Chapter 23
Cedric wasn’t supposed to be skulking around corridors.
That was spy’ business, or assassins’, depending on how cheerful you were feeling. But apparently, when Alaric got it into his head that Ravik was acting stranger than usual, he was the one sent to “observe discreetly.”
Right. Because Cedric and discreet were practically synonyms.
So here he was, trailing the Grand Marshal down half a dozen corridors, watching him peel off toward his office, mutter with someone he couldn’t quite see, and then vanish like a stone into fog.
The someone else had been hooded, feminine shape maybe, scroll under her arm.
Suspicious enough to follow. Ravik might be the kind of man to order his boots polished to regulation gloss, but he wasn’t in the habit of meeting mystery women with paperwork after curfew.
Cedric trailed the hooded figure just far enough to watch her slip into Orvath’s chapel. Perfect. Of all places she could have chosen, it had to be the one shrine in Edrathen that looked like a dungeon had eaten a void.
Cedric lingered outside a moment, hood tugged low, debating. He could leave it, report back, let Alaric gnash his teeth about missed opportunities. But then he’d always wonder. And the worst part? Cedric would wonder too. Curiosity was a contagious disease.
So he slipped in.
The air was cold and smelled faintly of old ash.
It was dark; he could see little beyond the long stretch of the chapel, the covered window, the altar, and the faint outlines of stone benches.
They stood in neat, punishing rows. The altar sat bare, a slab of gray with chains hanging from its edge like they were waiting for wrists.
Empty.
Cedric let his eyes adjust. He’d expected a clandestine exchange. Instead—nothing. The hooded woman was gone.
He stood there longer than he meant to, leaning against one of the pillars.
Five minutes. Ten. Long enough for his legs to stiffen and for him to start counting the cracks in the flagstones.
If she was still inside, she was a ghost. And Cedric didn’t believe in ghosts—only people who were very good at not wanting to be found.
He muttered a curse and pushed off the pillar. One last sweep, he told himself. Then he was gone.
That was when the door creaked.
Footsteps, light, cautious. He stilled, hand drifting toward the knife at his belt. He narrowed his eyes, waiting for the shape to resolve in the dim.
A figure slipped through the shadows. Familiar gait, precise in a way most servants never managed.
Recognition hit just as cold steel kissed his throat. His pulse jumped so hard he felt it thrum against the blade.
He blinked down into brown eyes.
“Vesena?” he blurted.
Her dagger didn’t waver. “Cedric?”
Of course. Leave it to him to spend half an hour waiting in a cursed chapel only to nearly get his throat slit by the one person he’d trusted most.
For a moment they just stared at each other, her blade right where his pulse beat. He lifted his hands halfway, mostly to signal “please don’t accidentally slip.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, voice low but pointed.
“What are you doing here?”
Vesena didn’t lower her dagger so much as allow it to drift downward. “Are we really doing the mockingbird routine now?”
They both spoke at once.
“You first.”
Vesena groaned. “We’re never going to get anywhere like this.”
Cedric shrugged, unrepentant. “It’s been working for me so far.”
He held still while the dagger lowered. Vesena stepped back half a pace, still close enough that he could smell the oil on her blade.
The chapel was awful. But if he was being honest, it was a relief seeing her face instead of whatever other nightmare he’d half-imagined might be waiting. Even if she’d nearly slit his throat.
“I saw someone suspicious come in here,” she said, voice low, clipped. “Didn’t know who. Thought I’d follow.” She tilted her chin slightly, eyes narrowing. “Which makes this rather awkward, because apparently that someone was you.”
Awkward, indeed. He scratched the back of his neck, trying for a sheepish look. “In my defense, I didn’t sneak. I walked in like a concerned citizen.”
That earned him a stare sharp enough to skin him. “Were you following someone?”
He glanced toward the altar—chains glinting faintly in the dim light—and briefly asked Orvath, patron saint of misery, for patience. Then he sighed. “Yes. Ravik. On Alaric’s orders.”
Her brows lifted. “You’re joking.”
He smirked faintly. “I’m really not.”
She studied him for a beat, eyes narrowing just slightly. “Did Ravik come in here before you?”
He shook his head. “No. He talked to someone, nothing I could catch from where I was. Then they split. Ravik went toward his office. The other one—hooded, female, I think—walked off with a scroll tucked under her arm.” He shrugged. “Figured she looked more interesting.”
“Women usually do,” Vesena muttered.
Cedric gave her a look. “I followed her. She came in here and didn’t come out for a long time. I thought maybe she slipped out through another exit, but the chapel only has one. So I came in.”
“And found nothing,” she guessed.
He nodded. “Nothing. No sign of her. I started checking corners, and then I heard the door creak. So I ducked behind a pillar. When I saw it was you, I thought I’d say hello.”
He crossed his arms, arching a brow. “Then you nearly opened my throat.”
Her lashes fluttered. “You didn’t say hello.”
That dragged a laugh out of him, rougher than intended. “Fair.”
The sound died quickly. A creak sounded somewhere behind them; both turned instinctively toward the door before trading the ghost of a smile.
Then Vesena asked the obvious. “Why is Alaric having Ravik followed?”
Cedric exhaled, long and low. The kind of sigh that carried more weight than he wanted to admit. Of course he told her everything about Kelvar’s Cross.
Vesena’s mouth tightened slightly as she absorbed it. She didn’t spook easy, but she didn’t dismiss it either.
“Alaric also has some kind of interest in the High Preceptor but I think it’s his excuse to chase his trivia.” He studied her a little more carefully now. “What about you?”
Her eyes flicked, just briefly, the way people did when they were deciding how much truth to give. “The princess didn’t ask me to do anything,” she said at last. “Not directly. She just—looked like someone holding too many questions and not enough hands.”
Cedric leaned back against the nearest pillar, arms still crossed. He let out a low whistle, humorless. “That sounds about right.”
His smirk faded for a beat, replaced by a quieter, heavier expression. Then he met her gaze again, his words low.
“Alright. So, what now?”
Vesena folded her arms. “Now we find out who that scroll belonged to.”
Cedric’s eyes flicked once to the heavy chapel door. Still shut. Only one way in. Only one way out. And yet, their mystery guest had vanished.
“Hidden passage,” Vesena murmured.
“Shocking,” he deadpanned.
Her glare could’ve blistered paint.
He raised his hands. “What? I’m just saying—it’s like something out of a third-rate mystery scroll. Cloaked woman disappears. Secret priest tunnel. Possibly demons.”
She rolled her eyes and crouched near the benches. “You can narrate your own murder later. Start looking for weak points.”
So they searched. He ran his palms along the cold seams near the rear columns, careful not to scrape his skin. Vesena moved with quiet precision, tracing the grooves of the altar and the rusted chains. Nothing. Only the silence, pressing closer, eating at his patience.
Then his hand brushed against something—barely a shade lighter than the rest of the wall. Uneven. Wrong.
“Found something,” he announced, trying for casual even as his pulse kicked.
Vesena turned, unimpressed. “That’s it?”
He grinned. “Apologies, it didn’t come with dramatic lighting.”
She came over, skirts whispering against the floor, eyes narrowing at the patch of stone.
“You’ve spent far too much time crawling around places you weren’t invited to,” she muttered.
“True,” Cedric agreed easily, “but it made me very popular at parties.”
She ignored him and crouched beside. “Help me get it open. Let’s see where our ghost went.”
For once, he didn’t joke. Just set his shoulder and shoved. Boots scraping, muscles straining, face heating to the exact shade of his damned hair. He gave it everything, achieved absolutely nothing.
When he stepped back, breath puffing like he’d just slayed a dragon, Vesena looked at him with one raised brow and all the sympathy of a stone bench.
“It’s no use,” he muttered, wiping his sleeve dramatically across his brow. “This thing isn’t moving.”
“You think they built secret passages for priests to be opened by brute force?” she muttered, folding her arms. “Please.”
He shot her a look. “I was trying to help. And admit it—some of them look like they could throw a decent punch.”
“And I appreciate the show,” she said dryly, stepping past him.
She ran her fingers along the wall. He’d already done the same thing—three times, in fact—without result. Then, of course, she found it. Lower edge, where the shadows thickened. Smooth patch, too neat to be natural. Her hand pressed in.
Click.
Stone sighed.
The wall slid aside like it had just been waiting for her to show up. Dust gusted out, and both stepped back on instinct.
Cedric stared. Then looked at her—the way he always did when she managed something he couldn’t decide was brilliant or infuriating.
“You are alarmingly competent,” he said.
Her lips curved, just a fraction. “And you are alarmingly surprised.”
The passage gaped in front of them, dark as a throat. Damp air drifted out, sour and cold. No sound. No trace of the woman with the scroll.
Cedric squinted into it. “Are we going in?”
She didn’t answer right away. He could see it—the calculation behind her eyes, like she carried a balance scale in her pocket.
Finally: “It would be unwise to go in together. If it seals from the inside and we can’t open it… no one’s coming to look for us.”
Cedric let out a breath. She wasn’t wrong. He didn’t like that she wasn’t wrong.
“Fair,” he muttered. “I like a good mystery. But I prefer not dying in a gods-forsaken tunnel better.”
Vesena touched the stone. The click echoed. The wall slid shut, smooth as before.
“Not tonight,” she said. “We’ll do this properly.”
She glanced at him sideways. “Rope. Lanterns. Backup.” A pause. “You know. Professional recklessness.”
He offered a tired smile. “My favorite kind.”
He kept glancing at the shadows, jaw tight, like he half expected something to crawl out of them. Because tunnels like that were never just forgotten. And in this kingdom, the things people tried to erase usually had teeth—or far too many legs.
“I’ll tell Evelyne what I found,” she declared. “Privately. She deserves to know, without anyone deciding for her.”
“And me?”
“You tell Alaric. We can’t keep acting like we’re on different sides of the map. If Ravik’s involved—if this ties back to Calveran—we can’t afford to split our pieces.”
Cedric gave a low laugh, shaking his head. He could see it—disaster wrapped in silk.
“Picture it now: your princess hiking up her skirts and dragging Alaric into some moldy corridor while the rest of us argue over which way’s north.”
Vesena smirked, already turning down the aisle.