Vesena folded her arms. “Now we find out who that scroll belonged to.”
Cedric’s eyes flicked once to the heavy chapel door. Still shut. Only one way in. Only one way out. And yet, their mystery guest had vanished.
“Hidden passage,” Vesena murmured.
“Shocking,” he deadpanned.
Her glare could’ve blistered paint.
He raised his hands. “What? I’m just saying—it’s like something out of a third-rate mystery scroll. Cloaked woman disappears. Secret priest tunnel. Possibly demons.”
She rolled her eyes and crouched near the benches. “You can narrate your own murder later. Start looking for weak points.”
So they searched. He ran his palms along the cold seams near the rear columns, careful not to scrape his skin. Vesena moved with quiet precision, tracing the grooves of the altar and the rusted chains. Nothing. Only the silence, pressing closer, eating at his patience.
Then his hand brushed against something—barely a shade lighter than the rest of the wall. Uneven. Wrong.
“Found something,” he announced, trying for casual even as his pulse kicked.
Vesena turned, unimpressed. “That’s it?”
He grinned. “Apologies, it didn’t come with dramatic lighting.”
She came over, skirts whispering against the floor, eyes narrowing at the patch of stone.
“You’ve spent far too much time crawling around places you weren’t invited to,” she muttered.
“True,” Cedric agreed easily, “but it made me very popular at parties.”
She ignored him and crouched beside. “Help me get it open. Let’s see where our ghost went.”
For once, he didn’t joke. Just set his shoulder and shoved. Boots scraping, muscles straining, face heating to the exact shade of his damned hair. He gave it everything, achieved absolutely nothing.
When he stepped back, breath puffing like he’d just slayed a dragon, Vesena looked at him with one raised brow and all the sympathy of a stone bench.
“It’s no use,” he muttered, wiping his sleeve dramatically across his brow. “This thing isn’t moving.”
“You think they built secret passages forprieststo be opened by brute force?” she muttered, folding her arms. “Please.”
He shot her a look. “I was trying to help. And admit it—some of them look like they could throw a decent punch.”
“And I appreciate the show,” she said dryly, stepping past him.
She ran her fingers along the wall. He’d already done the same thing—three times, in fact—without result. Then, of course, she found it. Lower edge, where the shadows thickened. Smooth patch, too neat to be natural. Her hand pressed in.
Click.
Stone sighed.
The wall slid aside like it had just been waiting for her to show up. Dust gusted out, and both stepped back on instinct.
Cedric stared. Then looked at her—the way he always did when she managed something he couldn’t decide was brilliant or infuriating.
“You are alarmingly competent,” he said.
Her lips curved, just a fraction. “And you are alarmingly surprised.”
The passage gaped in front of them, dark as a throat. Damp air drifted out, sour and cold. No sound. No trace of the woman with the scroll.
