc
I woke with a jolt, feeling like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my dead heart. I leaned back against the cold, slimy cell walls. As I caught my breath, I realized what had happened.
Someone had found my soul.
After all this time, would it finally come back to me?
I didn’t move from the stone ledge at the back of my cell. Instead, I closed my eyes again. With the limited magic I had, I reached out to the astral plane.
I had no soul to send across it, but with my mind’s eye, I could still look into the ethereal realm. Across the cosmic expanse, my soul shone like a star. I focused, trying to see who had found it. As I did, I felt the curse kindling. My body tensed as my blood began to warm.
I gritted my teeth. I could almost perceive her now. A woman.