21. The Secrets We Bury
We raced through the castle, Aster and I hard on Lazaros’s heels as he led us down toward where Alexandra might be.
It was as if he could feel her more than I could, having quickly overtaken me to lead the way.
I prayed he was right. I prayed harder that we would find her safe.
But I couldn’t shake the cold and certain feeling, growing with every stride, that something terrible had already happened.
He took us through the cellars first, past the great oak casks and the dusty racks of wine, and then on, past the places I knew. Further down into the old prison tunnels, my brother and I had haunted as boys. And then further still.
Because the passage Lazaros turned down next was one I had never set foot in.
One I had not known existed at all. It was clear now that it had once been blocked off but was now open by some unknown force.
For the mouth of it had once been sealed, that much was obvious.
It was cut off in a way a man wishes to seal his secrets behind bricks and mortar.
Sealed behind walls so that he would never need to look upon the shame of it again… now where did that thought come from?
But more importantly, what exactly had my father tried to hide down here?
Well, whatever it had been, the secret had broken free, and literally from the looks of it. As now the bricks lay scattered in a heap of broken stone and old grey dust. The mortar crumbled to nothing, the black passage beyond gaping wide. And what’s more, the rubble had been disturbed.
Recently.
There were marks dragged through the dust where the fallen stone had been shoved aside.
A path cleared through it by something, or someone, not long ago at all.
The dust had not yet had time to settle back over the scars of it.
Meaning whatever had walled this place away, and whatever had since torn it open again, had done so within the last day.
Perhaps just before it started to call to her.
It opened off into some old cells I had never seen before, and through an archway so narrow we had to pass it single file.
The stone here was older and rougher than anything above.
It was slick and weeping with damp, the air thick and wrong in a way that raised the hair along my arms. Torches that never should have been lit burned in their brackets, throwing our shadows huge and writhing up the curving walls. I thought
I knew this castle as I knew my own hands. Every stair, every passage, every forgotten room. And yet here was a whole black artery of it sunk beneath my feet, and I had never once felt its pulse.
That alone sent the unease crawling deeper into me.
Lazaros pressed on ahead, his breath coming ragged, his skin gone grey. He was still healing, my brother, and yet he took those endless stone steps two at a time, driven by the same desperate urgency clawing at me and at Aster both.
“How do you know where she is the same as I?” I asked, my voice ringing strange and close off the narrow walls.
“I don’t know,” he breathed, not slowing, not looking back. “I can just… feel her.”
Yes, and so could I.
Her presence swelled with every step downward, stronger and stronger, and yet there was no comfort in it. Only a deepening dread, because beneath that pull I could feel the other thing now too. The wrongness… The cold… The touch of some ancient evil.
I quickened my pace, and Aster pressed himself to the wall to let me pass.
“And this passage, do you know of it, Lazaros?” I asked, as I got the strong sense that he did.
“Yes, but it’s difficult to explain how.” He dragged in a shaking breath. “It’s in my head. Like a memory. Only I don’t think the memory is mine. It’s there, and it’s too far away to take hold of, like something… something our father left behind.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
I didn’t like any of it… not one fucking bit!
But there was no time to chase the thought, because Lazaros stumbled abruptly to a halt at the foot of the stairs with a sharp, broken gasp, and I nearly went straight into the back of him.
I caught myself and stepped past him instead.
And then my whole world stopped.
As there she was.
My little bird.
My little warrior.
My Queen.
Alexandra lay crumpled on the cold stone floor beside a single low pedestal, so small and so still that for one endless, ruinous heartbeat I could not make myself believe it was her.
She wore only the silk robe she had no doubt pulled on to leave our bed.
One now fallen open, pooled around her like spilled milk.
Dark blood stained the ancient stone beneath her head, where she must have struck it as she fell.
And by her open hand sat a box. Dark, polished wood, the lid thrown back, the inside empty but for a bed of deep velvet.
I did not know what it was. Nor did I know what it had held. But I knew with a certainty that needed no proof that it was the cause of all of this.
The heat came then.
It rose up out of my chest the way it always did, the old and terrible gift in my blood waking with a roar. My aura blazing to life around me until the very chamber began to tremble, dust sifting down from the ceiling, the flames in the sconces leaping wild.
Someone had done this.
Someone had reached into my own castle, beneath my own feet, and laid hands on what was mine. The monster in me wanted nothing but to find them and make them pay. To rip them apart and bathe in their blood. To break every fucking bone and grind it to dust!
I wanted to kill.
To destroy the whole fucking world until I found them.
To burn their entire existence from history.
“Easy, brother.” Lazaros’s warning was enough to know that if I let it loose down here, I would bring the whole weight of the castle crashing down upon us all.
A roar tore out of me.
And then my eyes fell on her face again.
To my anchor.
And the fury faltered.
It didn’t vanish. It never vanished. But it banked, leashed by the only thing in either world that had ever been able to leash it.
Her.
Even now. Even unconscious on the floor, her presence still wrapped its fragile rope around the throat of the beast and held steady. Because what use was the monster to her? What use was bringing down the ceiling on the woman I loved? The woman I was trying to save?
I dropped to my knees at her side.
“Alexandra, my love.” I did not bother to hide the break in my voice. There was no one left to hide it from. I gathered her up into my arms, and she came too easily, too loosely, her head lolling against me. Limp…Far too limp.
And cold. Gods, she was so cold.
Bile climbed my throat. Was she…
No. She couldn’t be. I would know. I would feel it the instant that thread between us snapped.
I would feel my world end. And it had not.
It was thin, it was guttering, but it was there.
She was still there. My fingers found the side of her throat, and relief crashed through me so hard it hurt as I felt it.
A pulse.
Faint. Barely a flutter beneath my fingertips, but there all the same.
I shook her as gently as I could manage with my hands trembling so badly and brushed a fallen strand of that fire-bright hair from her face.
“Alexandra?” Nothing. “Come now, sweetheart. Wake up for me.”
Her head only lolled against my arm again, and it pained me to see. Behind me, at the bottom of the stairs, Aster’s deep voice came, rough and careful. I twisted round to them as I continued to hold her close. They physically flinched, likely at the pain that would be so evident on my face.
Aster and Lazaros stood together at the foot of the steps, keeping their distance, watching me as men watch a fire they are not certain has gone out.
“Atlas,” Aster said. “Is she…” He couldn’t finish it. Couldn’t finish the agony in that question.
“She lives,” I breathed and it felt like a dying man’s last breath.
A short, ragged sound of relief escaped one of them, and then their footsteps drew in toward us, slow and cautious, unsure what they would find me capable of.
I laid my hand flat against the wound at the back of her head and poured my healing essence into it.
I winced when I felt the torn skin knit and close beneath my palm, and I looked into her face, waiting for her eyes to flutter open.
They didn’t.
“Alexandra. Come back to me now, my queen… please.” I pressed my lips to her brow as I begged.
As I moved to lay her gently down, Lazaros stepped into the light, already dragging his shirt off over his head and folding it into a rough pillow.
He slid it beneath her head, and I shrugged out of my own jacket and laid it over her, then sank down beside her and took her hand.
When I looked up, neither of them was looking at her. Both were staring at the box.
Lazaros bent and lifted it, turning it over and over in his hands.
“It’s nothing,” he said slowly. “Just a box. Empty, and by the look of it, never anything but empty.” He raised it to his face and breathed in.
“It smells musty. Old. As though it’s sat down here a hundred years and more.
And yet…” He ran a finger along the dark velvet lining, frowning.
“Not a mark on it. The cloth is perfect. It feels brand new.”
“Well, it’s here for a fucking reason,” Aster growled, taking the box from him and turning it in his huge hands, his gaze cutting between it and Alexandra until his face twisted with fury.
“Something was in this. Something did this to her.” And he drew back his arm and hurled the thing against the wall with all the force of a man who needed to break something or lose his mind.
I curved my body over Alexandra, shielding her, bracing for the burst of splinters.
It never came.
Because it didn’t break. No, instead it simply flew back to the pedestal as if it had always meant to remain there.
“What the fuck?!” Aster cursed, but I ignored it, my attention fixed on the only thing in the room that mattered to me.