“It's been less than half an hour, they may not have made it on the ship yet. Block all routes to the harbor and send out forces onto the street. I want as many guards as can be spared looking for her,” the Empress commanded, and the other advisors began to follow her orders immediately. They moved toward the door, presumably to contact their commanders and the forces they were in charge of. I knew the city—hell, the entire fucking empire—would be on high alert in minutes in order to stop Kyella from being truly taken from us.
It wasn’t enough for me, though. I needed more. I needed to act, now.
“Tristan. Medical, now.” Elijah ordered sharply, and the man grunted but listened, limping out of the space with his family in tow. The Empress stopped them before they walked out the door, talking in low tones to his wife.
I turned to my two brothers, and I spit out what I’d been thinking from the moment Tristan had said those fatal words. “We need to go find her. Now.”
“We need a plan,” Kolvar agreed, “it is completely possible they have already made it on board the ship, and if not—”
“If not, they have found a way to travel that allows them to remain hidden,” Elijah interjected, shaking his head with a curse. “Malakai’s men seem to have thought this out too well to risk taking any of the main roads. They knew exactly where she would be—they must have been following her. They would have taken her along a path that was mostly unseen. They probably paid someone off—”
“The tunnels,” I responded, cutting him off mid-rant.The fucking tunnels.
The tunnels existed in the case of an attack on the castle. They served two purposes: allowing people to escape the castle as well as permitting our forces to go through, in order to attack from the outside of the attacking forces.
Of course the attacker would take those, they led right out to the fucking harbor. While they were a well-guarded secret, it wasn’t impossible that Malakai’s men had found out about it. Most guards in the castle knew about them. If I had to guess, there was either a newly rich bastard that let them in with a bribe or there was a dead body lying somewhere, waiting to be discovered.
Without a word to the Empress, who was still deep in conversation with Tristan’s wife, we left the room, sprinting toward the massive stone staircase. We practically flew down them, taking several at a time to reach the main floor before lunging toward the next set of stairs in the direction of the underground dungeons. The prisons weren’t used often, but they still smelled of mold and dried blood.
I grunted with minute relief when we finally reached the heavy metal door that opened into the tunnel system. The concern was palpable through our group and the determined energy that filled the silence between us let me know they were as fearful for our woman as myself. Logic and reason had flown out the window at the news of someone taking our woman—the contrast to how we had been before in the meeting to now was a complete one eighty.
As Kolvar eased open the heavy door, I froze, a chill rolling over my skin as the scent of stale air and Kyella hit me. She had been here. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
“I can smell her,” I said, cursing with the realization that I could smell blood mixed with her natural scent.
“They hurt her,” Elijah snarled in time with Kolvar releasing a feral growl.
These wretched men had made our girl bleed, and they would pay for that crime with their lives. We would catch them and slaughter them, making them pay the ultimate price for the pain they caused her.
Following my brothers, sprinting down the tunnel, kept me from fully losing myself down the rabbit hole of my planned vengeance. When we reached the end of the musty tunnel, I cursed. The harbor was right there—just beyond a small stretch of land in the fucking distance. The tunnels bypassed the entire city and anyone who could have possibly caught them.
“We need to get a boat,” I said, panic spearing my gut as I stepped forward., “We need to approach the ship from the—”
Suddenly, a peloton of guards appeared at the entrance of the tunnel. I loosed a deep growl, one that sounded damn near animalistic even to my ears, as they blocked our exit. What the hell?
“Move,” Elijah demanded sharply.
“Lord Elijah, we can’t,” one of them stuttered out, looking scared out of his mind. The fear wasn’t surprising—our power was great, and we weren’t often challenged—but it was clear this man didn’t want to stop us from moving forward. According to him, hehadto.
“What do you mean?” I growled.
“We are under orders—”
“Whose orders?” Kolvar snarled, voicing the question screaming through my mind as well.
“Our ruler.”
Chapter Four
Kyella
“Ky.”
Dakath’s rough voice played against my ear in a seductive pattern that caused me to shiver, a pleased hum leaving my throat at his proximity. I missed him. I didn’t completely understand why I missed him since we had been together since leaving Malakai’s empire…
We had been together, right? Why did I feel like we had been separated? Why did I feel like he had just gotten here? Although, I couldn’t even tell you where here was, since I felt as if I were trapped in a hazy dream state.
The feeling that overwhelmed everything was my exaltation to see him. His presence eased the pain I had suffered. I didn’t want to think about the pain right now. No, instead, I put all my focus on the lips tracing the shell of my ear, my pulse jumping in response to the delicate, hot touch.
