Chapter 69
Cedric moved at the front of the group. It wasn’t obvious by rank. It was by the simple, practical logic that if something leapt out of the dark to slit their throats, he preferred it hit him first rather than the prince.
Alaric, grim-faced and sharp-eyed, walked behind him. Ravik was further back, pale and favoring his side, but still upright with the force of a man who refused to fall until the job was done. Vesena moved quietly, ghostlike as ever, scanning the walls of the tunnel with deadly focus.
The soldiers trailed behind, their boots thudding in an uneven rhythm against the slick stones of the hidden tunnels beneath Orvath’s chapel. They pressed deeper until the passage opened into a broad, natural cave—the same one they had stumbled across days earlier.
Only now, standing there, Cedric saw it differently.
Ravik stepped forward, grimacing as he did, and began giving orders.
“Teams of eight. Each passage. No wandering off, no playing hero. We sweep every damned tunnel until we find them. Report back to me if you spot an enemy. Dismissed.”
Alaric took a sharp breath and stepped forward instinctively, already braced to run toward the nearest descent.
Cedric caught his arm.
“Don’t expect me to wait,” Alaric said through clenched teeth.
“You’ll have to,” Cedric replied, firm and low. “You’re the heir. And I’ve been ordered to return with you and your wife in one piece. Got it?”
Alaric’s jaw worked, but he didn’t argue. Not out loud. Cedric didn’t need to ask him to know he was thinking the same thing.
We should have found them already.
But they said nothing. No need to give voice to the fear gnawing at all of them. Instead, they waited at the mouth of the cavern, listening to the soldiers fan out into the veins of darkness. Waiting for anything.
And as the minutes dragged by, each one heavier than the last, Cedric tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword and reminded himself that patience kept you alive. And right now, being alive was the only way to make sure they stayed that way too.
He stared into the black beyond the torches, jaw clenched. And then, as if summoned by the silence, the guilt came.
Cedric’s throat tightened. He had pushed the boy away.
Called him annoying more times than he could count.
Rolled his eyes at every enthusiastic question, every earnest declaration.
Pretended to be unmoved when the kid looked up to him like he was some sort of legend instead of a tired bastard with a sharp tongue and bad instincts.
And now the boy was in danger.
All he’d ever wanted was company. Someone to take him seriously. And Cedric—idiot that he was—had brushed him off like a fly.
If anything had happened down here—if Thalen was… gods, what would he even tell Evelyne? Sorry, princess, your brother’s dead because I couldn’t be bothered to answer his stupid questions about sword grips?
The thought made his stomach clench like a fist.
No. Stop. Focus.
He ground his teeth and shook the thought loose before it could finish.
It’ll be okay. You’re supposed to be a soldier. You’re supposed to save him. He’s counting on you.
He adjusted the sword at his side and forced his feet to stay planted.
Forced his lungs to pull in air and let it out slow.
He didn't need to watch Vesena, she was a fixed point, steady as bedrock.
If anything, he'd bet she was already calculating five steps ahead, preparing for whatever poor fellow was foolish enough to get in their way.
Alaric, though—Alaric, who normally carried himself like the world was a particularly interesting book he hadn’t quite finished reading—was now a man stripped to his nerves.
Terrified. His grip on the blade wasn’t loose, but it wasn’t steady either; the faint tremor in his knuckles betrayed him.
A bead of sweat slid from his temple to his jaw, vanishing into the dark line of his collar.
Cedric sighed under his breath, pushed off the wall, and crossed the space between them.
“You’re going to burn yourself out at this rate,” he warned. “You look like you're waiting for the walls to start bleeding.”
Alaric barely even looked at him.
“I should have protected her,” he said through clenched teeth.
Cedric shrugged, adjusting the worn leather strap across his shoulder. “You think standing at her door with a sword all night would’ve stopped this? You saw what they did with those guards.”
Alaric said nothing. His silence was answer enough.
Cedric tilted his head, studying him. “She’s smart. Smarter than all of us combined on a good day. The kid too. They know how to survive. And you...” He tapped a finger against Alaric’s chest lightly. “You’re not doing them any favors by losing your head now.”
Alaric finally looked at him then, some of the wildness in his eyes dimming, if only slightly.
Cedric smirked, thin and dry. “Besides,” he added, glancing toward the darkness where the soldiers had disappeared, “we’ll find them. You and I are far too stubborn to do otherwise.”
They didn’t have long to wait.
A young, twitchy soldier came pelting down the tunnel toward Ravik, skidding to a halt with a sharp salute.
“We found something, sir,” the boy reported, breathless.
That got their attention fast enough.
They followed him down one of the narrower tunnels until the passage opened into a jagged mouth leading upward. Cedric squinted through the gloom and caught sight of them—figures standing at the tunnel’s exit, brown robes draped over hunched shoulders, hands loosely clasped.
Priests of Rhyssa, if you judged by clothing alone.
So they vanished here.
Vesena moved first, fluid as water over glass, soundless as shadow.
Cedric barely caught the glint of her dagger before it flashed once, twice.
The first man never saw her coming. The second had just enough time to look surprised before his knees buckled.
She eased both down as though putting children to bed.
Ravik and his soldiers surged forward behind her.
They didn’t bother with elegance. Their blades slipped into soft places—kidneys, throats, the spaces between ribs.
Cedric heard a muffled groan, a gurgling breath, but even that was swallowed by the slow, rhythmic chanting that floated from above like smoke.
He moved with them. One priest turned toward him—slow, confused. Cedric hesitated. If this man still prayed, did he deserve to die? But the thread had already unraveled too far. His blade moved too. The body slumped soundlessly. He caught it with one arm, lowering it gently to the stone.
Behind him, footsteps.
“You're slow,” Alaric murmured, his sword raised high.
Cedric didn’t glance over. “You’re loud.”
“Only to your sensitive ears.”
“Sensitive ears kept us alive in Narkhail.”
Alaric grunted softly but didn’t argue. They moved together, two parts of a clock. One refined, the other ruthless.
A figure shifted at the far end of the tunnel.
Cedric raised his hand to signal—but Alaric was already moving, low and fast, the curved Varantian blade whispering out from beneath his coat.
It caught the man clean across the side.
The body hit the wall with a soft thud and slid down.
Cedric dragged it into shadow, tucked it behind a stalactite.
Vesena crouched over one of the fallen priests, her blade still dripping. She pressed two fingers to his neck, then bent low enough that her braid brushed the stone. A sharp inhale.
Her eyes narrowed. “They’re drugged,” she murmured.
Cedric’s brows twitched. “Drugged?”
“Smoke in their lungs,” Vesena replied, straightening. “Opium, maybe. Or something stronger.”
Alaric’s jaw tightened. “Someone sent them here only to die.”
Ravik spat on the stone beside the body. “Then they are more dangerous, willing to risk everything.” He raised his hand, signaling his men forward.
From the tunnel entrance, a low, eerie chanting drifted down.
No time to waste.
They stripped the dead quickly, pulling the brown robes free and shaking the worst of the bloodstains out of the fabric. Cedric gave one cloak to Alaric, put the other on himself. He saw that Vesena had already put on one of the robes. It was too big for her, but she still looked lethal.
Ravik turned to the soldiers and barked. “Stay here. Guard the tunnel. No one goes in or out.”
The soldiers snapped to attention, more than happy to have a task that didn’t involve charging headfirst into the unknown.
Cedric adjusted the hood over his head, catching Alaric’s glance across the dim cavern. They pushed forward, slipping through the last of the winding tunnels until the earth above began to lighten with moonlight and the air grew warmer.
That was when they noticed that this tunnel led beneath the ruins of the Ivory Bastion.
Cedric’s lips curved into something that wasn’t a smile. The world always frayed where it was weakest. His job today was to follow and hold it, for as long as he could.