Chapter 45
She had no idea what to expect at the end of the tunnel—if there was an end at all, or if it simply plunged them deeper into the bones of the castle until the dark swallowed them whole.
The passage sloped steadily downward, long and narrow, carved in ancient stone.
Iron brackets fastened torches to the walls at uneven intervals, their flames casting wavering shadows that danced across the damp.
Rough-hewn steps appeared underfoot, slick with age, each one worn into a shallow curve.
Evelyne kept one hand against the wall for balance, the stone cold and wet beneath her fingertips.
The air was colder down here. Older, too.
And it felt like the kind of place where secrets were laid to rest—but not forgotten.
They walked in silence, for several minutes, it was only the sound of their breathing, the brush of cloth, the quiet drip of water somewhere far away. Then, gradually, the darkness began to thin. A faint glow shimmered ahead.
They stopped.
Before them, the corridor widened, stone giving way to open air as the tunnel unfolded into a vast cavernous chamber.
Her breath caught in her chest. It wasn’t small or hidden like a storeroom.
It was vast, hewn straight out of the earth, high enough that the torchlight barely touched the ceiling.
Long columns had been carved directly into the rock to hold the weight above; their surfaces etched with half-faded patterns she couldn’t place.
Books filled the space in impossible quantities—shelves stacked to sagging, heavy tomes piled in careless towers, parchment spilling from open chests like forgotten memories.
A thin layer of dust blanketed everything, disturbed only by cobwebs that clung to corners and the long-dried inkpots left open on desks.
The air smelled of aged parchment, old iron, and something faintly sour.
Glass-fronted cabinets lined the walls, each crowded with artifacts Evelyne couldn’t begin to name: fragments of idols, rusted rings of unknown purpose, blades that gleamed with an unnatural sheen.
Some relics were half-covered in yellowed sheets, forgotten or hidden on purpose.
Between the cabinets, larger items loomed—statues with fractured faces, paintings with eyes that didn’t blink, weapons displayed on velvet that had long since faded to gray.
The whole place felt like a mausoleum for forbidden knowledge.
Vesena jumped down first, landing lightly on the uneven stone. She turned, offered a hand, and Evelyne took it with a sigh that was mostly frustration. Her slippers caught the edge as she descended, skirts snagging against something rough.
She cursed under her breath. “If this is what my life is going to look like now, I’m commissioning a proper spy wardrobe.”
Vesena only gave a wry look and helped her steady herself.
They stood side by side at the base of the cavern, shadows rippling over their forms as the strange light reached them. Evelyne shivered. Not from cold.
The fire was on all the way and here as well.
Someone had been here.
Or worse—still was.
She felt like a trespasser in someone else’s nightmare. One that hadn’t finished playing out. For a heartbeat her mind leapt to the worst: assassins stockpiling poisons, cultists bending prayers into weapons, intruders hollowing the castle from within.
The torchlight shifted and revealed two figures near a low reading table, half-hidden behind a sagging stack of books.
Alaric was already halfway into a smirk, the kind that said I knew you’d come crawling eventually—even though she had, in fact, neither crawled nor come here for him in any capacity whatsoever.
This can’t be happening…
Beside him stood Cedric, arms crossed, his expression maddeningly somewhere between sheepish and smug. Evelyne took a sharp inhale and stalked between leaning stacks of books and scattered crates, her heels cracking sharp against the stone floor with each clipped step.
“What,” she demanded, voice cold enough to frost the air, “are you doing here? And what is this place? And what’s going on?”
Alaric, infuriatingly relaxed, leaned one shoulder against the stone pillar.
“Oh, just enjoying the ambiance,” he teased.
Cedric raised a hand half-heartedly. “I’ll save us the time, Your Highness—Thalen told us he saw the High Preceptor in the Halls of Seals at night, acting suspicious. We figured it was worth a look.”
Evelyne froze mid-step. “He said what?”
Alaric gave a single, sheepish nod. “We thought it sounded... credible. He looked worried.”
A beat passed. Evelyne stared at them both, until her brows lifted ever so slightly. Then she closed her eyes and let out a long exhale. “He was lying.”
Alaric blinked. “He was?”
She folded her arms. “Today he told me he saw Ravik in the Halls of Seals, acting suspicious.”
Cedric shifted his attention from her to Alaric, then to the hallway behind them. A crooked grin spread across his face—part amusement, part disbelief, part reluctant admiration. “Well. Shit.”
Vesena, standing just behind Evelyne, frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Alaric rested his weight against the pillar, a glint sparking in his expression. “He played us.” His mouth curved into a slow, wry grin. “Stars, he’s a cunning little thing.”
Evelyne exhaled, pressing her fingers to her temple for just a second. “Yes,” she muttered. “Cunning. Congratulations to us all. We just got outmaneuvered by a ten-year-old.”
Cedric rubbed his temples. “Future king of Edrathen, ladies and gentlemen.”
Alaric let out a low chuckle. Vesena remained bewildered, as though no one had ever managed to outwit her. Evelyne didn’t join in—her expression sharpened, already calculating retribution.
Gods, she hoped Thalen had done it just to make them talk. Not because he knew about Ravik or about the shape of the storm they were circling.
But she’d be lying to herself if she believed that.
Thalen had always seen more than he should. He listened when adults forgot he was in the room, followed guards when they assumed he’d gone to bed. She needed to speak with him. Soon. Before curiosity became danger.
He wasn’t supposed to carry secrets.
And above all, she prayed he didn’t know about this place.
“So while we’re all here,” Alaric began, causing Evelyne to look at him. “I have something you’ll want to know.”
Evelyne crossed her arms. “I’m listening.”
Alaric’s expression turned thoughtful. “Mmm. Tempting. But information this intriguing deserves a little courtship.”
Evelyne’s jaw tensed. “Alaric.”
“Evelyne,” he mimicked, with a perfectly infuriating smile. “Come now. You barge in here like a storm in velvet, act as though I’ve crashed your sacred mission, and expect me to just hand over my findings like some... obliging butler?”
“Preferably, yes.”
“Well, then you’re going to be disappointed.”
“That seems to be a theme around you.”
Alaric raised a brow at her. “I will tell you what, Princess. You admit—just once—that having me here is not the worst thing in the world... and I’ll consider sharing.”
Evelyne stared at him. Deadpan. Emotionless. A perfectly sculpted mask of disdain. “I’m afraid I’ve already promised my time to something far less tedious.”
“Why are you so stubborn?” Alaric asked. “We could’ve been out of here ages ago. With actionable intel and, ideally, a passionate kiss to seal the collaboration. Romance with a touch of mortal peril is the finest kind. Adds flavor.”
Evelyne huffed.
Alaric chuckled softly under his breath. Which only made her want to stab him a little.
Just once. Something shallow.
She could blame it on adrenaline.
He closed the distance, setting his palm on the column above her head. He didn’t trap her, yet his nearness thinned the air between them. That caught her off guard.
“Admit it, you missed me.”
Evelyne swallowed hard, her gaze faltering—unsure where to rest, and far more unsure where not to. “Like a fever.”
Alaric tilted his head. “A fever consumes you.”
“Then I look forward to the cure.”
“Is it lethal?”
Her heart was pounding traitorously loud in her chest. The kind of rhythm that made rational thought feel optional. She hated how being near him made her want to do something reckless—say too much, feel too much, want too much.
Cedric whistled a tune, spun on his heel with exaggerated interest in a nearby bookshelf, and allowed Vesena to catch his sleeve and pull him into the far shadows. Their footsteps faded down the chamber.
Evelyne exhaled and pressed her back against the column to at least be a few centimeters away.
“You keep fleeing every time I try to understand you,” he dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “Is that how queens are taught to win their wars? By retreat?”
“You’re unbearable,” she muttered, scanning the spines of ledger books with far more intensity than necessary.
“I’ve been called worse,” Alaric replied. “Though usually not with this much affection buried under the irritation.”
A lock of his hair shifted from the draft and she watched it fall on his forehead.
“Don’t flatter yourself. My irritation stands alone. Your presence here is irrelevant. I'd still be irritated just knowing you exist somewhere in the world.”
“So you would think of me. And miss me.”
She stepped toward him before she could think better of it. “You think I miss this? You, skulking around in my investigations, getting smug every time you breathe correctly?”
“I am an excellent breather,” he said. “Decades of practice.”
“Somewhere, a bard is weeping over how misused your talents are.”
He stopped smiling. He leaned in, just slightly, but it was enough.
“Evelyne.”
A name was just a name, a collection of sounds she had heard a thousand times before. But in his mouth, it became something else entirely. Smooth as aged bourbon, deep as a nivalen hearth—his voice didn’t speak so much as sink into her skin and settle there.
“You think everything’s a game,” she snapped. “That it’s all just witty remarks and poetic little turns of phrase. But this isn’t a chessboard, Alaric. People have died. Are dying. And I feel you just want to be right.”
“I smirk because if I don’t, I might start screaming,” he admitted. “Or worse—start believing everything they tell us to swallow.”
“Oh, please—spare me the rebel prince act,” she scoffed, pointing her finger at him. “You play the charming dissenter, but you still signed every treaty, bowed at every ceremony, wore every polished shoe handed to you.”
He stepped in and the space between them collapsed like a breath held too long. Her fingertip brushed the fine weave of his doublet, and she snatched her hand back like she’d touched flame.
“Don’t,” she warned.
He didn’t back away. Of course he didn’t.
“Don’t what?” he asked, voice velvet-smooth.
Her heartbeat was in her throat, loud enough she was sure he could hear it. She’d crossed the line a long time ago, and now she was here, too far in, too tired to pretend she hadn’t changed.
She moved closer. Just an inch.
Close enough now that she could see every detail—the faint crease beside his mouth where a dimple threatened when he smiled. The way the light caught in the gold-flecked brown of his eyes, the smallest scar near his temple.
His gaze darted from her eyes to her mouth.
Stop, she told herself. Pull away. Now.
“You really think I’d kiss you right now?” She whispered.
“No,” he said, voice low. “I think you want me to kiss you.”
She caught a thin draw of air, lips parting as her attention drifted to his mouth before returning to meet his stare.
“I think you’re waiting to see if I’ll cross the line first,” he continued, keeping his eyes on her lips. “To have another opportunity to scold me. But I’ve learned my lesson, Evelyne. I don’t push without permission. Not until you stop pretending it would be a mistake.”
A beat passed; his focus lifted to meet hers.
“So, say the word. Or turn away.”
Her fingers itched with the need to push him, to pull him, to shake him, to do something. Because breathing the same air, feeling the heat from his skin, smelling that damned Varantian cologne was unbearable.
“You're a masterpiece in provocation,” she whispered, almost against his lips.
“And you,” he replied, like it cost him nothing, “are a masterpiece in every sense of the word.”
She swallowed, breath still caught somewhere between fury and something far more treacherous. If she shifted just a bit her lips would—
Vesena cleared her throat softly from the nearby corner. “Perhaps we should consider the larger problem. Like why does this exist beneath the castle at all.”
Evelyne shook herself, and took a few steps back.
By the Rhyssa, what are you doing?
Then she saw it. A flash in his eyes. Quick. Raw. Unmistakable.
Hunger.
He wanted all of it.
Her throat tightened. She forced her eyes away, body angling just enough to slip free of the weight of his stare.
“Alright. So, what is this place?” she whispered at last, her voice hoarse.
When she glanced back, just once, his attention was still on her—soft, intent, so unguarded it was almost a touch.
And that tenderness was unbearable.