Chapter 56 Rescue #2
“Tenny had better cry at my funeral.” Kit harrumphed into the darkness. “Somehow, I pictured this whole rescue mission very differently.”
“We are rescuing a damsel in distress. Does it get any more classic than this?” Tenebris Nox’s voice was laced with their telltale amusement as it wafted down the tunnel.
Kit exhaled through her nose, which turned out to be a terrible idea due to the inevitable inhale that followed. “Each of you owes me a bath and a hot meal after this.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Elyria said. “Assuming you do not, in fact, die?”
“If I do,” Kit grumbled, “you can rest assured it’s your ass I’ll be haunting first.”
Eventually, the runoff tunnel sloped upward, narrowing one final time before light appeared, and, with the screech of metal as Cedric pushed open a rusty grate, they exited into a cramped chamber.
Elyria shifted so she was no longer standing directly on top of Nox’s feet. “I guess it’s just as well I left my staff at home,” she muttered.
“I’ll take being crammed in here together over that disgusting tunnel we just clawed our way through any day,” Kit said, doing her best to wipe the slime from her hands and knees. She leaned against one wall as Cedric cracked open the door, surreptitiously checking for anyone lingering outside.
No one came.
There was no alarm, no shouts. Just the low flicker of the torches lit on the walls and the distant echo of footsteps above.
Cedric was already moving into the empty hallway, his jaw set. “Family quarters that way,” he said, pointing down the corridor. “Take the stairs around the corner up two floors, then take a right and head to the end of the—”
“We will find her,” Nox said. “And you?”
Elyria and Cedric exchanged a look. “We go for Malchior,” she said.
“You and I are unable to shadowstep in here, Revenant,” Nox reminded her, their lip curling with irritation. “Should something go wrong . . .”
Elyria’s wings burst from her back. “It’s a good thing we both have other means of making a quick escape then.”
Kit shook her head, freeing her own wings with a flash of magic.
“Besides,” Elyria added, tossing her braid over her shoulder before folding her wings down, “what could go wrong?”
Kit and Nox crept through the halls of the Seastone estate, swathed in shadow.
“How is it that you’re able to do this,” Kit whispered through the darkness, her hands gripping either side of Nox’s wrist, “yet you cannot shadowstep us to Tenny?”
“Shh,” said the nocterrian, sweeping their arm back to flatten Kit against the wall.
Footsteps sounded, and Kit held her breath as a man strode into view at the end of the corridor, wolven medallion bouncing on his chest. Blessedly, he did not turn.
He didn’t even spare a glance down the hallway, just continued forward, disappearing around the corner.
“Let’s keep it quiet,” Nox murmured, pulling Kit into motion once more.
“It’s already too quiet,” she whispered back.
The few guards they’d seen posted in front of various doors or making their rounds through the cold, gray halls had been easy enough to avoid.
Unease had only continued brewing in Kit’s gut the farther they wove through the building.
She hadn’t expected a warm welcome, to be sure, but there was nothing urgent, nothing pressing about the way the guards were acting.
If Malchior’s forces expected some kind of retaliation for the attack on King’s Keep, they certainly were not acting like it.
In truth, nothing about this place was as she expected.
Instead of running into cadres of cultists lying in wait after she and Nox climbed out of the lower levels, Kit had searched several rooms only to find each one stacked to the brim with metal barrels.
Dozens upon dozens of them, all uniform in size and shape, some resting beneath loosely draped tarps, others tipped over on their sides.
After stumbling into the third room like this, Kit finally inspected one of the barrels, shifting its lid.
The smell hit her first—fresh rain and melting snow, plus the tang of raw mana.
“Noctis take me,” she had said. “He’s been bleeding the Midlands dry.”
“No wonder the lord paramount has been so invested in overseeing the mana harvests,” Nox had replied.
“Most of these are empty. What in all four hells has he been doing with it all?”
The nocterrian’s unique voice drew Kit’s focus back to the present, to the shadows swirling around them both.
“It is curious that my magic is acting this way, isn’t it?” Nox said, their voice low. “The sanguinagi wards cast on this place prevent any great manifestation of my power, yet do not cut me off from it completely. I only feel . . . dampened. Suppressed. And it seems . . . intentional.”
Kit frowned, releasing her grip on the nocterrian’s arm to call upon her own magic. Moisture pooled in her palm and started to crystallize, forming a sharp, solid shape . . . then dissolved nearly as quickly. Water slipped through her fingers, splashing her boots.
Long fingers wrapped around her wrist. “As I said. Intentional. Even more curious, it does not seem new. These wards were cast long ago.”
“I do remember Malchior mentioning something about wards in his journal entries. Did he put them in place to stifle his own power?” Kit wondered aloud.
“To keep him from being discovered? Or a constant reminder to his followers not to reveal their dark magic here, perhaps?” Nox whispered. Then, pointing to a pair of guards stationed outside a heavy wooden door at the far end of the hall the two Arcanians had just turned down, they said, “Look.”
Kit drew a dagger from her thigh, flipping it in her palm. “Guess we do this the old-fashioned way.”
The guards didn’t notice the pair until they were already upon them, and there, finally, was the urgency and alarm Kit had expected to see.
It didn’t help them. She hadn’t even needed to use the dagger.
Just one quick burst of her celestial-given speed had her behind the nearer guard, forearm wrapped around his neck.
He gasped, clawing at her with frantic fingers, but a flex of her arm and twenty seconds of stillness had him sinking to the floor.
Tenebris Nox made even quicker work of the second, before dragging both bodies into a nearby alcove and hiding them from sight.
The door was locked. Kit’s eyes darted behind her to ensure the hall was still empty. Then, she slammed her shoulder into the wood—once, twice. On the third blow, the door burst open, and she and Nox fell into the room.
Tenny sat on her bed, legs tucked beneath her, the book she’d clearly just been reading clutched to her chest. “Oh, thank the stars, it’s you!” she exclaimed, launching off the mattress and barreling into Kit with enough force to knock the breath from the fae’s lungs.
“How are you here?” Tenny asked after a moment, eyes glassy as she peeled herself away from Kit. “I can’t believe you came. You came for me?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Kit’s heart cracked a little bit too. “Of course we did, Ten. We never leave one of our own behind.” She winked, and the sound Tenny released was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“I’m just stunned to see you. Stunned and shocked and—stars above, I’m so grateful. My father—He—I can’t—I never—”
“Just breathe, love,” Kit said, placing her hands on Tenny’s shoulders. She made a show of sucking in a deep breath—in through her nose, out through her mouth.
Tenny sniffled and gave a meek nod. “Thank you for coming.” She turned to Nox and gave them a quick bow, hands clasped in front of her. “Both of you. And thank Aurelia herself it’s you and not Cedric. For a minute I was worried he really is as stupid and noble as I thought.”
Kit exchanged a look with Nox. “What do you mean?”
Tenny’s throat bobbed. “I agreed to go with my father in order to stop the bloodshed at the palace. But he made me promise him something else too.”
“What did he make you promise?”
“He wanted me to write to Ric, to beckon him here.” She gestured to a small desk on the other side of the room.
“Told me to say whatever I needed to, to come up with something that will get him to come here—alone. I told my father I needed time. He wasn’t .
. .” She lifted her hand to her throat, which Kit noticed was bare, no locket or token in sight.
“He wasn’t particularly happy about that. ”
Kit’s jaw worked, her teeth grinding together.
“He said I had today to comply, or he would send Cedric a message of his own,” Tenny continued, and there was no mistaking the darkness in her tone. “But all thanks to the Five, you two came for me instead, and we won’t have to find out what he meant by that.”
It was like Kit could see the relief seeping from Tenny, the weight lifting from her shoulders as she spoke. It made Kit hesitate.
Nox stepped forward instead. “Cedric is here, Tenny. He and Elyria are confronting your father as we speak.”
Tenny’s amber eyes were wide, her mouth gaping open. “No,” she whispered, backing up toward the bed. “No, no, no, no. That’s what he wants. What he needs.”
Kit moved toward her. “What does he need?” she asked, at the same time Nox said, “What is he planning?”
Wringing her hands together, Tenny began pacing back and forth in front of her bed, the pale pink skirts of her dress rustling as the hem caught on the carpet.
“Half a crown was never going to be enough, he said. The instant he found out the prize at the end of the Crucible was incomplete, he started making other plans. Or maybe, he was his contingency plan all along.” She was muttering, mumbling, speaking to herself as if she’d forgotten Kit and Nox were even in the room.
“If he couldn’t have celestial power, he would take his birthright instead. Renew his legacy.”
“Tenny.” Kit reached for Tenny’s hand, forcing her rambling to stop. “Please. What are you talking about?”
Tenny’s eyes were wet when she met Kit’s eye. “Mal—”
The world shook.
A deep, guttural boom tore through the estate, the very foundation, rattling the floor beneath their feet, cracks spidering through the ceiling.
Tenny yelped as her windowpanes shattered, several pieces of furniture toppling over. She ran across the room, gasping as she looked out the now-open window.
“We’re too late,” she said, her face pale when she turned back to Kit and Nox. “It is beginning.”