Cedric rolled his eyes, crouching toward the narrow passage. “Of course. I live to be your canary in the crypt.”
Alaric offered him the torch. “You're too kind.”
While Cedric ducked into the tunnel, grumbling all the way, Alaric examined the stone frame from the outside. The last thing they needed was the door sealing shut behind them like some melodramatic tomb trap. He wedged a loose rock by the edge of the opening to keep their way back.
Cedric’s voice echoed softly from ahead, flattened by the stone. “I can’t see a thing down here. If that door closes, we’re trusting fate. Or dumb luck.”
Alaric followed a few steps behind, ducking to avoid a low arch. The passage was narrow, barely wide for their shoulders. In the walls, something wet wriggled. Worms, probably. Or worse.
“I'm not paid enough for this,” Cedric whined from the gloom. “This wasn’t in the job description. Why aren’t I back in the guest wing drinking brandy and seducing some half-bored noblewoman?”
“Because you're noble-adjacent and emotionally constipated.”
Cedric grumbled something that sounded like agreement but could’ve just been an insult.
Alaric reached out, his fingers brushed along the cold wall as they kept moving. “Stop whining. I’ve got a brain. You’ve got… something.”
“Rude.”
“Together we almost make one fully functioning person. We’ll manage.”
They kept walking, the corridor narrowing like it was trying to decide whether to let them through or crush them politely in the process. The torchlight flickered over uneven stone, casting jittery shadows that moved like something alive.
Cedric tripped over a rock and made a sound halfway between a gasp and a muffled sob.
“I want Vesena,” he groaned dramatically.
“Oh, Iknow.”
There was a beat of silence.
“What was that supposed to mean?” he asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Alaric replied far too smoothly. “An observation. A prophecy. A universal truth.”
“I say it in a completely cognitive-friendly way,” Cedric huffed. “She’s more competent. Smarter. Prettier than you. If I’m going to die in a hole under a chapel, I’d rather do it with someone who doesn’t treat death as a conversation starter.”
“And I’m the hopeless one,” Alaric muttered, dragging his fingers over a particularly suspect seam in the wall.
“You know what? I’ve changed my mind. It’s ablessingshe’s not here. At least if I die from your meddling and profound stupidity, I get to take you with me and balance the scales.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“You’re the one who drags us into suicide missions just to win points with the ice princess.”
“Not just for that.”
Even in the gloom, he could feel the force of Cedric’s glare. A psychic beam of judgment cutting through torchlight and sarcasm.
“We’re doing our duty. Like the exemplary citizens we so clearly are.”
Cedric snorted, unimpressed. “Right. Exemplary citizen. You mean the one currently daydreaming about the princess’s neck or the one who wants to uncover centuries-long counterfeit?”
Alaric narrowed his eyes. “Okay. That’s enough. Sneaking should be done in silence.”
Cedric grinned, utterly unrepentant. “As you wish.”
Alaric exhaled through his nose and kept moving.
