Reyla. She had forgotten Reyla.
Her jaw tightened. She would simply have to fetch her sister-in-law on the way out. Lord Tiberius would not like it. Her godparents wouldn’t either.
But she didn’t care. She would not leave her and Dame Florence behind.
The narrow corridor sloped subtly downward as they approached the first intersection—a cramped space branching left, right, and forward. Right lay the stables, Sir Tristan’s destination. Straight lay the King’s Forest—theirs.
“Wait—” Seraphina began to say before the rest of the words died in her throat.
A sound drifted near from the right-hand tunnel: the unmistakable clash of steel against steel. Fighting, right there in the passage.
Her blood froze.Tristan. Tristan was down that way.
Lord Tiberius’s hand clamped around her right wrist like a vice before she could do anything at all. “No,” he hissed against her ear, his breath ruffling her hair. “You are worth more than him.”
A protest swelled in her throat. She wasn’t. No one life was worth more than another.
Her guards rippled around her in the darkness, closing ranks as best they could in the tight quarters. A man’s distant scream echoed through the black, eerie, disembodied.
Her heart lurched. Was it Tristan?
“What are your orders?” Sir Arkwright asked, his voice brittle.
From the left, a sudden sound ruptured the silence—the clatter of stone in the distance.
Was someone approaching from that way, too?
Lord Tiberius tightened his grip, as if afraid she might be bodily wrenched from his grasp if he didn’t. “We. Must. Go.”
Her mind protested the thought.No. This was the council chamber all over again. Wellane. She did not want to be separated from her people. She did not want to leave her godparents and Olivia behind. She did not want to leave Tristan to die.
But neither did she want to condemn her guards to death by an unseen foe. A queen could not afford to choose one man over twenty—not even a man her best friend cared for.
“Please,” her captain implored from the darkness. “Your orders, Your Majesty.”
Her throat constricted around all the things she truly wished to say—denials, pleas for more time—but they were already out of time.
Please, Lord, watch over them all.
As if from far away, she heard herself whisper, “We must keep moving.”
Alyx coiled tighter around her neck, steadying her, grounding her, as their party swept back into motion. Onward they raced, growing further and further away from her quarters, her family. Past one intersection, and then another.
Her stomach churned. What a poor friend she made.
As if aware of her thoughts, Sir Arkwright quietly reassured her, “Their Graces are just behind us, Your Majesty, with that big varhound of theirs. And Mistress Olivia can handle herself.”
He was right. She knew he was right.
But for once, simple logic did little to soothe her, especially when the corridor finished its gentle slope, leading down a steep staircase to where another hidden door rested at the bottom.
The exit.
They were already there.
Once, that door would have led straight into a hunting lodge built by one of her ancestors right on the edge of the King’s Forest. But not in her lifetime. Now, it led out into mere trees and the ivy-threaded ruins of the once-grand hunting lodge.
The perfect place to hide horses.
