Chapter 14 #2
A natural curved indentation in the rock wall created a small landing where fresh soot stains blackened the stone above a bracket that held the stub of a recently burned torch.
Below it, where dust had accumulated deeper over the years, were clear disturbances.
Footprints. Multiple sets, overlapping, pressed into the grime by boots heavier than their own.
“Someone’s been down here,” Finn muttered, peering over Taran’s shoulder. “And recently.”
“The guards who brought her.” Keir’s voice hardened. “I’d wager my life on it.”
They pressed on with renewed urgency. Twenty more steps brought them to the bottom, where the staircase opened into a vaulted chamber barely large enough for the four of them to stand together.
Three corridors branched off in different directions, each vanishing into darkness that swallowed their torchlight within a few paces.
Noah stared into the black mouths of those corridors and felt something cold settle in his stomach. The maze. Keir hadn’t exaggerated. Each passage could lead to Skye, or to a dead end, or to a collapse that could bury them all.
And above them, dawn crept closer with every wasted breath.
“We can’t afford wrong turns,” Noah said. “Every one costs us time we don’t have.”
Keir crouched, studying the floor in the torchlight. “The dust here is thicker. Look for the freshest disturbance. That’s the path they took.”
After a tense moment, he pointed to the center corridor where the dust showed the clearest trail of recent passage.
They followed it, Noah marking the walls with a scratch from his sword at each intersection as the corridor split again.
And yet again. Decrepit cells lined the passages, their doors rotted away or hanging from single hinges, revealing cramped chambers of blackened stone that clearly hadn’t held prisoners in generations.
Twice they followed promising trails only to reach dead ends where the ceiling had collapsed, filling the passage with rubble. Twice they retraced their steps to the last intersection and chose again, precious minutes sliding away like water through cupped hands.
“We need to split up.” Noah hated the words even as he spoke them. Dividing their strength in this labyrinth went against every instinct he possessed. But the maze was too vast, the time too short.
Taran studied the branching corridors ahead, his tracker’s eyes searching for subtle signs in the dust or fresh marks on the stone. “Aye. ’Tis the only way tae cover enough ground. Finn and I will take the left passage. Ye and Keir take the right.”
“If you find her,” Noah said, “call out. Sound carries down here. We’ll hear you.”
“Aye, and so will anyone else down here,” he warned. “But I ken ’twill be a chance we’ll have tae take.”
“And if it’s trouble we find?” Finn asked.
“Then I guess we do the same?” Noah shrugged, unable to think of an alternative.
His father gripped his arm, a gesture that needed no words, then disappeared with Finn into the left corridor. The sound of their boots faded quickly, swallowed by the ancient stone.
Noah and Keir moved through the right passage in tense silence, checking each cell they encountered.
Empty.
Empty.
Collapsed.
Empty.
The pattern wore on Noah’s nerves. Every vacant chamber was another chance lost, more time forfeited.
He yanked open a rotted door and thrust his torch inside. Nothing but bare stone and the skittering retreat of something small and dark into a crack in the wall. He pulled back and slammed his fist against the rotted doorframe.
Where are you, Skye? Where did they take you?
The heavy silence was its own kind of torment.
This place was truly a perfect Hell and Skye was trapped somewhere inside it.
“Tell me about her,” he whispered carefully, forcing himself to breathe evenly as he splayed his fingers against the self-inflicted ache.
He needed something to anchor him beyond his sheer desperation to find her.
Keir glanced at him as they moved down the corridor. “What do you want to know?” he whispered low.
“You said you’ve watched over her since she was a child. What was she like?”
Something shifted in Keir’s posture, a softening he probably didn’t realize he’d allowed.
“Curious. Always curious. When she was small, she’d follow the servants around the fortress asking questions about everything.
How the bread was made. Why the stars moved.
What was beyond the valley.” He checked another cell, found it empty, and moved on.
“The Keeper put a stop to most of that as she grew older. Controlled who she spoke with, what she learned, where she went. But he couldn’t stamp out that hunger in her.
I’d find her in the library at all hours, reading everything she could get her hands on.
Teaching herself languages from old texts.
Drawing maps of places she’d never been and would never go. ”
He paused at an intersection, studying the floor.
“She wanted more than the Citadel could give her. She wanted to be part of something broader than these walls. To discover where she might be most useful.” A muscle worked in his jaw.
“Instead, he kept her caged. Told her it was love. Called it protection.”
The words resonated in Noah’s chest with a pain that was almost physical.
He thought of Emily, of the life she deserved beyond the confines of illness and borrowed time.
And Skye, brilliant and brave, locked away for the crime of wanting to learn about and experience what lay beyond her gilded prison. To make her own choices.
“Thank you…for watching over her.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted anything else. She’s enriched my life far more than anything I could ever do for her.”
“You love her.” Noah stated quietly. It wasn’t a question.
“Like the daughter I never had.” Keir stopped walking and turned to face him, his expression stripped of its usual guarded composure.
“You must know what you’re doing tonight, all of you, will change everything for her in ways that cannot be reversed.
Whether we succeed or fail, the moment The Keeper discovers she’s not where he put her, her life as she knew it is over.
There’s no coming back from this. Understand that.
He will not tolerate betrayal of any kind. Not even from her.”
“I understand.”
“And you also understand that not all of us may walk out of here alive?”
Noah held his gaze. “That was understood from the outset.”
Keir studied him for a long moment, searching for something in Noah’s face. Whatever he found there seemed to satisfy him. He gave a slow nod. “Then I need you to promise me something.”
His voice dropped, rough with emotion he was clearly unaccustomed to showing.
“Whatever happens tonight. Whatever becomes of me, or this fortress, or The Keeper himself, promise me you’ll protect her.
Not just tonight. Always. That you’ll put her happiness above everything else, including your own. ”
The weight of Keir’s words pressed down on Noah’s shoulders. This wasn’t a man seeking reassurance. This was a man preparing for the possibility that he wouldn’t survive to keep his own vigil.
“On my life,” Noah replied. “I promise.”
Keir held his gaze a moment longer. “Good. Because she deserves someone who sees her. Loves her, not for what she can do for them. Just her. I’ve watched what’s grown between you.
For me to say I trust you with her happiness is no small thing.
Your love for her is the only reason I agreed to help you. ”
He turned back to the corridor and continued walking. “Quiet now,” Keir warned, his voice low. “If there are guards posted farther on, we don’t want them anticipating our arrival.”
They continued deeper into the maze, their torches casting a slow-moving orb of light in the blackness. Noah counted new intersections, marked them with more scratches on the walls, and fought the growing dread that they were running out of both time and corridors.
Then he heard it.
Faint. Almost imperceptible beneath the echoes of dripping water and the whisper of their own movement. A rhythmic sound, like footsteps.
His hand shot out, gripping Keir’s arm. “Listen.”
They both stopped, hardly daring to breathe. Noah realized the footsteps were not approaching. They weren’t rushed or getting louder. They were measured and steady, more like…pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, muffled but unmistakable once he’d caught it.
Keir’s eyes widened. “That way.” He pointed to an extremely narrow passage on the left, one they’d nearly passed.
The passage curved sharply, then straightened into a corridor that ended at a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. A single guard sat on a stool beside it, head drooping, a half-eaten crust of bread forgotten on his knee.
Noah didn’t hesitate. He tossed his torch aside and closed the distance in four strides.
Just as the guard’s head snapped up, mouth open in surprise, Keir was already there, clamping a hand over his face as Noah drove him off the stool and onto the ground.
The man struggled, clawing at Keir’s grip, but a precise blow from the pommel of Noah’s sword had his eyes rolling back. He went limp.
Noah’s hands shook as he searched the guard’s belt and found a ring of heavy iron keys.
Behind the door, the pacing had stopped.
“Skye?” He kept his voice low but urgent. “Skye! It’s Noah. Can you hear me?”
He heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side. “Noah?” Her voice came through the wood, urgent and disbelieving. “How did you...? Noah, you can’t be here. If they find you—”
“Stand back from the door.”
He fumbled with the keys, his fingers clumsy with urgency, and jammed the first one into the lock. It wouldn’t turn. The second either. Nor the third. The fourth grated, caught, and then turned with a grinding screech that seemed to echo down the corridor like a scream.