Cedric squinted into it. “Are we going in?”
She didn’t answer right away. He could see it—the calculation behind her eyes, like she carried a balance scale in her pocket.
Finally: “It would be unwise to go in together. If it seals from the inside and we can’t open it… no one’s coming to look for us.”
Cedric let out a breath. She wasn’t wrong. He didn’t like that she wasn’t wrong.
“Fair,” he muttered. “I like a good mystery. But I prefer not dying in a gods-forsaken tunnel better.”
Vesena touched the stone. The click echoed. The wall slid shut, smooth as before.
“Not tonight,” she said. “We’ll do this properly.”
She glanced at him sideways. “Rope. Lanterns. Backup.” A pause. “You know. Professional recklessness.”
He offered a tired smile. “My favorite kind.”
He kept glancing at the shadows, jaw tight, like he half expected something to crawl out of them. Because tunnels like that were never just forgotten. And in this kingdom, the things people tried to erase usually had teeth—or far too many legs.
“I’ll tell Evelyne what I found,” she declared. “Privately. She deserves to know, without anyone deciding for her.”
“And me?”
“You tell Alaric. We can’t keep acting like we’re on different sides of the map. If Ravik’s involved—if this ties back to Calveran—we can’t afford to split our pieces.”
Cedric gave a low laugh, shaking his head. He could see it—disaster wrapped in silk.
“Picture it now: your princess hiking up her skirts and dragging Alaric into some moldy corridor while the rest of us argue over which way’s north.”
Vesena smirked, already turning down the aisle.
Chapter 24
Evelyne had spent the entire morning attempting, with increasing creativity, to rid herself of Isildeth.
It started innocently enough. A sudden craving—something sweet, perhaps. “A tart strawberry pastry,” she wondered aloud, all innocence and wistful indulgence. “It might be my last chance.”
Isildeth had blinked once, nodded with stately gravity, and promptly sent Vesena to the kitchens.
After that, she tried again, each attempt met the same fate: Isildeth, perfectly serene, redirecting Vesena with the quiet efficiency of a general commanding a private army. “Let the young ones do the running,” she’d say with a wave of one aged, capable hand. “I’ve served long enough to earn stillness.”
Evelyne resisted the urge to throw a pillow at her.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Isildeth. She did. The older woman had brushed her hair, bandaged her scraped knees, and scolded her into proper posture more times than she could count.
But right now, she needed her toleave.
Just for a few minutes. Just long enough to speak to Vesena. Alone.
She didn’t even know exactly why she needed to speak with her.
Maybe it was because she wasn’t Isildeth—who, for all her loyalty, would lock the doors and tell Evelyne to sleep off her nerves.
Or maybe it was just a feeling. A sense that Vesena would understand. That she would listen.
Because something was brewing beneath the surface of her world, and she had the growing sense that Vesena knew how tohelp her name it. And right now, the person who had tucked her into bed for over two decades was the single greatest obstacle to her political subterfuge.
It happened during the fifth errand.
