“Help me,” I yelled at them, grabbing the rope. I held it taut while the women tentatively unwrapped it from the peg suspending it in place. Luckily, the chandelier was lifted and lowered using a pulley system, but I was glad that I had grabbed them—it was still heavy.
Together, we slowly let out the rope, dropping it down further and further. I shot a glance at Viggo over my shoulder, keeping an eye on him as he watched the chandelier. “That’s good,” he shouted. “Hold it there, and get ready for some more weight.”
The other women looked at me and I met their inquisitive gaze with a no-nonsense one of my own. “Just do it,” I ordered, and they nodded. Several other women noticed what we were doing and came over, grabbing lengths of rope and bracing themselves.
I heard Viggo grunt and the sound of shoes scraping on stones. The rope shivered from the impact of his body. “Go, Violet,” he shouted, and I gritted my teeth, nodding to the others.
“Slowly,” I commanded, using one foot to brace myself on the wall as we let the rope out a few inches at a time. My forearms were straining and my shoulders ached, but I felt relieved when I heard the sounds of boots hitting the ground. We lowered the chandelier the rest of the way to the ground before I whirled around and launched myself at Viggo, binding my arms around him. He held the bag away from his body, but wrapped one strong arm around my shoulders.
“We’re okay,” he wheezed. “And… we got the bomb.”
I snatched the bag out of his hands and opened it. The same material Owen and I had scraped off of the columns in the facility had been packed tightly into the bag, a silver detonator leading to a digital clock that was counting down. There were five minutes on the clock, much to my relief. I pressed the edges of the clay around the timer down and peeked under it, checking for any additional detonators or wires underneath.
“I’m going to pull the detonator,” I said, before looking up at him. “Just in case I’m wrong… I love you.”
His lips twitched in a smile. “Yes I know. Just pull it.”
I rolled my eyes at his arrogance and then slowly, carefully, slid the silver pin out. I exhaled in relief when nothing happened, and then looked at Viggo. “Okay, now carefully pull the timer out. Slowly.”
Viggo grabbed the timer and did as I asked. I pressed my cheek against the clay so I could triple check that there wasn’t a secondary detonator, and breathed a second sigh of relief when it came up easily. Viggo pulled it one way while I pulled the bag another, and we both carefully took a step back and lowered our respective items to the ground, several feet apart.
Once the bomb was out of my hands, I threw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“We did it,” he said, nuzzling the top of my head.
I snuggled against his chest. “I knew we would.”
Viggo reached for my chin. Panning my face upward, he’d lowered his head for a kiss when something hard slammed into both of us, knocking us to the ground.
It took me a moment to realize that a pair of wardens had hit us, one of whom was now on top of me with a knee planted in the small of my back.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, trying to twist around to look her in the eye. “We stopped the bomb! We saved everyone!”
“Quiet!” the woman on top of me ordered, her hand going to the back of my head and gripping my hair to still me.
I looked over at Viggo, who was also struggling. But he didn’t get an order for silence when he started to break free. The warden on him made a tsking sound, stood up quickly, and kicked him in the face so hard his head snapped back and he fell to the ground unconscious.
I started screaming and struggling, trying to claw my way over to him. The woman who’d kicked Viggo looked at me, then back to him, and shook her head, pulling a pistol out.
“Sister,” she said, and my screams died in my throat as she aimed her gun purposefully at Viggo. “Come quietly or I will execute this man here and now, temple property be damned.”
I had no choice but to stop struggling and let the wardens take me.
40
Violet
Every part of my body was shaking as I paced the length of the cell I had been shoved into. I felt agitated, both mentally and physically, and pacing was the only way to keep in the screams that were building in my throat.
I had been in the cell for hours. Viggo had been taken somewhere else after we had arrived at the palace. He had been unconscious when I last saw him, blood streaming from a cut in his forehead. I had done my best to explain everything on the ride over, but the wardens were stone-faced, content to let me talk until my voice gave out.