41. Lars

41

LARS

I may not have said them out loud, but right now, the litany of curses running through my head would have put my brother to shame.

No, forget that. Clay rarely did shame. Likely, he would’ve been impressed.

And probably agreed with the sentiment behind them all.

My heart pounding, I followed the others farther down the tunnel, wishing there was something— anything —my magic could do about the situation my brother described. But fire was useless here, and heating the water until it turned to steam definitely wouldn’t fix anything. It’d just give us all horrific burns before we died.

Not helpful.

My eyes twitched to Norbert, Brock, and the other so-called real giants. My friends and I had incredibly strong affinities to things like fire and water, stone and wood and nature—more than many Erenlians. I’d always figured that was the gods’ way of trying to make up for the obstacles they’d thrown in our paths in other respects.

But right now, it only made me wonder: could these giants tell how much trouble we might be in? Yes, there was magic coating this place. Tons of it, and obviously, that was part of the problem. The various spells were like smeared oil paints, myriad types of magic blending together and making it damn near impossible to tell what the energies should have been doing, let alone whatever else might be going on. But surely as we drew closer, the other giants would start picking up on how precarious the situation truly was?

“You think good ol’ uncle Deter knew about this?” Clay muttered, eyeing the walls.

A chill rolled over me. “Maybe.”

After all, Deter had a water affinity too. That single similarity had made my brother Deter’s favorite target, even more than me, when we were children.

Gods forbid a dwarf be the only relative to share the affinity of Deter’s magic.

But Deter was also Erenlian nobility with the best magical training money could buy, and that meant he was probably second to Ignatius in terms of magical skill among the prisoners—a fact he’d undoubtedly used to his advantage over the years, as much as he could with that manacle on.

But the manacles were gone, and his power was back. If Ignatius didn’t have as strong of a water affinity—or maybe he was just out of practice—Deter may still have picked up on this.

And given how he’d acted right before we came down here… how Brock had too…

My stomach rolled. “Surely Deter wouldn’t send Norbert down here if he thought this was really going to end badly, though. Right?”

Clay met my eyes with a flat look.

Right. We knew our uncle. When push came to shove, he’d readily sacrifice family for power.

Even his own son.

Besides, the years hadn’t been kind to our uncle. The mines hadn’t either. Obviously he’d done what he could to make sure he had the most food and the best provisions, but he’d still spent well over a decade in a prison and he wasn’t getting any younger.

Deter may not have originally planned to sacrifice Norbert today, but where Brock and these five others were concerned, I was less sure. Brock hadn’t ever spoken up against Deter or our parents when we were all kids. Hell, when they told him to, he’d joined in on their “games” of beating us senseless.

But I’d seen the look on Brock’s face after Deter gave the order. Something was up. I’d almost swear Brock had seemed suspicious of the old man.

But did that mean I should warn them about this?

“You’re looking a bit green, brother,” Clay murmured to me.

“What if he wants Brock and the rest to die too?”

“Deter?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Good for him, then.”

“ Clay .”

“What?”

I searched for words and came up with nothing. I understood how he felt. I did .

But dammit, he was talking about letting people be murdered, and that…

Well, it was wrong .

Except they’d happily kill us too.

Should that matter?

I raked a hand through my hair. It shouldn’t. It didn’t . Gods help me, we’d all had this same debate weeks ago when we saved Gwyneira from the snow. We’d spared her because, as Niko pointed out, we couldn’t be like the Aneirans who would have killed us on the spot if our positions were reversed.

The same should go for this situation.

Right?

“I don’t know what’s going through that brain of yours,” Clay said quietly as we continued past another curve of the tunnel. “But your face looks like your brain’s twisting itself into a knot. There’s no bright side here. There’s just saving her, like you said. That’s what matters. We do what we can to stop the temple from collapsing, no matter what happens here.”

Gods, why’d I have to be the optimist of the two of us? “I know what I said, but that doesn’t mean we just give up. There has to be something I can do to help you fix?—”

Norbert turned, bringing us all to a stop as a collapsed section of tunnel came into view ahead. “What’re you whispering about back there, runts?”

“Leave ‘em be,” Brock grunted dismissively, not even bothering to look our way as he approached the pile of rock that brought the tunnel to an end. “They’re just stalling.”

I cast an insistent look at Clay.

My brother met it with a wry expression. “They’re not going to listen.”

“But—”

“But nothing.”

I couldn’t accept that. “There’s a problem with the tunnel.”

Norbert snorted derisively.

“See, what’d I tell you?” Brock commented to our cousin. “Just stalling.”

Clay scoffed. With heavy sarcasm, he echoed, “See, what’d I tell you?” to me quietly, as if proving his point.

Ignoring my twin, I strode toward the larger giants, though I fastened my attention mostly on Ignatius. “The magic here trapped the water in such a way that it eroded the stone. If we aren’t careful, it could bring the whole temple down into a sinkhole.”

For a heartbeat, the giants froze, and though it’d been years since I was last surrounded by their type of Erenlian, I could still read the flicker of alarm and—yes—fear that flashed through the eyes of several of them. They’d just gotten free and now this?

But they didn’t do what I hoped. Instead of facing the problem and finding a positive solution, they did the opposite. The henchmen scoffed their fears away and rolled their eyes. Norbert muttered about idiot dwarves delaying the inevitable.

Brock just stared at us.

I couldn’t believe this. “We need to do something!”

A couple of the giants laughed.

I looked at Ignatius again. His gaze was locked on me with an intent expression I swore Byron must have learned from the monks of the Order, because my friend definitely gave us that same look when he was weighing everything we’d said against the library of information in his head.

Norbert made a derisive sound. “Give me a break. Just admit my father is the king and get it over with. Dragging your feet won’t make your little buddy up there any less of a pathetic dwarf trying to steal what doesn’t belong to him.”

Ignatius spoke up before my brother could open his mouth and, most likely, tell our cousin to go to hell. “Your affinity is to water, is it?”

“His.” I nodded back toward Clay.

“Oh, please.” Norbert slapped his hand to the wall. “This tunnel isn’t going to?—”

A shuddering groan went through the stone around us. Dust rained from the ceiling and walls.

“You fucking…” Clay snarled, but his attention was on the tunnel, his eyes wide with horror.

Dex didn’t waste a second. “Ozias, support the stone. Clay, do what you can to control the water. The rest of you, help any way you can.”

Ignatius, Byron, and Casimir moved to obey immediately, while Ruhl’s smoky form spread out against the wall as if to hold it in place. Brock looked between them all and then rushed to help.

“The dwarves did this!” Norbert cried. “They set us up!”

The words were so ridiculous, they left me too dumbstruck to argue. Gods help us, we were going to die here because my cousin was an idiot.

No. No, I wouldn’t let that happen.

Forcing myself not to freeze in despair and horror, I raced to the wall to help my brother. I didn’t have magic like Ozias or Clay, but by the gods, I was still a giant. I could help them control the rock enough to keep us all from getting crushed.

Hopefully.

“Ugh, get out of the way, runts!” Norbert shoved Byron away from the wall, sending him stumbling. “You’re going to screw this up too.”

“You mean like you just did?” Clay snapped back. “Keep your fucking hands off my friends, asshole, or I’ll let you drown.”

Like a bull with the attention span of a gnat, Norbert abandoned the wall and stalked toward my brother.

Fear gripped me for Clay. I knew that look.

“I should’ve crushed you when you were a kid,” Norbert snarled. “You fucking?—”

Before I could reach him, Brock was suddenly there, stepping between them both. “Leave him,” he said to Norbert.

Norbert’s eyes widened. “Did you just give me an order, you piece of?—”

The tunnel shuddered around us.

“We need your help to save everyone,” Brock pressed, a calmness in his voice I’d never heard before. It wasn’t the disinterested tone he’d taken when our parents lashed out at me or Clay. It was… controlled. Level and yet pointed.

Dust rained down stronger than before.

Spinning away from Brock like he didn’t exist, Norbert shouted at the giants, “Get to work, you lazy asses!”

Brock’s eyes twitched to me. I couldn’t read his expression at all.

But there was no time.

Shoving my concerns aside, I put my hands to the stone again. The mysteries of my blood relatives could wait. Right now, I needed to help my family .

My magic merged into the stone. I wasn’t as skilled as some in this regard. Thanks to our parents, Clay and I hadn’t started school for our magic until years after most Erenlian kids. But even with my middling powers over the earth, the problem started becoming clearer after only a few moments.

This decaying magic wasn’t just some smeared blur of random spells. No, these were the protective spells cast by the long-dead members of the Order to guard this place. The magic had sunk into the bedrock beneath the temple, and without the monks to maintain it, the spells had merged and twisted and made a bigger problem. But they were still trying to fulfill their purpose.

Protect the temple, whether that was from invaders or—now—the very waters this place was originally built to enshrine.

But after all these years, they’d gone feral.

I felt the magic condense a split second before a blast erupted from the wall. It lashed out like a tangled crackle of lightning to strike the giant closest to the collapsed section of tunnel farther ahead. A charred hole in his chest, he flew back, crashing into the opposite wall and making it start to crumble.

“Holy shit!” a giant beside Norbert shouted, frantically retreating as another blast built up in the wall.

He was too slow. The magic struck, ripping through him like a thunderbolt.

Another tangle of magic rushed from the wall straight at Norbert. Ignatius raised a hand to intervene, but Byron got there first.

With hurried words, my friend chanted something unintelligible. The blast curved before it could reach my idiot cousin, the power slamming into the stone instead. The other spells rippled as it struck. That wall started to crumble too.

Ozias stepped in quickly, molding the stone around itself, fighting to keep the entire place from crashing down.

“Lars!” Byron yelled to me. “Send your power to me!”

I had no idea what he was planning, but I didn’t care. As another blast of defensive magic built in the wall, I let my magic rush out at Byron. In my haste, my power was laced with flames that flickered visibly and charred the dust in the air.

But my friend didn’t even blink. His gifts twisted the energy in midair, sending it through the wall and deep into the stone.

The burgeoning blast from the magical defenses suddenly pulled back, not striking out at us but instead chasing his power like an attack dog going after its prey.

“It should read the heat as a person attacking the walls,” Byron said. “That’ll buy us some time. “

“Good.” Dex nodded, though his attention returned quickly to the shuddering walls that Ozias was fighting to support. “Keep it up.”

Byron’s eyes darted to Ignatius. The older man nodded. “Well done, scholar.”

It was a compliment. I knew it was.

But even as he nodded back, Byron didn’t look pleased.

Gods, our group was a mess.

I shoved the thought aside. Yeah, a mess that might drown if we didn’t concentrate—and thank the gods Byron seemed to know that too. Turning back, he drew hard on my power and sent it racing through the stone like he was throwing glowing balls of heat through the earth.

Creating a diversion just in time.

More defensive spells swelled around us, crackling on the stone walls like lightning. But Byron never stopped. Over and over, he flung bundles of my magic and his back into the rock, while around us, the others worked frantically to keep the tunnel and the temple above from crashing down into a sinkhole.

Time blurred. The air became thick and harder to breathe from the panic around me. The ground shuddered and quivered, and at any moment, I expected the earth to crash down and end us all.

But slowly, the shuddering began to fade.

Blinking sweat from my eyes, I looked around as Byron stopped pulling on my magic.

The tunnel still stood. The giants and the dwarves slowly lowered their hands from the walls, all of them eyeing the tunnel and each other like no one was quite sure what to do now.

I raked a hand through my sweat-soaked hair. We’d done it. Gods, we’d really done it.

But the tunnel was significantly taller than before.

I paused. How much rock had my friends and the others needed to pull from the surrounding countryside to keep this place standing? If I went back aboveground, would the hills even be there?

But the walls around us were more stable. I could feel that. The ground overhead was too.

I could even hear water rushing through the aqueducts again.

A breath left me. The magical defenses around us weren’t raging anymore, either. We probably had Ignatius and Byron to thank for that. Rather than a smear of muddy paint or tangled lightning, the spells now twisted through the rock like threads of a fine net, supporting the earth and extending up toward the temple.

In fact, now that it wasn’t trying to kill us, it was even kind of beautiful. That kind of spellwork wasn’t exactly my forte, so I could only pick up on the barest edge of what the scholars had done, but the intricacy was shocking.

“Good job, everyone,” Dex said, including Ignatius and, gods, even Brock and the larger giants in his acknowledging nod.

Norbert scoffed. “Bet you learned something from the real giants here, didn’t you, runt?”

“You fucking—” Clay started forward, but Dex caught his arm.

“Don’t,” Dex said quietly.

My brother’s jaw clenched. He shrugged off Dex’s grip, but he didn’t start toward Norbert again.

Norbert smirked.

But that wasn’t what made me pause.

All around my idiot cousin, discomfort and maybe even embarrassment flashed over the faces of the other giants. These were Deter’s henchmen. His honor guard of bullies. Yet not a single one of them seemed eager to join in Norbert’s mockery. For gods’ sakes, Brock looked like he’d just bitten into a lemon.

Well, that was… different.

“We should return to the surface,” Ignatius said. Lifting his robes to step over the fallen chunks of rock, the scholar started back down the tunnel. “The lake will be filling again, and the others will likely want to know what happened.”

“Indeed.” Norbert smirked, his supercilious tone like a snide imitation of his father.

Ignatius’s face tightened, but he didn’t say anything, simply continuing past us on his way to the surface.

“Oh, and scholar?” Norbert called. “Best you start planning my father’s coronation. He’ll be your king before the end of the day.”

Ignatius didn’t respond.

“Not fucking likely,” Clay muttered.

Gods, I hoped my brother was right.