Chapter 14

Nobody moved. The knock didn’t come again, and the quiet it left behind was worse than the sound.

“Cassian. Four men, lanterns, swords. Bring up whatever is making that noise.”

“Alive?”

“Preferably.”

“I’d rather go down,” I said. “The scratches climb. Whoever made them was trying to get out.”

“You’re remarkably eager to walk into dark holes.” Lucian didn’t look at me.

“And you’re remarkably eager to keep useful people in chains.”

“Enough,” Cassian said. He signalled the guards. Two remained at the opening to watch the upper chamber while the other two followed him into the shaft. Their lanterns descended one by one, shrinking to coins of light before disappearing into the darkness.

Lucian stayed beside the open boards, one hand near his sword. Under the dust, that thread of scent drifted up again: smoke, burnt honey.

“You smell it too,” I said.

“I smell damp.”

“Of course you do.”

He shifted, and a dark stain bloomed through the bandage under his shirt. He lowered himself onto the table’s edge, jaw locked. Lycan healing was fast. It was not free.

“You’re bleeding on your father’s papers.”

“They’re already dead.”

“Let me see it.”

“No.”

“I heard you.” I stepped closer. “I simply disagree.”

His hand shot out and caught my wrist. The old jolt came, but it didn’t stop at my skin. Pain flared behind my ribs, hot and strangely far away, and the room folded back like a page.

A doorway. A strip of lamplight across a dark floor. A boy standing very still inside it, listening for footsteps that never came. The air smelled of ink and iron.

Then it was gone, and Lucian let go as though I’d burned him.

“You were in my head.”

“I was standing in front of you.” My voice shook. “I saw a room. A boy, waiting.”

“Stop.”

For one unguarded second he looked like a man caught holding what he’d buried. Then the ice came back, every degree restored.

“You’re very good at looking helpless.”

“I was chained to an execution block when your father died.”

“And yet the evidence keeps finding you. Why did you want me alive?”

It landed harder than a slap. Every answer I had was true, and none was the one he wanted.

“I don’t know,” I said.

His face hardened, as though my honesty offended him more than a lie would have.

“Your Highness!” Cassian’s voice rang up the shaft. “A door at the bottom. Iron, royal mark. The seal’s been cut. Recently.”

Lucian was moving before the words ended. I followed, and he turned, one arm across the opening.

“You stay.”

“It’s tied to my mother’s past. I know it.”

“You know nothing.”

“Then you’ve nothing to lose by letting me look.”

He glanced at the guards left behind, men he hadn’t chosen, men whose loyalties he couldn’t be certain of. Whatever he calculated, it wasn’t kindness.

“I don’t leave you with people I haven’t counted. Stay between us. If anything moves, you go first.”

I descended after him.

The shaft opened into a low passage, colder with every step. Cassian waited at the bottom with the two men who had followed him. The other two had remained above, guarding the opening.

At the end of the passage, an iron door stood in an archway, its seal sliced clean through. Lucian pushed, and it swung inward with a long scrape.

The room beyond was small and almost ordinary: a cot, a table with a chipped cup and a folded cloth, and in the corner an oil lamp, burning.

I stopped on the threshold. The flame was steady, perfectly fed.

Cassian touched the lamp’s base and snatched his hand back.

“Warm. They were here minutes ago.”

“No window,” Lucian said, sweeping the walls with his sword. “No second way out.”

“Then where did they go?”

Nobody answered.

On the table, dust lay thick except for one clean patch where something had been moved. Beside it sat a small pale object.

A bird, carved from light wood, wings folded close. A whistle.

My fingers had started shaking before I touched it.

“Don’t,” Lucian said.

I turned it over. On the underside, cut into the wood, was one crooked letter.

E.

My father’s hand.

I was eleven when I last held it, one fist clutching the whistle while the other reached into the chest beneath my mother’s floorboard, toward a paper marked with two crescents and a split sun.

Put it down, she’d shouted.

She had never shouted at me before.

I dropped everything, and that night she pried the board shut with bleeding fingers and made me swear. When I crawled back for the whistle in the dark, it was gone.

Eleven years.

“Elena.” Lucian was watching my face. “What is it?”

“Mine. My father carved it. I lost it in my village, a hundred miles beyond the Shadow Border.”

“And you’ve never set foot in this Citadel.”

“Never.”

“How convenient.” His voice dropped, soft and awful. “A trinket from your village, waiting in a room only someone from inside could reach. If I’d wanted to frame a spy, I couldn’t have left it better.”

“If I’d planted it, would I be shaking?”

“People shake for many reasons. Who brought it here?”

I looked at the cot, the folded cloth, the warm lamp. Somebody had slept here, keeping a piece of my childhood beneath the place the Council gathered to judge me.

For the first time since crossing the border, I had no clever answer.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

Above us, a guard shouted.

The cry cut off mid-word.

A thud followed, then the unmistakable rattle of rope sliding down the shaft. A lantern crashed somewhere in the passage, spilling fire across the stone.

“Back!” Cassian roared.

I turned towards the doorway, but the iron door slammed shut before anyone could reach it. Something heavy dropped into place on the far side like a coffin lid.

Lucian struck the door with his good shoulder.

Once.

Twice.

The wound tore open beneath his shirt. He swore and hit it a third time while Cassian threw his weight beside him.

It didn’t move.

Then a sudden rush of air swept through the passage from the shaft above. The flame in the oil lamp bent sharply, stretched almost sideways, and shrank. For one brief moment, it clung to the wick like a dying star.

Then it went out.

Darkness closed over us, absolute, and I stood in it with the whistle crushed in my fist.

I heard Cassian testing the door, his hands searching for a latch or a mechanism. Lucian’s breathing was close, controlled but strained. Somewhere beyond the iron, there was a faint scrape, followed by silence.

Then, through the door, calm and almost warm, a woman’s voice spoke.

“Hold on to it, little scholar. Your mother never did.”

The words landed like a revelation, though I couldn’t understand what they were revealing. Did she mean the whistle? Something my mother had lost? Or something she had deliberately abandoned?

Lucian’s hand found my arm. His sword rasped.

“You know that voice.”

I did.

The last time I’d heard it, it had been aimed at my heart over a crossbow, whispering, Sweet dreams, little scholar.