“An entry to our home.” Olivin looked to Yonlin, whose lips parted with shock.
“You never told me?—”
“I didn’t want you exploring,” Olivin interrupted him. “I didn’t know where Wynry might lurk—she knew about this, too—and I didn’t want you going off without me. So I sealed it and never spoke of it.”
“I had a right to know…” Even Yonlin sounded uncertain.
“You were a boy,” Olivin countered and turned back to the tunnel. “And I was doing my best to protect you.”
How had she never seen it with such clarity? Olivin might have suffered grave injustices, but he didn’t truly see himself as a Shadow. Even when he was giving the organization his all, that wasn’t where his heart had ever been. It finally all slotted together. The contradictions Eira had been grappling with smoothed. In Olivin’s mind, he was a noble knight. A fallen lord struggling to reclaim all the control that had been stolen from him. First, he’d wanted revenge, but at the first glimpse of being able to attain something more, he jumped at it.
He was nothing more than a boy who was afraid of losing the few people that were important to him after he’d already lost so much.
It was noble. But smothering and misguided at the same time. Rather than causing her heart to ache, the pain in her chest continued to knot further.
He loved her.
Never had it been more clear than in that moment. Never was something more sad…because if he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t be so bent on protecting her. He wouldn’t be happywith relegating her to the sidelines—he would’ve seen the problems with even trying.
Eira kept the thoughts to herself and dutifully followed behind him into the tunnel on her hands and knees. They were at Risen now. Having this conversation would have to wait. Right before they took down Ulvarth wasn’t the time.
The tunnel pitched down, then leveled, and sloped up again. Olivin and Yonlin’s glyphs glinted off the slick walls. As her knees were screaming from the endless digging into jagged rock, Olivin stopped.
“Alyss, once more, in front of me,” Olivin instructed.
With a pulse of magic that rippled through the stone around them, Alyss folded the ceiling of the tunnel above Olivin’s head like a sheet of paper. Stone and mortar ground against each other. The cracking and creaking ended with a few pebbles that bounced down and skittered across the floor.
Now able to stand, Olivin pulled himself through the hole in what must be a floor. He turned and reached back for Eira. She took his hand, praying that something in her grasp didn’t give away her realizations.
The room she now found herself in was a cellar, though it had been ages since anything was last kept in here, judging from the thick blanket of cobwebs and the piles of dust that had collected where various long-collapsed and rotted objects had been. Eira could almost see their silhouettes on the walls. An after-image remnant of bygone days.
“Where is this?” Yonlin asked as Olivin ascended the stairs tucked against one side of the room. At the top was a hatch.
“Just under the kitchens.” Olivin put his shoulder into the hatch. It hardly budged.
“Would you like me to?” Alyss readily offered.
“If you don’t mind,” Olivin said.
“Under the kitchens? How did I never notice?” Yonlin spoke partially through their conversation.
“I closed it off before you ever entered the house again.”
“And sealed the other passage shut. A bit much, don’t you think?” Yonlin looked from where they’d come through the opening Alyss had made.
“You’re clever, brother. Always have been. If anyone could find this place, it was you.” With a pat on his brother’s shoulder, Olivin marched up the stairs.
Yonlin lingered, strife furrowed across his brows. Sharpness in his gaze. Eira wanted to tell him she knew how he felt—especially after her latest realizations. And, as a younger sibling, she’d gouged that piercing look into Marcus’s back countless times. But she held her tongue, for now, and ascended into what had once been a well-appointed kitchen.
“Had once been” could describe the entire manor.
Doors hung askew, limp on their hinges, rotted from the rain that pelted the inner courtyard of the square, three-story home. Windows were smashed. Furniture had long since been eaten by moths.
“Where were you staying after…you know?” Alyss asked Yonlin. It was clear that they hadn’t been making this their home for some time.
“Deneya helped me set up an apartment,” Olivin answered before Yonlin could.
“Deneya was behind our place?” This was news to Yonlin, it seemed.
