Chapter Five
The moisture in the air was so thick and dense, it was beginning to stick to my fair skin, and I’d only been down here a few moments. The condensation on the stone walls surrounding me ran down in rivets, like the sweat I’d surely begin producing if I didn’t get out of there soon.
The tunnels below Gatlyn Castle wove together like the stitching of a handcrafted blanket, overlapping with twists and turns that were nearly unpredictable.
Unless, like me, you’d grown up roaming them until you got lost.
Nobody could hear you from down here, so you had to walk until you found your own way out.
So, that was what I did. I learned. And I adapted.
As I had with everything in my life.
Taking a sharp left, I headed towards the wing of the castle I hadn’t dared to venture to in over a month.
The ruler’s wing, which usually was home to whoever was currently on the throne.
My advisors—which I’d inherited from Father’s reign—had encouraged me to take Father’s chambers and the rest of his wing for myself.
I’d quickly declined.
Father had been the only fae I’d ever known to use that wing of Gatlyn Castle, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of erasing him like that. Not just erasing him, but also building on top of it for myself…
The thought made me sick.
Another bout of random turns, and a few minutes more of listening to my boots sound against the stone beneath me, and I’d finally arrived.
At a dead end.
Well, it would look that way to anybody else, anyways.
I reached out a hand and pushed one stone out of place in the wall, then shoved against it with my full bodyweight. And with that, the hidden opening I hadn’t used in what felt like ages slowly swung open.
Shutting it behind me, the other side of the hinged wall looked fairly ordinary. This wing housed multiple pieces that my grandmother had painted. I’d never met her personally, but sometimes I liked to imagine I could catch glimpses of her in the paintings she’d left behind.
They were all brightly colored, even the ones in snowy scenery—there’d be a patch of flowers, or a house, or an animal of sorts that drew the eye. It seemed as though she knew how to focus mostly on the positive elements.
How foolish, I couldn’t help but think.
I was stalling, I realized with a start.
Sighing lightly, I turned away from the wall of paintings and headed a few doors down on the opposite wall. There were seventeen doors in the hallway that made up the ruler’s wing, but there was only one I was looking for right now.
Every door in this wing was identical. They were a deep, rich brown wood so dark it was almost black, having been harvested from the surrounding area, and made up each door, with silver accents and handles.
Steeling myself, I reached into my pocket, feeling for the right key.
Once found, I slipped it into the lock below the handle and turned, unlocking the door with a soft shifting sound.
I gripped the silver handle and pushed down.
The door squeaked as it opened in on itself, echoing down the silent hallway and reminding me of how long it had likely been since anybody had been in this particular room—besides myself, that was.
Mother’s private study.
It was a fairly small space—likely the smallest in the entire corridor—but Mother had made the most of it. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined nearly every wall, overflowing with books and nicknacks of all sorts. It was as though she’d crammed her entire life into this one room.
And it had been left almost entirely untouched.
Except by me.
I imagined if Aviva had ever dared to venture into Father’s part of the castle, she’d have become emotional to know that so much of our mother still existed inside the same building we occupied.
Yet my twin did her best to stay out of our father’s way at all times, overpowering her curious nature.
Besides, we’d both been told all of Mother’s things had been given away or donated after she’d passed all those years ago.
The discolored rug on the floor was covered in layers upon layers of dust—just as everything else was—and had only been disrupted by my coming and going before the recent battle in Wittuck Woods.
I rounded the desk towards the back of the room and blew the majority of the dust off of the chair before taking a seat.
Drumming my fingers against the top of the wooden desk before me, I found myself becoming lost in my thoughts.
A couple of weeks before the latest battle, when I had just learned that it was going to happen so soon, I approached Father.
I’d argued that if we went forward with his plans to spring an attack, the South very well may hurt Aviva as retaliation against us.
They were said to be barbaric, after all—there was no telling what they’d do to her.
Sending her away was supposed to have been an act of peace—one that Father had initiated—and yet there he’d been, trying to ruin it all.
I hadn’t care much about the battle itself, only what it would’ve meant for my sister.
When I hadn’t let it go, Father snapped. He had been under a lot of stress due to planning the details of what was originally supposed to be a surprise attack, and I likely shouldn’t have pushed, but with what I thought was Aviva’s life on the line, I couldn’t let it go.
Then, Father had made a bargain with me.
He’d take me to see his favorite prisoner if I cooperated.
I couldn’t agree to a deal I didn’t know all of the specifics about, so at first I had declined.
That was, until Father told me who he was speaking of.
Who was still alive.
My mother.
Father had vaguely and with little detail explained that despite him telling me almost my entire life that Mother had died of a vicious, mysterious illness that had taken her in her sleep, he had been lying the entire time.
He had said due to unforseen circumstances, she had to leave the castle, but that she hadn’t passed.
That was when he’d finally told me everything. Or at least, what I thought everything was, at the time. I had to learn about Aviva’s abilities on my own.
Father had revealed that we were to spring a surprise attack on Cairnyl, which then lead to the Battle of Shadows.
He’d then told me all I needed to know about the encampments, and what exactly it was they were mining for—including the fact that what the alychite they were mining for was then used against them.
He’d told me everything except where Mother was.
And now he was gone, that knowledge lost with him.
Unless I could find something that would point me in the right direction.
I opened every drawer in the desk, shuffling the old, decaying papers inside and searching. For what, I wasn’t sure. I just needed something.
Finding nothing in the desk before me, I began shifting things around on the bookshelves, searching high and low for a sign or a clue—anything that might lead me to Mother.
After long moments passed without finding a thing, I sighed, pacing the short span of the room.
Suddenly remembering the gift I’d given Aviva, I circled the desk once again and shoved the chair out of the way, dropping to the floor.
Tapping lightly on a specific small stone in the floor, I was reassured that I’d found the right one.
The one with a hidden compartment under it.
Pushing and tilting the thin stone, it lifted just enough for me to pull it out of place.
Underneath housed various objects that must have been sentimental to our mother.
Pulling each object out one by one, I first pulled out the pouch of coins, placing it on the floor next to the hole in the ground.
Next, there was a box with two golden rings in them—one for a male and one for a female.
There was a dagger, one that was slightly bigger than the one I’d given Aviva, but matched it all the same.
The daggers both had the same engravings, and the same colored gems at the hilt.
Sliding the second, bigger dagger into an empty sheath on my belt, I reached for the last thing in the compartment.
A small, slightly torn portrait on a thin sheet of paper.
The portrait consisted of three fae. Mother, who had a glow to her that I never remembered her having, along with a male with dark olive skin that I didn’t recognize. Between them, being held by Mother, was an infant.
One that looked much too similar to Mother and the mystery male for my comfort.
But looking at Mother… I saw my twin in her.
If I could get Mother back, maybe I could get Aviva back, too.
Folding the paper and sliding it into a pocket, I tossed the other objects I’d pulled out back into their hiding spot, and I slid the stone back into place before getting to my feet.
Securing the door to Mother’s study behind me, I headed towards the room I’d been avoiding the most.
Father’s chambers.
I went to unlock the door, only to find it already so.
It made sense. Nobody would dare mess with Father or enter his chambers without permission. I wasn’t surprised he’d left it unlocked.
Though, it did show his arrogance.
Determination set in my bones, I entered the quarters, which were much too quiet for my liking.
There was a large lounge area to the left, a private desk and multiple shelves to the right, and in the middle was a giant four-post bed.
The large room was perfectly themed and accented, floor to ceiling, to match the Northern flag—blue and silver.
Father even had one of said flags hanging over his desk, as though while plotting war schemes he had needed a reminder of what he was fighting for.
The room, unlike Mother’s study, had hardly any dust. It truly hadn’t been that long since Father had last been here, in his chambers.
I picked at the skin around my nails as I walked deeper into the room, trying to dull the feelings that swelled up simply by entering the space.
And the surge of energy those emotions brought with them.
I’d hardly been inside the space before, as Father rarely took company here.
There were a handful of occasions, though, where he’d invited me for small things—to share tea, or to give me personal tips about my combat skills, or to simply sit in front of the fire together during the rare instances that the cold became too much, even for us.
Oddly enough, it was small moments like that which I found myself missing the most.
Heading over to the lounge area, I imagined if he were trying to hide anything about Mother, he’d have it within reach.
I sat in Father’s favorite spot—the left side of the long, navy couch—and searched.
A small table with drawers stood to the left of me, but they housed nothing of importance.
The low-lying table in front of me had no place to hide items, either.
Standing, I even went as far as to lift the couch cushions, my desperation becoming more and more potent as time went on.
Not finding anything in that area, I checked his desk and shelves, but came up empty-handed there, too.
Sighing, I took another moment to think.
My eyes lingered on Father’s bed. It looked as though he’d only ever slept on the right side of it, even after Mother was gone. The left side was untouched, nothing on the bedside table, while the right had a slight dip in it, and the table beside it was covered in papers and trinkets.
I approached the large bed, and within moments had checked the entire thing, as well as the top of the bedside table. Nothing under the mattress, or in his pillows, or anywhere in between. The papers and trinkets atop the table also didn’t aid in my search.
But it did still smell like him—the fresh smell of the calm after a storm—and the strike of grief that hit my heart felt like a physical blow.
My blood sang with a power that wanted to escape, but I pushed it down, determined to find something. Anything.
I noticed the top drawer of his bedside table was slightly ajar, as though Father had left in a hurry, and yanked it open. I shuffled through a few pens, papers, daggers, and other random, useless objects.
Slamming it, my anger sparked when it didn’t shut all the way, still slightly sticking out from the rest of the wooden piece.
Great, I thought. I broke it.
Bending to fix it, I pulled it open and peered towards the back of the drawer when something shiny caught my eye.
Heart racing, I pulled the drawer out of its place and put it on the ground next to me, then blindly reached for whatever it was I had seen.
My hand met leather, and I pulled the object out slowly, my hand shaking just barely.
It was a journal—and a very elegant one at that. It was black with a silver pattern all over the front and back cover. The pattern had no rhyme or reason, but it was pleasant, nonetheless.
Loosening a breath I must’ve been holding, I lowered myself to the floor with my back and wings against the edge of the bed. Balancing the journal on my knees, I cracked it open.
It was almost completely full of Father’s tiny, nearly impossible to read handwriting. As I flipped through, I noticed only a few pages at the end hadn’t been filled yet, as though he’d not had enough time.
Technically, I supposed he hadn’t.
Though, I couldn’t help but notice that on every page, multiple times, he’d written about somebody he called prisoner fifty-one.
Stopping to read on a random page, I could tell this was somebody Father must have been studying, or was important for some other reason, for he saw them far too often for somebody who was also running an entire kingdom.
Flipping towards the beginning, I noticed Father had sketched out a small map of the encampments he’d mentioned before the recent battle.
My eyes were drawn to a star on the top left side of the page, where he’d circled what looked like one of the stone towers multiple times.
Slamming the journal shut, I had to remind myself to breathe.
Father did nothing without reason.
I just had to put the pieces of the puzzle together.