Chapter 53
ALEXANDER
Darion was already on his way to the inn when Alexander intercepted him. They collected Krystoff at the rendezvous point. A dozen mounted men rode behind them, ready to swarm Bertrand’s manor the moment Alexander gave the word.
Bertrand was already standing when Alexander stormed the receiving hall, bathed in the hollow gleam of polished silver and vibrant banners as though opulence could bury his crimes. The man smiled as if nothing were amiss.
“Lord Wulfbane,” he drawled. “To what do I owe the honour?”
Alexander didn’t speak. He crossed the marble floor in two long strides and seized Bertrand by the front of his doublet, yanking him upright.
“Where is my wife?”
Bertrand smirked. “Shouldn’t she be—ah, that’s right. She left because of you—”
Alexander struck him.
The slap cracked through the hall. Bertrand stumbled, hand clutching his face. Alexander watched him sway, felt the sting in his own palm, and realized he’d been wanting to do that since he read the letter. No. Longer. From the moment Bertrand first looked at JingYi and saw only a pawn.
“There are many things I’d enjoy beating out of you.” His blood was pounding, his fists aching. “But my wife takes priority.”
He seized Bertrand’s jaw and squeezed until his face twisted. “So I’ll ask again. Where. Is. She?”
Panic flickered behind the man’s eyes, quickly masked. “I don’t know,” he rasped. “I haven’t seen Lady Wulfbane since the king’s rider arrived. It must be the annulment—”
“How do you know about the annulment?” Alexander growled, his hands shaking with the urge to shake the man. “You weren’t there when the messenger arrived. The only way you’d know the specifics is if you had a spy in my house. Someone like . . . Tedric.”
Bertrand gaped. “Tedric? He’s your man, not mine! Don’t blame me for your failings!”
Alexander leaned in until their faces were inches apart.
“A dead woman was pulled from Draemir Lake. The symptoms match purple limyerite poisoning—a substance you control.” He watched the blood drain from the man’s face.
“My cousin tells me its use to subdue Omegas is rampant in Bashkor. How, when the Crown does not sell to Omega traders and bandits. And now, two Omega princesses—my wife and Princess Adelise—are missing.”
Alexander shoved him back against the nearest column. “You’re working with Tedric. Or, at the very least, shielding him. Do not think I won’t burn your house to the ground to find proof.”
“Do it, then,” Bertrand spat. “What will you find? Evidence that your man Tedric is the one who slipped your leash? You brought him into your house. Whatever he’s doing, it’s on your head.”
Alexander’s fist curled. He held it there, a promise in the air, before leaning in so close his next words were a whisper against Bertrand’s ear.
“Here’s what will happen. My men will tear this manor apart for your ledgers.
They will trace every gram of purple crystal from the mine to its final buyer.
And if anything looks unusual . . .” Alexander let the sentence hang, a promise of ruin.
“The coincidence will become a confession written in your own hand.”
Bertrand’s eyes narrowed. “You have no such authority from the crown to perform a search on me—the king’s trusted agent.”
That grating voice, that smug face, even in the face of such damning accusations, were enough to make Alexander raise his fist again.
Krystoff Reave stepped between them. “Enough,” he said, voice firm. “Focus on retrieving your wife. Don’t throw your victory away by letting emotion cloud your judgment.”
Alexander’s gaze flitted between Bertrand’s red face and Krystoff’s calm one.
“I’ve waited years for this,” he hissed.
“Now the noose is finally around his neck. Do not be the one to pull it in anger. Let the king’s men do it. Let law be the thing that chokes him, not your temper.”
Alexander’s chest heaved. His fists dropped. But Bertrand, never knowing when to shut up, gave a hoarse, defiant laugh.
“Law?” he sneered. “I have enough friends to wriggle free of that trap. Unlike your father.”
Krystoff drove an arm into Bertrand’s chest, slamming him into the column. His head clipped the marble and went limp.
Darion stepped forward and pressed two fingers to the side of his throat. “Fast asleep.”
Krystoff rubbed his knuckles. “Good.”
Alexander stared at the man, but Krystoff only straightened his jacket. “You’re not the only one who’s waited years.”
Alexander looked over his shoulder to his men. “Search this manor. Every ledger, letter, shipment manifest, mining permit—anything that passed through his hands. Take it all back to Niewberg for the king’s magisters. If it’s written down, I want it. And ask the servants what they’ve seen.”
He turned to Darion. “Secure Bertrand. Tie him up and ensure two men are on him at all times.”
Darion gave a short nod. “Understood.” Then, quieter, “And you?”
Alexander’s jaw tensed. “I need to find a map of the mine. I have a sinking feeling the princesses’ disappearance has to do with the limyerite caves. Is the secretary in the house?”
Darion barked at his men to search the house. Minutes later, one of the soldiers brought in a pale, trembling man who looked one hard word away from bolting.
“Please,” the secretary stammered. “I only transcribe what I’m told—”
Alexander closed the space between them in two strides. “Where does your lord keep the cave maps?”
“I . . . I don’t know—”
“Don’t lie.” Alexander’s voice was soft, lethal, hand at the ready. “If anything happens to my wife because you kept your mouth shut—”
“The study,” the man stammered. “Behind the shelves. Second case from the left. There’s a lockbox, but I don’t have the key.”
Darion shot him a look. “You’d better pray it’s still there.”
They moved quickly. Alexander rifled through the shelf, hands sweeping aside ledgers until he found the case. A small knife pried the lock open. He lifted the lid: supply orders, coded schedules, and beneath them all, a folded sheet with mineral veins and markings drawn in red ink.
He spread it open on the desk. A tunnel extension branched off from the mine’s main shaft—snaking southward, mapped out with careful precision.
Alexander’s stomach dropped. “They’ve expanded the caves.”
He didn’t delay. He grabbed his axe and made for the door. Krystoff stepped into his path, brow creased. “You mean to go alone?”
“I can’t storm in with a unit. If they’re hiding something in those tunnels, I need to move quickly. Quietly.”
Darion rushed forward. “I’m coming. You’ll cover more ground with a second pair of eyes. And if it’s a trap, better two blades than one.”
Alexander glanced toward Krystoff. “Can I trust you to keep our rat caged while we’re gone?”
The man’s eyes glinted. “I’ve kept worse creatures on shorter leashes. Go, pup. Find your wife.”
The forest thinned, giving way to jagged limestone cliffs, clawing at the bruised autumn sky.
The road narrowed, a dark scar of trampled earth leading to a wide-mouthed cavern in the rock face.
The chilled air was sharp with the smell of metal and wet stone.
Ahead, the mine’s entrance loomed, a dark maw propped by groaning iron scaffolding.
Crates and abandoned tools lay stacked beneath canvas.
Alexander stared into the mouth. Darion waited beside him without a word.
As a boy, he’d trailed behind his father’s long stride, boots too big and heart too eager.
Back then, the cave had seemed like a dragon’s mouth, wide and noble, swallowing sunlight and exhaling stories of wealth and power.
His father used to clap a hand to his shoulder and call it ‘the lungs of the kingdom’—proof that House Wulfbane was the one who shaped the kingdom.
He’d known every turn of this place. He remembered how the miners paused when his father passed through, offering curt nods of respect. Alexander would stand taller then, memorizing everything.
But that pride had long curdled into something else.
A voice spoke behind them. “You’ve always hated this part.”
A figure stepped from the shadow of the trees—Ulrik with a lantern in hand, his face grim. He must’ve ridden ahead the moment village gossip spoke of armed men heading for the manor, and some part of him had known Alexander would come here next.
“Lad,” Ulrik said. “The mine’s been quiet for three days. No workers. No carts. Bertrand’s men cleared everyone out.” He gestured to the cave’s mouth. “Something’s not right.”
Alexander’s gaze swept the abandoned site. The childhood memory of his father’s proud words echoed, then dissolved into the air. That legacy was ash and suspicion now. The only thing that mattered was what lay ahead in the dark.
“Funny how, back then, you’d gallop ahead with your father’s cloak billowing behind you,” Ulrik said, coming closer. “But as soon as you reached this point, you’d stop dead. Wouldn’t go in unless he held your hand. Said it felt like the mountain was breathing on you.”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “I remember that.”
“That was my tenth year as your father’s foreman. You were barely five.”
A long breath passed between them.
“He brought you here every moon-turn after that,” Ulrik went on.
“Your mother wasn’t keen on it. Said a boy should be running in the fields, not crawling beneath rocks.
But your father”—his gaze drifted to the cave’s mouth—“said you had to learn the weight of stone if you ever meant to carry a House.”
Alexander swallowed hard, jaw flexing. “Sometimes I wonder what I’d be like . . . if he’d lived.”
Ulrik didn’t smile. “You wouldn’t be softer, if that’s what you’re asking. But maybe you’d have been kinder to yourself.”
A pause. Then, more gently, “Those of us who truly knew him never believed the crown’s version. Betrayal doesn’t run in the blood, my lord. Not unless you believe it.”
Yet Alexander had let himself accept that his father’s guilt was not just proven—it was irrefutable. That was the cruel thing about lies. If told long enough, and repeated enough, they became easier to believe than the complicated truth.
So he buried the good memories beneath hurt and shame, until even the echo of them felt like betrayal.
And then—then—a woman had crossed the ocean to become his wife. Blemished. Limping. Overlooked, just as he’d once been. And she carried something vast: a capacity for truth, for healing, for grace. Where others had shown him shadows, she held up a lantern.
And now, he would go into the dark, spend whatever was left of him to find her.
Any hesitation evaporated. He took one step forward.
“I’m coming with you,” Darion insisted, already moving.
Alexander didn’t argue. “Ulrik, wait here. If we’re not back by nightfall, ride to Bertrand’s estate and look for Lord Krystoff Reave. Ask him to bring men and raid the cave.”
Ulrik’s hand clamped briefly on his shoulder. “Make it out, lad. Your sister wouldn’t forgive me otherwise.”
Alexander stepped over the threshold into air that was immediately more frigid, staler, thick with the scent of crystal dust. His boots crunched over shards as torchlight flickered over damp, jagged walls.
He moved with haste, map in hand. “We follow the main shaft to the left fork. This extension is new.”
“You trust it?” Darion grunted.
“No. But it’s all we have.”
They passed crates of shattered limyerite, edges glinting like bone, and newer beams propping ancient walls. The passage narrowed, then widened in silence until it forked.
Alexander paused. The red line pointed left. They followed.
The tunnel sloped downward, but a gnawing unease made him stop. “Something’s off.”
He turned back. The left fork was staged—crates too neat, a pickaxe clean of dust. “They meant to send us this way.”
He turned toward the right tunnel, the one the map dismissed. It was narrower, swallowed in shadow, but the air carried a faint, cold kiss of a breeze.
“Feel it?”
Darion closed his eyes. “Barely.”
Alexander crouched, finding a shallow, recent scuff on the stone.
They followed the trail as the walls narrowed and a draft stirred his hair.
The tunnel ended in a smooth wall. Raising his torch, Alexander revealed a nearly invisible vertical seam.
He pressed his palm against it. Nothing.
He listened—a whistle of wind from behind the stone—then pressed lower.
A mechanism gave, and the wall opened just wide enough to pass.
“A hidden passage,” he rasped.
This is how they hide. He slipped through without another word. Darion followed. The wall shut behind them, sealing them in darkness. Sealing off everything but the hunt.