Keir crouched, studying the floor in the torchlight. “The dust here is thicker. Look for the freshest disturbance. That’s the path they took.”
After a tense moment, he pointed to the center corridor where the dust showed the clearest trail of recent passage. They followed it, Noah marking the walls with a scratch from his sword at each intersection as the corridor split again. And yet again. Decrepit cells lined the passages, their doors rotted away or hanging from single hinges, revealing cramped chambers of blackened stone that clearly hadn’t held prisoners in generations.
Twice they followed promising trails only to reach dead ends where the ceiling had collapsed, filling the passage with rubble. Twice they retraced their steps to the last intersection and choseagain, precious minutes sliding away like water through cupped hands.
“We need to split up.”Noah hated the words even as he spoke them. Dividing their strength in this labyrinth went against every instinct he possessed. But the maze was too vast, the time too short.
Taran studied the branching corridors ahead, his tracker’s eyes searching for subtle signs in the dust or fresh marks on the stone. “Aye. ’Tis the only way tae cover enough ground. Finn and I will take the left passage. Ye and Keir take the right.”
“If you find her,” Noah said, “call out. Sound carries down here. We’ll hear you.”
“Aye, and so will anyone else down here,” he warned. “But I ken ’twill be a chance we’ll have tae take.”
“And if it’s trouble we find?” Finn asked.
“Then I guess we do the same?” Noah shrugged, unable to think of an alternative.
His father gripped his arm, a gesture that needed no words, then disappeared with Finn into the left corridor. The sound of their boots faded quickly, swallowed by the ancient stone.
Noah and Keir moved through the right passage in tense silence, checking each cell they encountered.
Empty.
Empty.
Collapsed.
Empty.
The pattern wore on Noah’s nerves. Every vacant chamber was another chance lost, more time forfeited.
He yanked open a rotted door and thrust his torch inside. Nothing but bare stone and the skittering retreat of something small and dark into a crack in the wall. He pulled back and slammed his fist against the rotted doorframe.
Where are you, Skye? Where did they take you?
The heavy silence was its own kind of torment. This place was truly a perfect Hell and Skye was trapped somewhere inside it. “Tell me about her,” he whispered carefully, forcing himself to breathe evenly as he splayed his fingers against the self-inflicted ache. He needed something to anchor him beyond his sheer desperation to find her.
Keir glanced at him as they moved down the corridor. “What do you want to know?” he whispered low.
“You said you’ve watched over her since she was a child. What was she like?”
Something shifted in Keir’s posture, a softening he probably didn’t realize he’d allowed. “Curious. Always curious. When she was small, she’d follow the servants around the fortress asking questions about everything. How the bread was made. Why the stars moved. What was beyond the valley.” He checked another cell, found it empty, and moved on. “The Keeper put a stop to most of that as she grew older. Controlled who she spoke with, what she learned, where she went. But he couldn’t stamp out that hunger in her. I’d find her in the library at all hours, reading everything she could get her hands on. Teaching herself languages from old texts. Drawing maps of places she’d never been and would never go.”
He paused at an intersection, studying the floor. “She wanted more than the Citadel could give her. She wanted to be part of something broader than these walls. To discover where she might be most useful.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “Instead, he kept her caged. Told her it was love. Called it protection.”
The words resonated in Noah’s chest with a pain that was almost physical. He thought of Emily, of the life she deserved beyond the confines of illness and borrowed time. And Skye, brilliant and brave, locked away for the crime of wanting to learn about and experience what lay beyond her gilded prison. To make her own choices.
“Thank you…for watching over her.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted anything else. She’s enriched my life far more than anything I could ever do for her.”
“You love her.” Noah stated quietly. It wasn’t a question.
“Like the daughter I never had.” Keir stopped walking and turned to face him, his expression stripped of its usual guarded composure. “You must know what you’re doing tonight, all of you, will changeeverythingfor her in ways that cannot be reversed. Whether we succeed or fail, the moment The Keeper discovers she’s not where he put her, her life as she knew it is over. There’s no coming back from this. Understand that. He will not tolerate betrayal of any kind. Not even from her.”
“I understand.”
“And you also understand that not all of us may walk out of here alive?”
