Evelyne’s heartbeat thundered in her throat, louder than the silence they crouched inside. The footsteps faded, swallowed by the stone.
Evelyne pressed a palm to the wall at her back, her breath unsteady. A tunnel under the chapel was one thing. But this? A passage yawning behind a portrait in the most public hall of the castle, hidden in plain sight?
She laughed. The sound caught in her throat and burned instead, halfway between hysteria and relief.Just like Alaric said. In plain sight.
“Princess?” Vesena’s voice was low, urgent.
Evelyne shook her head. “It’s nothing. Let’s go down there.”
Vesena hesitated, eyes narrowing in the gloom. “Are you sure?”
Evelyne’s fingers brushed the edge of the stone frame, steadying herself. “Sure? Hardly.”
The heat in her chest hadn’t faded—it felt like stepping into fire, but one she couldn’t walk away from. “I just refuse to be still. That will have to be enough.”
Chapter 45
She had no idea what to expect at the end of the tunnel—if there was an end at all, or if it simply plunged them deeper into the bones of the castle until the dark swallowed them whole. The passage sloped steadily downward, long and narrow, carved in ancient stone. Iron brackets fastened torches to the walls at uneven intervals, their flames casting wavering shadows that danced across the damp. Rough-hewn steps appeared underfoot, slick with age, each one worn into a shallow curve. Evelyne kept one hand against the wall for balance, the stone cold and wet beneath her fingertips. The air was colder down here. Older, too. And it felt like the kind of place where secrets were laid to rest—but not forgotten.
They walked in silence, for several minutes, it was only the sound of their breathing, the brush of cloth, the quiet drip of water somewhere far away. Then, gradually, the darkness began to thin. A faint glow shimmered ahead.
They stopped.
Before them, the corridor widened, stone giving way to open air as the tunnel unfolded into a vast cavernous chamber.
Her breath caught in her chest. It wasn’t small or hidden like a storeroom. It was vast, hewn straight out of the earth, high enough that the torchlight barely touched the ceiling. Long columns had been carved directly into the rock to hold the weight above; their surfaces etched with half-faded patterns she couldn’t place.
Books filled the space in impossible quantities—shelves stacked to sagging, heavy tomes piled in careless towers, parchment spilling from open chests like forgotten memories. A thin layer of dust blanketed everything, disturbed only by cobwebs that clung to corners and the long-dried inkpots leftopen on desks. The air smelled of aged parchment, old iron, and something faintly sour. Glass-fronted cabinets lined the walls, each crowded with artifacts Evelyne couldn’t begin to name: fragments of idols, rusted rings of unknown purpose, blades that gleamed with an unnatural sheen. Some relics were half-covered in yellowed sheets, forgotten or hidden on purpose. Between the cabinets, larger items loomed—statues with fractured faces, paintings with eyes that didn’t blink, weapons displayed on velvet that had long since faded to gray. The whole place felt like a mausoleum for forbidden knowledge.
Vesena jumped down first, landing lightly on the uneven stone. She turned, offered a hand, and Evelyne took it with a sigh that was mostly frustration. Her slippers caught the edge as she descended, skirts snagging against something rough.
She cursed under her breath. “If this is what my life is going to look like now, I’m commissioning a proper spy wardrobe.”
Vesena only gave a wry look and helped her steady herself.
They stood side by side at the base of the cavern, shadows rippling over their forms as the strange light reached them. Evelyne shivered. Not from cold.
The fire was on all the way and here as well.
Someone had been here.
Or worse—still was.
She felt like a trespasser in someone else’s nightmare. One that hadn’t finished playing out. For a heartbeat her mind leapt to the worst: assassins stockpiling poisons, cultists bending prayers into weapons, intruders hollowing the castle from within.
The torchlight shifted and revealed two figures near a low reading table, half-hidden behind a sagging stack of books.
Alaric was already halfway into a smirk, the kind that saidI knew you’d come crawling eventually—even though she had,in fact, neither crawled nor come here for him in any capacity whatsoever.
This can’t be happening…
Beside him stood Cedric, arms crossed, his expression maddeningly somewhere between sheepish and smug. Evelyne took a sharp inhale and stalked between leaning stacks of books and scattered crates, her heels cracking sharp against the stone floor with each clipped step.
“What,” she demanded, voice cold enough to frost the air, “are you doing here? And what is this place? And what’s going on?”
Alaric, infuriatingly relaxed, leaned one shoulder against the stone pillar.
“Oh, just enjoying the ambiance,” he teased.
