Chapter 34
Once Lore dispatched the guards, they left their chambers in tense silence, slipping into the corridor at staggered intervals, each movement timed to avoid notice.
Dark fabric absorbed what little light the palace offered: Imani in a fitted black coat that allowed lethal fluidity, Esa in shadowed robes stripped of heavy ornaments, Lore in close-cut leathers that wouldn’t catch or scrape, and Meira in darker silks hastily chosen for silence over courtly grace.
Without a word, they moved as a unit, spacing themselves just close enough to maintain visual contact as they descended into the unseen belly of the palace.
Imani took the lead, adjusting their path the moment they hit the main hallway, cutting left and guiding them into quieter passageways.
She anticipated turns before the intersections came into view and kept a disciplined pace, a habit formed by time spent surviving within these walls.
Without pausing, she bypassed wide-open spaces, skirted lit corridors, and rerouted them when her shadows sensed guards present.
She sliced her hand through the air. Stop.
The heavy thud of approaching boots echoed down the corridor.
The patrol rounded the corner too soon, their pace brisk, leaving no room for a detour.
Imani reacted instantly, stepping off the main path and flattening herself into a shallow stone alcove.
The others followed in quick succession, bodies angled tight against the freezing stone.
They held their breath as the guards advanced, their low, indistinct voices growing louder.
One of the guards slowed down.
A pause.
Metal scraped against stone as the guard dragged his sword across the floor, studying the dimly lit corridor. Imani kept her gaze dead ahead, unmoving, her focus locked on a narrow sliver of space as the seconds stretched into an eternity.
As they prepared to step out, one guard’s steps hitched. He stopped and turned to scan the way he had come, his stare lingering on the shadows. After a breathless moment, he turned back around.
Finally, the patrol moved on. Their footsteps faded, leaving only the cold sweat of a near-miss. The group let out a silent, collective exhale.
Their advance continued, slower and closer.
With painstaking care, they navigated each step to guard against the patrols’ unpredictability.
Imani swiftly rerouted them, steering them away from the major thoroughfares and into a confined passage that sloped downward.
The stairwell entrance suddenly materialized, recessed into the stone and unmarked.
She changed direction, and the others followed suit.
As they descended, the walls seemed to close in.
Moisture made the stone underfoot slick as the air turned damp and biting.
Esa’s hand shot out, catching Imani’s wrist just before Imani’s boot hit the next step. “Stop,” she breathed, the word barely a whisper.
“What?” Lore asked.
“Wards,” Esa murmured, motioning to the empty air ahead. “Not blocking. Watching.”
Meira shuffled nervously behind them. “Can you break it?”
“No,” Esa said. She lowered herself slightly, her fingers hovering an inch above the stone. “Breaking it rings a bell. It tells them we’re here.”
Imani froze. “Then don’t break it.”
Esa exhaled slowly, her hand tracing a delicate path along the mortar. “I’m not,” she whispered. “I’m moving it.”
Lore’s voice dropped to a low rumble. “How long?”
“Long enough.” Esa’s fingers clenched once, a sharp, twisting motion, then eased as the invisible magic warped under her influence. She paused, then nodded curtly. “Go. Same spacing.”
Imani crossed the threshold first, confident in her friend’s skill. Everyone followed in turn, each step measured as they passed through the bent ward. The air held still for a heartbeat, then snapped back into place behind them.
Gratitude for Esa’s Defensive magic brand swelled inside her.
She shot a look over her shoulder. “Let’s keep moving. Stay close.”
Suddenly, the stairwell halted, depositing them on a dungeon level where the architecture changed. An icy chill filled the air, and a deep, persistent silence settled. The passages grew narrower, and time weathered the stone surfaces. Sparse, flickering torches offered little light or cover.
As they approached the main entrance, a guard stationed there forced them to slow. He stepped into their path, posture rigid, his hand dropping to his sword’s pommel as he gave them a once-over.
Imani pressed ahead with measured authority. Her expression was a mask of cold indifference as she met his scrutiny, and she let him stare open-mouthed at the crown on her head.
“I’m the Queen of Essenheim. We were instructed to familiarize ourselves with the lower levels before the summit,” she said. Her tone was flat, imitating someone who belonged there.
The guard’s eyes narrowed. “The dungeons are not part of the standard tour.”
“No,” she agreed smoothly. “But given the delicate nature of the discussions ahead, understanding the full scope of the palace’s security seems… prudent.”
A tense pause stretched between them as the guard weighed her audacity. Finally, he stepped aside, unconvinced but unwilling to obstruct a monarch.
“Stay within the marked corridors,” he grunted.
Imani inclined her head once, already moving past him before the dynamic could turn bloody. She trusted the others to shadow her without breaking formation. The guard’s leer bored into their backs as they descended into the gloom.
Past the entrance, the dungeon opened into neat rows.
Its builders had arranged the cells in orderly lines, leaving every prisoner fully exposed to the corridor.
Whoever had designed the dungeon had built it for visibility.
Every prisoner could be accounted for at a glance, and nothing about the structure offered a place to conceal someone as important as Saevel.
One reached through the iron with filthy, grasping hands. “Wait. Please—just look at me. I’m not supposed to be down here.”
A hand clamped onto Imani’s shoulder. She twisted away in a fluid, vicious motion, breaking the prisoner’s grip before it could fully take hold.
“Don’t leave me here,” the man babbled, his voice cracking.
Imani kept walking, stalking down the rows.
Her gaze cut across each cell in efficient, sweeping arcs, parsing faces from shadows.
The others matched her pace, scanning the opposite sides.
Their silence held, broken only by the clink of chains, ragged breathing, and the heavy awareness of a hundred desperate eyes watching them pass.
A figure suddenly threw himself against the bars, chains rattling violently. His eyes snapped to Imani with wild recognition. “You—” his voice was a raw, urgent hiss as his fingers curled tightly around the iron. “It’s you. The queen. His—”
Lore moved before the words could echo. He stepped seamlessly between Imani and the cell, his hand snapping out to strike the iron bars with a punishing rap. The sharp crack made the man flinch, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“Keep going,” Lore murmured, not looking back as the prisoner shrank into the shadows. “We’re running out of time.”
They swept through the remaining rows with brutal efficiency, scanning each cell as their options dwindled. Faces blurred into a useless repetition of the wrong height, wrong build, wrong presence. Imani dismissed them instantly, refusing to let desperation cloud her judgment.
She checked the last row twice, then stopped. She turned her attention outward, assessing the architecture rather than the occupants. The layout was perfectly consistent. Every cell exposed. Every prisoner accounted for. Nothing hidden.
Her focus homed in on Kiran’s mind. Where would he keep his brother? Alive, yet entirely erased from the world.
“He’s not here,” Imani mumbled.
“No. I can’t feel him,” Meira agreed.
“Fuck.” Esa pivoted toward Imani. “This is the most logical place to keep him.”
“Exactly,” Imani replied, the words spilling out as she tried to think like her heartmate. “Which is why Kiran would never leave him here.”
Esa frowned.
“He didn’t need to know we would come looking,” Imani continued. “He only needed to know someone eventually might. Saevel disappeared when Kiran took the Throne from his father. If anyone began asking where the Heir Apparent had gone, these dungeons would be the first place they searched.”
Imani examined the exposed cells again. They were too accessible. Too ordinary.
“Kiran would put him somewhere a search could pass over completely.”
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, louder and quicker this time.
Imani acted instinctively, diverting from the main route and signaling the others to split in an orderly fashion.
They moved into a narrow maintenance crevice between two load-bearing walls.
The space was pitch-black and oppressively tight.
They pressed their backs against the cold stone, holding their breath as the patrol marched past the intersection they had just left.
The footsteps faltered near the corner. The silence stretched thin, trembling with tension, before the boots finally marched on.
Imani remained perfectly still in the dark, shrouding everyone in her shadows, her mind racing beyond the castle’s physical walls.
The only place she could think to look wasn’t in the castle at all, but just beyond it—where she’d found the Drasil.
A hidden passage leading to a secluded space, concealed by ancient design and demanding intent and magic to uncover.
Kiran would not have accepted the mystery of how she found it.
That blind spot would have driven him to dismantle the castle piece by piece, tracing every corridor and testing every seam until he uncovered the answer.
He didn’t tolerate unresolved questions.
If he suspected the Drasil was hidden in Kehomel, he would have found it and claimed the space for himself.
Looking down at the stone beneath her boots, Imani’s voice cut through the dark with absolute certainty. “Zorah.”
Esa’s head snapped toward her. “That’s a myth.”
“No,” Imani said, her tone dropping to anchor it in truth. “It isn’t. I’ve been there.”
They stared at her. Imani forced herself to hold their wide eyes without fidgeting.
“You’re certain?” Lore asked.
“Yes. It’s…” She trailed off, hesitating.
Everyone watched her expectantly.
“It’s where I found the Drasil,” she admitted softly. “And it isn’t accessible unless you know how to look. The city is buried under the castle itself. You don’t find it by accident.”
Esa studied her, tension corded in the muscles in her neck. “And you think he found it, too.”
“I know he did,” Imani replied. “It would have been impossible for him to leave it alone. He would have taken the castle apart until he understood where I went, how I got there, and what I found. Kiran doesn’t tolerate gaps in his knowledge.”
Lore looked back toward the dungeon proper. “Even if that’s true, going down there—”
“He doesn’t hide what matters where it’s obvious,” Imani cut in, her voice hardening. “He buries it where it’s inaccessible. Where taking it back is impossible.”
“And you’re willing to go back into it?” Esa asked.
Imani swallowed hard. “If he’s here, I bet my life he’s inside the lost city.”
“Below this, we lose all manner of a plan,” Esa warned, licking her lips. “No mapped corridors. No guard patterns we can predict.”
Lore scuffed his boot against the uneven floor. “And no easy exits. If something goes wrong, we don’t know if we’ll be able to get back.”
“I know of one way in and out,” Imani stated.
He looked at her. “How much of Zorah do you actually know, though?”
Imani gave a tight shrug. “Not much. One entrance and exit, plus a section. The library. I didn’t explore the rest.”
Esa ground her teeth. “So, we go in blind.”
“Yes,” Imani said, unflinching. “Deeper means less oversight from them. That’s the point.”
“I’m going,” Meira said. The words tore out of her before anyone else could speak. Her ragged breath came in gasps, and her eyes focused on some distant, invisible point. “If he’s down there, I’m not standing here while you debate the risk.”
Esa’s violet eyes darted between them, her posture going rigid as she weighed the crushing unknown. Finally, she exhaled and gave a curt nod. “We won’t have the time to hesitate once we’re in.”
“We won’t,” Imani said. “But we will have to go deeper.”
With nods of agreement, they turned their backs on the dungeon.
Imani set a relentless pace, unsure when the guards might return.
The oppressive silence behind them felt like a trap.
Moving instinctively, she guided her shadows to slip ahead in uneven, restless pulses that pushed the limits of her control.
The path ahead seemed to stretch endlessly, the palace’s architecture shifting wildly—corridors narrowing, widening, then narrowing again.
Despite this, she kept them moving, following a ghostly route she had once taken.
When they finally reached the lower vault levels, their breath fogged before their faces. The stone seemed even older, and the silence pressed on their ears with tangible force.
The royal vaults lay sealed behind ancient, layered protections, but Imani didn’t hesitate.
Her shadows lashed out first, testing the surface.
She stepped up to the stone, drawing Drasil’s power through her veins to unravel the wards binding the entrance.
The magic pushed back, hot and resistant, before finally giving way.
Kiran’s signature was woven into the casting; their bond would have granted her easy passage, but it would have violently rejected her companions. She refused to rely on it.
The passage beyond was long and swallowed by darkness, offering no hint of what waited at the end.
But Imani knew it was the door. With a deep breath, she guided them forward into the blackness.