Chapter 7: The Room Behind the Wall

For a long time, nobody spoke.

The torch crackled in Garrick's hand. The red letters on the wall shone wet and dark. I tried to tell myself it was paint, but I could smell it. Real blood. Still fresh.

"Four guards," Kael said at last. His voice was very quiet, which was worse than shouting. "Four guards stood outside this cell. Tell me what they saw."

The guards looked like they wanted the floor to swallow them. The oldest one cleared his throat.

"Nothing, my king. We swear it on our lives. Nobody came down the stairs. We heard no sound. When Garrick came for the shift change, the door was open, and the prisoner was gone."

"Did the lock break?"

"No, my king."

"Did anyone have a key?"

"Only you, my king. And Lord Vance, who holds the spare."

Garrick and Kael looked at each other. Neither one said a word. But I saw a hard, sharp look pass between them.

"Lord Vance has been with me all night," Kael said slowly. "In the great hall, in front of fifty witnesses."

"Yes, my king," Garrick said. "I counted them."

I raised my good hand. "Can I say one thing? I know I am just the baker."

"You are not just the baker," Kael said.

"Okay, the very confused baker. That blood on the wall is not from the assassin. Look at it. It is too dark. And it is on the stone, but there is no smear, no handprint, nothing. It looks like somebody painted it with a brush. A man who vanishes through a locked door does not stop to write a long letter."

Garrick gave me a slow look. Then he nodded.

"The boy is right."

"Thank you," I said. "Finally. Somebody in this castle with a brain."

"I have a brain," Kael said.

"Debatable."

One of the guards made a small noise that sounded suspiciously like a cough covering a laugh. Kael turned his head, and the guard went stiff as a board.

Then Kael looked back at me. His silver eyes softened a little, just for a moment.

"We will search the whole castle tonight. Garrick, double the guards on every door. Nobody leaves, nobody enters." He paused. "And Rian will sleep in the room next to mine."

"What?"

"The bond." He pointed to my arm, and then his own. "If an enemy can reach you, I need to be close."

"I have my parents in the guest room."

"They will have guards. Two on each side. Nobody will touch them."

I opened my mouth to argue. But I looked at my arm, and the red line there, and I remembered the way the knife had come down at my father's back. My mouth closed.

"Fine," I said. "But I am not sharing a bed with you."

"There is a sofa."

"Whose sofa?"

"Mine."

"And where do you sleep?"

"On the bed," Kael said calmly.

"That is not fair!"

"It is my castle."

"It is my arm!"

Garrick turned around very slowly and became extremely interested in the wall.

Kael's room was twice as big as my whole bakery. It had a fireplace, a huge bed with black silk sheets, shelves of old books, and a window that looked over the whole valley. And there was, in the corner, a small velvet sofa that looked like it was made for a cat.

I stared at it.

"You are joking."

"The servants will bring a bigger one tomorrow."

"I am going to sleep with my feet hanging off."

"Then sleep in the bed."

"Never."

"Then your feet will hang."

I threw a pillow at his head. He caught it with one hand, without even looking. Then he put it down very carefully on his bed, like it was a piece of treasure.

I did not sleep.

I lay on that tiny sofa and listened to Kael breathe. He fell asleep fast, like a man who had been awake for three hundred years. His face looked younger when he slept. Less cold. A strand of black hair had fallen across his forehead, and I wanted to push it back.

I did not push it back.

I turned over and stared at the ceiling and thought about every bad thing in my life that had happened in the last twelve hours.

Around two in the morning, I felt a pull in my chest.

Not pain. A gentle tug, like a hand pulling a string. I sat up. The pendant was glowing on my chest, soft and blue. It was warm.

Kael did not wake. I took off my shoes and crept across the room in my socks. The pull got stronger. It led me to the far wall, behind the tall bookshelf, where there was nothing but old stone.

I put my hand on the wall.

It was warm, too.

The stone shivered under my fingers, and then it slid sideways without any noise. Behind it was a narrow stairway, going down into the dark.

I should have woken Kael. I know that. Any sensible person would have.

But I was never a sensible person. And that pull was too strong to fight.

I went down.

The stairs ended at a round room with a low ceiling. Silver light came from the walls, as if the stone itself was glowing. Dust covered everything. There were old shelves with strange tools on them, and a tall mirror covered with a cloth, and in the middle of the room a small wooden cradle with a silver blanket still folded inside it.

My throat went tight.

On the far wall hung a painting. A woman, tall and graceful, with long silver hair and kind eyes. A scar ran across the back of her left hand. She was smiling at someone outside the frame.

I knew her face. I had seen it every morning of my life, in a mirror, in the way my own eyes tilt up at the corners.

"Lyra," I whispered.

The pendant on my chest burned bright.

And a voice spoke softly in the dark, right behind me.

"I have been waiting twenty-two years for you to find this room.”