Chapter 13

The third tap came from beneath the floor.

Lucian stopped mid-sentence. Cassian’s hand dropped to the dagger at his belt. I stared at the boards, waiting for a fourth, but the chamber had gone so quiet I could hear the candle flame feeding on its wick.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

A scrape answered me, long and slow, dragging along stone until it stopped directly beneath Cassian’s boots. He jumped back as though the floor had bitten him.

“Seal the lower corridor,” Lucian ordered.

Cassian hesitated, then jerked his chin at the nearest guard, who ran. Lucian moved half a step in front of me, angling his body towards the planks. His injured shoulder remained stiff beneath his coat.

“Someone is inside the Citadel,” I said.

“Someone may be inside a passage.”

“And the distinction comforts you?”

“Nothing about this comforts me.”

Two guards pried up the boards with the tips of their knives. Beneath them ran a narrow maintenance shaft, its stones scorched black and raked with fresh scratches, the kind a claw leaves or a blade dragged by someone in a hurry. Cold air climbed out of it, stale and tasting of ash.

I knelt at the lip before anyone could stop me. The scratches didn’t run downward, as they would have if someone had dropped into the dark. They climbed.

“Whoever made these came up into this room,” I said. “Not out of it.”

Cassian’s head snapped towards me. Lucian’s eyes didn’t move from my face.

“Or someone let them in,” he said quietly. “You’ve spent three days alone in here with my father’s papers.”

“Chained to a shelf.”

“With a very long reach.”

I stood, and I did not trust my hands near the inkwell.

Cassian lowered the lantern. “This was opened recently.”

“Can you follow it?” Lucian asked.

“Not without removing the grate farther down. It runs beneath the Council wing.”

Beneath the chamber where Vane was gathering his power. Nobody said it aloud, but the thought settled over the room like damp.

One guard leaned into the shaft and recoiled.

“Commander. There’s something here.”

He drew out a strip of black cloth snagged on a rusted edge and held it at arm’s length. Cassian took it between two fingers and sealed it inside a pouch, but the smell reached me first.

Smoke. Burnt honey, sweet and scorched at once.

The same smell that had clung to the man who abducted me, breathing against my ear with a blade at my throat.

“You know that scent,” Lucian said.

“He held a knife to me in it.”

“So you claim.”

“I’m still bleeding from it, Your Highness. Look at my neck.”

“I looked,” he said. “A scratch is easy to give oneself.”

A voice spoke from the doorway.

“An unfortunate discovery.”

Prince Dorian entered with two Council guards at his shoulders. His familiar smile was already in place, but his eyes lingered on the open shaft a heartbeat too long.

“Brother,” Lucian said coldly. “You have a talent for arriving uninvited.”

“And you have a talent for making private problems public.”

“What do you know about this passage?” Cassian demanded.

“Nothing. Which is exactly why I find it unfortunate.” Dorian stepped closer. “Elder Vane has called an emergency vote. He intends to have Elena removed from Lucian’s custody.”

“On what authority?” Lucian asked.

“The ancient statute. Or rather, his interpretation of it. He’s gathered enough elders to make the distinction academic.”

Lucian’s expression hardened.

Dorian drew out a folded document. “The summons names every surviving member of the royal household. Apparently, this concerns more than your prisoner.”

“Why are you included?” I asked.

“Because Vane claims the royal family has withheld information about the sealed records.” His smile faded. “And he believes someone in this family knows more than they’re admitting.”

A horn sounded in the corridor, one long note and two short. The guards traded uneasy looks. Outside, footsteps multiplied. Cassian crossed to the door and found a messenger waiting, breathless, a narrow raven tube clutched in his fist.

“For the Crown Prince.”

Lucian broke the seal. A single sheet slid out, and he read it twice before speaking.

“The sealed service channel beneath the Council wing was inspected eleven years ago by order of the Crown.”

“Eleven years ago?” Dorian stepped forward, and Lucian passed him the message.

Dorian turned the royal seal towards the light. “Authentic.”

“Do you recognise the signature?” Cassian asked.

“There is none.”

Eleven years ago, my mother had pried up a floorboard with her bleeding fingers and made me swear never to speak of the crest.

A second knock sounded. This time, it didn’t come from beneath us. It came from the corridor.

“By order of the High Council,” a woman’s voice announced, “Elena Voss is to be transferred immediately.”

Lucian stepped in front of me.

“No.”

She entered with six armed guards at her back, Elder Vane’s insignia gleaming on her breastplate.

“Your Highness, the Council has approved the transfer. You are ordered to surrender the prisoner.”

“On suspicion alone?”

“The statute permits temporary custody pending investigation.”

“She remains under my authority.”

“Not anymore.”

The guards advanced. Lucian’s fingers curled at his sides.

I saw the change begin before anyone else did. His shoulders widened with a violent heave, and a sharp crack sounded beneath his skin. The guards stumbled backwards as his spine bowed and his coat split across his back. Dark fur flooded up his arms like ink through water. His jaw lengthened, teeth sharpening into ivory points. Bone and muscle reshaped beneath skin that seemed suddenly too small to hold him.

Someone screamed.

Within seconds, a massive black wolf stood between me and the Council guards, ribs heaving, lips peeled back from its teeth. The eyes were unmistakably Lucian’s.

Weapons rose and shook, but nobody stepped forward.

“Your Highness!” the woman cried. “Control yourself!”

The wolf snarled, and the sound went through me like a plucked wire. Among the guards, a smaller wolf whimpered and lowered its head. Another backed away.

Dorian moved.

“Lucian!”

He shifted too, faster, the crack of bone followed by a blur of deep silver-grey. Then he stood planted before his brother, teeth bared. He did not attack. The two wolves stood nose to nose, hackles raised, claws scraping stone.

“Brother,” Dorian growled, the word coming strange and low from his muzzle. “Think carefully.”

Lucian’s claws gouged the floor.

“Why are you protecting this human? What do you know that the rest of us don’t? What are you trying to discover with her?”

Lucian’s ears flattened.

“Or is it the courtyard?” Dorian pressed. “The way you stood there with your blade raised, and didn’t bring it down?”

The silence that followed was so complete that I heard the lantern hiss.

“What is she to you?” Dorian said.

Lucian’s growl deepened. His gaze swept the Council guards, the messenger, Vane’s representative and Cassian. Every eye was fixed on him. I watched him understand what his brother had come here to do. Dorian had not come to take me. He had come to make Lucian show his throat in front of witnesses, with no answer to give.

Dorian stepped back.

Lucian retreated with him, and his body convulsed as the change reversed, bone sliding, fur sinking away. When it was done, he stood naked and heaving, his injured shoulder bleeding through his bandage. A guard hurried forward with a cloak, and Lucian took it without looking away from the Council’s woman.

“Inform Elder Vane that I have not surrendered Elena.”

“Your Highness, resisting a lawful order…”

“Leave!”

She went, her guards behind her. The smaller wolves followed with their eyes lowered, avoiding mine. Cassian shut the door.

Dorian stayed where he was, human again, studying his brother as one studies a cracked blade.

“You’ve given the Council something more interesting than a sealed statute,” he said.

Lucian fastened the cloak at his throat. “And what would that be?”

“A reason to question your judgment.”

“Then let them question it.”

Dorian turned to me. “And you, Elena, should consider what happens when a prince’s protection becomes more dangerous than his hostility.”

He left. I rounded on Lucian.

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“You changed in front of them. You could have lost control.”

“I didn’t.”

“I would rather have gone with the Council.”

“Then you are a fool.” His voice was low and flat. “If anyone cuts the truth out of you, it will be me. You are not Vane’s to break.”

Whatever restraint he had forced on himself, the beast hadn’t entirely gone back to sleep.

“That isn’t an answer,” I said.

His eyes met mine. “It’s the only one you’re getting.”

Cassian came forward with the raven message in his hand. “There’s writing on the reverse.”

He held the sheet towards the lantern, and four faint words rose out of the paper, pressed in by someone who had leaned too hard.

SHE WAS NOT ALONE.

The skin along my arms tightened.

“Who?” Dorian called from the corridor, having apparently not gone far enough to miss it.

No one answered him.

I looked at Lucian. “Maybe this message wasn’t meant for you.”

“Who else would it be meant for?”

My eyes went to the open shaft.

“Whoever is listening.”

My mother’s bleeding fingers prying up a floorboard. Her voice shaking as she made me swear. Eleven years ago, the same year someone had inspected the passage beneath the Council wing.

Under the open boards, in the dark where the smoke had passed, something knocked once more.